Running from Skinner’s and the gun in the killer’s hand, from his eyes and the gold in the corners of his smile, bent low for balance over her bound hands and the case that held the asshole’s glasses, Chevette had seen all the others running, too, racing, it must have been, against the breaking calm, the first slap of rain almost warm when it came. Skinner would’ve known it was coming; he’d have watched the barometer in its corny wooden case like the wheel of some old boat; he knew his weather, Skinner, perched in his box on the top of the bridge. Maybe the others knew, too, but it was the style to wait and then race it, holding out for a last sale, another smoke, some bit of business. The hour before a storm was good for that, people making edgy purchases against what was ordinarily a bearable uncertainty. Though a few were lost, if the storm was big enough, and not always the unestablished, the newcomers lashed with their ragged baggage to whatever freehold they might have managed on the outer structure; sometimes a whole patchwork section would just let go, if the wind caught it right; she hadn’t seen that but there were stories. There was nothing to stop the new people from coming in to the shelter of the decks, but they seldom did.