Hidden Steel (7 page)

When she finally looked away, her expression shifted, became something surprised. “I miss my cat,” she said, quite nonsensically. There was wonder in her voice, as though this were somehow an important discovery.

Happy endings. Right.

Those were for someone else.

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

Chapter 5

Mickey should have been sleeping. Or at the least, plotting out just how she’d make this situation better—how she’d find Naia. How she’d find herself.

Instead …

The woman in her memory looked like Mickey.

She sat cross-legged on the cot and stared into the darkness, wishing her mind’s eye would take a rest. Wishing it hadn’t painted such vivid images across her dreams and into the small hours of the morning.

The woman looked like Mickey.
Except she was dying.

Mickey couldn’t say how she knew it. Seeing the woman against the dark rich green of the couch, propped by pillows, a cool cloth slipping off her forehead … she might have had the flu. She might have had a headache. She might have simply taken a few moments of private time from her children.

But Mickey knew better, just as she knew there were children. One of them responsible, trying to make it all better; one of them withdrawn and in denial, acting out at school and taking hits—literal hits from schoolchildren who knew how to flock around the weak one in the pack.

Trying to make it all better.

She felt that little girl’s desperation—the refusal to believe she couldn’t stop the inevitable. Another cool washcloth, another dinner made, another perfect grade. If she was good enough, if she tried hard enough …

And she felt the guilt of the woman’s death. If she’d been good enough, if she’d tried hard enough …

And is that really me? Is that really some part of my life?

Or just hallucinations?

Stop that.
Just because it was the middle of the night, without so much as the glow of the monitor to break the blanketing darkness of Steve’s office. Just because it was so easy to doubt herself when the only person she even began to trust—she
did
trust—also doubted her.

Well, not quite true. He didn’t doubt her at all. He just believed things of her that conflicted with what she needed to believe of herself.

She wished she could run her hand down short, sleek fur, feel the rumble of a deep purr. No point in that. So she turned her thoughts toward action. Not for the moment, but for the morrow. She’d had her freedom less than a day, and already it seemed that time was running out. Naia was still out there, still somehow tied to Mickey—somehow depending on her. Partners in crime, partners in business … Mickey didn’t know. But she was younger, and she evoked in Mickey all those feelings—

Younger sister, acting out at school … surrounded by bullies, coming home with bruises and tears.

Mickey had done something about
that.
She was sure of it.
Slingshot.

The image swam up from her thoughts with surprising assertiveness and would have sunk back down just as quickly if she hadn’t grabbed at it—learning to recognize those things of herself that were
true.

She’d best learn fast.

Tomorrow she had to leave this place. She hadn’t wanted to face it, but in that, Steve was right. She couldn’t chance another encounter, one in which she wouldn’t pull her punches. And that car … those men. If they were looking for her as her instincts insisted, she couldn’t bring them here. She wasn’t the only troubled soul who considered this a safe place, and none of the others deserved her trouble raining down on them.

But she wouldn’t go out there without more advantage than she had now. Steve …

Steve had known about throwing knives. He’d
known
. He’d handled that letter opener as though he wanted to try his own mettle on it, seeing if he, too, could compensate for its weaknesses, assessing its turn speed and distance to bury the point in the wall.

Tomorrow he had a woman’s self-defense class. Tomorrow, Mickey would see if his upstairs apartment held the bladed weapons she thought it would. And then it was time to leave this place so its people would be safe, time to find herself, time to find—and protect—Naia.

It had been a luxury, thinking she might stay here until she could get some kind of a foothold in this maze that was apparently her life.

It had been a mistake.

* * * * *

Morning at the pottery co-op came early—kilns firing up, people checking on projects—and Naia was only one of several to climb the narrow stairs to the second-floor warehouse before most people were brewing their first cup of coffee.

None of the others had a chaperone, of course.

An unhappy chaperone, not understanding why Naia had to make this trip into San Jose at this time of day.

