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Bobbie followed

Once Bobbie was outside, her height was both an advantage and a disadvantage Being a head and a half taller than most everyone around her meant that she could afford to stay pretty far behind Soren as he hurried along the sidewalk She could spot the top of his head from half a city block away At the same time, if he looked behind hiood third of a meter out of the crowd

But he didn’t turn around In fact, he appeared to be in soh the knots of people on the busy sidewalks around the UN campus with obvious iood reflective surface or backtrack He’d been nervous answering the page, and he was being pointedly, angrily not nervous now

Whistling past the graveyard Bobbie felt her row loose and easy, her hunch slip a centimeter closer to certainty

After three blocks he turned and went into a bar

Bobbie stopped a half block away and considered The front of the bar, a place creatively nalass If you wanted to duck in so you, it was the perfect place to go Maybe he’d gotten smart

Maybe he hadn’t

Bobbie walked over to the front door Getting caught following him had no consequences Soren already hated her Theout early to pop into a neighborhood bar Who was going to rat on her? Soren? The guy who cut out just as early and went to the saan early beer, she’d just walk up to hi, and buy him his second round

She pushed the door open and went inside

It took her eyes a ht outside to the di bamboo bar top manned by a human bartender, half a dozen booths with about as many patrons, and no Soren The air save her one look and then carefully went back to their drinks and mumbled conversations

Had Soren ducked out the back to ditch her? She didn’t think he’d seen her, but she wasn’t exactly trained for tailing people She was about to ask the bartender if he’d seen a guy run through, and where that guy n at the back of the bar that said POOL TABLES with an arrow pointing left

She walked to the back of the bar, turned left, and found a smaller, second room with four pool tables and two men One of them was Soren

They both looked up as she turned the corner

“Hi,” she said Soren was s, for hie The otheran excessively casual outfit that tried too hard to look like it belonged in a seedy pool hall It clashed with the ht posture Bobbie had a feeling she’d seen his face before, but in a different setting She tried to picture hi his co away “You play?” He picked up a pool cue that had been lying on one of the tables, and began chalking the tip Bobbie didn’t point out that there were no balls on any of the tables, and that a sign just behind Soren said RENTAL BALLS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

His co into his pocket Between his fingers Bobbie caught a glimpse of black plastic

She smiled She knehere she’d seen the second man before