black BMW cruised around the corner. Jazz pressed back into the door but it was locked, the
damn shop was* shut, and then the BMW passed and continued along the street.
She hurried back out onto the pavement, resisting the temptation to keep her head down. She had to
watch, had to know what was going on.
A tall man emerged from a fast-food joint, carrying something that looked like steaming road kill in a
napkin. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, and as she paused six steps from him, he adjusted a lump
beneath his jacket.
Gun, Jazz thought.
He looked up, glanced around at her, and smiled. "Too hot to eat," he said, raising the food toward
her.
She ran. The man called after her, and even though he sounded friendly and alarmed, she could not
afford to stop, not now that she'd started running, because she was drawing attention to herself. And if and
when she did stop, she'd col-lapse into a heap, and the white-hot grief would start tearing her up.
The grief, and the loneliness.
She ducked into a Tube station, grateful for the shadows closing around her. The smell of the
Underground seemed to welcome her in.
Chapter Two
behind the beneath
Jazz flew down the stairs two at a time, sure that she would trip and break an ankle but unable to
stop herself. Images of her mother's brutalized corpse —and the warning she'd painted on the floor in her
own blood—flashed across her mind. But there was no going back. Over the years her mum had said a lot
about running, but one refrain echoed in Jazz's mind.
Once you start running, don't stop 'til you're well hidden.
A glance over her shoulder revealed several men de-scending after her, but they seemed in no hurry.
Still, best to be sure. To be safe. The blood on the bed and floor could so easily have been her own, and if
she slowed down it still might be, though now it would spill on the concrete stairs or tiled floor of the Tube
station.
She hit the bottom of the stairs and sidestepped a bickering middle-aged couple with three tagalong
children who huddled close to their parents, afraid of the world. Wise little ones, Jazz thought.
In her pocket she had a crumpled wad of notes —little more than forty pounds, she guessed—and
her rail pass. Hurrying toward the turnstiles, she thought of simply vault-ing them, both for speed and
because her pursuers could not be so bold. But in the fugue of grief and fear that warped her thoughts, she
knew that would attract attention she did not want. She pulled out the rail pass, stuffed her money back into
her pocket, and fed the card through the slot on the turnstile.
Get lost in a crowd, her mother's voice whispered in her head.
All of the things she had told Jazz over the years, while tucking her into bed at night or sending her
off to school in the morning, were the words of a ghost. Jazz had a ghost in her head now.
People milled about the platform, waiting for the train to arrive. The electronic sign above their heads
declared the next was three minutes away. Three minutes. Jazz glanced over her shoulder at the men who
had come onto the plat-form behind her, and she knew she did not have three min-utes. These weren't the
Uncles, but she had seen the black BMW slide by on the street above. Dressed in dark suits, they seemed
cut from the same cloth as the ugly-eyed men who had kept Jazz and her mother like pets and whose
leader had put Mum down like a sick dog.
Bile rose into the back of her throat, and she had to breathe through her mouth to keep from throwing
up. She tasted salty tears on her lips and wiped them away, plunging into the crowd of suited commuters,
snaking through them, hiding among them on the platform.
Trembling, she stopped. Eyes on the advertisements across the tracks, she tried to blend as best she
could, steady-ing her breathing. Do You Know Who You Are? one advert asked. She had no idea what it
was trying to sell, and for a second she felt the whole world bearing down on her, press-ing in from above
and all around.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. How many times had she taken the Tube in her life?
Hundreds, surely. If she could be normal for two more minutes, pretend that all was well, perhaps she could
truly become invisible in the crowd.
She squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to hold back the tears. A dreadful mistake, for on the backs of
her eyelids she found the grotesque tableau
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