The weather turned sleety with rain; gray clouds converged over the canals so that the water reflected the dull gloom, making mirror images of fat gray clouds spitting and pissing water. But the cold along the Brouwersgracht was nothing compared with the arctic chill inside Peyton and Carson's flat. They avoided each other's gaze. They left the flat to take long, useless walks, getting soaked to the bone. Carson took to disappearing for hours on end, while Peyton got good at cataloguing her minders parked in the van across the street. There was Newsboy, of course; a pudgy guy who looked like a down-and-out ex-cop (if that were a type) who'd obviously replaced the dreadlocked wanker who attacked her; and a middle-aged woman with the large, darkly liquid eyes and deep brown skin of the Middle East. They lounged outside the flat windows and lurked in doorways and unobtrusively read the same pages of newsprint in soaking park benches as Peyton walked the canals and wandered the city.
