she was doing anything with any real meaning.
“I wanted to help people,” she said. To her ears, she sounded pathetically idealistic.
Joey cracked a smile. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Let’s see, I’ve trashed my car, barfed my way across the country, gotten chased, and now I’m hiding out with you because I think some people might want to kill me. So . . . it’s going great.” Caroline smiled back at her friend, but then the smile faded from her face. “You want to know why I became a lawyer? The answer is, I didn’t want to be ruled by my fears.”
She looked down. Her fears were kicking her ass at the moment.
“You and me both, honey,” Joey said. “Being scared is a natural response to living. But you get out there, and you figure it out. Honey, you can do this.”
Meeting his eyes, Caroline found conviction. Absolute belief in her. That certainty in her merit, in her abilities was the gift her best friend had been giving her for as long as she could remember. The question was whether she shared his certainty that she could see this nightmare journey through to the end.
“You’ll take care of Nolan while we’re gone, right?” Caroline finally said.
Joey smiled. “I promise.”
“The police station’s automated phone system is a complete nightmare, but I finally talked to a real, live person,” Caroline said. “They said they’d send a couple of officers to escort us into the courthouse.”
“Really? How’d you get them to agree to do that?” Judi asked. “I can’t even get them to come out here when the neighbors are dumpster diving in my trash cans. Don’t get me started . . .”
“I told them I had a subpoenaed witness who was worried about getting to a hearing safely. They said they’ll meet us at the north entrance between nine and ten a.m. The hearing starts at ten fifteen, so that should give us plenty of time to get upstairs.”
“That’s great,” Annie said, her dark eyes sparkling with relief.
“It’s still not ideal,” Caroline said. “An hour window is really big. The more time we spend out in the open, the greater our chance of detection. But if we aren’t there when the police get there, I’m worried they’ll leave.”
Judi nodded, her face showing her skepticism about whether the NYPD would wait.
Caroline tilted her laptop so Annie and Judi could see the map of the courthouse.
“What we need is a safe place where we can watch the north entrance.” Caroline met Judi’s eyes. “Is there a café or restaurant across the street?”
“No.” Judi shook her head. “Just some office buildings and a subway stop. There’s a dirt lot where they took down a building, but that doesn’t help us.”
From the corner of her eye, Caroline saw Nolan approaching. Judi and Annie must have seen him, too, since they stopped talking and took sips of their coffee with pretend nonchalance.
“Whatcha talking about?” Nolan asked. He wore a T-rex shirt, striped pajama bottoms, and a 49ers hat. At his hip, he’d tucked one of the kitchen implements from the puppet show.
“Nothing much. Grown-up stuff, honey,” Annie said. “Mommy just needs to do an errand today. You’re going to stay here with Joey until I get back.”
Caroline watched as Annie held her breath, waiting to see if Nolan would reject the proposed plan. Instead, Nolan looked down at his mismatched outfit.
“Everything I’m wearing is awesome,” he announced. “Just not together.”
“What’s the spatula for?” Caroline gestured with her chin toward the silver-and-black implement tucked into the waistband of his pants.
“It’s an ax. For fighting bad guys.”
Caroline smiled. “Good thinking. You can never be too ready for the zombie apocalypse.”
“No, not zombies,” Nolan said. “It’s for regular bad guys.”
Caroline caught Annie’s concerned look over her son’s head. Maybe Nolan had heard them talking.
“I know it looks like a spatula, but that’s just to fool the bad guys. They’re only going to think it’s a spatula,” Nolan explained. “I’m going to surprise them with it being an ax.”
“That’s genius,” Judi said, her face lighting up.
“It is?” Annie asked.
“I’ve got an idea,” Judi said as Joey came to lead Nolan back out to the living room.
Caroline and Annie squatted together in the aisle of Freddie’s lunch truck. The wheels bumped along the uneven pavement.
When the motion stopped, Caroline straightened to standing and craned her head forward toward the driver’s cabin, where Freddie sat piloting the truck through the dirt lot. She was pleased with what she saw. Freddie had found a