Free Hidden Steel by Doranna Durgin Page B

he took a deep breath, stuck the water back in the fridge, and went back to see if Mickey was awake. And then he stood in the office door, sledgehammered by what he found.
    Awake, yes.
    Awake, tidied up, and gone.
    He didn’t have to search the back rooms to know that gone was gone. She’d left the sheets neatly piled on the cot to be washed. She’d taken the flannel shirt she’d scrounged the evening before, even though it was another hot day.
    And beyond that, he just knew . She’d seen the look on his face when he’d found the letter opener in the wall. She’d seen his doubt.
    And she’d gone.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Chapter 7

    Options.
    Not many of those.
    Mickey pondered them nonetheless.
    There was the library. First she’d have to get there, of course, but once inside … air conditioning, and a week’s worth of papers. She could skim for whatever hadn’t made it onto the web version. Anyone missing a young woman about yay tall?
    But she’d rather get cleaned up first—get herself squared away. And there were other options to ponder. Turning herself into the authorities, for one. If they didn’t know who she was, they could probably find out.
    Yeah, and what if you’ve got worse crimes on your rap sheet than knowing all the Barry Manilow hits?
    Which she did, apparently. They’d certainly come to her with ease, humming through her brain as she’d taken back streets and alleys away from Steve’s gym toward the center of town, munching the remains of the pizza.
    She winced at that. Sorry, Steve. I guess that’s what they really call eat and run.
    At least she’d found a trashcan for the pizza box.
    So still no authorities—no more now than when she’d stopped Steve from calling them. Not until she had no choice—until she knew for sure whether she was the cause of Naia’s problem, or her only hope. She had to keep herself footloose and ready to move in case she remembered something.
    She shook off the doubt, and turned her thoughts toward more constructive paths. No cops, no clinic … not yet with the library. Maybe she just needed to take some precious time to scope out some safe places here on the street. To get herself some working funds. Just the rest of the day, that’s all. And then …
    A final option occurred to her, one that slotted neatly after plan number one—scope out a new safe place—and might possibly lead to answers for plan number three.
    Find the building. The place that had been her prison, and held the only for-sure clues to her situation. Possibly still held the people who’d imprisoned her.
    And this time she wasn’t unarmed. Wasn’t sick, wasn’t weak, wasn’t confused. This time she had some idea of her abilities.
    Yeah, when up against a kid and an unresisting wall.
    Still.
    After a moment she realized that the very idea of hunting the place should have surprised her—should have filled her with fear and doubt.
    The very idea didn’t.
    She suspected that imaginary rap sheet might have something to it after all. But as she rose from the cement block in the back corner of a the parking lot that had been her thinking spot, heading for plan number one—scope out a new safe place—she found herself humming Copacabana with a dramatically cheerful air.

    * * * * *

    “You don’t belong here!”
    That voice was rough and insistent, and Mickey reversed course out of the cardboard box she’d been inspecting. She’d found herself beneath the overpass, drawn by a hazy memory of stumbling over the pedestrian path above the nearby river.
    The man she currently faced could have been another of their victims. Confused, angry, his demeanor set to “belligerent.”
    “Sorry,” she said. “Is this your box?”
    “No,” he said, and brushed away a bug that wasn’t there. “But it’s not yours!” Bad hair, bad teeth, bad breath, bad manners.
    “You’re right,” she said. “But I was thinking of hanging out over there.” She nodded at an area near the riverbank.