Page 2 (2/2)

To do the salanced in the win-dow A man and wo froht out at Jazz He wore a slasses, and his lips twitched into whatinto the next side road she ca onto another street She passed an old woo by

It took Jazz tenWhere could she hide? And how could she just leave herstreet It was noisy and bustling and smelled of exhaust fu the street and a tall, elegant woman stepped out She brushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes, paid the cabbie, and walked aith her lued to her ear

And Jazz's mother was dead

She was dead, murdered, and now Jazz was more alone than she had ever been before

They'll be on the streets, she thought, and the idea bore herho for you

She stepped into the doorway of ablack Bea Maybe they'd be on foot Maybe, like herher for the last couple of years, they had so ers in so many pies that none of them knew the true extent of their reach

She wiped her eyes and looked both ways A dozen peo-ple turned their heads away just as she looked at them A dozen more looked up In a crowd such as this, there was al-ways so her

"Oh shit, oh fuck What the hell a to do?" she whispered

A black BMW cruised around the corner Jazz pressed back into the door but it was locked, the da the street

She hurried back out onto the pave the temptation to keep her head down She had to watch, had to knoas going on

A tallthat looked like stea road kill in a napkin He was dressed in a sharp black suit, and as she paused six steps from him, he adjusted a luht

He looked up, glanced around at her, and s the food toward her

She ran The h he sounded friendly and alarmed, she could not afford to stop, not now that she'd started running, because she was drawing attention to herself And if and when she did stop, she'd col-lapse into a heap, and the white-hot grief would start tearing her up

The grief, and the loneliness

She ducked into a Tube station, grateful for the shadows closing around her The sround seemed to welcome her in

Chapter Two

behind the beneath

Jazz flen the stairs two at a time, sure that she would trip and break an ankle but unable to stop herself I she'd painted on the floor in her own blood--flashed across herback Over the years her , but one refrain echoed in Jazz's , don't stop 'til you're well hidden

A glance over her shoulder revealed severalafter her, but they seemed in no hurry

Still, best to be sure To be safe The blood on the bed and floor could so easily have been her own, and if she slowed down it still h noould spill on the concrete stairs or tiled floor of the Tube station

She hit the bottoed couple with three tagalong children who huddled close to their parents, afraid of the world Wise little ones, Jazz thought

In her pocket she had a cruuessed--and her rail pass Hurrying toward the turnstiles, she thought of si them, both for speed and because her pursuers could not be so bold But in the fugue of grief and fear that warped her thoughts, she knew that would attract attention she did not want She pulled out the rail pass, stuffed her h the slot on the turnstile

Get lost in a crowd, her mother's voice whispered in her head

All of the things she had told Jazz over the years, while tucking her into bed at night or sending her off to school in the host in her head now

Peoplefor the train to arrive The electronic sign above their heads declared the next was three lanced over her shoulder at the men who had come onto the plat-form behind her, and she knew she did not have three min-utes These weren't the Uncles, but she had seen the black BMW slide by on the street above Dressed in dark suits, they seely-eyed men who had kept Jazz and her mother like pets and whose leader had put Mu

Bile rose into the back of her throat, and she had to breathe through herup She tasted salty tears on her lips and wiped the through the, she stopped Eyes on the advertisements across the tracks, she tried to blend as best she could, steady-ing her breathing Do You Know Who You Are? one advert asked She had no idea what it was trying to sell, and for a second she felt the whole world bearing down on her, press-ing in from above and all around

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply How many times had she taken the Tube in her life?

Hundreds, surely If she could be normal for two more minutes, pretend that all ell, perhaps she could truly become invisible in the crowd

She squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to hold back the tears A dreadful rotesque tableau of heracross the tracks at the grubby tiles, the colorful advertiseun --ere the Uncles, really, and why had they done it? But they were not new questions to Jazz She had been asking versions of thelanced along the platforirls, twins about six years old An old reat dignity upon a cane Beyond the a sea of tourists and business suits, she saw a flash of dark jacket,quickly

"Here, love" A hand landed on her shoulder "Everything all right?"

Jazz opened her ed She stood paralyzed for a few frantic seconds, and then she bolted to the right, toward the end of the platfor with an old biddy in a fruot in her way, one hand out as though he ht try to stop her She shot hi

"Mad fucking cow!" he called after her

Her face flushed with heat as her heart thundered in her chest She darted in and out of the crowd, knocking over shopping bags and bu?" someone shouted

"Who is that?"

"Don't push, don't shovel"

Jazz felt the ripples of unease spread across the platfor froht, but she could not help running She thought of shouting Boet hurt, and she could not bear that on her conscience

She burst from the crowd to find herself alone at the end of the platforht ahead and the train tracks to her left If the Uncles really had come down here after her, they would be on her in seconds Her skin prickled with the attention of strangers' eyes, as though the tiles thee jutted twelve inches from the wall, a lip of con-crete that continued past the end of the platforh the wall had not always been there Desperation drove her forward The cry of metal upon metal and the screech of brakes approached fro the tracks The train's arrival i her head out over the tracks In the gloom of the tunnel, she saw that the ent on perhaps six feet and then there was an opening where the platforht she couldthey used to partition off unused areas of the Underground