They were looking for someone. And she had a horrible feeling, deep in her gut, that she knew who it was… and that they were about to find her.
The bartender's eyes shifted to the seat where she'd been sitting, and she felt her heart almost stop as he pointed toward the dingy corridor where the bathrooms were, saying something dismissive to the cop standing there. That was her cue to leave. Wishing nothing but unpleasantness on the bartender, she turned on her heel and started walking, calmly but quickly, toward the other end of the hallway, her heart pounding in her chest. There was no way she was getting out of the bar by heading the other way, was there? The only way was this way. She only hoped there'd be a way out…
Sure enough, she moved past a dingy and clearly unused kitchen and found a screen door that was closed over, the grimy alley beyond beckoning her like a beacon. She'd be safe there. Behind her, she could hear the cops moving toward the corridor, knew that they had eyes on her, but she forced herself to stay calm, forced herself not to turn around. If she turned and made eye contact with the cops, they'd know for sure that she was running from them… because if they told her to stop, she'd have no choice but to disobey. Right now, they hadn't shouted anything at her. Right now, she still had plausible deniability. She tried the screen door and bit her lip when she realized it was locked. Quickly, she started fumbling for the catch.
"Excuse me, ma'am?"
Cop voice. It shot down her spine, setting off muscle memory from her head to her toes. That authoritative tone they used, that don't-mess-with-me edge to a voice that was clearly masquerading as friendly. Protect and serve, her ass. She'd never met a cop who was in it for any reason other than pure ego. And she wasn't going down today. Not to a handful of bullshit beat cops who didn't even know how to surround a building properly. She was Scarlet Adams, goddamnit, and the only reason they didn't know her name was that she was too goddamn good at her job.
The catch wasn't working. With one jerk of her wrist, she broke the handle and shoved the door open, slipping out into the alley beyond. To her relief, she saw what she'd been hoping to see. A dumpster, pushed up against the wall — and above it, a busted fire escape that was positioned just right for her to be able to get up onto the roof of the building next door to the dingy bar she'd been camping out in.
Well, there went her fake credit card. Served the guy right for ratting her out to the cops. She just hoped he'd get done for his stupid watered-down bourbon… or he'd choke on it. Still, she was grateful she wasn't too drunk for what she was about to do. Bracing herself, she ran the few paces across the alley and made it onto the closed lid of the dumpster with an athletic leap. Then it was the work of a moment to jump up and grab the rusted fire escape to make it up onto the roof.
The cops were shouting at each other — she realized with a stir of dismay that a couple more had come down the alley, clearly called by their mates from inside the pub. That made four of them, and they were all in the alleyway, two of them talking to each other, two more looking up at her. She hesitated for a minute, not sure where to go next — had they lost her? No… no, the cop who'd shouted at her from inside the bar was looking straight up at her, anger in his hard, mean little eyes.
"Get down from there," he shouted, his anger clear in his voice. "You need to answer a few questions, right now."
A rooftop chase? Really? She hadn't had one of these in years… not since her brief stint as a cat burglar. And that had been in New York City, where there had been plenty of rooftops to jump across… she didn't know Philadelphia nearly well enough for this. And it was dark out, too. The alleyway was reasonably well lit, the lights of the bar keeping it illuminated, but up here… well, no matter. The darker it was, the harder the cops would find it to keep up with her. So, Scarlet turned on her heel, and took off running.
She had to hand it to the cops — they were brave. Behind her, she could hear them scrambling up onto the dumpster, barking orders at each other as they scrambled to catch up with her. She accelerated, scanning the rooftops ahead of her, feeling her boots thumping on the tiles as she ran, gritting her teeth as she felt her feet slip slightly with every step. This was dangerous as hell. But it was exhilarating, too… it gave her that giddy adrenaline rush that she'd been chasing ever since that day in the store, six-years-old and helping her daddy get away with something he shouldn't have done.
