Hidden Steel

Free Hidden Steel by Doranna Durgin

Book: Hidden Steel by Doranna Durgin Read Free Book Online
Authors: Doranna Durgin
Tags: Suspense, Bought Efling
could stay here. But I know more now, and don’t think it’s safe. Not safe for anyone else here, that was.
    Wuhggh! He landed on his back on the gym mat, blinking painfully up at the wiry black woman who’d put him there.
    She put her hands on her hips and gave him a critical eye. “Mr. Steve, honey, you ain’t payin’ the least attention to this class this morning.”
    “Head in the clouds,” came the murmured agreement from the background.
    “Bet it’s that woman.”
    His ears still rang, but Steve knew that particular comment could only come from the young single mother who’d been trying to catch his attention since she joined the class. Gaynell.
    “How—” he started.
    Dawnisha, the student who’d taken him down, now helped pull him to his feet—as wiry in her strength as Mickey. “What, you think we spend all our time sittin’ in front of soaps when we’re not here? Those kids talk, Mr. Steve. You got some woman stayin’ here, and she knows how to take care of herself. That’s what we hear.”
    Nods and affirming noises followed this pronouncement. Steve grabbed a moment by brushing himself off, straightening his red Steve’s Gym T-shirt, pushing hair out of his eyes.
    Gaynell came to stand next to Dawnisha. “I think she’s got something to do with those cars cruisin’ this neighborhood yesterday, what do you think?”
    Suddenly Steve was surrounded. Women in brightly colored gym clothes and scarves, too much spandex where there shouldn’t be any at all.
    “I hear she didn’t look good.”
    “I hear she’s fine.”
    “I hear she don’t look like she belongs on the street, no matter how many old clothes you put on her.”
    “I hear she fainted.”
    “Those men don’t belong here, neither. Not in those smooth rides.”
    “My Tajo says you oughta watch it with that one. She trouble.”
    Steve briefly covered his face with his hands. This was a kind of self-defense he’d never mastered. “Air,” he groaned dramatically. “I need air.”
    “There, there,” Dawnisha said. She was the oldest, with four children and a night shift job at the nearest 24-hour walk-in clinic. “You just in over your head, that’s all.”
    Steve widened his fingers just enough to glare at her. When she laughed, he dropped his hands altogether. “Seriously,” he said. “I think she’s in trouble.”
    Someone couldn’t resist a mutter. “I think she is trouble.”
    He wished he could have ignored that. “That’s the problem.” He looked at them all, found them interested … found them concerned. Faces of color, mostly. His own olive complexion wasn’t the lightest here, but it was close. “It’s both. She—” He stopped, beset by the memory of her expression as the letter opener sagged in the wall, by her earlier realization of how close she’d come to hurting Malik. By her struggle to deal with her situation—never answering his questions less than honestly, even if that meant telling him she couldn’t answer them at all. Never veering away from direct eye contact. Not letting her pride get in the way of asking for help.
    “There, you see?” Dawnisha said. “He’s a goner.”
    “I think I have to ask her to leave,” he blurted.
    The general clamor to greet this eloquent declaration gave him just enough time to imagine Mickey’s reaction to such a request—disappointment, maybe fear, but acceptance. No begging or pleading, not after she’d already made her request to stay. She’d just look at him with those bright, direct eyes of hers, and—
    Since when did he think he knew her that well?
    “He’s right,” Gaynell said. “She’s in some kind of big trouble, and that makes her a problem for us . Me, I got enough problems already. This place is the one place we can count on. We send our kids here. Them homeless people … they need this place, too. She get in the way of all that, we don’t watch out for ourselves.”
    Dawnisha turned on her a look of complete

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