Lexicon

“Where is she, do you think?”
    “Can you take a step back?”
    “I think you know.” He tapped Harry’s forehead.
    “Don’t fucking touch my head.” He began to wrestle the window out of its frame.
    “This place,” Eliot said. “It brought you back to yourself. Maybe it’s having a similar effect on her. And you know her. So tell me. Where is she?”
    “That plan you had before, about getting out of Broken Hill? I’m coming around on that.”
    “Where,” Eliot said.
    He tossed the frame to the floor and climbed up the shelves. The window was narrow but he managed to work the rifle through it and drop to the rooftop six feet below. He crouched against the wall until Eliot dropped beside him.
    Eliot looked around. “This was a good idea.” He rose and ran to the edge of the roof, leaped across the gap, and landed on the tin roof of the pharmacy. Harry saw his head turn left, right. Then he stopped moving. Harry froze. Eliot crept back toward the edge, peered over, and dropped out of sight.
    Harry ran after him. Halfway there, he heard Eliot bark out words in a strange, guttural tongue. When he reached the edge, he saw Eliot in the alley standing over another helmet-free soldier. This one was bald.
    He tossed the rifle down and lowered himself over the edge. “I’m starting to feel like you don’t even need me.”
    “Oh, I do,” said Eliot. “I don’t know where she is.” He looked at the pharmacy.
    “She’s not in there. I don’t remember her ever going in there. Eliot. Eliot?”
    “What?”
    “You’re staring at nothing.”
    “Oh,” said Eliot. “I was thinking about earplugs.”
    “Is that . . . that sounds like a great idea.”
    “It’s great against verbal compromise. It’s not so great for hearing someone coming up behind you with a gun. So there’s a trade-off.”
    “Right.”
    “I’d rather be shot than compromised, though.” He looked at Harry. “Shoot me if she manages to compromise me. Did I already say that?”
    “No.”
    “Well, do. I’m serious.”
    The bald man said, “We’re on the third floor. We know you’re not there.”
    “Thank you, Max,” said Eliot. “Harry. Where is she?”
    “How the fuck should I know?”
    “Think.”
    He looked around. If he were Emily, where would he go? Somewhere near the hospital. There was a café on the other side of the block, but Emily had never liked it; she said it smelled like men. They’d usually gone to the burger joint farther down. That was actually where they’d first met. Outside of her being a patient, that was. She’d been eating and Harry had walked by with some girl, whomever he was seeing at the time, and she’d called out. He remembered thinking she was a nutcase. Why had he thought that? The card. She’d sent him a card with something crazy written on it, TO MY HERO or YOU SAVED MY LIFE, something like that. But then they’d spoken and she hadn’t seemed crazy. There had been something about her. Something bright, to which he’d responded.
    “You thought of something,” Eliot said. “I see it on your face.”
    He shook his head.
    “Don’t hold out on me.” Eliot leaned closer. “Come on, now, Harry.”
    “You are creepy as hell right now.”
    “This state is temporary. I need to make the most of it. Comedown is going to be a bitch.”
    “I’ll make you a deal.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “I might know where she is. But if I tell you, I go in first. I get to talk to her. If it goes badly, fine. You do what you have to do. But I get five minutes.”
    “Deal.” Eliot stuck out his hand.
    He hesitated, suspicious. “You don’t mean that.”
    “What do you want me to say?” Eliot shouted. “You’re confronting the futility of your own proposition! Shoot that guy!” This part was directed to the bald soldier, who dropped to one knee and raised the semiautomatic. Harry turned in time to see a pair of dark-suited figures at the end of the alley. Eliot grabbed his arm and then they were running.
    “It’s the burger place,” Harry panted. “Right, right, circle around the block.” They rounded the corner. “Five minutes. Promise me.”
    “Okay, okay,” Eliot said. “Fine.” He stopped, eyes widening at something on Harry’s gun. “Whoa, shit, fuck.”
    “What?” he said. He couldn’t see the problem, and looked at Eliot, and Eliot’s pistol butt was moving very quickly toward his face. That was all he knew.
    • • •
    The soldiers went in and then there was a