Strictly Need to Know

by MB Austin

  “Sorry,” Maji said when they were alone briefly. “I didn’t expect this. Let’s get the basil, and beat it.”

  “Done.” Rose smiled. “Maybe we can slip out before someone asks you to run for mayor.”

  Maji blushed. “No chance.”

  As they wound through the shoppers toward the bike, Maji stopped and directed her attention ahead of them, thumbing her watch as she did so. “Two guys in suits, both carrying.”

  She fished the bike keys from her pocket and handed them to Rose. “If I’m not there when you reach the bike, take it, ditch it when you’re able, and hide. Clear?”

  Rose nodded, speechless. Run—alone? The men were coming toward them, never glancing at the stalls. Maji took her elbow and guided her forward, then turned them into a U-shaped stall. Won’t we be trapped here? Panic welled up, despite Rose’s trust in Maji’s judgment.

  “Maj!” the vendor exclaimed.

  “Hey, Marty. Long time. Got some trouble on our tail. Run interference for me?”

  “Sure, hon.”

  “Under and out,” Maji said into Rose’s ear. “Now!”

  Rose didn’t hesitate, just hit the ground and rolled under the nearest table, popping up on the far side.

  As she glanced back, one pursuer was flailing backward toward his partner, who caught him as Maji turned her way. Rose picked up a melon and lobbed it at the encumbered thug, yelling, “9-1-1,” as she let it fly. Then she turned and ran for the bike, not waiting for the satisfying thwonk it made, or the tangled pile of angry limbs to sort itself out.

  * * *

  “Dial it in, Marty,” Maji bit out as she planted one hand between two stacks of strawberry baskets and vaulted over the table, sprinting off after Rose. To the urgent voices in her ear, all she said was, “Stand by.”

  As Maji neared the bike, she saw a man approach from behind Rose, who was fastening on her helmet. “Six o’clock,” she yelled, putting a last blast into her already pumping legs.

  Rose spun and kicked her pursuer in the knee, a nice sharp side kick that drew a yelp and bent him over the wounded limb. He reached one hand out to the bike for support, shoving the other under his jacket for the pistol undoubtedly there.

  Maji reached the injured man as Rose was mounting the bike, fumbling to put the key in and start it. She struck him once, hard, and he sprawled behind the bike. She moved to check his pulse, giving her update as she leaned down.

  “Two tails lost, one down parking lot, and”—a black SUV honked and tried to jockey through the now-crowded lot—“driver stuck in lot,” she finished.

  Leaving the downed man be, she hopped on behind Rose. “Go, go, go.” For the comm, she added, “Clearing out. Stand by.”

  “Hooah,” Dev’s voice replied.

  Rose rolled on the throttle and the bike leaped forward. She braked, throwing Maji into her back. Her bare head hit the back of Rose’s helmet with a sharp crack. Her vision blurred. “Ease it on, and point us down the path,” Maji managed to spit out, blinking hard.

  “Can’t we just trade places?” Rose’s voice climbed with each word.

  “No time. Black SUV on our tail.” And indeed, the big vehicle was trying to turn around and wend its way out of the tangle of cars, to get onto the access road the bike was headed toward. At least she could see it clearly again.

  As Maji clung to her, Rose tried again, this time carrying them smoothly down the incline and onto the fire lane, headed toward the water. When the paved lane ran out, Maji tapped her to turn right, and they passed between the waist-high poles meant to keep cars off the bike trail. A few hundred feet down, as they started to gain on a group of unwitting bicyclists, Maji tapped her again. “Okay. Stop, but don’t cut it.”

  Rose pulled over smoothly and stopped. Maji hopped off the back and gave her a hand scooting back. She unhooked her helmet from the bike and slipped it on, ignoring the sting where it pressed against her throbbing forehead. “Okay to just hang on?”

  Rose nodded. “Sorry.”

  Maji slid on. “Sorry, hell. You rock.”

  They zipped past the bicyclists, leaving a muted protest behind them as the pack realized what had happened. As soon as the trail met road again, Maji slowed and threaded the bike out between the anti-car posts, onto the street.

