a long-lost brother.
When someone died in the movies, it was operatic. The gun went off with a peal of thunder and the victim flew back, propelled like a cannonball, spinning and trailing arcs of blood before crashing down to earth.
This wasn’t like the movies at all.
There was a sound. A polite but gruff cough. Arthur said, “Oh.” Then he stumbled back a couple of steps and sat down. His hand clutched his abdomen like he had a stomachache. Scarlet trails leaked between his fingers as the missionary stepped into the condo, closing the door behind him. A discreet pistol with a long gray tube screwed to the muzzle nestled in his other hand.
“Very sloppy,” the missionary murmured. Talking to himself now. Arthur was dead.
Huddled in the office, peering out through the crack in the doorway, Seelie tried to make herself very, very small.
The man rolled Arthur onto his back and patted him down. Now the cell phone, so innocuous, felt like a burning coal in Seelie’s pocket. Coming up empty, the killer grunted. He stepped back into the hallway and returned with an alligator-skin case, a vintage doctor’s bag. The bag plopped down next to Arthur’s body. Brass hasps flipped open under the man’s delicate thumbs.
Seelie looked to the front door. He hadn’t locked it. It was fifteen feet from her hiding place to the door, with a killer and a gun in between. Fifteen feet looked like a mile from here. Even lugging her backpack, Seelie was fast. Was she that fast?
The killer’s shadow moved in and out of her narrow frame of view. He took something from the doctor’s bag and rose, turning his back to the corpse on the floor.
Turning his back to her, too.
Seelie looked over her shoulder. No other way out of the office. Just the window, five stories straight down to the sidewalk. Lamp on the desk. She harbored a momentary fantasy of creeping up behind the guy and braining him with it. Then she thought better, as common sense outweighed her courage and her fear. Arthur’s floors were wood grain. They squeaked. The tiniest sound and he’d turn and gun her down, easy as breathing. Her other options played out in the nervous flutter of an eyelash.
If she stayed put and he didn’t search the place, he’d leave and she would be safe.
If she stayed put and he did, she would be cornered and trapped and dead.
Staying put meant trusting to chance, and Seelie never ever trusted to chance. Chance was a malicious bastard who would stab you in the back with a smile. Seelie took care of herself.
She needed a plan.
4.
A glassine pop sounded beyond the crack in the door, then a mechanical hum. Seelie was in motion, the hum fading to silence behind her back. She couldn’t worry about what it was, not yet. Arming herself came first.
Her gut reaction still had some merit. She took hold of Arthur’s desk lamp. It was brass with a green accountant’s shade, an imitation of vintage style, and heavy in her curled fist. She followed the cord, moving on her tiptoes, and yanked the plug. She made her way back to the door, quietly curling the cord around the base of the lamp so it couldn’t trip her up.
There was another pop, like a bulb burning out, and a split-second flash of hard white light. All she could see through the crack was Arthur’s corpse, sprawled in a puddle of cold blood. She had to take a chance. Clutching the lamp close to her chest, she gave the door a tiny push with the tip of her index finger and prayed the hinges didn’t squeak.
It glided wider, silent. The missionary had his back to her and his attention on the far wall. He raised a bulky gray box to his face and as the room lit in a blinding flash, she realized what it was.
He had a Polaroid camera, a model right out of the eighties. The chunky gray box hummed and spat out a square of glossy plastic. He took the photograph by the white border, gave it a vigorous shake and set it on the floor next to the others he’d taken, leaving them to develop. The popping had been the old flash bar clamped to the top of the camera, a row of bulbs burning out one by one with each squeeze of the trigger.
Seelie poked her head out a little farther. Now she knew what he was doing, just not