Well, she was still that six-year-old girl, and though her father might have been gone, she sure as hell wasn't going to let herself get caught by some boof-headed beat cops. So, when she came up on some loose tiles, glancing over her shoulder to see how close the cops were, she took her chance. She kicked a few of the tiles, waited until just the right moment — then uttered a bloodcurdling scream before tearing off in the opposite direction, as silent as she could. The tiles clattered down to the alley below, and she grinned in triumph as she heard the cops arguing with each other, slowing to investigate the scene. That should take them a bit of time, at least. The fog was rolling in and it was hard to see more than twenty feet ahead… she knew the river was close, maybe that had something to do with it. She was just about away. She just needed to…
"Stop!"
Scarlet's eyes widened. How the hell had he gotten here so fast? There, ahead of her on the roof, was one of the cops — the one from the bar, she realized with a sinking feeling in her chest, the one who'd been walking the perimeter, checking the faces of all the regulars who'd been drinking there. He must have fanned out from the others, come around a different way. There was nothing she hated more than a smart cop.
"Turn yourself in, Adams," he cautioned her.
She gritted her teeth at the realization that he knew her name. That meant Ryan had betrayed her — it had to have been him. Nobody else knew her real name aside from the members of her crew… this betrayal stung a lot more than any others had, and she felt the rage burning in her as she locked eyes with the cop.
"Don't think so, officer," she spat, heart pounding as she tried to subtly scan the surrounding rooftops. Not sure what was behind her, not sure what was to the left or to the right… could she risk jumping down, sprinting out into the street, losing them in traffic? The fog really was thick up here… she could barely see where she was, let alone formulate a plan.
But she had bigger problems. The cop had drawn his gun. Her eyes widened a little and she took an unconscious step back, feeling her balance shift a little on the uneven surface of the roof. What the hell was he doing? Getting a gun out like that when he'd barely even touched on the non-lethal options? This was no regular cop. The guy grinned, and she saw cruelty in his face, saw him inching closer as his confidence grew. Her fault, she knew… she cursed herself for showing weakness, for letting him know she wasn't armed by reacting with such fear to his own weapon.
"Buddy of mine knows you," he said conversationally, the gun trained on her as he strode slowly closer. At least he was letting her back up — she continued to inch backwards, using her foot to make sure there was roof behind her each time. Maybe she could get out of this somehow… maybe — "Goes by the name Ryan. You'd remember, huh? Whore."
That word was like a slap. Very quickly, Scarlet began to recategorize the nature of the situation she was in. This man was no cop — at least, he sure as hell wasn't operating in his official capacities right now. His buddies were exploring the false lead she'd given them, the tiles she'd kicked down into the alleyway… which meant she was stuck with him. And she was beginning to worry that he was more interested in killing her than capturing her and having her tried.
"Yeah, I know Ryan," she said cautiously, wanting to keep him talking. "We were close for a while, until he cheated on me. Is he the one who sent you to — what? Capture me? Kill me?"
"He left it up to me," the cop snarled, an ugly glitter in his eyes. "And I'll be honest with you, Adams — I haven't decided yet. Maybe you could convince me," he said, something deeply unpleasant in his voice that made her shudder. "Maybe you could make it wor
th my while, you know? Not shooting you right here and now." And with the hand that wasn't holding his gun, he gestured to his belt buckle.
"I'd rather have my head blown off," she said, feeling her face flare into a rictus of disgust. That seemed to offend him. His expression darkened and he cocked the gun, and she knew in one dizzy moment that he fully intended to fire the thing straight at her. So, she did the only thing she could. As she heard the gun fire, the sound, impossibly loud, echoing and ricocheting off the rooftops around them, she turned on her heel — and jumped straight off the roof and out into space.
Chapter 3
For a long, terrifying moment, Scarlet felt like she was suspended in mid-air, the fog all around her completely obscuring her view. With no idea where she was or what she was falling toward, she felt her reflexes take over, her instincts honed by a lifetime of jumping off rooftops and climbing up buildings — she tucked into a ball, ready to roll if she hit the ground hard, ready to absorb as much of the impact as possible. She'd be scraped to hell, but she'd survive without any broken bones if she was lucky… and then she could run like hell in whatever direction that cop wasn't. The fact that he'd fired on her was still the source of a lot of shock. She'd been shot at before, of course… but not very often. Scarlet had always prided herself on being careful, on avoiding the majority of gunplay through good planning and taking care.
