Hidden Steel (3 page)

Be smart. Run away.

Mickey ran. Down to the basement, where the lights seemed dimmer—or the grey mist crowded closer. She bounced around the hallways, past pipes and electrical boxes and phone relays and inexplicable blocky structures jutting from wall and ceiling, and then eventually—she wasn’t quite sure how—she found herself a way out. Out into the bright daylight.

She should have been paying more attention. She might not have run into the over-muscled, neckless man in his perfectly tailored suit. As it was, she didn’t see him until she slammed into him, finding out for herself just how hard those muscles were and just how well that suit hid the gun that dug into a soft, tender spot she had to keep herself from reflexively grabbing in public. But luck stayed with her—because she bounced right off him, and she had the space to turn on her heel and bolt.

She heard his curse—and she heard him bark something into a hand-held radio. If they hadn’t known about her escape before …

Mickey ran.

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

Chapter 2

Heat. White hot summer sun in dry air.
Mickey ran into someone, blurted an apology, and ran onward, unsteady and drawing offended shouts. No doubt people stared. At some point she crossed a river, clutching the railing of the bridge pedestrian lane and fighting the impulse to simply jump right in, embracing the cool wetness. The chest pocket of her stolen, blood-spattered scrubs yielded a few folded dollar bills and she lurched past a gas station vending machine, hesitating long enough to buy an iced tea. Somewhere else she got an apple … she wasn’t sure she’d paid for it, but she ate it to the core.

She didn’t know if she’d been followed. She thought not, that she’d grabbed that instant of opportunity between discovery and enemy mobilization and actually made it. But she didn’t know. They could be using teams, they could be hanging back, they could simply be waiting for an opportunity to snatch her up when no one would notice.

When she hesitated, knowing she’d hit the end of her limited resources, she found herself beside a high, ratty chain-link fence. She laced her fingers through the diamond links and held herself steady. In the distance, long hills rippled up into mountain ridges, parched brown formations that made her long for that river. More immediately, she found herself surrounded by city formations—buildings of brick and block crowded together in a variety of tired store fronts, their line-up broken only by narrow alleys and fenced, junky lots like the one she’d stopped beside. A few cars parked along the curb, most of them looking as though they’d stopped here only because they couldn’t go any further.
Just like me.
Broken glass seemed to be the major decorating theme, but in this particular lot, used condoms ran a close second. Garbage crowded into the corners of the fence, blown there and left to decompose at its own rate. Rather like the stiff, flattened body of the rat sticking out from beneath a crushed six-pack carton.

Mickey swallowed hard against a sudden faintness. All that running …
I went in the wrong direction.
She should have gone the other way.
Any
other way.

A silver-grey tabby looked out an apartment window, paw poised to snag the lilac-colored curtains stirring in the breeze.

Mickey blinked. What—?

She blinked again, hard and deliberate, and refocused herself on this grey-edged street. At the end of the block, a signal light went from yellow to red. A shop door swung open with the chime of bells, then slammed shut in a way that spoke of a malfunctioning automatic closer. Scanning to find it, her gaze fell on the building across the street. Glass storefront with a giant hand-printed schedule of some sort, a few flyers spotting the glass, but nothing in the way of professional lettering. Above the door—which was blocked ajar, and couldn’t have been the sound source she hunted—a plain, unassuming sign declared
Steve’s Gym.

A gym. Relief tugged at her; she frowned when she realized it, and realized she couldn’t say why. A gym.
Safety. Refuge. Strength.

In the end she quit trying to understand the
why.
What did it matter? Where else did she have to go? And if nothing else, a gym always had a drinking fountain.

Indoors. Out of the sun. Out of sight.

Mickey extricated her fingers from the chain link fence and aimed her big clunky sneakers across the street.

* * * * *

“Big isn’t always better.” Steve Spaneas held his arms wide with the declaration, a
Hey, look at me—What could be better than this?
gesture that always made the students of this class laugh. Some of them even pointed. “
Prepared
is better.
Smart
is better. You stick with me, and we’ll make those nights on the street feel a little safer.”

