Men came out of the car and joined the long-chinned man, and they were surprisingly ordinary.
That was the first thing that struck me. No masks. No uniform. No attempt at looking like anything at all. Six of them, most of them young, faces lit orange by their own headlights, the kind of boys you'd walk past outside a shop without a second thought. One had ink climbing both arms and across his neck in dark, dense patterns. Another kept shifting his weight from foot to foot as if the asphalt itself were uncomfortable.
That made them worse, not better. Men who bother with masks are still pretending they might go back to being someone afterward. These ones had already decided there was nothing left to go back to.
"I told you people always use this street," Trapper said. The long chin moved above me. His voice was calm, almost conversational, the tone of a man discussing weather.
