Hidden Steel (12 page)

She’d lost them … or they’d decided to try again later.

But she’d also lost time, and she’d lost energy. She found her nerves stretched thin and her body losing its edge to hunger and lack of sleep. Nor had she truly returned to herself after her stint at the make-believe hospital.

At least, she hoped she hadn’t. It would be a bitch to be this tired all the time.

Urgency drove her onward … common sense stopped her and pulled her into a sub shop. She bought a footer and put half of it away for later, and when she returned to the street she knew her tracking exercise was a temporary thing. She put herself to tracing her steps and got as far as the footbridge over the Guadalupe River before admitting she’d had it.

That, too, seemed like a response to training, just as her footwork had to be. Such an objective evaluation—the awareness that she could go on if someone’s life directly depended on it, but that the circumstances didn’t currently warrant the risk.

She gave the city on the other side of the footbridge a rueful look, and she turned back. She bought bottled water from a corner vendor and sat down at a bus stop bench to eat the rest of her sub. “Tomorrow,” she promised the spread of buildings.

For she already had plans for the evening.

* * * * *

She found a new fleabag hotel—no shortage of them in this part of town—and dumped her few belongings there, switching back into sporty mode with sneakers and yoga pants. She gave herself thirty minutes of rest, and headed for the nearest PW grocery store. There she stacked a cart full of peanut butter and tuna and crispy crackerbread that wouldn’t get stale; she jammed the bottom rack with tissue and toilet paper, and crammed toothbrushes and paste into the remaining crevices.

The muggers paid for it all.

She headed out of the store with a step lighter than any amnesiac being hunted by really angry mystery enemies should ever have. She’d gotten a good cart, too—it let her shove it on down the sidewalk and jump up to coast along, and when she hit a downhill stretch she just went along for the ride, trailing one foot behind as a stabilizing rudder. Music bubbled right on out of her throat, something that went along with her long sweeping movement. Manilow. Sweepingly, dramatically … one of the ballads. “… Ohhhh Maaaan—” She had a fumble, a lost note as she navigated a curve, but picked it right back up again. Another oldie, she realized, and decided to update herself, fumbling for another tune. Celine Dion, that would do it. Celine was
now.
Right to the power chorus—“I’m youuur la—”

She stopped the cart. Celine Dion might be now, but her fickle memory was happy to inform her that the song came from the eighties. “Fine,” she muttered to herself. “I like the oldies.” And she pushed off, launching back into the Manilow song.

No one along the way seemed to care one way or the other, and that suited her just fine. She drove her little shopping cart right down to the underpass, taking the long way around to avoid the steep bank, and by the time she approached the underpass itself—breathless, but still singing—she had a wary welcome committee.

“Thought you was gone,” Meth Woman said with a sniff. “Saw you leave last night. Wasn’t that—”

“Zander’s brother,” Mosquito interjected, swiping at something invisible on his arm. “She’s sweet on him. I saw it.”

“Maybe it was.” Mickey waved a box of tissues, enticing them and changing the subject in one fell swoop. “I hope you like peanut butter. It keeps. And tuna—”

“Oh!” Meth Woman snatched the can out of Mickey’s hand. “Gourmet choice!”

“Nothing but the best,” Mickey said, and after that the cart emptied apace. She was bending to get the final tissue box when a gruff voice spoke beside the cart.

“Yesterday you were one of us, and today you bring us this stuff? You got new clothes?” There was warning to the words.

Mickey stood to face the man who’d appointed himself to look a gift horse in the mouth. She said, “You just keep my business mine, and any trouble following me around will stay clear of here.”

“You think bringing this stuff makes up for that risk?”

She straightened, offering him the tissues. “I think bringing this stuff was something I could do, so I did.”

He offered her only a skeptical look.

“Plus, I found it to be sweetly ironic revenge on the fellows who used to have this money.”

His eyes widened slightly as he absorbed the implications. “You?”

“Word getting around already? Good.” Although that would only make it harder later.

