but Gob had assured him that the target had not made them. Too busy talking into thin air,
he'd said. Thing plugged in 'is ear. Looked like someone out of Star Trek.
"So what now?" Jazz said. She'd been plucking up the courage to ask for several minutes, but Stevie
shot her down.
"He comes out and goes to work the same time as before, and the nick's on."
Jazz sighed. "Don't mean here, this. I mean..." Us, she wanted to say But that sounded so intimate,
and she was not sure there was any intimacy present in Stevie Sharpe. There really was no reason for her
to think of her and Stevie as an us. But sometimes she got the feeling that he wouldn't have minded so
much, and she couldn't deny that he intrigued her.
Stevie shifted on the bench. His hand dropped on her shoulder, light as a bird's touch, and she felt the
warmth of his leg against hers. Was that an answer? she wondered. She shook her head slightly and
smiled ruefully. She didn't want to play games like this.
Jazz stood and stretched, walking a few paces before squatting down and picking some daisies. It
was hot already, even though it was barely nine in the morning. For the first time since going underground, it
felt truly good to be out again. This was a wealthy street, the houses far apart and sep-arated by this small
park, and the windows she could see were too far away to bother her. She did not feel spied upon, did not
feel watched, and the sky above her was almost light enough to lift her away.
She picked another flower and remembered the daisy chains her mother used to make. When she
was a little girl, she'd thought they were magical, and when her mother showed her how they were done,
she remembered being disappointed.
Maybe she'd make one for Stevie.
"Jazz," Stevie said.
She glanced back at him. He was looking at her with lazy, lidded eyes, trying to affect a casualness
that neither of them felt. "Is he out?" Jazz asked.
"Front door's open; he's gone back in to set the alarm."
"Same again," she said. The target had done the same yesterday and the same the day before. Three
days in a row meant routine. And routine meant an easy score.
Jazz looked back at the ground before her, picked an-other daisy, and stood. As she turned around,
keeping her head down, she lifted her eyes to glance across the street. The house's facade was tall and
imposing, three stories high with four windows on each floor, an attic window in the steeply sloping roof,
and plant pots on balconies outside the first- and second-floor windows. The pots held the dried re-mains of
last summer's flowers. There was a large gate in the cast-iron fence around the small garden and a set of
steps up to the front door. Beside these steps, in the shadows, hid a smaller gate that must lead down to a
basement access. The light stonework was darkened from years of exhaust fumes and London smog, and
Jazz wondered at someone who could live somewhere so opulent without caring about its appearance.
The front door stood open, and she saw the shadow of the owner approaching from inside. He'd set
the alarm, and now he had however long the delay lasted to close and lock the front door.
Jazz heard Stevie counting very quietly beside her.
Something about the man caught Jazz's attention. She should be turning away from him, she knew
that —they'd seen enough to know he had his set routines—but as he emerged backward from the house
and slammed the front door closed, she realized what had grabbed her.
He had a ponytail.
Plenty of people have ponytails, she thought. Her heart stut-tered. The first time she'd met the
ponytailed Uncle, he'd said to her, Hello, little Jazz, you can call me Mort. She never had. When they
visited her mother, she always avoided speak-ing to them, if at all possible. But over the past few weeks,
when she thought back to that fateful day, she'd often won-dered whether he had been joking with her even
then. Playing with her. Giving her a clue as to how their relation-ship would inevitably end.
You can call me Mort.
"What is it?" Stevie whispered.
She'd dropped the daisies and grabbed Stevie's upper arms, fingers digging in. She heard his sharp
intake of breath, but she could not loosen her fists.
Turn away, she thought. If it's him, and he glances across here and sees us, it's all over. Cadge
died because those people knew me. I can't have Stevie on my conscience as well.
"Jazz?" Stevie said. "You're hurting, and you're going