Mule's inhales came harsh and steady, like someone pulling the starter cord on a lawn mower.
Ash tapped the browser icon and when the keyboard appeared, punched in "Seattle City Jail." The search came back with "King County Correctional Facility, Seattle, 500 Fifth Avenue." She clicked the map, and saw its location in the heart of downtown. She zoomed in from a satellite view. From above, it looked like just another office building.
Where were the inmates? On the umpteenth floor? Was she going to have to scale a building? How would she find Elsbeth in there?
Easy, she told herself. One thing at a time.
She set the phone down. Mule might notice tomorrow that someone had searched for a prison on it, but then again, he might not. Ash wasn't worried. Mule was many things, but he wasn't terribly curious. Ash paused in the bedroom doorway, before the stretch of darkness behind the couch that separated her from the window over the washing machine.
She watched the TV's pulsing light on Mule's face as he slept. Why had she broken in here? Why not just wake Mule and ask for his help? He would have found the prison for her. She didn't have to sneak around.
A bitter feeling nagged at her. Yes, she did have to sneak. Mule wouldn't let Ash do what she was about to do. He would protect her... by stopping her. Once he grasped that she was serious, he would never let her go.
And that wasn't his fault. He had always protected her. She wished she could thank him, instead of using her ninja stealth against him. Instead of lying to him.
The bitter feeling got worse. Could she ever be honest with Mule again? And if not, how could their friendship survive?
She felt an urge to go hug him. Or at least, sit on the couch with him while he played a few rounds of his game. She glanced down at herself, cloaked in shadow.
What would he think of her outfit? The quintessent material caressed her face as she grinned.
He'd like it, she knew.
No time. She'd work things out with Mule later – she hoped – but for now, she had other priorities.
She had to tell him. The thought came quick and without warning. When all this was over, she would. Mule, she would say, I'm a ninja.
She set the thought aside and started for the window–
Mule's grinding inhale cut short and he lifted his head. Ash had almost reached the washing machine. She dropped into the shadow behind the couch and rolled toward him as he drew in a sleepy breath and sighed it out.
He scanned the room behind him, frowning, sleepy eyed. Ash lay in the dark below him, holding her breath. His face was dark, with his back to the TV, but still she could see the stubble on his heavy jaw. She could see up his nostrils.
"Huh," he said. He faced forward and stood. Ash scooted silently against the back of the couch. The television clicked off, and the room was plunged into the safety of pure darkness. Ash relaxed.
Mule pulled a string hanging near the stairs, clicking on a bulb at the ceiling. The room filled with yellow light.
Ash winced soundlessly. She spider-crawled around the couch and balled up under the armrest.
Mule made no sound. He had to be standing under the bulb, not moving. Why? Did he think someone else was in the room?
"Huh," he said again. He crossed to the washing machine. Ash scrambled to the front of the couch to stay out of his line of sight as he closed the window she had opened.
He wobbled sleepily back to the stairs, and Ash spider-crawled back under the armrest. He clicked off the light, bathing Ash in darkness. She tracked the sound of his breathing as he crossed to his bedroom. The light there clicked on. She circled the couch and peered around the worn edge of its upholstery at the doorway's rectangle of light.
The light went out, and Ash heard the mattress springs strain noisily as Mule flopped into bed.
After a minute, she heard his breathing deepen and grow louder, until those tortured-pig inhales were back. Ash tip-toed to the washer, hopped up, and opened the window, letting the pane swing slowly out and down until the chain stopped it. With a big toe on the window’s frame, she reached through until her fingers felt grass, and stepped over the pane with one leg, then the other.
This time, she eased the window closed.
Lucky, she thought. That's what she was.
She sprinted to the neighbor's fence and continued up its wood planks until she balanced on its top. Then she hopped to the neighbor's roof. How was she going to get downtown? She would have to work on that while she kept moving.
She jumped to the next house, and the next, moving south down the street, until she stood on a shingled slope beside a shopping center's parking lot. No more houses. She hopped to the asphalt, landing hard on her feet, and sprinted across. At the far side, she raced up the wall of a QFC grocery store, jogged across its broad flat roof, then hopped to a pizzeria, then Red Mill Burgers, then a Starbucks.
This was getting exhausting, and taking too long. It would take until sun up to reach the prison at this rate.
If not a ninjamobile, a ninja-cycle. Something.
She touched down on the sidewalk on Dravus Street and plunged into the jungle of blackberry bushes that lined the slope leading down to the train yard.
