Hidden Steel

  Copyright © 2010 by Doranna Durgin

  Blue Hound Visions

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Original Copyright © 2008: published by Five Star Expressions, a Gale/Cengage Imprint.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously—and any resemblance to actual persons, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  License Notes:

  This efiction is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This efiction may not be re-sold or given to others. If you would like to share, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this efiction and it was not purchased for your use, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for helping the e-reading community to grow!

  The Author Note:

  Usually when I start a book, my characters know who they are. And because they know, I know. I can plan the book around them and how they’d handle things, and mostly I’m pretty close. But this time … both of us were in the dark. Boy oh boy did that mean a fast learning curve along the way. And outlines? We don’t need no stinkin’ outlines! Once Mickey began to trust herself, it was all I could do to keep up with her. I have the impression that Steve felt the same way. And as for those bad guys? Ha!

  So I’ve decided to take a page from Mickey’s book. More trust in myself, and full speed ahead!

  Ritual Disclaimer:

  This book is set in San Jose and Palo Alto … if you’ve been there, you might recognize a thing or two. But I made up some stuff, too, so it won’t all be familiar. So take a drive past that big brick warehouse, but don’t expect it to be a pottery co-op. … After all, making stuff up is my job!

  ~Doranna

  http://doranna.net

  Finding the Other ~ Facing the Other

  Loving the Other

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 1

  Sound first invaded her cocoon of awareness. Beeping. Really annoying beeping. Something tightened snugly around her upper arm … and when it went away, so did she.

  When the beeping returned, it came with odors. Astringently offensive odors of new plastic and antiseptic, and the earthier odors of unwashed hair and barely washed body. It came with the trickle of a thought: hospital. And the more worrisome question: What am I doing here?

  Nothing hurt particularly, aside from the ache of being too long in one position. No pain in her limbs, her torso, her head … although every thought came surrounded and obscured by thick mist. So then …

  Why?

  Voices came from beside her bed. Murmurs, just barely loud enough to make it through the mist. A demanding question. Something beside her head gave a plaintive beep, and with a hiss, the snug feeling returned around her arm. Blood pressure cuff, she realized. And again—What am I doing here? She tried to say the words out loud; her dried lips didn’t so much as twitch.

  The voices rose again—a man and a woman. SomethingsomethingsomethingMICKEYsomething.

  Mickey.

  Must be her.

  * * * * *

  Mickey opened her eyes. She hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t planned on it … just suddenly found herself awake. Chaotic images struck her with the force of a physical blow; she flinched and closed her eyes. As she tried to sort out what she’d seen, she realized she wasn’t alone. At least, not quite. Two voices hovered in another unhappy discussion, far enough away so they might not notice her new awareness, close enough so she couldn’t discount them.

  Hmm. What a suspicious way to think.

  She cracked her eyelids open again, keeping it slow. Abstract shapes resolved to objects, most of them white in tone. Over there, the slats of closed blinds. The walls. The ceiling, sound-absorbent tiles pocked with little holes. Her skin, lightly tanned and freckled arms emerging from a gown of definite hospital vintage. Hospital. Made sense, with the woozy pounding in her head and the mist that loomed not far away, threatening to close back in on her. The black blood pressure cuff wrapped her upper arm, stark against her skin. A boxy blue monitor on a pole sat beside the bed. It gave a familiar plaintive beep and the cuff automatically inflated.

  Hospital.

  Why?

  She couldn’t see the man and woman who conversed; they seemed to be just outside the door. She considered opening her still-dry lips to ask, suddenly overwhelmed by the taste of morning mouth. Ick. And as she hunted the room for any sign of ice water or maybe even randomly placed toothpaste—because hey, one could hope—other details impressed themselves upon her.

  She lay on a fancy cot of some sort, not a hospital bed. There was no television in the corner, no privacy drapes around the bed. A stethoscope and a brand-new box of latex gloves sat on a rickety fake-wood table not far from the bed—no sign of a hospital bed tray in sight. None of the ubiquitous identical supplies one seemed to find in a hospital room—no dull pinkish-rose plastic emesis basin, no matching pitcher, no box of scratchy generic tissues. A flattened, empty IV bag sat on the floor beside the table, along with a battered box of vials and syringes.

  And then there were the handcuffs.

  * * * * *

  Handcuffs.

  She’d had reason for her suspicious thinking.

  She just had no idea what it might be.

  Mickey took a sharp breath as the fear hit, a great wash of unknown that flooded through her body in a jumble of panic and adrenaline and goose bumps. Acutely vulnerable in the oversized but still immodest gown, handcuffed to this aluminum-frame cot, and … no idea why.

  No idea what she’d done, how she’d gotten here …

  Who she was.

  Mickey.

  But only because she’d heard them say so.

  Right on cue, their voices rose again.

  “You said it was a sophisticated form of a Mickey Finn!” the woman snapped, the indefinable trace of an accent barely evident in her voice.

  Mickey Finn. It hadn’t been her name after all. But at the moment it was all she had, so she thought she’d keep it.

