Free Uncaged by John Sandford, Michele Cook Page B

grungy hoodiethat still smelled of the Greyhound bus she’d taken down from Eugene.
    And her hair …
    Tobias was waiting for her with the frap. She thanked him as she unwrapped a straw, told him she had a boyfriend when he asked, and took a seat in the far corner to sip her breakfast and go online.
    She dropped another Facebook message to Odin, telling him that she was in Los Angeles. Then she began looking for places where he might actually be. There were more animal rights groups in Hollywood than Shay could believe—everything from pit bull rescue specialists to seal enthusiasts. Somewhere in that matrix, she thought, the Storm people were probably talking to allies.
    She began saving names and addresses to a separate file, but she was suddenly so sleepy again.… She closed the laptop and then, just for a moment, her eyes.
    An hour later, a toddler in a stroller screamed for more juice, and Shay jerked awake and looked around, a little dazed. She’d slumped straight over onto the table like an actual homeless person. When she sat up, a woman with cornrows was giving her a hard stare from the next table.
    “What?” Shay asked. She was feeling cranky, and the sleep taste in her mouth didn’t help. “I fell asleep.”
    “Yeah, I saw,” the woman said in a Mississippi Delta accent. She had a pile of papers on the table in front of her, and a red pen. “Late night?”
    “A little,” Shay said. She tightened the compression straps on her backpack and pulled it on.
    The woman said, “Hang on a minute. I’m not the police.”
    “Wouldn’t matter if you were. I’m not doing anything illegal,” Shay said.
    The woman pushed back in her chair. “You need a place to stay? Look, I’m Rashika Jones, I’m a youth psychologist for the county.”
    “Uh-huh,” Shay said. She stepped toward the door. She knew the lingo: Jones decided which abused and neglected kids were a little messed up, and which ones were
really
messed up.
    “Let me give you a list of shelters,” Jones said. “There’s a halfway decent one just a few blocks from here.”
    “Thanks, but no thanks,” Shay said.
    Shay walked away but Jones followed along, leaving her papers on the table. “You’re too good-looking to last on the streets. A pimp will come along, act like your best friend. He’ll hook you up to something, and that’ll be the end of you. There are two hundred and fifty gangs in this city. More than two hundred murders last year—”
    Shay stopped and looked her in the eye. “I appreciate your concern. But I’m fine.”
    Jones said, “You’re tough and I appreciate that, but this ain’t Kansas. One of my clients, a girl about your age, tougher than you, was stabbed last year. On the run for nine days, dead on the tenth.”
    “I’m sorry about that,” Shay said, and pulled at the door handle.
    “Don’t live here without an address,” Jones persisted. “Nothing good can come of it.”
    Shay hesitated, then dug in the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out the black business card from the Cat in the Hat. “You ever heard of this guy?”
    Jones took the card in her red-lacquered fingernails. “Twist. Okay. He’s different, but if that’s your preference, you’d be safe there. You wouldn’t have to deal with the likes of me.”
    “What does that mean?” Shay asked.
“There?”
    “He runs a hotel. Or a flophouse. Or a crash pad,” Jones said. “Kids only. Rumor is, he was one of you, until he grew up and got rich. Where’d you get his card?”
    Shay hesitated again. “He gave it to me,” she said, and took back the card. “Anyway, I gotta run.” She readjusted her backpack and went out the door.
    “Go see Twist,” Jones called to her back.
    Shay twiddled her fingers over her shoulder.
    Good-bye.
    Hollywood, the place, was a letdown, especially during the day. Shay rarely went to the movies because she didn’t have the money, but she hadn’t grown up under a rock. Where were the celebrities, the