Mind the Gap Read Free Page B

her mother’s brutalized corpse—and the warning she’d painted on the floor in her own blood—flashed across her mind. But there was no going back. Over the years her mum had said a lot about running, but one refrain echoed in Jazz’s mind.
    Once you start running, don’t stop ’til you’re well hidden.
    A glance over her shoulder revealed several men descending after her, but they seemed in no hurry. Still, best to be sure. To be safe. The blood on the bed and floor could so easily have been her own, and if she slowed down it still might be, though now it would spill on the concrete stairs or tiled floor of the Tube station.
    She hit the bottom of the stairs and sidestepped a bickering middle-aged couple with three tagalong children who huddled close to their parents, afraid of the world.
Wise little ones,
Jazz thought.
    In her pocket she had a crumpled wad of notes—little more than forty pounds, she guessed—and her rail pass. Hurrying toward the turnstiles, she thought of simply vaulting them, both for speed and because her pursuers could not be so bold. But in the fugue of grief and fear that warped her thoughts, she knew that would attract attention she did not want. She pulled out the rail pass, stuffed her money back into her pocket, and fed the card through the slot on the turnstile.
    Get lost in a crowd,
her mother’s voice whispered in her head.
    All of the things she had told Jazz over the years, while tucking her into bed at night or sending her off to school in the morning, were the words of a ghost. Jazz had a ghost in her head now.
    People milled about the platform, waiting for the train to arrive. The electronic sign above their heads declared the next was three minutes away.
Three minutes.
Jazz glanced over her shoulder at the men who had come onto the platform behind her, and she knew she did not have three minutes. These weren’t the Uncles, but she had seen the black BMW slide by on the street above. Dressed in dark suits, they seemed cut from the same cloth as the ugly-eyed men who had kept Jazz and her mother like pets and whose leader had put Mum down like a sick dog.
    Bile rose into the back of her throat, and she had to breathe through her mouth to keep from throwing up. She tasted salty tears on her lips and wiped them away, plunging into the crowd of suited commuters, snaking through them, hiding among them on the platform.
    Trembling, she stopped. Eyes on the advertisements across the tracks, she tried to blend as best she could, steadying her breathing.
Do You Know Who You Are?
one advert asked. She had no idea what it was trying to sell, and for a second she felt the whole world bearing down on her, pressing in from above and all around.
    She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. How many times had she taken the Tube in her life? Hundreds, surely. If she could be normal for two more minutes, pretend that all was well, perhaps she could truly become invisible in the crowd.
    She squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to hold back the tears. A dreadful mistake, for on the backs of her eyelids she found the grotesque tableau of her mother’s bedroom. She opened them wide, staring across the tracks at the grubby tiles, the colorful advertisements, breathing too fast. The questions had begun—who were the Uncles, really, and why had they done it? But they were not new questions to Jazz. She had been asking versions of them for most of her life.
    Someone shouted. She glanced along the platform. A mother held the hands of her two girls, twins about six years old. An old man with long silver hair and an enormous nose leaned with great dignity upon a cane. Beyond them, among a sea of tourists and business suits, she saw a flash of dark jacket, moving quickly.
    “Here, love.” A hand landed on her shoulder. “Everything all right?”
    Jazz opened her mouth to scream but no sound emerged. She stood paralyzed for a few frantic seconds, and then she bolted to the right, toward the end of the