She was in a car with a dead body. Macy lay in the back, underneath a dark sheet that once lined the seat. The old man was slumped and bleeding in the front. She’d hid from the headlights quickly, ducking down under the sheet and then writhing into cover. She focused on her breathing, not wanting the sheet to be so obviously huffing and puffing, but the adrenaline made it hard to breathe slowly. The material was thin, and when the headlights shone into the car, she could press her eye against it and see through. She could see the light inside the car. Thank God that was all she could see.

It must have been a head shot. Execution style. The old man probably hadn’t seen it coming, her only half-trusted friend out here, the good and kindly grandfather dutifully responding to her call.

The guilt made her want to vomit all over the sheet.

There was fear, too. She supposed it was fear that kept it in, a fear that kept her catatonic in a car with a corpse.

After a while, the headlights turned off. She waited there in the dark, straining her ear for any sound of an opening door or footsteps over the crushed stone. For now, she could only hear her heart pounding.

As long as she heard nothing else, she’d have to stay there and try not to lose her mind. The men who’d been pursuing her had taken out the old man. And then what? Had they gone back inside the hotel? Would they give up looking for her at some point and return to the car? Maybe it helped her to be stuck in a crime scene. It might ward the bad guys away. But if the gunshot was reported, the police might show up. Police could be bad guys, too. In her experience, they usually were.

When she was on the force in St. Louis, she’d met plenty of bad cops. She had worked alongside them. She supposed she’d been a bad cop in a way, too. Early on, she had taken part—foolishly, naively—in some questionable operations. Little money-making schemes, kickbacks. At first she hadn’t even figured it out, how she was helping cover for other people’s corruption. That was the original sin, starting up like simple favors. She was the rookie. And she was not only new, but a girl. The new girl. It was hard for her to imagine now how she could ever have been so “new.”

It infuriated her.

Fear had turned to anger, also, for what those fuckers had done to the old man in the seat in front of her. It turned inside her, under the sheet, a hidden transformation.

She almost wanted them to come back to the car, to check on their handiwork and get blasted away by her Beretta. She hadn’t used it in three weeks and she welcomed the practice.

Damn. She had to slow her breathing down again. She was getting too worked up thinking about revenge. She was still lying under a goddamn sheet.

Twenty minutes passed and still no sounds from the car behind her. Was it even still there? It had come silently. Maybe it left the same way. Could she lift up the sheet and peak out above the headrest and out the rear window without being spotted?

It was entirely possible, too, that the car was filled with innocent people that had nothing to do with the old man. Not everything in Luanda revolved around her and her problems.

Before she could slide the sheet off, the sound of her car’s door opening froze her in place. Another door, both of them at the front. And then voices like teenagers, speaking something like Portuguese. Quick, nervous voices. Macy peeked above the sheet to find two kids looking into the front seat, and looking, with increasingly horrified expressions, at the bloodied driver. They touched him and then recoiled when the corpse moved like a corpse. And then they came back and touched him again, this time at his pant pockets, their little hands searching through, most likely for cash. The boy on the passenger side reached into the center console, where a taxi driver would keep his fare money. These little punk kids robbing a dead man. The dead old man.

Macy whipped off the sheet and pointed her gun at them. “Freeze!” It came out like a cop.

They had nothing to point back at her, so Macy sat up and then lurched out of the car, spinning around the opened rear door and then fixing her gun sight on the eldest kid. They were both scared, but the eldest had now gone white. She could see the color of his face in the dark, his face was almost crying. “What the fuck are you doing?” Macy said.

He had wads of pastel-colored bills in both hands.

Maybe she shouldn’t have left the car like that and made it so obvious for her killers. Maybe she should have worried about herself rather than the honor of a dead man. But here she was, acting like a cop with these kids in a dark lot behind Hotel Topenka.

They stumbled over each other and then rushed to a scooter parked in front of the car. The engine was still running. Macy chased them to it, into it, one of the kids tripping over the bike and spilling onto the ground, the money billowing all over in the wind like confetti.

“Leave it,” Macy said, whether or not they could understand. She wanted their bike. “Leave the bike.” These punks had stolen the old man’s cab fare. So now she could take their bike. As far as Macy was concerned, it was more than fair. And it was a good lesson, one taught for free. Any other street person here in Luanda would have shot them dead the second they opened the car door.

Macy waved them away with her other hand while still aiming at the kids. “Go!” she cried. They understood go and the gun, the two kids running off into the night without their bike. They could come back and scoop up the money later if they wanted.

She looked around in a three-sixty for the first time since leaving the car. She was alone. The car behind her had somehow left.

Traffic sounds reached her ears again. The sirens. The wail of an ocean freighter. It was time to get moving.

She jogged up to the scooter, pulled it upright off the ground by the handlebar, and then straddled it. It was an uncomfortable ride. Too small. And the engine was probably just slightly stronger than a lawnmower. But it was better than walking.

A scooter could also maneuver around in some tight corners, and out of some tight spots. She would leave the hotel on it, taking alleys and back roads away from the city, trying not to stop for anything.

Ten minutes of continuous travel and Macy no longer checked compulsively at her mirrors. She had weaved through a thinning horde of pedestrians and cars, approaching the first of many highways. She needed to put as much distance between her and Hotel Topenka as possible.

It was a change of plans, that was all. Nothing to stress about. Instead of trying to make contacts at the shipping docks, she’d pursue one from her past. She’d been avoiding direct contact, not knowing how he’d take it, but it was time. After another few miles, Macy slowed to a stop alongside a gas station to check her phone. She pulled up the Luanda address of Kyle Raleigh, a man who owed her a favor. She’d already exhausted her resources looking for him at his other residence in Soyo. The address in Luanda would be her last chance.

She was so fucking tired of this.

Putting the phone back in her pocket, she checked her surroundings. Several cars had pulled into the station after she did. She waited for the occupants to step out of their cars before she drove off into the night.