“You wore a shirt on your head with eye holes in it?” He snorted in amused disbelief.

“
Hey
,” Mickey said, stung. “And what about a little black cowl with bat ears
isn’t
silly?”

He seemed to consider this. Then he took the tissues. “I saw you at the gym.” At her surprise, he added, “Not my turf, but Steve don’t care. I’m thinking Mosquito’s right—you’re sweet on that boy. You’re smart, you won’t bring him your trouble, either.”

She opened her mouth to protest. Plenty of protest, most of it having to do with how she’d left the gym specifically to take her trouble away and he’d only followed. But the man turned his back on her and ambled away, and she realized he had few enough victories in his life … she’d give him this one. “Cart’s for the taking!” she announced to the underpass as a whole. And with any luck, Robbin’ in the Hood would be back in a day or two to distribute more mugger money.

Lots to do between now and then.

And most of it involved people who wanted to get their hands on her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 10

The bus pulled away with a grumble of gears and lingering diesel smoke, leaving Steve to walk a block to the gym in the late afternoon heat. He liked to think of it as walking, at least. Other people obviously considered his movement more of a borderline lurch, and they gave him plenty of room.

He wondered if his brother had felt like this. Watched. Judged.

Of course he did.

With effort, Steve straightened his shoulders, lightened his walk. But by the time he reached the gym, fumbling for his keys, he’d already attracted attention.
Dawnisha.
She ground a cigarette out on the sidewalk and picked up a full garbage bag, and he realized that she’d been waiting there. Then he looked at the bag again and realized—
Tuesday.
The day Dawnisha brought over Sunday’s take from the hotel where she worked. Soaps opened and barely used, toothpaste left behind, lost and found items never picked up. Officially, the hotel didn’t know that these things didn’t end up in the garbage. Unofficially, the other maids pitched in to make sure the Tuesday bag was bulging.

“Don’t you look fine,” she said to him.

Steve offered a vague, evasive gesture and opened the door. He hadn’t realized how hot he’d been until the cool interior air washed over him; he might have stood in that doorway for the next year, eyes closed and head tipped back, if Dawnisha hadn’t nudged him. And at that he let out an involuntary yelp, jerking aside as she marched in and dropped the bag beside the freebies barrel. She turned around, crossed her arms, and looked him up and down. “Uh-huh,” she said. “Locked it up with someone, didn’t you?”

“In the loosest possible terms,” he muttered.

“And came back without that Mickey.”

Couldn’t argue that.

“Doing anything about it?” The challenge was right there in her eyes. He’d spent years telling the people in this neighborhood to take charge of their own fate, to reach for what they wanted. Clearly enough, she thought it was his turn to walk the talk.

“Shower,” he said. “Long one. All the Ben Gay in the world.”

“That’ll bring the ladies running,” she noted. She flicked her fingers at the training room. “World won’t end if you close this place for the whole day. You’ve gone and missed most of it already.”

“It might.” But he didn’t meet her gaze.

“Be just as well,” she said. “Been 5-0 hanging around here all day, I hear.”

“Cops?” That surprised him. Nothing he’d seen so far indicated that the cops were in on Mickey’s little adventure.

She shook her head, brisk and disapproving. “Someone’s muscle, trying too hard to look like they aren’t watching the place.”

Steve rubbed a careful hand across the back of his neck—very careful. “Maybe I should stay here, then. Give them something to look at.” Keep them from looking in Mickey’s new direction.

“
Scared
,” she said, picking up on their previous conversation and letting scorn put an edge to it.

He didn’t respond, and she dismissed him with a wave, leaving the gym with an I-own-the-world walk. But of course she was right. Scared. Of what would happen if he found Mickey again; of what would happen if he didn’t.

Just because she didn’t want help didn’t mean she didn’t need it.

And Steve …

Didn’t even really understand what was at stake. He just knew it had quickly become far too important to him that she come out on top—alive and kicking and singing some old pop tune while she was at it.

Except she had a right to make her own decisions … to make her own way.