“This is my schedule,” Naia told her, walking briskly up those stairs and drawing from the early days of her rebellion to get the convincing tone in her voice—to hide her concerns and uncertainty. “If you prefer to stay on your own schedule, that would suit me perfectly.”

Badra obviously preferred just that. But she had little recourse other than to say, “That isn’t an option.”

“If it seemed you were imposing significant restrictions on me, it wouldn’t present the image of Irhaddan that my father is trying to portray,” Naia reminded her, turning around the narrow landing to take the final flight of stairs. Badra wasn’t a young woman and she wasn’t physically fit, and Naia in no way accommodated her. So it was natural that she reached the pottery co-op before Badra … not surprising that her firm stride took her straight to the shelves with their assigned project space, or that she’d managed to palm her short, concise note—
need help/advice—blown?—
between her fingers, slipping it into the dead-drop behind her own current project even as Badra entered the huge, open area. Naia kept her composure, pushing the hollowed brick back into place.

Because Anna’s people had prepared it, had smoothed it top and bottom and inserted a slick Teflon base, the brick slid easily. Silently. And when Naia turned around to Badra, she had a hand-formed vase in her careful grip, examining its newly fired glaze with a critical eye.

Badra gave it a dubious look. “It’s lopsided.”

Naia considered telling her it had been a firing accident, but, flush with her success with the dead-drop, told the truth instead. “I made it that way.”

“Flawed? On purpose?”

“No,” Naia said, quite distinctly. “Individual.”

Badra was silent a moment. Then she said, “The color is pretty.”

As close to victory as Naia would ever get. “Thank you.” She returned the vase to her project space and hovered over the class schedule and kiln sign-up sheet, then spent a few moments admiring the other projects in process.

No sign of Anna’s presence. Her quirky vase—a daisy vase with a dozen stem ports and giant, splashy daisies painted in unfired glaze—hadn’t moved since Naia’s last visit to the co-op. It was so
Anna,
that vase. Even dressed for high society, wrapped in designer gowns with her hair in an up-do and her fingers elegantly be-ringed with her antique jewelry, Anna managed to convey the quirky, impulsive side of her nature. It was something in her smile, Naia had thought from the start. It had been that smile that drew Naia to her friend in the first place. With all the pasted, faked, cultured expressions surrounding her in that party, Anna’s smile had stood out as real—faintly flawed, not quite symmetrical, and genuine.

Ironic that she, of all people, would eventually recruit Naia to spy on her countrymen.

Countrymen who are hurting my country,
she reminded herself. She signed up for a work time in the next afternoon so she could check the dead-drop. She’d have to come up with a new project concept by then.

Though if Anna hadn’t picked up her note, faking enthusiasm for a new project would be the least of her worries.

* * * * *

Mickey should have known it. Actually, she should have known two things.

One, that Steve’s lofty apartment would be every bit as neat and organized as the rest of this place. And two—Mickey allowed herself to dance a brief little jig—that he’d pursued his interest in weapons with the same dedicated follow-through.
Jackpot. A total glut of weaponry.

He liked projectile weapons, that was clear enough. Anything but guns. Two competition recurve bows sat in a metal stand with straight-fletch, practice-point arrows. A pistol crossbow in a glass-front corner cabinet along with several braces of throwing knives. To judge from the heavily gouged wood target planks leaning against one painted cinder block wall, Steve really enjoyed the satisfaction of the blade striking home, that feel of metal slipping through fingers, the
knowing
when the throw was righteous, the sound of it. …

Mickey looked down at her hand. It twitched, fingers already placed for the throw.
I guess he’s not the only one.

And then she saw the slingshot. A simple thing, really—a folding steel frame with wrist brace and surgical tubing, a box of ammo beside it.
Younger sister, acting out at school … surrounded by bullies, coming home with bruises and tears…

Slingshots were cheap. They were unexpected. And it hadn’t taken much practice. Rotten yewberries, raisins, cat droppings … even those, at short range, went where Mickey sent them; if they didn’t sting, they stunk. And still she’d been able to stay out of sight, to keep her sister’s protection an anonymous thing. An unexpected thing. Until the bullies got the message—
mess with this girl, and you never know where, you never know when … and you never know just how disgusting it’s gonna get.

