by Robin Hale
I sat up and stared at her in surprise. “Was she? There was a moment, before you walked in, where she winced and I thought she might be in pain, but I couldn’t figure out why.”
Jade snorted. “I’m surprised you noticed anything before I walked in. If I’d been a minute later I’m sure I would’ve found you with her tongue down your throat.”
The familiar heat of embarrassment rose in my cheeks, but I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Jade was teasing me, but it was affectionate. Fond. And she didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with the idea that the Silhouette had been about to kiss me. Perhaps I’d overreacted? Maybe things weren’t quite as impossible as I’d first believed.
16
LANA
Shit. Shit damn fucking hell damn shit.
Bullet wounds were, in my experience, exceptionally painful. More painful than they ought to be. And this one was no exception.
I sagged back against the brick wall that lined the alleyway, sweat clouding my vision as my goggles hung haphazardly across my face. I risked a touch to my hip where the line of fire and pain had roared into life when I tried to lift myself out of the ventilation shaft, and the tips of my gloved fingers came away shiny and slick with blood.
Shit.
Izzy was going to give me hell for that. It’d been years since I’d been shot. I shifted my weight experimentally, sucking in a sharp breath when my hip protested.
Shit.
There wasn’t much time. Certainly not enough time for me to summon an alternate means of transportation. I grimaced. That meant that I needed to walk — at least, enough to get to my motorcycle, and from there I needed enough strength in my hip to hold on and enough pain tolerance to sit through the engine rattling my fucking bullet wound until I could get home.
A safe house wouldn’t do it. I had them stocked with rudimentary supplies, enough that I could patch myself up, but the wincing, animal part of myself wouldn’t be satisfied with that. I’d never been able to rest outside of my home. Not really.
I was only minutes away from the sound of sirens, and Izzy really would murder me if the OCPD got their hands on me a second time. I shouldn’t have tried for the doubloon job, not after what had happened retrieving the atomizer. I screwed my eyes shut and indulged in a frustrated groan. Running the job with an injury was stupid and vain and I was going to get my foolish ass thrown in prison over it. Or worse.
Oh well. There was nothing to be done but to push through.
I took a series of slow, calming breaths, trying to brace myself for the web of fire that would trace through my body as I limped forward on my injured hip. I needed to make it approximately seventy-four yards to my bike. Only part of that expanse was in open view. I could make it.
I would make it.
I pushed off from the wall in a burst of speed I instantly regretted but I continued along the path. Along the plan.
MY ESCAPE from the Opal City Maritime Museum — the single most idiotic feature of a city that sat in the center of a landlocked state — was such a disaster that I had not even needed to reach out to Izzy when I finally, finally made it back to my home and away from the uncomfortably prying eyes of the public. She’d been waiting for me there.
“Izzy,” I said as I locked the front door behind me, covering my grimace with an unnaturally wide grin. “Fancy seeing you here. Everything all tidied away at the consignment?”
Izzy’s face, usually so bright and lively with laughter and mischief of all kinds, was practically stony. “No. In fact, I’ve got Ms. Popova waiting for me to come back from an urgent errand, construction in the basement that’s so noisy it’s driving away all my customers, and I suspect there’s another rat that’s gotten in. But there was this news report, you see, and who should I watch stumbling bleeding down an alleyway but my best and oldest friend?” Her voice was full to bursting, brimming over with a roil of emotion that I couldn’t accurately begin to quantify. Fear, probably. Anger, more than some. But there was a heart-wrenching exhaustion baked in, a deep and fierce affection that I’d always known was between us but that I hadn’t had cause to test.
“I hardly bled at all, really,” I insisted. “You shouldn’t have worried.”
Izzy laughed despite herself. “God, you’re an idiot.” Her well-manicured fingers ran through her hair, setting it to rights after what seemed to be a lengthy session of pulling and tugging at the strands. She’d had the habit since we were kids together. You always knew when Izzy was worried because her hair would take the brunt of it. “I just wanted to make sure you’d made it out. I didn’t — I didn’t have any way to help you.” And there was the frustration again. “If something had happened…I would’ve found out when they ran a bullshit front-pager about taking down the Silhouette. No one would’ve ever said that Lana Blake had been hurt.”