Maybe she could take a train...
She pushed through the blackberry brambles, making more rustling noise than she would have liked. Not that there were people about to see her at this hour. A blackberry thorn scraped one of her exposed fingers, and she squeaked. A drop of blood formed on the knuckle. She flexed her finger and scowled, the mask caressing the face she made.
Wait a minute. These were blackberries. They should be shredding her to a bloody mess. She made fists to protect her fingers and pushed farther down the hill. The branches turned aside, dragging against her body. They didn't snag or poke through her outfit. Elsbeth was right. These clothes made her too tough and too slippery.
I love my black pajamas, she thought.
She broke free of the brambles at the bottom of the hill, and stood before a half-dozen sets of tracks. Rail cars sat here, heavy and unmoving, waiting for someplace to go. The Dravus overpass loomed overhead, giving plenty of cover. Not a single person in sight.
Ash grinned. Now she just had to wait for a train. She hopped up on one of the rail cars, sat on the broad expanse of cold steel, and looked north for a ride.
All quiet. Nothing moved.
No time for this. Maybe she could catch a truck.
She zipped across the train yard and pushed uphill through the brambles on the other side. The smell of wet green life floated through her nose. She liked blackberries even more now that they didn't hurt. Once out of the train yard, she cut through some unlit parking lots behind a restaurant and laundromat, then more bushes, to the overpass that crossed Fifteenth Avenue.
Fifteenth ran straight downtown.
Ash hopped the guard rail of the overpass and dangled over Fifteenth, clinging to the cracks in the mossy concrete. She pulled her legs up and lowered herself more, hanging like a monkey. When the first truck blew by at about forty miles per hour, she wasn't ready, and the top of the trailer almost whacked her knee.
Yikes! Low bridge, tall trucks. It wouldn't be a long drop to a truck trailer's roof. She just had to be going fast enough when she jumped, or she’d roll off the back and splat on the asphalt. She hung in darkness and breathed. Her fingers started to ache.
Five... ten... twelve...
And here came a beautiful furniture truck, with a trailer that was tall and broad and flat. She set her feet on the concrete wall and as the truck's cab passed under her, she pushed off.
She seemed to dangle weightless over the trailer's expanse of white metal. Then she plopped on it, landing on her fingers and toes, without the slightest jerk.
Nice! She flattened herself and let her ride take her downtown.
36
The truck roared south from Fifteenth onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a two-level highway with southbound traffic on the lower level, northbound traffic abo
ve. Ash now had solid concrete racing by no more than five feet over her head and traffic noise echoing straight into her skull.
Ouch. At least the view was nice. The Viaduct ran along the coast, and at this hour, Puget Sound was still and black. She could smell the ocean. No ferries ran this late, and only the yellow glow of a freighter lit the water.
She needed to get off at Yesler. But twelve feet off the ground, racing at highway speed while surrounded by concrete – how was she supposed to stop this ride? She sat up, flummoxed, and watched the dark and crumbling second level whirr by above her.
She'd have to jump for it. Trees had been planted at regular intervals below, on both sides of the Viaduct, and their uppermost branches reached the southbound level. They might make a soft target. Ash crept to the rear corner of the truck and checked the traffic behind.
No cars behind, so no one would see the jump... and no one would flatten her if she blew it and landed on the highway. Ash thought it through. As the truck moved forward, she would have to jump backward to compensate. Yep, that sounded right. So she would land in the tree and not smack it.
Ash crouched at the very edge of the trailer's top and breathed. The sound of the highway retreated to a more comfortable distance, and the traffic seemed to slow. Beyond a highway column, she spotted a perfect tree, broad and leafy, colored gray-yellow by the lights along the piers. Soft and cushiony.
She slipped over the edge of the truck, planting her feet on the side, and pushed off. She had to balance the speed of the truck, but forty miles an hour wasn't really all that fast.
She got it about right, and suddenly had a face full of branches. She spread her arms and legs and grabbed randomly, stripping leaves off with her fingers, until she came down butt-first on a branch strong enough to hold her.
She dropped to the sidewalk and paused only a microsecond before bolting across the intersection and racing up Yesler. She accelerated into a sprint, dodging parked cars and trees (and leaping over a homeless-looking guy) until she turned onto James Street. That was a straight shot, fast and low, passing the Smith Tower with its little pyramid on top, staying in the streetlight shadows and crossing the intersections in a single leap.
