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er. That nagging feeling in the back of her brain that she'd long ago learned to heed even though it was wrong as often as it was right. You couldn't survive in her world without learning to pay attention to such feelings, and she'd more than survived - she'd prospered beyond the dreams of any young hacker or con artist. Heeding the subliminal warning, she changed plans and stepped out into the crawling Duval Street traffic. A purple taxi honked angrily but she just smiled as she strode across the street and stared intently at a display of cheap, tasteless T-shirts in a storefront window.
She had no interest in wearing anything with the phrase "Fart Inspector" on it, whatever that meant, but she did want a chance to get a quick 360-degree look at her surroundings and the people in them. A young couple, their baby strapped into a stroller and grabbing in vain at passersby. Four good-looking men in their 30s, probably gay, chatting amiably with one another. A pair of slightly chubby, badly sunburned young women headed into the bar next door. Dozens of other tourists and a few locals. Nothing out of the ordinary for... no, wait. There.
An older man with a well-groomed beard, indistinguishable from the others except that he was alone. She'd seen him earlier, somewhere. She couldn't quite remember where, but he'd been alone then too. He was too professional to jaywalk after her, but he'd gone up to the next corner and was now crossing over to her side of the street. She let him finish crossing before she turned and started walking again, headed back up the way she'd come from. At the corner of Petronia she turned right, toward Truman Annex.
Losing him now would be simple, assuming he was alone. But he could have help, and she wanted to string him/them along a little and see if anyone else had taken an interest in her. It didn't occur to her to be scared. She doubted that he/they meant her immediate harm, and besides she had plenty of friends in town if