Disruptor (18 page)

Dani threw her hands up. “Whoa, whoa,
whoa.”

“We need to look at the whole picture, and
you need to decide what’s more important to you.” He rose and
headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to make some coffee. Want
some?”

“Yeah.” She was no hero, super or otherwise.
He had to know that. “What would you choose?”

He answered without hesitating. “Find the
girls and get them to safety.” He disappeared into the kitchen.

Her first instinct was to take out a killer.
His was to help the people in danger. Sounded to Dani like that
made Kevin more the heroic type.

Several minutes later he returned with two
cups of coffee. He set his on the desk and picked up the notebook.
“Bratva means brotherhood. It’s what Russian organized crime call
themselves.”

“Brotherhood.” Dani snorted. “How fucking
special.”

“They’re international, they’re into
everything illegal you can imagine, they believe in loyalty, and
they’re deadly.”

“I don’t suppose you have names and
addresses, huh?”

“Nikolay Volodin. He owns a lot of property
in Lincoln Heights. Been arrested on various charges but nothing
sticks to him. What little I can find online suggests he’s the head
of Point Sable’s Bratva.”

Dani sipped her coffee. “Still nothing on the
guy I’m looking for?”

“Without a name, I don’t know what else to do
other than the image search that already turned up nothing.”

“We need contacts in the South Side. I tried
to make one but I screwed it up.” It might be worth it to approach
Housecat again.

“I know someone who’s played poker in Lincoln
Heights. Maybe he can get me into a game.”

Alarm focused Dani’s restless energy into a
near-panic. “No. No, you can’t do that.”

“Sure I can.” Kevin grinned. “I’m a hell of a
good poker player and I’ve got plenty of money to throw
around.”

“You said it yourself, these people are
deadly. You can’t take a risk like that.”

“Why not? Because I don’t have superpowers
like you?”

“I don’t have superpowers. I have
enhancements. It’s science, not.” She struggled for words. “It’s
not mystical woo.”

Kevin placed his cup on the desk and came to
stand less than a foot in front of her. “You may be enhanced, but
it’s still a risk for you to do this.”

“Yeah, but it’s a bigger one for you. At
least I got nothing to lose.” The words sounded pathetic to her
ears but it was the truth. She had nothing. Nothing to lose, and
maybe nothing to give. All those experiments to make her stronger,
faster, alter her DNA and implant tech in her body and brain, even
the training and education the lab had given her, and none of it
had helped her figure out how to be a worthwhile person. None of it
made up for the worst decision she’d ever made in her short, stupid
life.

Dani blew out a breath and met his gaze. “The
research you do is great. Giving me a place to stay, helping with a
new ID. All of it. It’s way more than you should have done.”

“Dani.”

“No, let me finish. I may not know what I’m
doing, but I do know that putting you in the path of Russian
mobsters is wrong. Promise me you won’t do that.” She took his hand
and squeezed. “Promise.”

Kevin raised her hand to his lips and kissed
her knuckles, still rough and red from her last fight. “Keep it up
and I’m going to start thinking you like me.”

“The food’s good here.” She pulled away, but
took her time about it. “Have you checked the hashtag lately?”

“Feel the need to beat somebody up?” He gave
her a teasing smile then retrieved his phone from the desk.

“You know how it is. Got an itch, might as
well scratch it.”

He looked up from his phone, an unreadable
look in his eyes. “Take a look at this.”

Dani hurried to his side and took the phone.
He’d enlarged a tweet from a user named djhousecatmd – her new
friend in Belmont, Housecat.

Hey #cabrinighost i got a girl wants to see
u again. u know where.

Kevin said, “What’s that about?”

She told him about the club in Belmont and
its owner.

“You think one of the girls from that night
wound up with him?” Kevin took his phone back, his fingers sliding
over hers in what felt like a deliberate caress.

“Either that or some kind of trap.”

“Let me go with you.”

“Hell no.”

“What if you need to get out of there in a
hurry? I have a really fast car. I have more than one really fast
car.”

Damn it. He had a point. She didn’t know
Belmont like she knew Cabrini. As fast as she was, lack of
knowledge like that would still be a disadvantage if she had to
make a run for it. “Okay, but you’re not parking too close. And
you’re keeping your ass in the car.”

