I think my mystery caller is an employee who saw them marching me out and decided to take a chance.”
“A whistleblower,” Seelie said. “Like Arthur.”
“Who is dead now,” Tyler pointed out.
“Besides figuring out what that goop in Arthur’s flask is, we don’t have any other leads. I have to go for it. And I can’t risk scaring this person off, so yeah, I’m going alone.”
“Still don’t like it,” Tyler said.
Nell brandished the hot-pink spike of her tactical pen.
“See this?” she said. “Mightier than the sword.”
Tyler slouched in his chair. “Great. How does it do against guns?”
* * *
A hot rain rode in with the night. It drizzled down in a gritty mist, dripping a clammy finger down the neck of Nell’s trench coat. The weather was a tease, a prelude to a real summer storm, not enough fury in the clouds to wash the streets clean, just enough to turn the sidewalk grime to smudges of oil and leave a throbbing, building pressure behind her sinuses. She splashed through a shallow puddle. She’d worn her gray and white trainers tonight, shoes she could run in. Kick in, if she had to. The sign for the parking garage was dead ahead, black block letters on violent yellow, like the belly of a wasp. Nature evolved warning signs; so did the city, in its own way, if you understood its secret language.
It was four minutes to ten. The backlit sign glowed in the Manhattan dark.
Thin, wavering tendrils of greasy water rolled down the long concrete ramp. Nell stepped around the barricade and wandered through a silent gallery of cars, drifting between patches of stark fluorescent light and hard shadow. Outside, the rain started to pour. The garage acoustics turned it into a relentless, distant thrum, like fingers drumming on the lid of a casket. The air had a musty, stale-bread smell.
She turned at the end of the gallery, winding down, deeper beneath the earth. The next level was half-empty, the commuter crowd long gone. Battered and forgotten cars gathered dust in silence. A stretch of overhead lighting was burned out, dead and black behind a cage of chicken wire, painting the far corner of the garage in darkness.
Someone was hiding there. Crouching, next to a pale white sedan. Nell held her breath and pretended not to notice. She thought maybe it was their car, that they dropped their keys on the dirty concrete, but five more seconds in her peripheral vision told her otherwise. They were waiting in the shadows, with a perfect vantage point to see anyone coming their way. A little too far to jump out and grab her when she walked by. Not too far to fire a bullet.
She counted her steps, hunting for cover. Then she veered left and sidestepped behind the hood of a minivan. Her hand, deep in her trench coat pocket, curled around the armored spike of her pen. She hunkered down and watched the figure through the minivan’s windows.
“Come on out,” she said. Her voice echoed back to her, uncertain, anxious.
The figure seemed to move a little. Doing something with its hands. Still crouched.
“I can wait all night,” Nell called out.
“Did…did you come alone?” It was a man’s voice, no air behind it, too afraid to breathe deep. Either her mystery man was one hell of an actor, or he was about to cut and run.
Nell steeled herself. Then she rose back up, stepping out into a patch of light, hands open and out at her sides. A show of trust.
“Your turn,” she said.
He emerged on unsteady legs. His gaze darted behind her, over his own shoulder, looking everywhere but straight at Nell. It was Matt Crosby, Weaver’s public-relations man.
“I’m putting my life in your hands,” he said.
“I protect my sources,” Nell said. “Anything you tell me is strictly off the record and I take it to prison or my grave, whichever comes first.”
“If they find out I’m here, talking to you?” He stared over her shoulder, watching. “They’ll bury us in the same landfill. The Loom…it isn’t what you think it is.”
26.
“When I found out who you really were,” Matt said, “I knew you were the only person I could trust with this. Someone has to say something. Someone has to do something—”
He was a rabbit with a rabid dog on his trail. Shifting his weight from foot to foot, eyes bulging, face glistening with sweat. Nell could see his legs were aching to bolt. She kept her motions smooth, slow, working to