But no amount of good planning, it seemed, could get her out of the clutches of Ryan and his buddies. She could feel a dull, sick pounding in her chest as she thought of what he'd told her in passing about all the buddies he had on the force, the cops that he'd befriended — either by bribery or the simple brotherhood of unpleasant men that seemed to bring men like Ryan such an ample supply of asshole friends who were willing to do their dirty work for them. She had half a mind to stick around in Philadelphia and make sure she got her revenge on Ryan…
Then she hit the ground, and that curiously long, suspended moment of pure shock evaporated, replaced by a completely new kind of surprise. It was wet. She was sinking deep into icy-cold water, her body tucked into a ball that sank deep into the water… spluttering a little, not used to the cold or the wet, she struggled toward the surface, kicking hard as she felt her jeans and jacket soak through with water. Holy shit, she'd been closer to the river than she'd thought. At least she hadn't hit the ground. Was it worth staying in the water? Maybe they'd assume she'd drowned… she snatched a quick breath of air and then dove under the surface again, feeling the water carrying her on and kicking her feet a little to help it out. Where did the river flow out to, again? Maybe she could let it carry her all the way out of Philly and into the countryside… or the ocean. Start over from there. Her wallet was going to be soaked through, but her phone at least was waterproof. At least, she was pretty sure it was waterproof. Shit, had she sprung for the waterproof one in the end, or not?
It was very cold, in the river, and she kept swimming more to keep her body temperature up than because she felt the swift waters needed any help getting her where she needed to go — which, after all, was just as far from the murderous cop — cops? Were his buddies in on it too? — as she could get. Still, it wasn't long before the chill of the water made her shiver, and she kicked her way to the shore and clambered out, shivering, onto a rocky shore. God, she really had gotten a decent way out of town, hadn't she? There were no buildings to be seen anywhere around her, and though the fog was still thick, she had a suspicion that a big part of the reason that she couldn't see a damn thing was the loss of the lights of the city. The current must have pulled her further out of the city than she'd thought. Well, at least she was a good distance from those cops. Time to get moving.
Still shivering, she got to her feet and dusted herself off a little, wrinkling her nose at the way her boots squelched soddenly against the rocky shore of the river. What an unpleasant way to get away from a nasty situation. The shock of it was beginning to set in, now — the understanding that she'd just narrowly avoided a pretty gristly fate — and she kept herself moving, not wanting to sit for too long in case the cold and the shock did her in the same way that cop had been trying to. This was not how Scarlet Adams intended to go out. No, she'd either die in a blaze of glory… or at a ripe old age, surrounded by all her stolen trinkets. She wasn't going to freeze to death on a riverside.
As she walked, she ran a quick check of her faculties, just in case she was missing some serious injury. It seemed wild that she'd fallen from a rooftop and not sustained a single scratch, even from the river — weren't there usually rocks and sticks and such in rivers? Strange, too, that the water had been so clean. The river she knew was polluted and revolting. Not that she'd spent much time in Philadelphia, of course. There hadn't exactly been much time for sightseeing. She couldn't even remember the name of it actually. Hadn't the bar she'd been drinking in been further away from the river, too? Sure, she'd gotten a little turned around while running for her life, but it just seemed strange that there had been a building that close to the river; one that let her leap from the edge and land safely in the water…
Well, she wasn't injured. Aside from the cold that was turning her fingers blue, she was safe and well. But new concerns were beginning to dawn on her. She'd walked up from the river shore, finding herself in an oddly rural part of the country. That didn't make sense, did it? She hadn't exactly spent much time in Pennsylvania, overall, but she still didn't think there was quite this much countryside so close to the city… what the hell was going on? Had she passed out without realizing it, floated further downstream than she'd thought possible? She reached into her pocket for her phone, wanting to get a GPS reading or at the very least a map to start figuring out where she was. They might track her, of course, if they had that kind of surveillance equipment going… but right now, she was more interested in figuring out where she was than she was in evading the cops. She could always ditch the phone later — bury it somewhere, let them spend a while trying and failing to hunt her down out here. God, this fog really was thick, wasn't it?