Maybe that shower would help. Maybe it would clear his mind, make everything clear. What to do next, how to get her to that happy ending.

But he didn’t think he was headed for easy answers.

* * * * *

Mickey stood in the cool evening shadow of a dun brick building, but her shivers didn’t come from the shade at all.
Here. This is the place.

Where she’d woken, a mystery to herself. In handcuffs. Facing down the cold expression of a woman who was used to getting what she wanted.

At the time Mickey had been frightened … confused … more than a little sick.

Now she was suddenly just mad.

It didn’t matter who she was … what she might have done. How
dare
they play around with experimental drugs? How dare they leave her fumbling to figure out who she was, who she could trust, and who she needed to find? And dammit, what if no one was feeding that cat?

… silver tabby, pretending not to see the twitching, dangling toy just out of reach, braided rug beneath tucked paws …

The building across the street loomed sleek and new … and yet somehow also looked abandoned. The small, neat name and logo combination on the corner of the structure created an air of snooty arrogance.
If you don’t already know who we are, we don’t care if you notice us or not.

 CapAd.Com. A dot-com building, busted right down to emptiness.

Mickey circled the building, always staying across the street, sometimes ducking into those buildings—a bank, a bakery—sometimes circling the block before lingering to watch CapAd.Com.

No one went in; no one came out. Eventually, she discovered that all the doors were locked. Eventually, as night fell, as the business area shut down, she discovered that no one turned on any lights.

Gone? Or just really, really good at hiding?

Hard to find rocks of any substance in this manicured neighborhood. Mickey settled for a heavy pot of pansies, acquired from outside the bank. Heavy, no doubt, to discourage people from picking it up and hefting it through someone’s glass front door.

Which is exactly what she did.

The resulting crash—glass raining down, pot smashed inside the door, pansies scattered everywhere—was eminently satisfying, but it brought no one running. It brought no one walking, or sauntering, or otherwise into evidence at all.

So whatever else she was, Mickey was also now a vandal. “Sorry, pansies,” she muttered at them, watching from behind the big blue mail drop on the corner. And to herself, “Sorry, Janie A. Looks like there aren’t any answers waiting here.” No people … no one to interrogate.

But she couldn’t help herself; when no one responded to the broken door—no police, no curious onlookers—she slipped across the street and through the jagged hole she’d created. Glass crunched beneath her feet, grinding into the carpet.

Familiar pattern, that carpet.

She found the stairs; she wished for a flashlight. But by the time she’d climbed those three unlit floors and emerged into the hallway, her eyes were so accustomed to the darkness that the city light through the bank of windows seemed a luxury.

And standing there at the end of the hallway, unable to suppress another bout of shivering, she thought the dim light was probably also a mercy. It softened the details … blurred them. There was the bathroom, where she’d taken down the doctor. There … that room halfway down the hall, with the door ajar …

That had been her room. Her prison.

She made her way there, sneakers silent on the carpet, and pushed the door open.

They hadn’t cared enough to clean up after themselves. The bed was just as she remembered it, and the medical trash still created vague visual lumps on the typing table turned bedside table. She supposed there had been no real point in cleaning up beyond this; anyone who stumbled across the room wouldn’t have the faintest idea what had happened here, and anyone who knew it was significant also already knew it was here. These people knew how to get while the getting was good.

She surprised herself with her own reaction to the room—the flush of prickly heat across her face, the faint feeling of disassociation with her body. As if she’d float right on out of it while her body slumped to the ground.
Get a grip, Mickey Finn.

She forced herself to enter the room … to walk around it. To look at the spot where the woman had sat, smiling coldly, offering threats as though they were perfectly reasonable options. She found herself humming, quavery at first, but soon enough it grew to real words, real notes, determined but low. A certain rainbow song, sung by a certain green frog puppet.

The darkness soaked up the words, leaving a profound silence as she trailed off, running the backs of her fingers down the bed. She wondered if they’d even left the handcuffs in the bathroom. She murmured optimistic lyrics into the room, not much more in tune than the original Muppet version.