Page 5 of Fang Fatale

I pocket the photograph, leave enough cash to insult the coffee, and step outside.

My Crown Victoria waits at the curb like a stray dog parked outside a horse show.

Its paint is a mottled patchwork of faded charcoal, primer gray, and oxidized regret—the color of a bruise that's been healing wrong for the better part of a decade.

Beautiful.

I angle the rearview mirror just in time to watch Leland leave the café.

The laptop guy joins him.

A third man appears from around the corner.

They climb into three identical black SUVs, and for one brief moment the parking lot looks like the mouth of a very expensive carnivorous insect.

I follow them just long enough to confirm they aren't doubling back before peeling off toward Blackthorn Bay.

The sun bleeds into the harbor behind me, turning the water copper before surrendering to blue. Under the ferry dock, teenagers light cigarettes they swear their parents will never smell, and somewhere overhead a gull screams like it has money riding on the outcome.

I should be thinking about routes.

Witnesses.

Where to start.

Instead, I find myself pulling Birdie's photograph from the envelope one more time.

She looks back at me with wary hazel eyes and one stubborn little dimple.

Most people spend their lives running away from something.

I have a feeling Birdie Longfellow ran toward something.

I intend to find out what.

CHAPTER 2

BIRDIE

If you've ever tried to hang a painting with witch's tape, you'll know it's less an adhesive than a tiny, opinionated life form. It uncurls itself the moment you turn your back and occasionally hums show tunes under its breath. I've spent the better part of the afternoon wrestling a single strip onto the wall of my new cottage, and it's beginning to feel personal.

It's a new wall. That's the disorienting part—not the packing, not the running, not the sleeping in three different places over the last two weeks. The wall. Mine.

For twenty-three years, every surface I've decorated belonged to someone else. My parents. My aunt. The Brookses. Leland, briefly. It always felt harmless, the way you draw in washable marker on a rental. But this is my wall.

Dandelion—Dandy to everyone who hates syllables—calls my current residence the Button Cottage. The name owes less to its appearance than to the fact the address is impossible to find unless you're, quote, "one of those annoyingly tenacious Girl Scout types." Dandy collects phrases the way other people collect antiques and drops them everywhere like pollen until everything grows just a little weirder.

I am not a Girl Scout.

I can barely thread a needle.

But I can run.

And, as of last week, I am excellent at disappearing.

A sharp knock echoes through the cottage, and I flinch so hard the tape springs free, fluttering uselessly to the floor.

Standard protocol says I should hide under the kitchen table.