And at this they always nodded. Fear crept in around their eyes—weary eyes, wary eyes, and often just a little bit unfocused eyes.

They weren’t on drugs. The problem for this bunch was that they couldn’t or wouldn’t take the drugs they should. Local street folks, dressed in old and scavenged clothing, always needing haircuts and shaves and a good solid application of toothpaste and deodorant. During this class, the old gym … well, it smelled like a gym, all right.

But it didn’t mean they weren’t
people.
That they didn’t deserve to feel safe in the little niche of this world they called their own. The self-defense skills he taught them were basic, but the very fact that he held these free classes let the local toughs know they’d find no easy prey in this section of town.

A tribute to his brother, who might not have died so young if someone had done the same for him.

His other classes were more typical. Young men and woman, drawn to the discipline and fellowship his classes offered—non-denominational, he thought of them, and culled from all fighting disciplines to cater to a street-fighting method. Low-cost memberships that also drew them to the free weights, and friendly competitions that gave them the motivation to follow-through. Kickboxing for those who wanted to get serious.

It didn’t add up to a lot. But it was steady, and it was enough to cover his gym and the apartment above it in this low-rent district. And the neighbors liked having him here. Casseroles and brownies and tomatoes grown in pots outside back doors … there was always some kind of offering on the store front counter just inside the doorway, just beside the open-topped barrel where he kept the donated hotel soaps, toothpastes, feminine supplies and disposable razors.

A doorway he’d propped open for this tangibly odorous class, in spite of a day hot enough to keep the cranky old air conditioners working hard. Unusual for the San Jose climate, but it always happened a couple times a year.

He didn’t need the class reaction—ten of them today, all frequent flyers—to let him know someone had come to that open door, and hesitated there. He didn’t read anything into their suspicion, either—many of them survived on suspicion. But he wasn’t expecting what waited for him when he turned around.

Bright scrubs, splattered with … yes, blood. Bright eyes to match. Utter exhaustion on that face, and a personable haircut that didn’t match the filth factor dulling the honey-brown color. Too thin on a slender frame—and too exhausted to stay upright for long. An old, old story … she’d walked out of a clinic somewhere, wasn’t on her meds, had forgotten to eat … and someone else on the street had sent her in Steve’s direction with the misguided notion he could do more than hand out soap and teach free self-defense. But … surely her feet weren’t really that big?

“I just—” she said, and her voice was hoarse and weary, barely reaching him. “I need—”

And then her eyes rolled up and she folded to the ground in an absurdly graceful faint, just missing the barrel with her head on the way down.

No panic. Not like he hadn’t been here before.
His brother’s face, curly black hair damp with sweat, that same dazed and somehow surprised expression …

Steve gave the class a reassuring word and left them long enough to scoop her up—oh yeah, way too thin—and deposit her on the cot in the office. He left a cool damp washcloth on her head, a tall plastic cup of water on the desk, and checked his watch. He’d take just a moment to give the class some familiar warm-up exercises, and then he’d make sure his assessment—that she just needed rest—was on the mark.

He hesitated at the door, looked back at her. Small in those scrubs. Her face wan and pale, her eyes deep with shadows. For the moment, peaceful.

For the moment.

Here we go. …

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

Chapter 3

Naia Mejjati stopped in the act of placing demure diamond studs in her ears, swamped in a wave of homesickness. It stopped her breath short.

Not because of the depth of her feelings. No, because she’d had them at all.

She quite deliberately slipped the back over her earring before thinking or feeling anything else. Then she gave herself a critical eye in the mirror.
Foolish girl,
she told her reflection—classically Irhaddani, those features. Olive skin, big dark eyes, generous lips and a long nose, delicately shaped. In her own country, she was a beauty. In the United States, she was yet another ethnic set of features not quite conforming to the standards of beauty set by Hollywood and advertising.

