of here.” Before she got all focused on how much carnage she’d wrought with her last shot. Light from the door was spilling out in a long rectangle into the alley, but King and Rock were slumped off to the side, more in the shadows.
Just as well.
She nodded, rotated the Bersa’s decocker down, and slipped the gun back into her purse. That’s when he noticed the hole between a pair of the zebra stripes on her bag. He also noticed her hand was trembling. She’d been rock solid in her gunfighting stance, but she was losing it fast.
“You shot King with your pistol still inside your purse?” One-handed, he folded his knife back up and stuck it in his pocket. They were almost to the corner of the building, and Corinna was parked in front of the restaurant.
“Y-yes,” she said. “I slipped my hand in and grabbed my gun as soon as you told me to get up and leave, while we were still at the table. I was waiting for a chance to use it. I figured I’d get one as soon as we got outside.” She gave a quick glance around. “And I guess I was right.”
Very good girl, indeed. He was impressed as hell, and no wonder she’d been clutching her purse like her life depended on it.
“It was real stupid of them not to think that a girl might have a gun,” she continued, her voice trembling but still managing to sound tough.
He had to agree, but he also had to cut the guys a break.
“They’re not used to girls like you.”
A stricken expression crossed her face but passed almost as quickly as it had come.
“What do you mean, girls like me?” she asked, keeping her gaze straight ahead, the hesitancy of her tone telling him more than the question.
What could he possibly mean? he wondered, curious as hell. What could possibly have given her such a wounded look of uncertainty?
“Drop-dead gorgeous, pure hothouse, like you’re from another planet,” he said, not having any trouble coming up with the truth, or any trouble recognizing the relief on her face when he said it. “You look like you should be on the cover of a magazine, not like you’re strapped.”
She gave a small smile, shaky but there.
“I’ve been ‘strapped’ since Superman taught me how to shoot on the firing range at Steele Street—about four years ago.”
This Superman guy again. Con was beginning to think he should make a point of meeting the man, but according to Jane, he already knew him—and he hadn’t seen a damn thing to tell him she was wrong.
No, his old life was here. It was here with Kid Chaos and this guy called Superman, if he wanted it.
But wanting it wasn’t going to be enough for him to get it.
“Well, that’s all I meant,” he said. “That when a guy looks at you, the last thing he’s thinking is that he’s going to get shot with anything you could drag out of a zebra-striped purse.” Or any other kind of purse, for that matter. Oh, hell, no. Every guy who saw her was definitely thinking something else—the same damn, impossible thing he was thinking.
He increased their speed, hustling her up the alley toward the street, passing the backs of a whatnot shop and the hardware store on the corner, moving faster, ignoring the burning pain in his side, his hand still on her arm.
She stumbled on the edge of a pothole, but he kept her from falling and tightened his hold on her. Off in the distance, he heard the first siren headed their way, but when they reached the corner of the building, he realized it wouldn’t matter even if they did make it to Corinna before the cops arrived. The GTO was sitting right where he’d left her, and her tires had been slashed.
Hell.
Two dead bodies, plenty of witnesses, and a damn good description of him and Jane weren’t exactly going to make the crime scene a cakewalk, but pretty damn close—except the cops wouldn’t find him in their database, not in any database. Every piece of identification he owned he’d either made himself or tagged an underworld expert to create. He was a clean slate in both hemispheres and on any continent.
He hesitated a second longer, looking in every direction. Like the elevator at Steele Street, and the garage, there was something familiar here, right here on this corner.
The first siren was joined by a second, both of them