Not speeding my steps, I jaywalked across the street and stopped in front of a window as if attracted by the silver jewelry on display. But mostly just watching my trail and the parked cars and the buildings across the way for anything or anyone suspicious. I saw nothing. Except the car with the teens in it, cruising back around the block. This time the windows were up, the hecklers inside, and the car was moving slowly, at a walking pace. My walking pace. Which begged the question, were they tailing me for purposes of their own or were they tailing me because someone paid them to watch for me and tail me?

Beast sent me an image of her leaping to the hood of the car and swatting at them. I sent her one of them shooting her through the windshield. She snarled, frustrated. I wasn’t sure when Beast had developed this love of battle, but she was a lot more aggressive than before.

I tapped out a quick text to Bruiser. Where are you?

He sent one back. Ten minutes out. Held up. Get a table. Be there soon.

Too far away. Across the street, in a second-story window, I saw movement. The window was up about six inches. Something small and round emerged into the sunlight. Gun barrel?

I walked into the shop and quickly beyond the entrance. I pulled a twenty from the tiny pocket in my waistband. To the redheaded woman in the back of the shop, behind the counter, I said, “A car is following me. Can I get out the back?”

“Cop car?” she asked, reaching under the counter. “Or gangbangers?”

“I’m going with gangbangers. Clothes are alike.”

She brought out a sawed-off shotgun and laid it on the counter. I froze until I saw it was pointing away from me. Sawed-offs had a hella kick, but the redhead was a big woman and looked as if she knew her way around the weapon. She had full-sleeve tats with skulls on both arms, a dragon on the left, and black roses on the right. The tats extended up her neck where blackbirds flew into her scarlet hairline. She asked, “Dark gray four-door sedan with a blue driver’s door?”

I thought back, surprised. “Yeah.”

She lifted a horizontal slab of counter and said, “Put your money away and get back here. That car has been up and down the streets around here for days. I’ve called NOPD every day, and they did a stop and frisk, but they got zilch. There’s nothing they can do until the guys commit a crime. Get outta here. Back door leads to a long narrow courtyard and an apartment. My landlady lives there. Knock and tell her Andromeda sent you. She’ll let you out to a covered passageway. Follow her directions out to St. Peter Street.”

The Gumbo Shop was on St. Peter. There would be collateral damage if I was followed. I looked over my shoulder to see the mismatched car pull to a stop in the street. This wasn’t accidental or coincidental. They were here for me. Beast moved to peer out of my eyes. Fight? Can eat one?

Seeing the car stop, Andromeda cursed and leaned down to press a red button on the side of the cabinet. Even her fingers were tattooed, with musical notes and barbed wire. “Silent alarm,” she said. “The security company will contact the cops and we already have video running.”

“I’m not leaving you here alone,” I said to Andromeda. I sent a fast text to Bruiser, pulled the H&K nine-mil, and joined her behind the counter. The display cases were old-fashioned and though the fronts and tops were glass, the sides and back were constructed of heavy, old wood. I pulled my vamp-killers and placed them on the counter. “You ever fired that sawed-off?”

She looked at me, taking in the golden glow of Beast in my eyes. “You’re Jane Yellowrock.”

Three young men moved toward the shop, their gaits streetwise and threatening. Two of them hid their faces in their navy hoodies and reached into their jeans in a weapon draw. They were older than I’d first thought. Twenty-somethings, not kids. “I am.”

Fight! Beast said.

“This is my daddy’s gun. It’s got a kick, but yeah. I can handle it.” She withdrew a small nine-mil from below the counter too and racked the slide.

“Bloods? Crips?” I asked as the guys moved through the traffic. Behind them horns blared, but the mismatched car didn’t move.

“No one’s seen Crip or Blood for weeks. Word is that the fanghead MOC took them out.” She shot me a glance. She meant my boss. “These are homegrown gangs, filling back in where the national boys used to be. Call themselves the Zips. They paint big navy blue Z graffiti everywhere. They’re looking to make a name for themselves. My brother runs with the Razors, another local gang. This is Raz territory.”

Out front, the young men gathered in a tight grouping, one talking, by his body language giving orders. He was wearing khakis, no hoodie. “This could get messy,” I said.

“No shit, Pollyanna.”

Am Beast. Not Pollyanna.

I chuffed in amusement, showing teeth.

The woman picked up the sawed-off and held it in a one-hand grip, the other hand holding the nine-mil, her feet spread. She knew how to make an impression. The modified barrel looked like a cannon.

The guy in front opened the door. Came in out of the glare, blinking, arm up, gun held in a street-style shooting angle, sideways. With that stance, if he hit us, it would be by accident. Andromeda said, “Stop or die.” When they kept coming, she fired the nine-mil.

CHAPTER 5

I Can’t Shoot a Suspect on the Ground

The round hit the wall at the floor, a deliberate shot. “Next one draws blood,” she said over the ear-blasted dead air left behind.

“Give us the woman,” Khaki Man shouted. His eyes were wide. He hadn’t expected armed resistance. Or getting shot at.

“No,” Andromeda said.

The men spread out in a small semicircle, blocking the front exit, two hoodies on the left, Khaki Man on the right. Andromeda shifted the nine-mil to the man on the far left. “I got the navy jackets. You take out the other one,” she said.

I let Beast flood into me. My heart rate sped. My breathing deepened. I took a breath, smelling testosterone, aggression, and chemicals in their blood. And I caught an unexpected scent.

Of wolf.

The guy in the center fired. Time slowed, that battlefield awareness that showed me the angle of the shot. The blast stole the last of the silence. He missed us both.

Andromeda fired the shotgun. It deafened. Stole the air. Replaced it with a roiling cloud of gunfire residue. The guy in the middle stumbled and fell.

The other hoodie fired.

I firmed my aim. Fired twice. Andromeda dropped the shotgun and fired the nine-mil. All three men were on the floor, one with a large, circular shot pattern on his chest. Messy.

Fun, Beast said. More!

I raced around the counter and disarmed the three guys—even the dead ones—by gently shoving the weapons to the side with my foot. Carefully. People had died by kicking guns and getting shot. Out front, the gang car took off.

“What the hell?” Andromeda shouted, barely heard over the deafness of the gunfight, furious.

I tracked the unexpected scent I had caught just before the firing started, to the khaki-clad guy. Over the damage to my ears, I heard sirens and Andromeda cursing as she spotted the bullet hole damage to the walls and the jewelry cases. Scowling, she took in the damage to one cabinet: the wood that had once been beautifully carved, swans with long necks intertwined, and the antique glass, which was now all over the floor. She cursed long and hard at the damage. I took her weapon from her and set it with mine on the counter. Texted a fast 911 to Bruiser. Then, Shots fired. Am OK. Cops on way. Call lawyer. I added the address.

I got back, There in 22.

Twenty seconds later, Bruiser sprinted to the front of the shop and stopped. He was breathing hard, eyes wide and determined. He had been ten minutes away when this all started. He got here a lot faster, on foot, running. He opened the door, needing to see me, his scent washing into the room, over the smell of weapons fire, full of fear. I smiled at him and said, “I’m not hit.”

He let a harsh breath go, gave me a nod, and let the door close. George Dumas, elegant and urbane, no longer out of breath or terrified, was standing there with his cell phone to his ear, talking, when the cops pulled up. There was something disarming about the appearance of the local celebrity, casually talking on the phone, and I could see the cops instantly decompress, though they came at him with weapons drawn. Bruiser held his arms in the air, and though my ears weren’t healed, I could make out the soothing timbre of his voice. It was pacifying. Calming. In control of himself and everything around him.