He raised his hands, palms facing out. “My
ass goes where you want it.”

Getting him further involved was a bad idea,
for multiple reasons. But if he was sitting in his car in an alley
in Belmont, waiting for her, then that meant he wouldn’t be doing
something really stupid, like trying to get himself into a poker
game with mobsters. Definitely the lesser of two evils. “We’ll head
out at nightfall.”

“I’ll go find some clothes appropriate for a
sidekick.”

“If you wear tights, I’m leaving you
here.”

Kevin glared at her as he left the room.

Kevin decided pretty quickly that maybe his
lap wasn’t the best place to leave the stun gun. He slid it between
his seat and the door instead. The doors were locked. The lights
and the engine were off. Even the radio was silent. He waited in
the dark, fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on the steering
wheel.

Dirty South was four blocks away. That was as
close as Dani would let him get. He didn’t like it but he wanted
her trust so he didn’t argue too much. And to be honest, it’s not
like he would be much use in a serious fight. The cover story he’d
made up for Dani’s presence in his life was starting to seem like a
good idea, self-defense training. He never again wanted to be as
helpless as he’d been the night of the attack. Plus he wasn’t
finished with his community service yet, and he didn’t know how
long he’d be chauffeuring a superhero into the scary parts of
town.

The idea of wastrel playboy Kevin Moynihan
acting as a chauffeur would cause a riot of laughter among just
about everyone he knew.

The thump and rattle of a cheap stereo
blasting sent his nervousness into overdrive. Lights shone in the
rearview mirror. Kevin watched as the vehicle crept past the alley,
tension tightening his muscles. After an agonizing several seconds,
the car moved on and the music faded. The tension stayed,
though.

Where’s your white liberal guilt now,
huh?

He shifted uncomfortably in the leather seat,
hoping Dani’s meeting with this Housecat guy wouldn’t take
long.

***

Dani paced the roof of Dirty South, hands
flexing, head bobbing in time with the hip-hop that floated up from
the dancefloor below. If this was a trap, it would be sprung soon
enough. If it was an offer of help or information, she would wait
on the roof rather than break in again. Seemed the polite thing to
do.

It didn’t take long for him to join her. “You
want people to help you, you’re gonna need a better way to get in
touch with you than a hashtag.”

She’d thought of that. Setting up something
would imply a permanent situation, though. She wasn’t here to be
some kind of savior for Point Sable, she just wanted to help three
young women. “I take it that means you’re offering help.”

“Not me. Someone else.” Housecat moved
closer. “But that someone is under my protection. So I’m gonna need
you to take off that mask.”

Risk versus reward. This could be nothing.
Kevin might be four blocks away, but at least one person had seen
them together. That one person might have been Kevin’s friend, but
he gave off an untrustworthy vibe. It would take a little doing,
but she could be connected to Kevin, if someone wanted to do the
work. Like, say, Russian mobsters.

Or the lab.

Housecat crossed his arms over his massive
chest. “People think love makes the world go ‘round. That’s
bullshit. It’s reciprocity – that’s the key. You show me a little
trust, I’ll be inclined to reciprocate.”

“You’re asking me to take a big risk on the
faith that what you have to offer will be worth it.”

He smiled, and she wondered if he ever had
any trouble at all with getting women to pick up what he was
putting down. “What I have to offer is always worth it.”

Nice and smooth, all right. But still, she
hesitated.

Housecat nodded. “Okay, okay. I’ll give you a
little something. That someone else – she’s got information, and
she wants to thank you.”

Bingo. One of the girls
did
wind up in
Belmont looking for help. Dani removed the ski mask. Some strands
of hair came loose from the twist she’d worked the mass into and
floated around her face. She batted them away and met his searching
gaze.

Whatever he saw in her eyes and expression,
he must have approved of. “Let’s go.” He headed for the fire
escape. “Put your mask back on until we get there.”

She did so and followed. Once on the ground
he kept close to the building, out of the patches of yellow cast by
streetlights. Around the west side of the structure, a quick dart
across the street after making sure there was no traffic, then
swallowed by the darkness of another alley. This building was dark
and quiet and appeared to be empty.

