Free Reflex by Steven Gould Page A

had died and, possibly, the place where Davy might have been seen last.
    Hopefully, Davy had "departed" that place in a different manner than Cox.
    She'd had breakfast with Sojee, but she went into the restaurant anyway, asking for a table at the window, the very one, she figured.
    The windows in the place were bordered with announcements of this and that performance, this and that dance studio offering classes, this or that dojo offering martial arts instruction, this and that person looking for a roommate. Even when they'd been ripped off, the layers of yellowed Scotch tape formed reefs and shoals. Except this window. This window must've been replaced recently. There were a few announcements on it, but none of the ancient evidence of bygone posters. This window had just been replaced.
    She ordered coffee but didn't drink it.
    Hopefully the management was a little more careful about letting non-employees serve food now, but this wasn't the time to test the issue.
    She felt a little odd, today, like a corner had been turned. She'd looked, the day before, for the NSA watchers, but hadn't really seen anybody. She believed they were keeping back, depending on the bug and intermittent checks, hoping to lure Davy's snatchers back into the open. Their absence had been palpable after the seven days she'd spent under surveillance back in Stillwater.
    Today, her back itched.
    They're out there.
    She laughed at herself.
    You're imagining things.
    The itch was still there and no matter how she squirmed in the chair, she couldn't scratch it.
    She left Interrobang and walked east, but the sidewalks were so busy that anybody could have followed her without detection. A cab went by, then another. She flagged the third one, self-consciously thinking about Sherlock Holmes, and told the driver, "The Mall, please, at the Capitol end."
    He dropped her at the corner of Fourth and Independence and she walked across the grass to the East Wing of the National Gallery. She headed up the stairs for the Upper Level where the huge red and black Calder mobile hung in space beneath the faceted glass roof, but when she reached the top of the stairs the elevator doors opened and a woman pushing a fussing baby in a stroller got out. Millie couldn't hear anybody on the stairs below but she stepped quickly into the elevator. The doors shut, then it continued up. She stayed in when it opened on the top floor, then she pushed the basement button and took it down and rode the moving sidewalk down the concourse toward the older West building. At the end of the walkway, she crossed to the gift shop, and browsed, standing behind one of the display shelves and watching the pedestrians coming from the East building carefully. Across the way, water sheeted down the glass wall of the Cascade Café.
    Several minutes passed and she frowned. There was a cluster of Japanese tourists, a family of five, three elderly ladies practically tottering, one of them using a rolling walker, and a single man carrying an easel and wooden paints case. They'd have to be more organized than I could imagine to come up with that outfit on such short notice.
    She was about to relax when she saw him, a man coming from the West Building, walking slowly, casually checking out the patrons seated at the cafe. Over half the five hundred seats were full and he was pausing often to examine a particular grid of tables, then moving to another.
    He'd actually walked past Millie already, but hadn't seen her as she'd been blocked by a shop display. She moved around that same display unit and positioned herself to peer over it, between two large coffee-table art books.
    He was average height with blond hair cut very short around a large bald spot— like a monk's tonsure —and wearing a dark blue windbreaker and slacks.
    He could be looking for his wife. His kids. His grandmother.
    She looked at the way he stood and something made her doubt his innocence. She pulled off her blue raincoat and rolled it,