The air was hot and weighted down to motionless with the threat of rain. We went carefully but quickly down the stairs, always listening for more building preparing to give way. I thought Rico was listening for something else, too, and remembered all her careful entrances into rooms. Of course—she was still waiting for the ambush.

It didn’t happen. We made it to her car in perfect safety.

Rico let her guard down at last; she stood by the car with her arms folded over the roll bar, her head resting on them. I sat on the curb.

“You’ll never get your nice suit clean,” I said. “And all for nothing, too.”

“Shut up,” said Rico, with murderous clarity, “and get in the car.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought you’d want a ride home. Was I wrong?”

I slid in the passenger side door, and she started the engine. “It’s on Sentiment Street—”

“I know where it is.”

“Of course.” Resentment nipped at me. “You would.”

After a few blocks, I asked, “Are we square? Can I stay home now?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re out of leads, aren’t you? What do you need me for?”

She shook her head. For the first time since the roof had fallen, I looked directly at her. There was blood mixed with the plaster dust on her face, from a cut near her eye. She seemed not to notice. The Night Peepers were gone, possibly lost, and I saw the intensity of her gaze, the way it seemed to reach past the street and the city and into some place I couldn’t see or imagine. “Did I say I was out of leads?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ll get Linn to take a crew and go over the building in daylight.” She smiled suddenly, a harsh expression. Her hand went into her jacket, came out again. “And I have this.”

In her fingers, a thick white sheet of paper, now rather crumpled: the note from the table.

“I’ll come by for you tomorrow. Around noon,” Rico said, just as if I’d responded.

“Stop here.”

She did. “Something wrong?”

“I think… I think I’d like to walk the rest of the way.”

She looked at me for long seconds, but didn’t speak. She understood that much, at least. I got out and shut the door firmly behind me. “Tomorrow,” I said, and walked away. I heard the engine pick up behind me, and the crunch of gravel under the tires.

Tick-Tick’s motorcycle was parked in front of my building. Tick-Tick was sitting on it. When I was close enough for her to tell that the sorry object walking toward her was me, she vaulted off the bike and ran toward me. I let her do it.