Page 43 of Alonzo

“You hate them, right?”

“What?”

“The tattoos?”

“Yeah. No. I mean. Lonnie—” A knock at my door makes me jump. “Shit. Someone’s here. I gotta go. I’ll call you back later, OK? Bye!”

I hit end on the screen and stare at my door.

Who could it be? Diablo? Did he follow Vann to Anna Ameci’s? Did he see us through the window? Did he follow me home in the snow?

Just the thought of him walking behind me while I was making my way home in the storm makes me ill.

Then I hear footsteps behind me and the next thing I know a black leather glove is covering my mouth and dragging me backwards into the bedroom.

I struggle and kick, trying to knock my assailant off balance—

“Shh! Relax, Tara! It’s just me!”

I turn a little and see Vann Vaughn’s wide eyes. He lets go of me and puts a finger up to his lips and whispers, “Follow me. We need to get out of here. Because I’m pretty sure you don’t want to meet up with that guy knocking on your door right now.”

“What?”

“Devil tattoos? Ringing any bells for you?”

I look over my shoulder at the door just as the knocking commences. “No. It’s not possible.”

I glance back to Vann. He has an unfamiliar look on his face. “I followed you home,” he says, still talking in a low voice. “Just to make sure you were OK. And I saw him. I’ll explain, but right now we need to get you out of here.”

He grabs my purse and coat from a chair and shoves them at me. I’m still holding my phone, so I stuff it into my purse, then tug my jacket on as Vann walks over to the bedroom window and slides the sash open. “We need to leave, Tara. Now. You can think about it later. Come on.”

More knocking.

Yes. I do need to leave. Right the hell now. Because the devil on the other side of that door is the whole reason I had to go into the witness protection program in the first place.

Vann helps me through the window and my second-hand sneakers sink into ten inches of fresh snow. Cold wetness surrounds my ankles as we stumble over to the fire escape and start running down the stairs. Vann’s truck is parked in the alley, idling. He pulls me over to it, nervously glancing past my shoulder at the corner of the building. Like the devil might be following us.

Vann opens the passenger door, shoves me inside, closes it up, and then runs around the front of the truck—nearly slipping on some ice—and then gets in next to me. He jams the truck in drive, and the massive tires grip the deep snow the way they were meant to, and we lurch forward.

“You wanna tell me who he is? Starting with a name?”

“Diablo,” I whisper. Almost afraid to say his name out loud for fear of conjuring him up after two years of peace. “I testified against him. Obviously, didn’t work out.”

Both of us are silent as we turn out of the alley and make our way across College Avenue. I assume we’re going to his house, but he makes a right and doubles back towards College. “What are you doing? Where are we going?”

“I can’t leave Belinda in the shop. He could be here for her too.”

“What? Why—”

But Vann shoots me a look that has my mind spinning.

“Oh, my God. He saw her, Vann. Belinda just called me and said some devil tattoo guy was looking for me. He saw her. This is all my fault. Everything is fucked!”

I lean back in my seat and start biting my thumbnail, running through all the ways my life just went sideways. Staring out the window at the thick sheets of snow falling from the sky. People are starting to get stuck. We spot several cars in ditches as we go around the block and pull up in front of Sick Boyz Ink.

“Wait here,” Vann says. Then he’s out of the truck and going inside the shop. You can’t really see inside. They have the windows blacked up with semi-opaque paint. But you can see shadows. And I recognize Belinda’s as Vann’s shadow meets her on the other side of the counter. There’s a lot of hand gestures and arm-waving. But then Vann’s shadow is pulling Belinda’s shadow across the front of the shop.

She emerges into the storm clutching her leather jacket and purse to her chest, eyes wide and looking around. She finds mine as I stare at her, and then she’s rushing towards the truck, pulling the door to the back cab open and slipping inside with a gush of freezing air. “What the fuck is happening? I’m confused, you guys! And this is scaring me.”