  “Now what?” Rose asked.

  “Long way home.” Maji turned them onto a two-lane highway, picking up speed on the long open stretch. From behind them, a siren sounded, growing louder.

  “Thank God,” Rose breathed.

  “Don’t thank her yet,” Maji cautioned, pulling onto the shoulder with the bike pointed toward the median. “And don’t let go.”

  The NYSP car pulled up behind them, and from each side an officer in a domed hat emerged. Maji waited as they approached the bike, speaking softly. “Delta Tango Charlie One Five One. Copy?”

  “Copy. We show you on northbound parkway, County Road cross.”

  “Not for long. Stand by.” To Rose, she added, “Hang on tight.”

  The officers within yards of them, Maji slammed on the throttle and hurtled the bike across the highway. The uniformed men dashed back to their vehicle. The bike bounced into the recessed median, and she throttled on again to pop them up and into the lanes going back the way they had come.

  When the heavy police cruiser tried to follow in their path, its undercarriage made a grinding shriek on the incline down. It roared up the opposite side, leaving a trail of oil as it went. The driver pushed it hard, even as the rapidly drying pistons began to knock.

  The bike zipped quietly down the two-lane road, the siren and its source receding in the mirrors. Maji eased off the throttle as they began passing neighborhoods again, and turned right, slowing to residential speed.

  Rose relaxed with the decrease in speed, but kept her grip tight, in case. They seemed to be crawling along the little tree-lined street. Any second the cruiser could appear behind them. A few houses into the second block of modest single homes with neat yards, Maji turned the bike sharply left, and they bounced down a grass and dirt alley lined by fences and garages. The bike skidded to a stop by the gate in a tall wooden fence.

  “Open the gate!”

  Rose hopped off, thumbed the gate handle, and shoved it open. Maji drove silently into the yard, the gate closing behind them. As she set the kickstand, a brindle Doberman-boxer mix dashed from the side yard, barreling toward them. Maji lunged past Rose and met it as it rose up. Before Rose could suck in enough breath to scream, Maji had the big dog by the throat, pinned to the grass.

  “Barkley! Hush!” Maji commanded. The dog whimpered, wagged its tail, and tried to lick the hand planted at its throat.

  Rose slumped back against the closed gate. What would come at them next?

  The door at the top of a short set of concrete steps opened, and a statuesque woman in her late thirties, yellow-blond hair falling in her eyes and bathrobe clutched to her chest, glared at them. Amazons? Rose nearly giggled, heady with relief and the surrealness of it all.

  “Always an entrance,” the Amazon said to Maji and grabbed her into a tight embrace. “Who you running from?” she asked with a smirk as she let Maji go, eyeing Rose knowingly.

  Maji ignored the question and the innuendo. “Sorry about the wake-up.”

  “No sweat, Jailbait. I’m due at the station anyway.”

  “Can I use your landline?”

  “Still in the same place.”

  Maji headed through an arched doorway into the dining room and began dialing. “Lost them. Yours secure?” Rose heard her say.

  “I’m Karen,” the Amazon said, pulling Rose’s attention back into the kitchen, and to their host. “Sit down. Coffee?”

  Rose shook her head. She needed to come down before she fell down. “Water, please.”

  Karen brought her a glass from the tap and tilted her head toward the next room. “Nice to see Maji with someone her own age.”

  “Hey!” Maji’s voice piped in. “No storie
s.”

  Karen straightened her robe, lowering her voice. “When she was sixteen, she had this fake ID from Columbia…”

  “Seventeen. And it was real.”

  While Karen went to dress for work, Rose closed her eyes and stroked Barkley’s silky ears, taking comfort from the solid body leaning in to her thigh. A few minutes later, Karen returned, nicely pulled together and buttoning a white short-sleeved uniform shirt with Fire Marshal embroidered on it. An expletive from the other room turned both their heads. Maji appeared in the doorway, looking vexed.

  Karen caught Rose’s eye and shook her head, smiling. “Still not a morning person, huh?”