  “It is.” The man responded with a combination of deference and annoyance. “She had a reaction to it. That happens even with the old-fashioned chloral hydrate—it’s not predictable.”

  “She’s not of any use if we can’t question her. That was the whole point of acquiring her, was it not? Of using the ‘sophisticated delivery timing’ of your absorbable drug?” High heels landed on thin carpet with a muted firmness of tread.

  The man remained placating. “I have no doubt you’ll be able to speak with her soon. I’d be more certain of her recovery if I had real facilities for her treatment.”

  The woman responded with a genteel snort. “We were lucky to have arranged this much without attracting attention.” And then her voice dropped back to a murmur, though it still held command.

  Great. Whoever Mickey really was, whatever she’d been up to, she’d attracted the attention of this woman and her people—and they’d gone to great effort to get her here so they could question her. That didn’t sound like fun, not at all.

  But it was more than she’d known just moments before, and it was enough to give her some goals—to find out who she was … who they were … why they’d imprisoned her here. To escape.

  In any order she could get it.

  She realized the hallway conversation had ended and the man—a doctor, perhaps—stood in the doorway shuffling through papers. Mickey quickly closed her eyes. The longer they thought she was out, the more time she had to gather information before the unpleasant-sounding questioning began. The more chance she could plan her escape.

  Escape. Just what kind of life did she lead when she wasn’t cuffed to a cot awaiting a meeting with a wo
man who’d had her drugged so as to conduct a conversation?

  “I know you’re awake,” the man said, quite conversationally. Somehow he’d made it to her side to fiddle with the machine while her mind wandered the edge of the still-lingering mist. He tapped the machine. “You’ve left behind a very revealing spike in your pulse and blood pressure.”

  “Bother,” Mickey said crossly. She opened her eyes to regard him with unconcealed interest. He turned out to be a sallow little man in turquoise scrubs with bags under his eyes and a sagging jaw line. He took a step back at her immediate and direct response. Maybe he’d expected her to flutter her eyelids and ease into the situation with some demure decorum. Instead she met his washed-out brown eyes with a demand. “What did you do to me?”

  “You’re fine,” he said.

  “I’m not,” she told him. “I obviously haven’t been for … what? Days? Weeks?” She flexed her unsecured arm and eyed the tight, lean muscle there. Thin, but … “Not weeks, surely.”

  “No.” Startled all over again, he still managed to shake his head. “A few days. You had a bad reaction to a drug.”

  “Your drug.”

  By now he seemed to have given up on being surprised. He pulled a chair in close to the bed, an ancient office chair on wheels. If he tried to touch her, she could literally send him flying. Hmm. Do I do that sort of thing? But he gave her no such excuse. “I’m helping to test it, yes.”

  “Was I allergic to it? Should I get a little bracelet to warn all future kidnappers?”

  “I—that is—” He took a breath, pressed his lips together. “Literally speaking, you weren’t allergic to it. But it was a serious reaction, and I’m relieved to see you so coherent.”

  Mickey nodded wisely. “It’ll get her off your back, anyway.”

  “Among other things.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, his sheaf of papers—notes and records about Mickey—threatening to spill from his grip and scatter. Did he have a key to these cuffs somewhere? He wasn’t the jailor, but surely he’d have it in case of a patient crisis. Something to think about.

  Something to think about. Good God, how could she be so cool? Kidnapped, handcuffed, no idea where she was or who she was …

  Then again, what did she have to go on but instinct? She’d have to trust it … to trust herself. And when instinct told her to panic, she would.

  He hadn’t followed her train of thought—had she hidden it so well? He narrowed his eyes and nodded at the door behind him, presumably indicating the woman who’d just been standing there. “Don’t play these games with her.”

  She took the warning to heart. He might be working for the enemy, but he’d evidently not intended to hurt her. He seemed genuinely concerned that he had. The realization, the awareness of such sympathy in this cold, frightening situation … it released her fear in a sudden burst, turning it into a burning impulse to ask the most important questions of all—the who am I question and the when will I remember myself question and even the most frightening of all—the will I ever remember question.

  But she didn’t. The woman wanted her for something. A discussion. That meant that Mickey had information … and it was the information that had made her valuable. If she’d lost the information … then she’d lost her value.

  She didn’t want to think what that owner of that cold, angry voice would do to an acquisition who had lost her value.

  * * * * *

  “Jane A. Driedler.”

  The voice woke Mickey. She hesitated long enough to identify it—the angry woman—and to realize that there had been an odd tone attached to the words. As though they were being said in quotes. As though it weren’t a real name at all. So when she opened her eyes, she held the puzzle of it there.

  The woman nodded with some satisfaction. “Yes,” she said. “We know your station name.”