The phone, to her acute dismay, would not turn on. Not waterproof after all, then, she thought with a sigh, taking a moment to remind herself that all the important stuff was backed up — either on an encrypted hard-drive she kept stashed in an anonymous safe deposit box, or just in her head, the best encrypted hard drive of all. Still, she'd heard that the cops could sometimes track even a phone that was turned off, or maybe even waterlogged, and she spent a few minutes digging a hole to bury it in. It felt oddly like a funeral, and she shook her head as she covered the little device back over and set off walking again.
She was on what felt like a dirt road, which struck her as strange. Surely, she wasn't that far into the country, was she? A dirt road? Really? Couldn't afford bitumen out here? At least it was a road, though. A road meant she was getting somewhere… and once she got somewhere, she could figure out where the hell she was going next. Her purse was still strapped to her body, under her jacket — she'd gotten into that habit a long time ago. When you spent a lot of your childhood learning how to pick pockets, you got very good at keeping your own pockets safe from that particular kind of harm. She had her father to thank for that.
God, he kept coming up today, didn't he? She wondered why that was — why she was thinking about him so often. Maybe it was leaving Philadelphia, getting ready to leave town again for the millionth time in her life. That always reminded her of home — of her dad, of traveling the country with him, leaving town whenever the locals began to notice that things were going missing… or whenever they'd finished selling their collection of stolen goods from the town before. But she needed to get out of Philadelphia. There was nothing left for her there… not with Ryan behaving the way he had. The fact that he'd turned her in to the cops… that really stuck in her craw. There was petty, and then there was breaking thieves' code. Not that it was in writing anywhere… but when you'd been in the business for long enough, you intrinsically knew that even if you might
dislike another thief, you never — never — went to the cops.
Then again, it hadn't exactly been legal means that cop had been trying to use to subdue her. She shivered a little, well aware that she'd narrowly avoided being killed… then shivered again, because it was freezing on this dirt road in the middle of nowhere. How late was it? The buzz of the watered-down bourbon was well and truly gone in the wake of the rooftop chase and her dip in the river — adrenaline had a way of getting rid of alcohol, much to her displeasure, and all she was left with was cold and exhaustion beginning to creep in as the adrenaline faded. Where the hell was she going to sleep tonight? Under a tree? The fog was so thick… she'd never seen mist like this before. Where the hell was she, exactly? She was beginning to suspect she was a lot further than Philly… but that didn't make any sense. She'd only been in the river for… what, barely ten minutes? Nowhere near long enough to be anywhere this different.
But as she kept walking, Scarlet realized she could see something in the distance, just faint. Something that looked for all the world like a building. Not a tall building — this one was low, a story at most, but it was still a building, and a blessed relief from the monotonous mist and dark countryside. She hastened toward it, realizing as she did that the dirt road beneath her feet was giving way to… stones? Cobblestones, she thought blankly, staring down at the road beneath her still-soggy boots. This street was paved with cobblestones. Just where the hell was she? There were plenty of tiny towns in Pennsylvania, but surely none with such a … medieval vibe.
The building, as she approached it, didn't really assuage her unease. It was distinctly medieval-looking, too, topped with a thatched roof, and she squinted at it uneasily through the fog before continuing on. Maybe I've stumbled onto a film set, she thought vaguely, squinting around for some trace of cameras or special effects… but somehow, it just didn't seem likely. What seemed more likely was the idea that she was dreaming. That was reassuring, a little. Just a dream. Maybe she'd wake up in her cozy bed and realize that not only this whole stupid walk, but the breakup, too, had all been figments of her imagination.
Highlander Guarded: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander In Time Book 10) Page 2