Free Underground Warrior by Evelyn Vaughn Page A

when he heard it. A single cry.
    Somehow, through the cheering and the booing. Through the smoke and cell phone rings. Through his and Emilio’s grunts and gasping breaths. Through his own rushing blood and pounding heart.
    Somehow, Trace knew that voice.
    Sibyl?
    That’s all it took, that momentary break in concentration. Somehow Emilio got an arm loose and, worse, hooked it around Trace’s neck and began squeezing. Now Trace began to hit him faster, trying to break his hold, but his opponent stayed dogged. Trace’s blows began to loose power, and…
    Sibyl?
    With a body-shaking thud, he fell to his side on the dirty warehouse floor, and for a moment he thought he saw her face, small and pale and Faline-eyed in horror, amidst the wild crowd. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want her to see him like this.
    Then everything went black.
    Not everyone tapped out, after all.

    “Are you certain you wish to get out here?” demanded the cabdriver in his thick, Middle Eastern accent.
    Sibyl counted out the correct number of bills, plus a tip. “Yes.”
    “I would not wish to get out here,” insisted the cabbie. And yes. With the exception of a surprising number of cars and pickups parked at the side of the road and in a vacant lot, the old warehouse district beside the Fairpark neighborhood felt dingy and deserted.
    And dark, thought Sibyl, amusing herself with alliteration. And dangerous. “I wish to.”
    “I cannot wait for you here,” he told her as she paid, and even looked sorry for that.
    “No,” agreed Sibyl, getting out. “Thank you.”
    Then the cab drove away, and she stood alone, her senses on alert. Otherwise, she wasn’t particularly frightened. Growing up in a hellhole tended to readjust one’s sense of real threat. People who actively trolled the streets, looking for prey, would find better hunting grounds than this. No, these men would have come for other purposes.
    Sibyl’s spy-against-the-Comitatus side saw infinite possibilities here, most of them scandalous. Was Trace dealing drugs? Moving stolen property? Could LaSalle be involved?
    Disreputable. Dishonest.
    In contrast, the confused-by-her-feelings Sibyl wanted this to be a mistake. Because Trace wasn’t dishonest, no matter how much LaSalle blood flowed through his veins. No matter how guilty he’d looked on making this mysterious assignation. At least…she didn’t want him to be dishonest. But if wishing could change things, her father would still be alive. She would never have accepted the scholarship to the New Orleans academy. She would have grown up like a normal girl.
    She shook her head. “Not physics. Reality doesn’t change based on presence or wishes of observer.” Her old, once-soothing habit of talking to herself, even in a whisper, wasn’t a good sign. She had to get this over with. Like with Schrödinger’s cat, she wouldn’t know how to proceed until she looked in the metaphorical box.
    “1217 East Pacific,” she reminded herself—she needn’t write things like that down. She inhaled deeply to settle her nerves, not that she could smell anything be yond city—asphalt, car exhaust, garbage—on the brisk air. She thought she heard something, many voices, shouting. But it faded almost as soon as she placed the thought, and could easily have been the wind it self, rushing through the smattering of distant trees. And…
    There! Someone with lesser instincts might dismiss the sudden, peripheral impression of movement as imagination. Sibyl had lived too long only one mistake away from hurt and humiliation. She headed where she’d sensed the change.
    She gave wide berth around the corner of a hulking warehouse, to minimize chances of an ambush, and so got a good view of several men loitering with feigned nonchalance at several points outside a freight doorway. A lookout, she thought of the one nearest her. And of the farthest, nearer the distant railroad tracks? Another lookout.
    The third, she couldn’t label so