Hidden Steel Read online

  She trailed her fingers over the edge of the desk, unhooking her veil to drop to one side. She would, she thought, replenish the spice oils while she was here. In that way, her father would know she was thinking of him.

  And so it was that she was in the closet when she heard a hand upon the doorknob. And so it was that her recent thoughts led her to stay there, instead of coming out to greet the new arrivals as would have been perfectly appropriate.

  And so it was that she heard her father’s most trusted advisor discussing treasonous matters with a man purported to be an imports expert from a nearby country. She heard them laugh, scorning her father, and she listened closely when their voices dropped … and that’s when she learned that the most trusted advisor was also feeding false information to the United States.

  If the States wanted illicit weapons of mass destruction, they need look no further than this man. He was providing nearby countries with the opportunity to store such things here in these less scrutinized lands.

  And so it was that Naia made the decision to spy on those within her own country. The feeling of it—the certainty in her chest mixed with flutter everywhere else—had surprised her.

  Just as it surprised her now, looking at Badra and Fadil Hisami and knowing something had changed. She was no longer flirting with playing the game; things had gone deadly earnest. She might well not get a second chance if she played poorly … and she hardly knew enough to play well.

  She pretended she was Anna. She stepped aside for Badra and Hisami, looking them each in the eye, failing to greet them as she should. “What’s wrong?”

  Neither tried to pretend there was nothing. Badra’s lips thinned in disapproval before she said, “We have concerns that someone inappropriate might try to contact you. Such a person would lie to you and upset you … and might well be a danger to you.”

  Naia didn’t need to pretend her distress. She stepped back again, letting her briefcase thump to the floor. “Here? Does my father know?”

  The man would have lied; he was halfway through a nod when Badra said, “Not yet. We don’t want him to worry. If you’re sent back home, it would reflect badly on your father’s image. It would seem as though he couldn’t control his own daughter. Unfortunately, that is very close to what has happened. Had you not been so free with your friendships and behavior here, you would not be in this position.”

  Naia should have been shamed by those words. Instead she blinked at the audacity of them, at just how many ways Badra had tried to manipulate her in one short speech. It’s a good thing I was free with my friendships. Anna is the one who taught me to look past your ways.

  And still, she didn’t think Badra knew precisely what was happening. She thought the woman had simply fallen back on her old methods of control when faced with the uncertainty of the orders she’d been given.

  Hisami, however …

  Hisami was another story. He gave her the coldest of looks as he said, “It is necessary to tighten your security. For the next few days, you will not attend classes; lectures will be taped for you. Your instructors have been informed of the situation.”

  “This decision is already made?” Naia couldn’t hide her surprise. Even her father wouldn’t treat her so.

  But her father didn’t know.

  She thought perhaps her father would never know.

  Unless she could break out of the prison of her apartment to contact Anna.

  * * * * *

  “You’re sure,” Steve said. He’d seen Mickey exhausted, drugged, flying into action with a tank top on her head, and dancing on the bed. He’d never seen this shocky look on her face.

  She looked blankly at him, as though surprised they would even have this conversation. “I’m certain. This is the place.”

  Her surprise made him think twice. “What are we talking about here? We’re looking for your connection with Naia, right?”

  She laughed, small and wry, and there was something on her face that made him think of those first vulnerable moments he’d seen her. “Oh. Right. We were, weren’t we?”

  “Mickey.” It was as much a warning as a question, and he left the handlebars to fend for themselves even as he put a second foot to the pavement to stabilize the bike. They weren’t going anywhere until he understood what was happening with her.

  “I don’t know yet if we found the connection with Naia, but I think so. What I know is … this area is where it happened. Where they took me.” She shuddered, and then gave him a smile as wry as her laugh. “I can’t imagine wanting anything more than to succumb to the animal urge to flee. Good thing I’ve got a brain, I guess.”

  “It’s not such a bad thing to listen to your gut,” Steve said, suppressing the need to cradle her face in his hand. Wouldn’t work anyway, not with the motorcycle helmet.

  “Going in there is the only way we’re going to find answers,” Mickey said, and it sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  Or as if she already knew, and just had to find a way to face it.

  “Do it,” she said. “Take us to the pottery place.”

  He tried to read the best option in her eyes, but she’d closed them. “Mickey—”

  “Do it!” she said sharply. “I can’t. I need you to—”

  He got it, then—he got that every moment they sat here just stretched out her experience of their approach. He turned back to the bike, grabbed the first opportunity, and accelerated into traffic. Her arms again wrapped painfully around his bruised ribs.

  This time he said nothing.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 14

  The pottery co-op loomed large even in an area filled with warehouses. Old, brick, several stories tall … it had square jutting towers on either end, giving it an old-world look, and the red brick was trimmed with limestone crenellations on the corners and base. Its parking lot was a cozy space behind the building, outlined with greenery and half full of cars—both the ostentatious and the junker.

