The alley was only a block away now and Danielle kept her pace steady, worried that a change of speed in either direction might trigger an alert. She couldn’t afford that here, not this close to home.
It was an alley bar about the size of boxing ring. Raise the Flagon. The kind of place even the college kids avoided, the theme of the place residing somewhere between biker bar and punk rock club. The stench from the bathroom on that first day was something Danielle would never forget, and the hours she spent cleaning it felt like prison-camp work.
But she called the place hers now, home, and though it wasn’t exactly the Palace of Versailles, it had everything she needed to get through each passing night.
And most importantly, it was secluded.
The basement setting of the dive bar gave it something of a bunker feel, which, at first, made Danielle feel trapped, buried. Now, however, the underground location instilled security, advantage. As long as the white monsters never saw her enter the alley, she felt safe in this underground dwelling, like a gopher in its burrow.
Danielle stopped midway between Huntington and Poplar and turned on her heels, scanning the upper windows of the two-story brick buildings that surrounded her, shifting her eyes steadily along the openings, pausing for a second or two on each.
