Hidden Steel Read Online Free PDF Page A

drop exchange. They weren’t even terribly significant notes, not for this practice run. The real intelligence still burned in her memory, acquired during her most recent visit and festering there, waiting for an outlet.
    She could only hope she had the nerve to pass it along. Even now, another wave of homesickness washed over her, and she recognized it for what it truly was.
    Fear.

    * * * * *

    Red blooming Christmas cactus, a silver tabby cat in a bay window, a Bristol Blue Nailsea vase on a serpentine mahogany chest of drawers with a dressing slide above graduated drawers and fluted, canted corners—
    Mickey’s eyes flew open to the view of yellowing acoustic foam ceiling panels. Bristol Blue Nailsea vase? What the—?
    Me. Something about me.
    Not a very useful something, but useful nonetheless.
    “Feeling better?”
    She didn’t startle, because some part of her had known he was there all along. She merely turned her head on a somewhat lumpy pillow, identifying her bed as a narrow cot and the smell in the air an unexpected combination of stringent sweat and old gym mats. She found him sitting in a folded chair beside an old metal desk, ankle propped on one knee, T-shirt snug across his chest. Day-old stubble framed striking lips, the set of which suggested that his lower jaw didn’t quite fit neatly inside the upper. Curly black hair gone beyond the need for a haircut topped off deep, expressive black eyes. Greek god.
    Except this wasn’t heaven or Olympus. Just a gym she’d stumbled into. A tiny office in that gym, complete with the old desk and its computer monitor perched at one corner, the kickboxing awards and photographs, and a corner coat rack holding colorful satin workout gear and a brown belt tangled in lightweight boxing gloves.
    He didn’t seem bothered by her failure to answer; he just nodded at the desk, where a paper plate held a sandwich and an apple accompanied by a tumbler. “Think food might help?”
    “God, yes,” she blurted.
    He smiled—but if his expression held understanding and compassion, there was something reserved there, too. “Can you sit up, or is it lunch in bed?”
    “I can sit,” she assured him. She could even stand to get there, and though she still felt weak and wobbly, the haze had lifted. The drugs, out of her system at last. She applied herself to the turkey and Swiss on whole wheat, drinking the accompanying milk with enough gusto to leave a mustache.
    “Looks like it’s been a while,” he observed. He seemed relaxed enough, but she got the impression he was ready for …
    Something.
    “I wouldn’t know,” she said, but looked with regret at the last bite of sandwich. Her unthinking response didn’t seem to surprise him any more than the other oddities that had come along with her—oversized scrubs, oversized shoes, the blood splatter from the erstwhile doctor’s battered nose. His stomach growled, and she looked at him in sudden realization. “I just ate your lunch.”
    “There’s more where that came from.”
    She wasn’t so sure. Nothing about this place gave her the impression of goods to spare.
    “You missed the street class,” he said. “But there’s another one in an hour, if you want to sit in on it and get an idea of how we work around here. It’s my tough love class, but the principles are the same—self-defense for the streets.”
    He thought she’d come for a class?
    She vaguely remembered the room full of people she’d seen upon arrival here, all awkwardly assuming the same balanced pose. Street defense classes for street people? Okay, it made a certain amount of sense.
    “It’s free,” he said, misinterpreting her hesitation. “As long as you don’t have an address, that is.”
    “No,” she murmured. “No address.” And her thoughts moved more swiftly then, almost without bothering to consult her. Perfect cover, this—street person, new to the streets. Needing help. Blending in with the others. Let him think she’d come