“They’d have figured out who I am eventually, Izz,” I pointed out and watched as her sharp eyes narrowed on me.
“Not the point, Lana!” She hissed. At once she was across the entryway to the apartment, easing my goggles off, unwrapping the first layers of my multi-piece leather bodysuit.
“Ready to take our relationship to the next level, eh, Izz?” I teased. We’d never been that way with each other. As far as I was aware, neither of us had ever even been tempted. We weren’t sisters, not really, but we were close enough. And neither of us had ever wanted to risk what we had for sake of awkward fumbling and sharp regret. Our edges were too jagged to fit together.
“Don’t make me laugh, asshole,” Izzy huffed and peeled off my gloves. “I’m still mad at you.”
She wrapped my arm around her shoulders and helped me toward my bedroom, mercifully taking most of my weight so that I wouldn’t feel the freight train of agony crashing through my body with each step.
My bedroom was mostly as I left it. The shade was drawn, the lamps unlit, and the comforter on my bed was twisted in the strange configuration I’d gotten it into the night before with my tossing and turning. I’d never gotten properly in the habit of remaking my bed in the morning, even when Izzy got after me about it when we were kids. What was different, however, were the loose pajama bottoms and tank top that had been laid out for me. The carefully arranged first aid supplies that were spread out like a formation of little soldiers on the nightstand.
“Jesus, Izz. Did you reorganize my kitchen cabinets too? How long ago did that news spot run?” I asked, laughing at Izzy’s nervous habit. She’d always been an organizer, always found it soothing.
“It’s pajamas and your med kit. Don’t be so dramatic. Now take your pants off.” Izzy huffed.
I sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, wincing at the way it compressed my hip and the open wound still weeping blood, and reached down toward my boots. It was barely a second later when Izzy was batting my hands away and kneeling to unfasten them herself.
Wait.
I ran through the calendar in my mind, putting together the Popova name with the recent jobs I’d managed to pull off — no Roscoe sapphires or Spanish doubloons, unfortunately — and jolted in place. “Izz.” The word was practically a bark.
“Calm down, I’m not hurting your boots.”
“No, that’s — Izzy, your meeting.” She was meeting with Popova. That meant — at a minimum — Russian crime ties. That meant the doting patron of Abel Johansson. That meant she had a potentially violent, definitely impatient woman waiting in her office while she helped me out of my own idiocy.
“She’ll wait.” Izzy’s jaw was set in a determined clench, and I loved her for it but I couldn’t let her make that mistake for me.
“You know that she won’t,” I looked down at the curls falling around Izzy’s shoulders.
“That’s just too damn bad for her, isn’t it? She’ll have to get her Greek antiquities from someone else.”
Antiquities? Hell, Izzy had gotten into a much broader range than I had realized. “She’s going to think you’re setting her up for something.”
A shadow flittered across Izzy’s face, the first hint of self-preservation I’d seen on her since I opened my front door to find her waiting. She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”
“Damn it, Izzy, go back.” I jerked my foot from her grasp and bit down viciously on my tongue to contain the yelp that threatened to escape. “I mean it. I’m a grown woman, I can patch myself up. Go back to your office and don’t piss off the damn Russians.”
Izzy’s glare was a rare and fearsome thing, and I wasn’t immune to it. I stroked her shoulder and tried to make my face look like an apology. “I appreciate you being here, Izz. You know I do. Come back later and tell me all about the meeting, okay? I’ll be fine until then.”
It took more cajoling and a rather large number of meaningful looks before Izzy relented, packing up her things and heading out the front door with only a single baleful look cast back my way. It was that remarkable self-restraint that convinced me I had done the right thing by insisting she leave. She wouldn’t have left if I were wrong to think that Popova could cause real problems for her.