At least in this country, other people could actually see those features. They could see the sparkle of her earrings, the expression of a mouth lightly glossed with color. They could see by her clothes that she was a conservative young woman, but one who understood quality. The composed, appropriate daughter of President Sayid Mejjati.

None of those things were true in her homeland, where she went veiled outside the presidential household, and where her own people knew only that she existed. The Irhaddan princess in a tower … but it was no fairy tale. It was any woman’s life in Irhaddan.

True, she hadn’t initially been excited about the prospect of traveling overseas to attend Stanford—her father’s grand gesture to prove that Irhaddan was indeed modernizing its attitudes toward women. Not after her initial schooling was entirely handled by tutors in an extravagant indulgence … a gift from her father to her mother. Not when she was used to the relative anonymity of the veil and chador. Here in the States, anyone could see her—
everyone
could see her.

But once she’d gotten used to it …

She dreaded her graduation, and the inevitable call back to Irhaddan. She’d come here as a symbol, and she’d learned to embrace a different kind of life. She’d even learned to see the corrupt nature of her father’s regime—not her father himself, but his advisors and cabinet members. Her father might be old-fashioned and inflexible, but he honestly strove to lead his people through a tumultuous time in a tumultuous region. Others … had their own agendas.

And it was for the sake of her father that she’d allowed herself to be drawn into Anna’s world of espionage. She’d quickly understood the value of her contributions—how easy it was for her, a practically invisible member of the presidential family, to pass along details of secure building structures, of overheard conversations. Things that would help the States to keep on top of the corruption her father refused to see.

Even if Irhaddan intelligence suspected they had a leak, they’d never look to Naia. Not proper, demure Naia, loyal and obedient to her father. They simply neglected to understand that she could distinguish between her father’s efforts and their own.

And still, it had taken all her nerve to leave the recent notes at her first dead drop exchange. They weren’t even terribly significant notes, not for this practice run. The real intelligence still burned in her memory, acquired during her most recent visit and festering there, waiting for an outlet.

She could only hope she had the nerve to pass it along. Even now, another wave of homesickness washed over her, and she recognized it for what it truly was.

Fear.

* * * * *

Red blooming Christmas cactus, a silver tabby cat in a bay window, a Bristol Blue Nailsea vase on a serpentine mahogany chest of drawers with a dressing slide above graduated drawers and fluted, canted corners—

Mickey’s eyes flew open to the view of yellowing acoustic foam ceiling panels. Bristol Blue Nailsea vase? What the—?

Me. Something about me.

Not a very useful something, but useful nonetheless.

“Feeling better?”

She didn’t startle, because some part of her had known he was there all along. She merely turned her head on a somewhat lumpy pillow, identifying her bed as a narrow cot and the smell in the air an unexpected combination of stringent sweat and old gym mats. She found him sitting in a folded chair beside an old metal desk, ankle propped on one knee, T-shirt snug across his chest. Day-old stubble framed striking lips, the set of which suggested that his lower jaw didn’t quite fit neatly inside the upper. Curly black hair gone beyond the need for a haircut topped off deep, expressive black eyes.
Greek god.

Except this wasn’t heaven
or
Olympus. Just a gym she’d stumbled into. A tiny office in that gym, complete with the old desk and its computer monitor perched at one corner, the kickboxing awards and photographs, and a corner coat rack holding colorful satin workout gear and a brown belt tangled in lightweight boxing gloves.

He didn’t seem bothered by her failure to answer; he just nodded at the desk, where a paper plate held a sandwich and an apple accompanied by a tumbler. “Think food might help?”

“God, yes,” she blurted.

He smiled—but if his expression held understanding and compassion, there was something reserved there, too. “Can you sit up, or is it lunch in bed?”

“I can sit,” she assured him. She could even stand to get there, and though she still felt weak and wobbly, the haze had lifted. The drugs, out of her system at last. She applied herself to the turkey and Swiss on whole wheat, drinking the accompanying milk with enough gusto to leave a mustache.