A Friend in the Dark - Gregory Ashe Page 0,29

white Escalade blitzed in front of Sam and Rufus, and then a Corolla with Uber and Lyft stickers on the windshield came the other way. By the time they had an opening, Yankee was past the fence, disappearing into the deeper shadows under the trees.

Sam and Rufus jogged after him. Not a full run, not a sprint, nothing that would make so much noise as to give them away. Sam felt the air change as they passed under the first old oak, the drop in temperature, the relative cool wicking along his skin. He breathed in the lingering smell of sun-warmed mulch and broken leaves, and, still there, Dial soap from Rufus right next to him. Adrenaline heightened everything; the world, always so sharp and intrusive for Sam, took on new edges. He did what he always did: he kept going.

Yankee was a darker shadow up ahead. When he turned, scouting, Sam caught a handful of Rufus’s shirt, and they both slowed. A streetlight deeper in the park limned branches, traced the silhouette of the ball cap. Then, a secondary glow lit up Yankee: the phone, the screen held close to his face as he considered something. Another message? Reviewing instructions? No breeze here. On the street, a girl laughed, talking loudly about Pablo’s bad behavior when he came over for Sunday dinner. Off to the right, behind the chain-link of a basketball court, a ball bounced hard with a thump that sounded shockingly loud in the park’s stillness.

Then Yankee was moving again. Sam’s knuckles brushed Rufus’s belly beneath the cotton, and he felt the faint tremble there, the careful release of breath. He shook his hand free from Rufus’s shirt, his fingers aching, and they followed. Yankee kept to the asphalt walkways, occasionally studying the phone again. When he turned down another path, Rufus stopped Sam, a hand held in front of his chest.

He pointed to the fencing surrounding the walking path, made a shape in the air vaguely resembling a C, then, with a bit of a run to get the momentum, vaulted over the fence to cut across the grass and meet Yankee on the other side. Rufus turned and waved Sam to join him.

Copying the movement, Sam landed easily on the other side of the fence. Then he and Rufus moved into the trees, skirting a line of boxwood, then a nasty blackberry bramble that nobody had uprooted, Sam ignoring Rufus’s grin when he hissed at a long line of scratches on his arm. Like Rufus’s touch earlier, the scratches were overwhelming; it was only practice and long years that let Sam shuffle them under everything else and keep his head in the game. They kept going until they reached a copse of cherries. When a shadow moved on the other side of the screen of leaves and branches, both men froze.

This time, Yankee came toward them, materializing out of the darkness as he emerged into a small clearing ahead. The ambient light of the city painted him in a chalky glow, the white letters of the cap bright in contrast to everything else. Yankee took a few paces in one direction, then back, then off in a third, then back. Sam felt a moment of frustration; had they followed him this far for nothing? Was Yankee looking for a place to pee? Was this some weird, exhibitionist jerk-off game?

Then a branch cracked off to the left, and Sam grabbed Rufus’s arm without thinking about it. Rufus was trembling; not shaking, not fear—or not just fear, anyway—but tremors. Compressed energy. This was personal for him too. Jake had meant something to him too. And Sam found himself adding to the mental list: cute and funny and vulnerable and expressive and clever and resourceful and, now, brave. Oh, top of the list, big bold letters: smartass.

The woman who emerged from the shadows to the left was unremarkable. Mousy brown hair in a ponytail, small head, a pant suit that had probably come off a JCPenney suits and separates rack. Sam recognized her as the woman who had interrupted his conversation with Lampo. The weak light made the rest of her features indistinguishable, but the way Yankee reacted, that was remarkable. He jerked back at her appearance. He touched his pocket like a man with a talisman.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Yankee said in a low voice that carried in the still air of the clearing.

The woman tsked. Actually tsked. “Some of us lead busy lives, Marcus.