"We caught the impostor. He told us where the bad guys would be later tonight."

"What did you do with him?"

I told her.

She looked at me for a while and then said, "Are you all right?"

"Fine."

"You don't look fine."

"It's done."

"But are you all right?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'm glad you didn't see it."

Susan asked, "Oh? Why?"

"You're a girl. Beating up bad guys is a boy thing."

"Chauvinist pig," Susan said.

"Yeah. I get it from Murphy. She's a bad influence."

We hit the first traffic sign directing us toward the stadium, and Susan asked, "Do you really think you can win?"

"Yeah. Hell, Ortega is only the third or fourth most disturbing thing I've tangled with today."

"But even if you do win, what does it change?"

"Me getting killed now. That way, I get to be killed later tonight instead."

Susan laughed. There was nothing happy in it. "You don't deserve a life like this."

I squinted my eyes and made my voice gravelly. "Deserve's got nothin'-"

"So help me God, if you quote Clint Eastwood at me, I'm wrapping this car around a telephone pole."

"Do you feel lucky, punk?" I smiled and turned my left hand palm up.

I felt her hand settle lightly on mine a moment later, and she said, "A girl's got to draw the line somewhere."

We rode the rest of the way to the stadium in silence, holding hands.

I hadn't ever been to Wrigley when it was empty. That wasn't really the point of a stadium. You went there to be among about a bajillion people and see something happen. This time, with acres and acres of unoccupied asphalt, the stadium at its center looked huge and somehow more skeletal than when it was filled with vehicles and cheering thousands. The wind sighed through the stadium, gusting, whistling, and moaning. Twilight had fallen, and the unlit street lamps cast spidery shadows over the lots. Darkness gaped in the arches and doorways of the stadium, empty as the eyes of a skull.

"Thank God that isn't too creepy or anything," I muttered.

"What now?" Susan asked.

Another car pulled in behind us. I recognized it from McAnnally's the night before. The car pulled up maybe fifty feet away and rolled to a stop. Ortega got out, and leaned down to say something to the driver, a man with a dark complexion and amber-tone glasses. There were two more men in the backseat, though I couldn't see much of them. I was betting they were all Red Court .

"Let's not look scared," I said, and got out of the car.