  “You—” Mickey started, baffled—and then realized she couldn’t ask that particular question, although she instantly accepted that Jane was no more her name than Mickey. She frowned and looked away, trying for the dismay that such a pronouncement seemed to deserve. When she glanced back from beneath a downcast brow it was to soak up the visual details of this woman, hunting for familiarity. She found only the nondescript—a woman of average height with a shapely and well-padded figure, dressed in conservative corporate with a tailored grey suit over a black silk shirt, her hair dark brown and her complexion a light olive that left Mickey no clue as to her originating culture. Her features offered no help; they, too, were non-committal, pleasant on an oval face. But her eyes … they were the darkest brown, perhaps even black, and they were just as cold and angry as her voice.

  Mickey quailed before those eyes. Whoever she was, whatever she’d been up to … this woman was harder than she. Crueler.

  “Tell me,” the woman said, in a purr so false it made Mickey wince, “about Naia.”

  Mickey shifted her wrist within the handcuff, looking for freedom and finding only the loose but perfectly secure fit. Slender, she was … but not so slender she could simply slip their restraints and run for it.

  All the same, she wasn’t about to lie here with this woman looming over her, so she awkwardly levered herself around the stationary wrist to sit. “I have to go to the bathroom.” No doubt it wasn’t the first time, but she didn’t care to think about the details.

  “How inconvenient for you.” The woman sat—on a new chair, padded and highly adjustable and obviously her own.

  She thinks she’ll be here awhile.

  “Naia,” the woman said. “How compromised is she?”

  If I’m supposed to know Naia, then she must know me. Maybe if I find her… “I wouldn’t know.” Mickey tugged her gown around her thighs and decided she must be a jogger. Or a cyclist.

  The woman gave the same genteel snort Mickey had heard upon first waking. “You’ve been cultivating her for months. Don’t think you can save her with your silence. You can only save yourself, by giving me the information I need.”

  Mickey dared to look into those cold black eyes. “Can I?” she said. “Save myself?”

  The woman’s lips curved in smile made stark by the deep red of her lipstick. “You can certainly save yourself some trouble. How much? That would be up to you.”

  The skin tightened across Mickey’s spine and arms and lower belly; an instant of disorienting panic gripped her so tightly she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Who am I who is she what am I who is Naia …

  The woman smiled.

  Instincts. They were all Mickey had. She’d trust them. She’d damn well cling to them.

  “Really,” she said. “Just woke up … small bladder … how about that bathroom?”

  With a flicker of irritation, the woman leaned back in the chair and crossed her stocking-covered legs. “I don’t understand your reluctance. Naia is still at liberty only because we’re playing her like a plump little fish. As I said, your silence won’t save her.”

  Mickey hid her instant skepticism, looking at her bare toes, wiggling them slightly. If they were so sure about Naia, why play her? Why would they need any additional information from Mickey?

  Perhaps the woman read Mickey’s mind … or maybe she’d just done this too many times before. “We do, however, need to follow up on the damage Naia has caused us—and since it isn’t convenient for us to reveal our knowledge of her activities just yet, you will be our source. It’s only fair, don’t you think, since you corrupted her in the first place?”

  Corrupted her to do what? And who was Naia? Sister, friend … or some clueless mark of whom Mickey had taken advantage?

  She winced at the thought, and hoped—hoped hard—it wasn’t that last. And then thought … if it bothers me to consider it now, would I have done it? Surely her personality had remained intact.

  Except she immediately recalled the head injury cases she’d heard of, people who’d had to relearn themselves—and the frustration of their family members as they turned out
to have new personalities along the way. New likes, new dislikes, new responses.

  Damn. Self-doubt … this wasn’t the time or place. Whoever this woman was, she had the money and backing to employ her own unscrupulous doctor, and access to the building Mickey found herself in. And one look at the woman’s eyes let Mickey know she was used to getting her own way.

  In fact, aside from that mild frustration, she didn’t seem particularly upset with Mickey’s reticence. She simply regarded her captive with a raised eyebrow. “You do realize, I hope, that the good doctor is hardly here just to hold your hand? His primary purpose was to help us acquire you—and then to make sure I get the information I want. He has a creative collection of chemicals to help you feel talkative—but he did suggest that, given your recent reaction, it might help avoid scrambling your brain for good if I simply talked to you first. So far, I don’t find this approach very rewarding.”

  And if Mickey talked? If she admitted she was of no use to the woman at all? What were her chances then?

  Her voice sounded strained even to her own ears, a whisper fighting its way out to be heard. “And hey,” she said, somehow finding the strength to lift her gaze back to meet those cold black eyes. “How about that bathroom?”

  * * * * *

  “I’m not an orderly!” the doctor insisted, standing just inside the doorway, offended and not trying to hide it.

  “And I don’t want her exposed to anyone else on staff now that she’s awake.” The woman didn’t bother to get angry … mostly, Mickey realized, because she truly didn’t care. “Don’t waste my time arguing. Take her to the bathroom, or clean up after her when she wets herself. Your choice.” And she looked over at Mickey to say, “This is my gift to you, Jane A. Dreidler. Time. Think over our discussion. When I come back, it’ll be your last opportunity to preserve your mind, such as it is.”

  Oh, ha ha. Clever. And if she only knew …