She just needed me to make her believe that I’d be fine on my own and that it wasn’t betrayal for her to leave me there.
I scowled, even as I felt a rush of warm affection for my oldest friend. I sat as far as I could onto my good hip and used my free foot to scoot my remaining boot onto the floor. It was awkward and painful, but I’d worry less about Izzy now that she wasn’t courting the attention of the Russians and Opal City’s homicidal crown prince.
Shit. I’d dragged her into being a fence, that much was true, but I sure as hell never told her to go after Russian money. Whoever it was that had put them in touch, I’d have to make sure that I registered my displeasure. I eased the waistband of my leather trousers down my hips and winced at the slide of the cured leather over my open graze. Just as soon as my hip healed, I’d go pay those assholes a visit.
The only person I wanted dragging Isobel Verdera into trouble was me.
IT TOOK another fifteen minutes of wriggling, cursing, and bleeding all over myself, but I managed to free myself from the rest of my leather bodysuit. It took another five before had the wound more or less disinfected and covered in a series of adhesive bandages. Then, and only then, I finally summoned the presence of mind to curse Izzy for not adding a bottle of whiskey to the neatly arranged field of medical supplies covering my nightstand.
I stared up at the ceiling, indulging in a round of self-pity over the entirely predictable consequences of my recklessness — god, if someone had told me a year ago that I would attempt a museum heist involving a dangling rope climb after sustaining a muscle tear three days prior, I would have called that person an idiot. Now, I had no one to blame but myself.
The recovery would be irritating, especially given the number of times I had reopened the wound. It was angry, red and ragged around the edges and swollen more than I would have thought possible. Whiskey — whether Izzy thought it a medical necessity or not — was definitely called for.
I pulled a loose tank top over my head and tied my hair back into some semblance of a bun to keep it out of my face until I could wash it. Ugh. Showering. That was going to be a problem for a while.
Whiskey was moving up the rankings of my current requirements, soon to displace oxygen and gravity.
Easing myself onto my feet resulted in a sharp bolt of pain all down my right side, beginning at the bullet wound along my hip and extending up into my shoulder and down as far as the small bones of my feet. My stabilizing muscles were in complete distress. Damn it. I needed to text Izzy, ask her to bring a crutch or something when she returned in a few days.
I took a slow, hobbling step toward the bedroom door. Of course, if I told her I needed a crutch she’d come back immediately, further insulting Ms. Popova and likely attracting all sorts of attention that would only lead to retaliatory violence. God damn, but that life was a complicated one.
The whiskey — well, the liquor cabinet and glasses — was only on the other side of the living room. I braced myself against the wall and took graceless, dragging steps like a zombie chasing a human brain. It was humiliating. It was pathetic. It was a damned good thing I was alone.
Less than a week ago I was free climbing the side of city hall, traversing rooftops in rolling leaps, dangling into unprotected spaces over marble floors by a single rope and being held up by my own strength. And there I was, hobbling across my living room.
I deserved it, I knew. I’d been careless. Reckless. I’d let Fawn’s disappointment, her fear that I had been after the atomizer to spur me into a poorly planned and sloppily executed theft to retrieve the damn thing. I’d gotten myself injured for the sake of seeing her smile. The sake of watching her realize what I’d done for her. And then I’d made the whole stupid thing worse by sticking to the doubloon job.
I was a hopeless idiot.
The splash of whiskey into my glass was a satisfying reward for the shuddering waves of pain radiating throughout my body, and I lifted the glass to my mouth to take an unreasonably large gulp. It burned a trail down to my gut, painting my tongue in its comforting, complex taste and fighting the shuddering cold that I knew was the last vestige of the shock that threatened to overtake control of my body.
My forearm braced most of my weight against the wall and I pressed my forehead into it. I had been damn lucky to get away. I was limping, I was slow, and it was a miracle I could ride my bike at all given the way the engine made my body feel like it was going to shake apart in a wave of fire and shattered glass. In a few minutes it would really hit me and I would let the panic set in. But for right then, I would drink my whiskey and focus on breathing.
