Pick sat at the bar for an hour before they moved. He watched their reflections in the bottles behind the bar as they got up and walked to the door. He didn’t move, not yet. Any indication he was paying attention to them could be noticed, which was the last thing he wanted.
Brawny was in the lead, pushing through the crowd and giving anyone who looked at him threatening looks so Blue could follow behind him. Baldie hung back. She slipped through the crowd, her eyes shifting back and forth as she seemed to take in everyone in turn. Brawny was big and scary, but Baldie was the scary one. She was observant, and her scars told stories of the fights she’d survived.
Note to self: Avoid her at all costs.
He counted to fifteen before paying his tab and leaving The Guilded Oubliette. It was just in time to, as he saw Baldie’s head round a corner and down a side street. Pick wound his way through the crowd, being less cautious until he spotted them again. He caught up to them quickly, keeping behind large groups or passing through stores to break the line of sight momentarily and picking them up again on the other side.
He pinched a hat from a distracted vendor's stand to cover his hair, then pulled a jacket from the back of a man’s chair eating at an outdoor restaurant. In less than a block, he’d changed his appearance, never losing sight of his targets for more than a few seconds.
Blue appeared to be causally strolling, perusing the stores, and pointing things out to Brawny. He laughed, his gaze lazily wandering over the street when she wasn’t making him look at some bit or bauble. He watched her closely, looking for any hint of where she might be carrying the item.
There it was. That was the fourth time she’d stuck her hand in her jacket pocket. An unconscious motion, reassuring herself the item was safe. Pick smiled and moved in, closing the distance as he joined a large group of boisterously drunk men coming down the street.
He threw his hand around a man’s shoulder, joining in the laughter like he was just getting off his shift like the rest of them. The men didn’t notice the stranger suddenly in their midst, and he stayed in the middle of the pack until he was almost next to Blue.
Just a few more feet.
Pick pretended to trip, stumbling out of the group of men and bouncing off Brawny before staggering drunkenly into Blue. The woman yelped in surprise, never feeling Pick’s hand slip into her pocket as he bumped into her.
“Oi! Sorry, miss,” he slurred, affecting a rough accent.
Brawny grabbed Pick by the front of his jacket and pushed him hard, “Back off!”
The men Pick had been walking with, thinking Pick was one of their own, started yelling and jabbing angry fingers in Brawny’s direction. Pick took advantage of the distraction, flowed between the group of men, abandoning the hat and jacket on the ground at their feet, and melded back into the crowd like water into a stream. He could hear the angry shouts fading behind him as he picked up his pace and went in a perpendicular direction from where Blue had been heading.
Job done. Now, I just have to wait out the night.
Pick moved through the streets, keeping his senses on alert in case he started being followed. It was at that moment he realized, when he made the lift, that Baldie hadn’t been anywhere in sight. There was the sound of several quick steps behind him, and the snap of metal from a collapsible baton.
On instinct, Pick ducked, dove forward, and rolled. He felt the baton swish through the air where his head had been only moments before. Had it made contact it surely would have fractured his skull.
As he rolled he glimpsed the snarl on Baldie’s face as she recovered from her swing and pulled back for another blow. Pick planted his feet, then dodged to the right as she swung down. The baton hit the street hard enough to bend the metal, and Baldie stumbled forward as she over-committed. As she turned to take another swing, Pick dug his hand in his pocket and threw a handful of sand into her face.
Baldie screamed, swinging the baton wildly as she rubbed at her eyes. A smile grew across Pick’s face, right up until the moment a pair of large hands wrapped him up under his arm and between his legs. Pick saw the grinning face of Brawny as he was lifted high overhead and thrown bodily through a nearby shop window.
Pain exploded through his body as he impacted the glass. Time seemed to slow as he felt the glass bend, crack, and shatter as his weight went through it. Glass spun in the air around him, and he hit the ground hard, bleeding from a half-dozen cuts from the glass.
Pick rose unsteadily to his feet. Bits of color and starlight floated in his vision, but not enough to block his view of Brawny and Baldie coming through the door of the shop. Pick smiled, putting his hands up with the palms out, and took a few steps back.
“Hey, why don’t we talk this out?”
Brawny popped the joints in his knuckles as Baldie cracked her neck. Pick sighed, “I guess we’re not talking, huh?”
Then, they charged toward him.
To be continued…
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