Memories. True, hard memories.
Her
memories. No names attached, no locations. Just that feeling of satisfaction … the realization of just how good she was at the game.

Mickey opened the corner cabinet and gathered up her chosen arsenal. A brace of four small knives, a shoulder harness that looked unused and might even adjust down to fit her, and the slingshot. Both easy to conceal … both utterly familiar to her hand.

With any luck, it would take a while before he realized they were gone.

Mickey gave the target wall a wistful glance. Not just the knife planks, but the wide variety of gallery targets. Playing card targets, bottles and cans targets, command training targets … and of course a variety of bulls-eyes. No silhouettes, not human or animal. And the whole doggone wall was lined with home-made archery backdrops—old carpet being a favorite—as well as gypsum board leaning against brick.

This was one bachelor pad Mickey found she could appreciate.

The rest of it … also purely Steve, from the faint spicy smell of aftershave to a collection of family portraits by the entry area. Three of the vast brick walls were painted white; the third, over by a queen-sized bed, was natural brick. The bed itself wasn’t closed off by anything other than its position in the corner, and she thought the walled extrusion between the bed and the kitchen was probably the bathroom. Jutting out from the wall and over the bed, a loft pushed into the room, shadowing that whole area. Up above she could see shelves and part of a recliner, but the rest of the loft was a mystery.

She realized, then, stepping back to take in the big picture with a detail-oriented approach that seemed as much training as impulse, that he’d built this space to his own specs. It had probably been a dance studio, scuffed wooden floors still there, still full of light from the two giant banks of windows along the building’s front wall. And now it was full of Steve, from his hobbies to his penchant for clear space and clean lines.

And she was stealing from him, and then she was going to run from him.

Even if she was doing it
for
him.

For all of them, actually. The women in the self-defense class below her, street people who would trickle in that afternoon, those in the weight room throughout the day, the kids who came in after school …

They didn’t need to deal with her—not her mysteries, her vagueries, or her unpredictable reactions.

They sure didn’t need to deal with people who were looking for her.

Standing there in the middle of Steve’s very personal domain—stolen goodies in hand, the leftover pizza scavenged from the fridge and a grocery bag full of fruit and protein bars waiting by the door—Mickey had her first serious doubts. Were the memories real—any of them? Right down to those first hazy moments of being handcuffed to a bed? What if she’d just twisted memories of restraint in a real hospital? What if some clinic was frantic, looking for her?

Very deliberately, she walked to the nook that served as Steve’s personal exercise corner. Television, elliptical trainer, weights. And, of course, the full-length mirror all weight lifters seemed to need; it reflected her in all her glory.
There. That’s me.
Mickey Finn, a name stolen from the barely remembered conversation of someone who’d kidnapped her for interrogation. Two borrowed layers of tank tops, one tight to make up for the missing bra and the other loose to hide the fact the first one didn’t quite do the job. Old running shorts—no panty lines, because … no panties. She had color in her cheeks, unlike her first view in the “hospital” bathroom. Now her strength showed through … and on her face, determination. “Yeah,” she said. “Me, meet me. Could be crazy. Could be just what Steve thinks. Could be I should just hike straight to the closest cop shop and—”

No.
In the mirror, she frowned back at herself; her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.
If I don’t trust myself, I have nothing. If I don’t follow my gut instincts, I have nothing.

This might be crazy, but at least it was something. Goals. Somewhere to start, while she looked for the rest of it.

And hoped she could live with what she found.

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

Chapter 6

Steve practiced the words in his head.
Mickey,
his internal voice said,
I know I said you could stay here. But I know more now, and don’t think it’s safe.
Not safe for anyone else here, that was.