  Maji didn’t correct her, or explain. “Could you drop us off on your way in?”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  They rode slunk down in the Jeep like teenagers ashamed to be spotted with a parent, much to Karen’s continued amusement. “Brenda’s gonna love this.”

  “Still together?” Maji asked from the space between the front passenger seat and the console, bracing herself against the bumps in the springy suspension. A blooming headache reminded her that she should have asked Karen for an ice pack, earlier. But she’d been preoccupied.

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “No, of course. But, you know. How is she?”

  “Four years clean and sober,” Karen answered with pride.

  “Wow.”

  “Damn straight, wow. Doubting Thomas.”

  “I was pulling for her,” Maji objected. “Well, say hi, okay?”

  “Say hi yourself—you two come for dinner sometime, and we’ll catch up,” Karen suggested. “You can go out in public with her, can’t you?”

  “Not after today,” Rose piped up, eliciting a true guffaw from their driver. Maji didn’t laugh.

  Without asking, Karen pointed the Jeep toward Hannah’s house, as Maji knew she would. “Coast is clear,” she announced, pulling up to the curb.

  As instructed, Rose slipped out of the Jeep and rabbited for the back porch. Hannah caught her in a hug, and together they watched Karen and Maji muscle the bike out of the back of the Jeep, into the garage. As Maji gave her signature thanks and good-bye nod, Karen took hold of her wrist and spoke earnestly. Maji said something curt but polite and was released.

  When Maji reached the back porch, Hannah asked, “What did Karen say?”

  “Just that I’m too old to be messing around with married women,” Maji answered, then looked Rose in the eye. “Which I never did. Knowingly.”

  Rose just turned and walked into the kitchen, and sat at the table there. Maji walked past her, talking to herself. No—talking on the comm again. “Package secured. Yours?” She listened a few seconds. “Will extract after debrief. Out.” She opened the cabinet over the sink, then turned to Rose. “Water?”

  “Please,” Rose said.

  Maji handed her a glass and washed four pills down with half of her own.

  “Injuries?” Hannah asked.

  “Just a bump.” She peeled off her bike jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. “Let’s do the talk. I need a shower.”

  “Sit,” Hannah commanded. She fished in a drawer and pulled out a small flashlight. Pulling a chair to face Maji, she asked, “Any bumps besides the goose egg on your forehead?”

  “My fault,” Rose said.

  “Nonsense,” Hannah replied, while shining the light in each of Maji’s eyes and closely watching the reaction.

  “No, really,” Rose tried again. She couldn’t seem to put more words together. Had she hit her head, too?

  “Really, she did great,” Maji said. Then she described the two men, how they were dressed, how they behaved. “Might have been posing as Feds,” she added. “Didn’t wait to find out.”

  “What if they were?” Rose asked. “Feds, for real.”

  Maji shook her head, winced, and accepted an icepack from Hannah. “They would have identified themselves. Loudly, and with badges. These guys wanted to corral us before engaging.”

  Rose drank down the rest of her glass. “Good. I’m glad I didn’t kick a federal agent.”

  “She got the knee, after a nice roll-under, and before driving like a pro,” Maji told Hannah.

  Hannah raised one brow. “And then?”

  “Sirens picked us up on the parkway. I pulled over at County Road, and let two guys in state trooper uniforms approach.”

  “They really weren’t cops?” Rose asked.

  “This level of planning suggests they’ve been in the area, waiting for an opportunity,” Hannah noted.

  Rose looked into her empty glass. “Hungry,” she said.

  “Of course.” Hannah stood and left them sitting, Rose feeling too dull to move and Maji with her head reclining on her chair back, and her feet on a second chair. Hannah set plates and silver before them, and brought Shabbos leftovers to the table. “Eat. It helps.”

  Rose started unwrapping the cucumber salad, the broiled salmon, and the cold potatoes. “Bubbles?”

  Hannah smiled at her, and heaped large portions onto Maji’s plate. “She and Rey came for supper, yes.”

