Kit let out a long, low whistle. “I find that mighty interesting, don’t you?”
“Interesting? That’s not the half of it. There’s something screwy about Caddrick’s story, all that guff he fed us about Noah Armstrong. Either Caddrick’s lying, or somebody fed him a line, because I’m starting to think Noah Armstrong didn’t kidnap anybody. And maybe he’s not a terrorist, at all.”
Kit halted mid-stride, his lean and weathered face falling into lines of astonishment. Grimly, Skeeter told him, all of it. About the wild-eyed kid who’d shouted Noah’s name. “And I’m willing to bet,” Skeeter added, “it was Noah Armstrong who shot the Ansar Majlis gunmen in the daycare center, when those bastards tried to grab Ianira’s kids. They lit out through the Wild West Gate, came up here, and after somebody murdered Julius, Noah Armstrong went on the run with Marcus and the girls. Only . . . Why was Julius posing as a girl?” That part bothered Skeeter. It didn’t fit anywhere.
“I wonder,” Kit mused softly, “just who Julius was supposed to be? Why, indeed, pose as a girl? Unless, of course, he was acting as a decoy for someone.”
“Jenna Caddrick?” Skeeter gasped.
“Isn’t any other candidate I can see. But why? And if Noah Armstrong isn’t Ansar Majlis, then who the hell is he? And how did he know there would be an attack on Ianira and her family?”
“I’ve been asking myself those very same questions,” Skeeter muttered. “Along with the name of that wild-eyed kid in the crowd.”
“You said he was carrying a black-powder pistol?”