  Steve’s motorcycle tucked away quite neatly in a tiny spot beside the privacy-fence enclosed trash bin, and after he cut the engine they sat in silence for a moment. Mickey pried her hands away from his sides and hugged her arms, rubbing her hands over goose bumps.

  To his credit, Steve didn’t remind her that they didn’t have to go in.

  Because really, they did.

  Mickey dismounted the bike with all the vigor of a little old lady, then gave herself a vigorous shake—a dog shake. She had her—Steve’s—slingshot. He had his bow, broken down and stashed in a saddlebag where it had poked her in the back of the thigh the whole time. She even still had the small set of knives. She touched them, currently strapped on the back of her shoulder over the sports shirt and under the baggy San Jose t-shirt.

  Steve grinned at the gesture. “You want me to string up the bow?”

  “That’d be inconspicuous,” she told him, but it was just the thing to get her kick-started into moving. He hastened to catch up as she headed for the entrance—a door set off to the side of a short row of loading bays. Pottery Warehouse was the actual name of the place, carved into an understated plaque by the door.

  They entered into a cavernous space—the entire warehouse, left open and filled with rows of low, convenient shelving, display nooks, and tables. The second floor loomed over only part of the building, a loft floor on two sides with a narrow door opening to stairs along the back of the building. The stairs, she knew quite suddenly, had an exterior exit as well.

  The third floor was complete, forming a ceiling high above them. And while the tracks and pulleys and catwalks were a reminder of what had once been a working warehouse, the chains and hoists had been removed.

  “Wow,” Steve said. He wandered into the store, reaching for but not quite touching an exquisite vase. “All the potters in northern California must send their stuff here.”

  “And the classes …” Mickey looked up to the loft. “That’s where we want to go.”

  They
excused themselves from the approaching sales floor monitor; a nod at the class area was all it took. And then they were through the door and into the tight area of the bottom landing, the exit door looming on the other side. Mickey staggered under the sudden onslaught of feelings. More than feelings—reactions, bursting out from deep within. Danger and strike out! and the build up of an angry scream—

  She made a noise in her throat, a grunt of impact. Steve turned to her, touching her—too fast. She struck. A lightning blow to his abused solar plexus and then she had her arm against his throat, pushing him back against the wall and cutting off his air when she’d just knocked it right out of him. Not Steve, not here in this place—only the enemy. Only those who wanted to hurt her. Her vision filled with the past, leaving nothing of the present.

  Nothing of the real man she was choking to death, a knife already finding its way to prick just below his breastbone—just at the angle it would take to twist upward and pierce his heart.

  “—Mickey—” the man said, and it meant nothing to her. Not the voice, not the name. Not the feel of the body she pressed against.

  “C’mon, easy, Mick—”

  That there was nothing of aggression in that voice made her hesitate, just for the merest instant. Made her back off some of the pressure at his throat.

  “Hey, Mickey,” he croaked, words barely scraping by—never mind the notes he attempted, the Mickey song she’d been singing only that morning. “Hey Mick—you’re so—”

  No. No, that wasn’t right.

  “Mickey—” Pleading, now. And with the kind of desperation that said he couldn’t wait much longer. That he’d act. That neither of them would walk away in one piece, and maybe not at all.

  The here and now came flooding back; she gasped with the impact of it. He easily pushed her away—only long enough to wrest the knife away and toss it behind her to clatter on the stairs. Then he drew her back, holding her up when her knees would have given way with the realization of it all. What she’d almost done. What she could have done.

  And he just held her. Through the shuddering, through the weakness left by the storm of feelings from the past, ambushing her as much as she’d ambushed him. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, mumbling into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t say it was okay. He said, “No one’s hurt.” But when she drew back to look at him, she saw his doubt. His renewed realization that just maybe the happy endings were still out of his reach, and that they always would be. In that moment, she would have done anything to smooth away the look in his eye.

  But when she reached to touch his face, he flinched. Only the tiniest bit, but it was enough. Mickey gave herself a mental kick and pulled herself together, a deep breath and then another, and suddenly she was standing apart from him. She retrieved the knife and returned it to its sheath, and she couldn’t look at him as she said again, “I’m sorry.”

  He cleared his throat. It didn’t do anything to hide the aftereffects of what she’d done. “Tell me those were memories. That at least we know more than we did.”

  “Well,” she said wryly, “I think we can be pretty sure this is where they took me.” The violence had left her drained … and yet the need to act, to react, lingered. “Let’s not hang around, okay?”

  No need to tell him twice. He led the way up the stairs, leaving Mickey to wrestle with her guilt in his wake.

  By the time she reached the second floor, he’d had plenty of time to wander into the room. She just stood there a moment, momentarily overwhelmed by the place. It, too, came with feelings—hints of laughter, the welcome scent of wet clay, the visual clutter of the project shelves. The floor itself was full of kick wheels and electric wheels, work stations and tables. Jars of clay working tools dotted the surfaces, and splashes of glaze had found their way to nearly every table and even some of the floor. Cabinets full of tools and glazes lined the wall next to the project wall and the whole thing looked out over the first floor, a bird’s eye view of juried work from established artists.

