Page 131 of Sting
Where are we going?”
“Just keep walking.”
Shaw propelled Jordie across Canal Street. He was walking fast and with purpose, but they were swimming upstream of the pedestrians who’d been lured toward the apparent emergency behind the hotel, the destination of speeding vehicles with flashing lights and sirens.
She and Shaw crossed the streetcar tracks in the median and then had to wait for the traffic light to change before they could cross the lanes of oncoming traffic. Had he not been pushing her along, she couldn’t have kept up with his brisk clip.
Without slowing his pace, he pulled off the hoodie and dropped it wrong side out into the lap of a homeless man who was semireclined in the recessed doorway of an abandoned building. The man didn’t even look up.
Once on the other side of the busy boulevard, they entered the French Quarter. Even on a Monday night, it was thronged. The busy vendor of a souvenir kiosk didn’t notice when Shaw yanked a t-shirt off a rack. It was a flashy purple-gold-and-green-striped thing with a sequin fleur de lis on the chest.
He thrust it at her. “Put this on over your shirt.”
He also lifted an LSU baseball cap from off the head of a stuffed alligator and snatched several strands of Mardi Gras beads hanging from a peg. He put on the cap and draped the beads around her neck.
Beneath her shirt, the bulletproof vest was heavy and hot. Another layer would make it worse, but when Shaw ordered her again to put on the t-shirt, she pulled the gaudy thing over her head without missing a beat.
“How bad was Hickam?”
“Bad.”
“Do you think he’ll die?”
“Probably.”
Her breath caught. “We should go back.”
“And let Panella get you, too?”
“You can’t be sure it was Panella.”
“Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
“We left a crime scene. Joe Wiley will be beside himself.”
“I’m doing him a favor.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re one less thing he’ll have to deal with tonight.”
“I don’t think he’ll see it that way.”
“Me either.”
“You could always tell him that you placed me under arrest.”
He threw his arm across her shoulders like an affectionate lover, pulled her close to his side, and nuzzled her hair away from her ear. “I have.”
Astonished, she tilted her head back and looked at him. The upper half of his face was shadowed by the bill of the baseball cap, but there was no mistaking the set of his jaw. He wasn’t kidding. She tried to shake him off, but he held firm, even though he grunted with pain as they struggled.
“You can’t arrest me.”
“Hell I can’t, and if you don’t stop that I’ll cuff you for resisting.”
“What are you arresting me for?”
“Lying to federal agents. The others didn’t know you were, but I did.”