He paused at the mouth of a stairwell leading
to an entrance below street level. “For someone with short legs,
you got no trouble keeping up with me.” Fishing for
information.

She wouldn’t give him any. “Nope.” She
pointed at the door below. “What’s down there?”

“A little hidey hole I like to keep, just in
case.”

“Seems a little close to the club.”

He grinned. “Didn’t say it was my only hidey
hole.” He descended the short flight of stairs then unlocked the
door. A dark hallway led to another door. This one had three locks.
Housecat opened it slowly, staying in the hall. “Sveta? It’s
me.”

An accented, feminine voice replied,
“Miles?”

Dani looked up at
Miles
, wishing he
could see her raised eyebrow underneath the ski mask. From the
downward turn of his mouth, he didn’t need to see it, he just
knew.

He entered the room with slow, deliberate
steps, hands hanging low and away from his body. Sveta must have
been a skittish thing.

Very skittish, based on the nine millimeter
in her trembling hands, aimed at the door. Dani froze.

Housecat spoke in a soothing voice. “Sveta,
this is the Cabrini Ghost.”

Sveta was the girl who instigated the escape,
the last one out as Dani held them off. Russian tumbled from the
girl’s lips like fast flowing water, then she switched to English.
“Take the mask off.”

Mimicking Housecat’s careful movements, Dani
removed the mask. Sveta lowered the gun and rushed toward Dani,
enveloping her in a tight hug. A torrent of Russian spilled forth
and the other woman shook. Dani patted her back, at a loss as to
how to comfort her. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Russian.”

Sveta released her. She wiped the tears from
her cheeks with one hand, the one holding the gun bobbing fitfully
in the air. “Yes, yes. I speak English.”

Dani kept an eye on the gun. “Are you okay?”
She really wanted to talk to the girl alone, but if Housecat was
letting her keep a gun, maybe Sveta was safe with him. Relatively
speaking.

“I would not have got away without you.”
Sveta placed her free hand over her heart, big blue eyes shining.
“Thank you. Thank you.” She hugged Dani again, a fierce strength in
her arms that belied the tears.

Dani’s first instinct was to push the girl
away, but then she remembered. Remembered the desperate need for
human contact, touch that didn’t hurt, didn’t demand or degrade.
Years after crawling through her own hell, Dani still carried some
of that need around, deep inside in a place she didn’t like to
acknowledge. Hidden under layers of fear – that giving in would
bring more pain and broken trust – and shame – that even after all
the horrors her body and soul had been forced to endure, she still
needed to be touched, wanted to be touched in a way that would help
clean all the bad stuff away. Dani closed her eyes, her mind
swimming with images of every hand on her shoulder, every hug,
moments of friendship and yes, even passion, that had helped her
turn simple human touch from something to be feared to something
close to normal. Something she could even welcome.

Dani remembered all of that, and then she
hugged this Russian girl she didn’t know but had so damn much in
common with. She hugged her like a long lost sister. Like both
their lives depended on it. Some wound deep in her heart she hadn’t
even known existed found its way to healing in that moment. It left
scar tissue, but it healed nonetheless.

Sveta broke the embrace but kept a tight grip
on Dani’s hand. “Miles said you were trying to find the others. To
help them.” Her voice was steadier now, her accent easier to
understand.

“Yeah.” Dani glanced around the room. For a
hidey hole, it was pretty cozy. Small but functional, whatever it
had been before, it was now basically a studio apartment a little
bigger than the average motel room. The couch held a nest of
blankets, a hollow spot in the middle where Sveta had obviously
been sitting. A coffee table had been pulled close to the couch,
with an open laptop set up and the remains of an earlier meal
waiting to be taken to the tiny kitchenette. Dani gestured at the
couch. “Can we sit?”

Sveta nodded and dropped Dani’s hand. She
returned to her nest and tucked the gun between the seat cushion
and the arm of the couch. Dani sat at an angle on the coffee table.
Housecat took up a perch on the opposite side of the couch, his
gaze rarely leaving the pretty Russian.