I just needed to keep breathing.
A knock at the door shattered the fragile calm I had managed to weave.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, but turned dutifully toward the sound and started staggering toward the door. “Wait a damn minute!” I called in little more than a growl. “Izzy, if you forgot your keys I’m going to skin you.”
I’d told her to go back and have her meeting, and I’d meant it. She wasn’t doing either of us any favors by getting the Russians riled up because I was stupid enough to get shot.
My fingers flew over the locks and latches — obviously Izzy must have had her keys to secure those behind her — and yanked open the front door, a snarl on my face. “What —” I began, but the words died on my lips.
There in my doorway stood Dr. Molly Fawn, wide-eyed and beautiful and carrying a basket.
“Hi,” she breathed, pink rising in her cheeks. She lifted the basket in front of her like an offering, eyes trained on mine even though she looked desperate to look away. “May I come in?”
17
MOLLY
The coffee at the Opal City Research Lab, while certainly not a patch on my preferred off-campus espresso bars, did have the distinction of still technically qualifying as caffeine and being close enough that I could retrieve it in between iterations of my latest serum tests in the lab. I’d placed the next stage in the centrifuge, made sure that everything was properly sealed and calibrated, and then had hightailed it to the coffee bar. I’d arrived in the office far earlier than usual that morning, unable to rest, unable to keep my mind off of painted smiles and leather-clad legs.
It had seemed far better all the way around to come into the office and work on the next generation of Captain Colossal’s healing serum.
To be honest, it was rather late in the day for another cup of coffee. In grad school, I’d been able to keep a practically constant drip of caffeine into my bloodstream without disrupting my sleeping habits — such as they were. The older I’d gotten, however, the more I knew that I would pay for the indulgence in the form of restlessness. Just what I needed, of course.
“Careful, Molly, what did that coffee pot ever do to you?” A teasing, lilting baritone broke through my suddenly soured mood, and I looked up from my coffee to see Kevin Platt leaning against the wal
l and smiling down at me.
“Oh, gosh,” I groaned and smiled sheepishly. “I’m just…lost in thought. Work, you know?”
Kevin nodded like that was what he had expected. A flare of frustration nearly broke through the shy mask I was attempting to maintain. How was it that Kevin had known me for years and still couldn’t tell that I thought about more than what went on in the lab?
“I hear that,” he said mildly. A moment later his grin went lopsided, dimpling his cheek in a highly distracting way. It was a dangerous smile. One that I’d learned, over long years of practice, usually heralded a request that was going to complicate my immediate future. “Hey,” he began. “I don’t suppose I could ask you to go over the quarterly audit for your department again, could I?”
I hesitated, hung between the mounting frustration in the back of my mind and the way Kevin smiled like he knew he could count on me. I should say no. Jade was constantly telling me to tell Kevin ‘no’, that I wasn’t actually at his beck and call and I really did have work of my own to be doing. But Jade didn’t know that Kevin was Captain Colossal, and that a large part of my job really was to be the voice in his ear, helping him navigate through obstacles better than he could on his own. It was sweet, really, that he’d generalized that feeling into a sort of…of partnership. Even if it often resulted in more work that I needed to do.
“Oh my god, turn that up!” A voice came from behind me in the break room, and I spun to see the TV mounted in the corner showing a news report. ‘Theft at the maritime museum’ read the chyron. The video feed behind it was a time-delayed view of the outside of the museum, a shaky video that was likely filmed on a cell phone rather than with a proper camera. The video looped, and I frowned, squinting to see what I had missed in the first pass.
Once I saw it, I couldn’t imagine how I had missed it.
A lithe figure, clad head to toe in her characteristic black leather, stumbled across the far edge of the feed. She limped heavily, and the flash of a nearby camera bulb lit the side of her in an unmistakable wash of red.
