Page 6

CHAPTER 6

BABY AND I WAITED in the darkness of the alley, side by side. In my peripheral vision, I could see the flickering blue lights of the police cars at the front of the apartment building, but the two of us were transfixed by a small lit window on the third floor.

“Fifteen hundred bucks.” I heard the smile in my sister’s voice. “Not a completely wasted night.”

“Don’t count your dog before you catch it.”

“I got this. I was on the JV basketball team.”

“You’re pretty confident for someone who made the mess we just had to clean up,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how the whole point of us staking out that apartment was so we could figure out how those assholes operated,” I said. “Learn their habits. Enter the place while they were out, when it would be safe to do so. Now one of them is in an ambulance and the other one’s in a body bag, and we almost were too.”

“They’re animal thieves!” I could feel Baby watching me. She’d completely forgotten the window above us. “They steal people’s pets! How was I supposed to know that one of them was going to — ”

“You don’t know,” I said. “That’s the whole point, Baby. You wait and you watch and you listen until you know .”

The third-floor window slid open. I braced myself.

“You mean I should do whatever you say, even when it’s my damn case,” Baby snapped.

Hands holding a skinny gray dog emerged from the window. L’Shondra shook violently as she eyed the distance to the ground.

“Can we talk about this later?” I said to Baby.

Ramirez let go. The dog fell. I caught L’Shondra in my arms in a tangle of bony limbs, and both the animal and I yelped in terror and relief.

When I turned around triumphantly, my sister was gone.