  “Missed him again,” Rose said and took a bite of salmon. Almost right away, her head felt clearer. She ate slowly, watching Maji clear her plate with uncharacteristic speed. Food must be a cure she was used to. Rose smiled for the first time since before they’d spotted the men in suits. It felt so long ago. “May I go lie down?”

  “Take a bunk upstairs, middle bedroom,” Hannah replied. “And you may take that shower now,” she added, to Maji.

  Maji stood. “C’mon. I’ll give you the five-cent tour of the upstairs.”

  Rose woke and looked around, surprised the room was still bright. Surely she’d slept all day. No, the clock on the desk said 1:25. She rolled off the bottom bunk—Bubbles’s bunk, according to Maji—and took a few minutes to search for signs of the two when they had shared the room, years ago. A yield sign on the back of the door suggested they had pillaged street signs as teens, like some of her high school friends had. An old poster from a 1995 Ani DiFranco concert tour hung on the wall. Rose leaned in close and read the inscription: Missed you!—A. She made a note to ask about that.

  On the bookcase, a stack of textbooks looked as if they’d been pulled off the shelf and returned in a stack rather than a row. Rose remembered Hannah’s promise to remove any identifiers from the dojo, and Bubbles’s concern over the possibility of Iris staying in their room. But if Iris saw books on Farsi, Arabic, and general linguistics, what could she glean from that? Rose picked up the text on top and opened the front flap. Maji’s real name, with a phone number and Columbia University Department of Linguistics were written inside, in neat print. The interior pages had highlighting, turned down pages, and not-so-neat notes in the margins. Definitely an item to pack away during Iris’s visit.

  She set the book aside and reached for the manila folder under it.

  “If you can’t sleep, that one will put you right out.”

  Rose turned and was relieved to see Maji smiling in the doorway. “Sorry. Hannah put these away to protect you from snoopers, didn’t she?”

  “You’re allowed. Go ahead, open it.”

  Rose flipped the folder open, and read the title of what was clearly Maji’s master’s thesis. Toward a Concordance Methodology for Farsi, Arabic, and Hebrew in the American Diaspora. She skimmed down the page and understood very little. Not because it was written poorly—it read like a master’s thesis should—but because the lingo was entirely out of her wheelhouse. Rose felt like she was witnessing another transformation of Maji, as believable as the Ri persona, but more relatable to her own academic world. “Did you really start at Columbia at only seventeen?”

  Maji looked surprisingly shy at the question. “No, I was a sophomore by then. And dumb enough to think that an ID would convince Karen she could go to a club with me.”

  Rose laughed. “Didn’t work?”

  “She met me, but it didn’t go like I’d hop
ed. I got drunk and stupid. Wound up in the ER. Papi had to come bring me home, and he blew my cover.”

  “And she’s called you Jailbait ever since?”

  “Yep. Can’t blame her. She fought to become one of the first women in the New York City fire department. If anyone had found out she dated a juvenile, well. I’m lucky she still talks to me at all.”

  Rose offered her the gentlest smile she could. “People seem inclined to forgive you for all sorts of things.”

  “More than they should.” Maji looked past Rose, her eyes sweeping the room and alighting on an unopened package on the desk. “What’s that?”

  “Don’t know.” Rose was glad she could answer that honestly, after snooping so boldly. She had seen it was addressed to M. Rios, c/o Paragon Security at an address in Madrid, and had left it alone. “Here.” She handed it to Maji and watched her face, looking for answers to a question Iris had raised earlier in the week. She’d implied that Hannah had trained Maji, and perhaps others, to gain employees suitable for her private security business. Maji’s face didn’t betray anything as she ripped the packet open. A slow smile when she pulled out a music CD and read the back made Rose twice as curious.

  “Fan mail?”

  Maji’s eyes flitted back and forth, her smile not entirely wiped away. “Just a gift from a friend.” She left the package, but held on to the CD. “Meet me downstairs in five.”

  And then she was gone. Rose went down the hall to find the bathroom, wondering at the enigma that was Maji—soldier, scholar, juvenile delinquent, and child prodigy. Pretending to be a gangster’s moll, street-smart and tough as nails. Now that Rose knew her better, only the last seemed unlikely.