13
Jack leaned against the brick divider between an Italian restaurant and a bodega. He pretended to watch the uptown crawl of the rush-hour traffic on Broadway, but his real interest was the subway exit to his left on the other side of Eighty-sixth Street.
He'd adopted his John Robertson identity and called Jamie Grant to arrange a meeting. He had some questions. When she said people were watching her, he figured she wasn't being paranoid. The last thing he needed was someone from the Dormentalist temple to see them together. He told her to hop any of the Broadway line trains to Eighty-sixth Street, and gave her some tips on how to lose a tail in the subway.
And here she came, dressed in a loose jacket and matching blue slacks, with her cell phone in her hand.
She hit the sidewalk and walked east as planned. Jack stayed where he was, watching the rest of the Morlocks climbing to the surface. Three of them—a lone woman and two men—followed Grant east. Jack trailed them through the twilight.
The woman stopped at a Chinese take-out place and the two men turned uptown on Amsterdam.
The plan had been for Jack to call her if he spotted a tail. He stuffed his phone into his jeans pocket and came up behind her.
"Looks like you lost them," he said.
She jumped and turned. "Oh, shit, Robertson! It's you!"
"You think I was a PS or something?"
"That's what we Dormentalists call a purse snatcher." She smiled. "Cute. Where'd you come from?"
"Been following you. But I'm the only one."
"At the moment maybe, but not earlier. There were two of them. They were on me from the minute I stepped out of The Light."
Jack gripped her arm and turned her west. "We want to go this way."
"It's the oddest thing. They don't hide what they're up to. Almost as if they want me to know I'm being followed."
"They do. Serves two purposes: They find out where you go and who you meet, and they put you on edge, keep you looking over your shoulder. Surveillance and harassment, all in one neat little package."
"But that move you told me—you know, stand by the doors and pop through just as they're closing? Worked like a charm. And so simple."
"The simpler, the better. Fewer things that can go wrong."
She grinned in the fading light. "After I ducked out I stood there on the platform and gave them the SD salute through the windows."
"Single digit?"
"You got it. They deserved no less. You should have seen their faces." She looked around. "Where's this bar you told me about. I need a GDD."
"A gin and…?"
"A goddamned drink."