Gavin manned his post, his eyes lifted above the top edge of the paper, his thoughts pumping faster than the beat of his heart, contingencies gushing like blood from a ruptured artery.

Then he saw her step off the elevator. She wore a red raincoat and carried one of those classic umbrellas, long and thin with a silver point on the top. She didn’t look around the atrium for Gavin, which told him all he needed to know about her naïveté. She headed for the north exit and not the parking ramp, which lifted Gavin’s spirits. She walked to work? Gavin waited until she had left the building, her blue umbrella opened against the rain, before he stood to follow.

Chapter 58

Lila walked through the north exit of the Government Center, popping open her new umbrella as she stepped into the rain, the handle sturdy and thick in her hand. The heavy droplets fell hard and loud against the nylon, the cacophony making it difficult to hear anything beyond the edge of the umbrella—traffic, voices, footsteps. Above the skyline to the west, the clouds appeared to be thinning.

She crossed the courtyard, walking north toward the Stone Arch Bridge, the sidewalks mostly empty in the rain. A couple of men ran by, racing against the downpour. One came up behind her so quickly that it startled her, his large shoes splashing water onto her pant legs as he rushed by.

As she walked seven blocks to the bridge, the rain, carried easterly by the wind, grew lighter, but it had emptied the bridge of pedestrians. She followed the curve of the bridge as it ran past the ruins of an old mill, and slowed her pace as she reached the middle of the river.

Had she planned for every contingency? She thought so, but she knew the price of even one small mistake. What she was doing—this gambit—she owed to Sadie and the others. No one could walk this path except her.

She arrived at the center of the bridge and turned to look downstream, thinking about Joe for just a moment. There was so much she hadn’t told him, and if he knew why she was standing on that bridge, he would have lost his mind. She hadn’t called him, but it would have been nice to hear his voice—tell him that she loved him—just in case.

He’s coming.

From the corner of her eye, Lila saw the dark figure getting closer. He was about a hundred feet behind her and moving slowly. The rain had lightened enough that she could hear the water rushing over the falls. Soon she would be able to hear his footsteps. She went through her final preparations—a few more seconds and she would be ready.

Forty feet away.

Lila closed her umbrella, strapping the canopy to the handle, turning it into a weapon.

Thirty feet.

She reached into the pocket of her raincoat and armed the canister of pepper spray.

Twenty feet.