The phone I was holding up had the x-ray vision. Kenzie had tuned the view to capture the loose luggage shape in the back of the car.

“We could sneak down there, crack that open, and steal it. No fight, obviously we wouldn’t get a chance to talk to Ashley, or it would be an ugly and unfriendly talk, but it’s an option, okay?”

“I feel like you’re distracting us,” Rain said. “I have six problems with your tech load and how you’re carrying it. I’m not even a good tinker and there are red flags here.”

“Can we deal with it after?” Kenzie asked. She pointed. “Mission. Ashley.”

“Damsel,” I said, quiet. “Not Ashley.”

She sighed.

“I get it. I’ve been doing the mental flip-flop in my head, myself,” I told her. “That’s Damsel, that’s Ashley, that’s Damsel. But that first talk was to look for Ashley and reach out. This time, we’re here for Damsel.”

“And Damsel’s here for us,” Kenzie said, turning her head. “Did they see us? Do they have a thinker?”

“No thinker,” Etna said.

The Deathchester group was leaving the headquarters. They fanned out at first, which suggested they hadn’t directly seen us.

“I was careful with the camera,” Kenzie protested. “Shoot!”

Tristan reached out to touch my shoulder. We looked at Sveta, who nodded, then at Rain, who didn’t protest.

We stepped out of the cover of the trees, away from our parked vehicle.

Deathchester lined up, facing us. A few of them had stayed inside. Sidepiece was thankfully one.

Gibbet reached for a log from a stack of firewood, and broke off a stretch of bark. She dropped into a crouch and pressed it into the ground before turning it like a key, ignoring the hardness of the ground she was turning it through. All around her, like a ripple expanding out, jagged, thin walls of wood stabbed up and around us.

Until we were surrounded, walled in. Not that it was much of a wall. Cardboard thin.

I supposed her use of the gallows before had been a style thing.

“We didn’t see a tail,” Trophy Wife said.

“How did you know we were here?” Kenzie asked.

“I’ll tell you our secret if you tell us yours,” Damsel said.

More at ease, even surprised with a situation like this, than she’d been back in the city center. Oddly so. Because she was further from the thin ice?

“Can I?” Kenzie asked Tristan, before looking to me. “It’s a security thing.”

“Yeah,” I said. I saw Tristan nod at the same time.

“Tracker,” Kenzie said. “On Torso.”

“I told you to check yourselves over, you in particular,” Damsel hissed the words, before striking Torso on the back of the head. He toppled, landing on frozen earth, the back of his head scuffed by the claw-marks.

“How did you find me?”