Free Dark Time: Mortal Path by Dakota Banks Page B

back to Chicago was uneventful. She brought with her the melancholy atmosphere of the alleyways and the lingering effect of the brutal reenactments of the coders’ deaths. She’d pried herself from her apartment building to get her sluggish body and thoughts revved up.
    “Ms. Winters,” the doorman said, as he tipped his hat to Maliha. “Beautiful evening. I hope you enjoyed your walk.”
    He made no mention of the fact that her hair was dripping wet and that the T-shirt she wore was plastered to her skin.
    “Mr. Henshaw,” Maliha said, nodding. “It was an invigorating walk.”
    She’d swum about fifteen miles in Lake Michigan in about five hours, no record for her but more than enough to serve as the day’s exercise. Deeply chilled from the fifty-degree water of the lake, she was looking forward to some pleasant interaction with warm water in her apartment.
    “You have a letter. Came by private courier. Hold on a second.”
    He went inside and rummaged around in his voluminous desk in the lobby. He handed her an envelope. She recognized it as the type Chicago businesses used to “packet” items from one building to another during the day. It was slim, and she wondered if the contents had accidentally been left out.
    “Good night, Ms. Winters.”
    “Good night, Mr. Henshaw.”
    She’d lived at Harbor Point Towers for fifteen years, and known Arnie Henshaw for every one of them, and that was a typical conversation. There was an understanding between them, though. He didn’t say anything about the way she sometimes dressed, the dual knife sheaths that shouted “armed with a 30 z 138
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    dangerous weapon,” the scent of blood that trailed her as she breezed past him through the door, or the fact that she didn’t look like the forty-year-old woman she should be by now.
    In return, she tipped him thirty thousand dollars a month, plus a hundred thousand at Christmas. The humble doorman was a multi-millionaire—she’d given him a few investing tips over the years—and when he retired, he planned to travel far away from women who didn’t age.
    It was a great understanding.
    The lobby was deserted. Once past the doorman, she hurried to the elevator bank in the central core of the building. All three elevators were awaiting her command. Her residence, a custom combination of two condos, was on the forty-eighth floor. The tower was shaped like a Y , with the corners sinuously rounded. Inside, she pressed the button for her floor and leaned against the wall, hoping there would be no intermediate stops.
    The elevator spit her out with a melodic tone on her floor. Her unit was at the end of a bright hallway. She loved the place, even though it wasn’t the grandest spot by far that she’d lived in. That honor belonged to a sheik’s desert compound, a place of sere landscapes, great luxury, silks, spices, and horses that ran as though their hooves touched not sand but the heat shimmering above it. The sheik wasn’t half bad, either.
    One thing she loved about her current home was simply that it was in Chicago. The city overflowed with raw energy and sophisticated culture. Although she lived near the shore of Lake Michigan, she’d been all over the city on foot and by bus, and under and above it, too, on the pedway and the El.
    Sometimes she rode the El in the middle of the night, watching the goings-on with hooded eyes, alert but appearing asleep. The passengers never knew that with her slumped form in the last seat in the car, they were utterly safe from harm.
    At her door, she entered numbers into a keypad and stood still while her retina was scanned. The neighbors all thought her biometric security was over the top, because the building had an excellent security staff, but they had no idea what was behind her door. In any case, they thought her kinky with all the costumes and props she wore, and Maliha didn’t discourage the notion.
    When her retina passed inspection, the electromagnetic lock