We walked, not touching, but our orbits synced. “Sauerkraut,” she murmured.
“Far end,” I said, nodding to a cart with a handwritten sign: FRANK OPINIONS. A guy in a newsboy cap took orders—“Two dogs, one heavy cabbage”—while a woman with a stroller never moved, just rocked, eyes on the water.
“Look at the lawyer,” Zoe added under her breath. Slick suit, expensive shoes, the kind you didn’t wear to a pier unless you had a meeting you couldn’t afford to miss. He took a mustard packet like it was a baton.
“Courier,” I said. “Black messenger bag, patched strap. He’s nervous.”
“I’ve got the nervous guy,” she said. “You take stroller mom.”
“She’s not a mom,” I murmured after a beat. “Stroller’s empty.”
Zoe’s eyes flicked, sharp and impressed—she’d clocked it a second later. We drifted closer, bickering loudly about pickles so anyone watching us would file us under “annoying couple.”
“Pickles are not a personality trait,” she said in a stage whisper.
“Artisanal brine is culture,” I said, deadpan, and she snorted, tried to smother it, failed. God, I liked that sound.
The exchange happened in a breath—a folded napkin passed with a hot dog, a shoulder bump, a pivot. Lawyer peeled off. Courier angled toward the far stairs. Stroller-not-a-mom pushed away from the rail, too casual.
“Now,” Zoe said, and we split like we’d rehearsed it.
I cut left, intercepting stroller woman at the end of the truck. Up close, she smelled like motel soap and adrenaline. “Rough night,” I said, friendly.
She smiled without teeth. Her hand dipped into the stroller canopy and came out with a pistol suppressed enough not to scare gulls, pointed at my heart.
I sighed. “Ma’am.”
“Walk,” she said.
Zoe’s voice cracked over comms—quiet, controlled. “Courier’s bolting west—”
Gunfire stuttered somewhere beyond the taco truck, too soft for most to clock over the surf. People laughed. A gull stole a pretzel. Music from the waves.
I lifted my hands. “We don’t want to do this.”
“Then don’t.”
She didn’t see my right foot hook the stroller wheel. I jerked it sideways, hard. The chassis rolled, she flinched, and I shoved her wrist up. The first shot hissed into a string of Edison bulbs, popping them like champagne. Shouts. The cart guy swore.
She brought a knee up; I took it on my thigh, pivoted, and we went into the rail together. Damn toothless mom had muscles. The gun clattered. I kicked it under the cart and grabbed her wrists.
“Security!” someone yelled. “Hey!”
I glanced down: her palm was inked with a pine tree and numbers beneath it—42.213, -122.56 what the hell was that. A coordinate, or part of one. She wrenched free with surprising strength and dove for the stroller.
“Forest,” Zoe said, breathless in my ear, “courier dropped the bag, but we’ve got a visitor—”
A white van fishtailed onto the boardwalk like it owned the place. Doors flew open. Two men in masks jumped out, one leveling a short shotgun, the other reaching for Zoe.
I moved. So did she.
Zoe slid over the hood of a car like it had been waiting its whole life for her and planted her foot in Mask Two’s sternum. He slammed into the van door, metal singing. Mask One swung the shotgun my way; I grabbed a tub of nacho cheese off a counter and threw it.
It hit center mass. Cheese wenteverywhere. He fired before he meant to—the blast pulverized the side of the pretzel truck and an inflatable pickle deflated with a scream that was one hundred percent not in my plan.
“Really?” Zoe called, ducking behind a bench. “Cheese?”
“Worked,” I grunted, catching the shotgun as it skittered. I racked it empty, tossed it aside, and yanked Zoe behind the hot dog cart just as the van lurched forward, trying to clip us. It missed, tires screaming, then jerked away into traffic with Stroller Woman diving in last second, empty-handed.