  Only a handful of people were at work, several of them clustered together and one woman off to the side, inventorying glazes. Steve wandered toward her, while Mickey found herself drawn to the project shelves. Slow and steady, as if nothing else in the room existed. She stopped before a niche with an outrageously cheerful vase, unglazed daisies and a dozen stem ports; she ran her hands over it. Closed her eyes and knew it.

  This is mine.

  But her attention quickly shifted to the lopsided vase nearby, a deliberately flawed creation. She reached for it … reached past it, her fingers taking over as long as she didn’t think too hard about it. Fingertips on rough brick, a tiny nick in the stone that drew her attention, the memory of a brick sliding and then suddenly it was out. So easily, so silently, that Mickey startled herself and couldn’t help a glance around to see if anyone noticed.

  The woman beside Steve caught her movement and smiled, lifting a hand in greeting without breaking away from her conversation.

  Good God, she had to get out of here. She couldn’t afford to connect with someone who knew her—someone who would start asking questions. She fumbled the brick, fingers dipping inside to make contact with paper. And suddenly she was all efficiency, palming the paper, replacing the brick, and straightening both her vase and Naia’s. She lingered at the firing schedule just to make it look like she’d had a purpose in stopping by, and then she headed out of the room.

  Not downstairs, not yet. Upstairs, where she could hesitate on the steep stairs and pull the note from her hand.

  Need help/advice—blown?

  Tiny, precise lettering with graceful curves. Familiar lettering.

  Naia. Naia, reaching out for help. Who knew how long she’d been waiting? Since the first day Mickey had been taken? Since yesterday?

  Too long.

  And still, she didn’t know how to reach Naia. The university and her government had kept her too closely guarded. In her spy guise Mickey no doubt had access to any such information as a matter of course; for now she was on her own.

  You could go looking for the pair who found you at the CapAd.Com building, she told herself. Surely the place was still under surveillance.

  Right. Except all the reasons she hadn’t trusted them the first time still very much applied. She thought they were telling the truth … but even so, they wouldn’t trust her any more than she would trust them. Not after the way she’d bolted from them—not with so much time unaccounted for. And being on the same side didn’t mean having the exact same interests.

  And that meant she had to hope Naia would come here.

  She sat on the stairs, rubbing her eyes—and shook her head. Waiting … whoever she was, it wasn’t her style. She needed to act. To take care of the young woman who was counting on her.

  Fine, then. This place must have an office. If Naia took classes here, then she’d given them some kind of contact information.

  Mickey peeked back into the classroom to find Steve still in conversation—flirting, by the body language—with the woman by the glazes. Okay then. Up she went, to check out the third floor.

  But the third floor was no joy, not when it came to offices and filing cabinets and records. The area had been nominally divided—walls that didn’t reach the high ceiling—but held nothing more than old furniture, construction material, and boxes so aged they looked brittle enough to fall apart if anyone got a notion to move them. It was a child’s dream attic, lit by huge banks of dirty windows and full of treasure chests and odd bits of this and that. Over here, the chains that had been removed from the main warehouse. Over there, a set of shelves with the shelves themselves leaning drunkenly inside the frame. A pile of old magazines … a rat bait box, long emptied and now lined with dust.

  Nothing. If she wanted to look for Naia’s sign-up information, she’d have to do a little B&E after hours.

  But as she turned to go, Mickey hesitated. She looked back at the room … she considered.r />
  She needed a place to hide out, a place that didn’t threaten anyone else. Not the homeless, not Steve, not even the proprietor of a fleabag hotel. And if she hung out here …

  It was just possible Naia would come to her. And in the meantime, she could use the after-hours to look around for those files. It wouldn’t be breaking and entering so much as breaking and sleeping.

  She looked around the room again. “Hey,” she said to it. “Home sweet hideout.”

  She took the resounding silence as approval, and went to wait for Steve in the stairwell.

  * * * * *

  Mickey sat in the stairwell between the second and third floors, elbows on knees and chin propped in her hands. She didn’t wait long before Steve appeared in the landing outside the second floor, looking down the stairs for her. She said, “Were you really singing the Mickey song?”

  He jerked around, saw her sitting relaxed and patient, and offered something between a grin and grimace. “Such as it was.”

  “You heard me in the hotel.”

  He looked a little wary. “Maybe.”

  Mickey laughed. “Hey, no biggie. Being watched has never stopped me.”

  That got his attention, all right. “Really?” And then he cleared his throat and seemed to remember the circumstances of their presence here. “Hey,” he said. “I learned something useful.”

  She regarded him from her lofty height, chin still propped. “Do tell.”

  “The woman in there is one of the teachers. She didn’t recognize you at first, because of the hair thing. She really wasn’t keen on the hair thing. But then she said you were—”

  Mickey sat bolt upright, both hands shoved out in a warding gesture. He stopped short—for a moment he looked like he might retreat, for which she didn’t blame him. She said, “I don’t think I want to know.”