She passed a tall white building with a lot of little windows and "King County Courthouse" in brass letters over the doors. Then an ugly gray block of a building, made even uglier by weird-looking diagonal criss-cross facades on the sides, labeled "King County Administration."
Then the jail, a white, blocky office building like any other one downtown. Lots of windows. It would be locked up tight, so Ash would be scaling the outside.
Ash crouched in the shadow between two parked cars and stared. Elsbeth was in there.
The windows were inset without ledges or anything to hold on to. Ash wondered about security. Over her head, a skybridge extended across the street from the previous two buildings, like a long square windowless tube. That had to be how they got inmates to the courthouse and back.
It could work for Ash, too.
She doubled back to the ugly building. Those diamond-shaped concrete facades would be easy to climb. All the windows (one in each diamond) were dark. The time had to be three in the morning.
Ninja prime-time. Ash started up. The wall had plenty of places to grip, and after climbing ten floors in a zig-zag pattern, she rolled onto the roof.
The roof was broad and flat and painted white. The skybridge crossed this roof and extended to both buildings on either side of her, and it was totally enclosed. The access door was locked, and not Ash's style anyway. Using the doorknob as a step, she reached the roof of the skybridge in two quick hops.
Ash stood on a smooth white road, with a hundred-foot drop to the street on each side, that ran straight to her destination. Strong breeze up here. She was safely out of view of the street, and doubted if any human had ever stood where she was. She took the road like a racetrack.
At the jail, the skybridge disappeared into the wall of the building. Ash hopped up to the jail's broad white roof.
She took a deep breath. Made it! Elsbeth was somewhere below her... so close. This was going to work. Ash could really pull off a rescue. Elsbeth would be impressed. Then Elsbeth and Ash could take turns beating Drake until they knocked him to the next county. She could–
Slow down. Ash had to take her time now and not blow it. She started a slow walk, taking in her surroundings. Rooftops all looked the same. White, with pipes and vents and metal boxes sticking out, one metal box humming noisily.
Where would the inmates be? Top floor? If Ash had to build a prison into a highrise, she wouldn't put the bad guys near the lobby. Yeah, top floor. Ash set her feet lightly as she walked. She had no idea, really, where the prisoners would be. Maybe something else was saying "top floor" to her. Intuition, maybe.
Elsbeth, maybe. Could it be auntie's telepathic trick?
Ash tried to reach out with her mind. Elsbeth? Are you here?
But before, it had only worked when they were touching. Now, Elsbeth could be on the other side of the building... assuming she was only ten feet down.
Ash sighed. Elsbeth, it's me!
Nothing.
Okay, new plan.
Except Ash didn't have a new plan. She looked down at the late-night traffic racing along I-5. Really, it was super-early-morning traffic.
There was nothing else Ash could do from the roof. She had to face that. What, then?
She had to go in and look around with her own eyes.
And get caught on security cameras and seen by prison guards, and tackled and arrested and thrown in a cell for being dumb enough to break into a prison.
Yeah, she had to do it. She couldn't let Elsbeth down. It wouldn't be hard. She could cut right through the roof with the sword, straight down. Drop in from the ceiling.
But that would leave a mark on the building. Evidence.
Ash wandered over to the great humming box. A heater. She put her hands on its warm aluminum and felt it vibrating. A fan cranked away in there. She walked around it and found a vent on the other side, down low, a mechanical roar coming from it. Narrow... but not too narrow. No hinge, no bolts, not able to be opened. So Ash would make her own door.
She reached over her head and her fingers touched the soft fabric wrapping the handle of the sword. They tapped thoughtfully. Was she really going to do this? There was no backing out, starting now.
Fine. But... she left the sword in its scabbard, and instead drew the star from her pocket. Holding it like a scalpel, she sliced away the vent cover. The air that blasted out the opening washed over her, a sauna from hell. It would be hot in there. It might even hurt.
But she could do it. In, and down. She replaced the star, hunkered, and crawled–
The sword handle hit the opening and the strap gave her a yank. She reached back and pulled the handle inside the vent, then faced forward, squinting into the Saharan wind tunnel. Best to get this done quick, before she roasted. She shimmied her way inside.
No light in here. Judging by the racket, the heater was in the metal box now directly above her. She dropped down the rectangular shaft and landed on thin aluminum. She probed the darkness with her fingertips and found herself in the middle of a three-way intersection.
She didn't try waiting for her eyes to adjust. Instead she crawled forward in a slow, light slide, shifting her weight gently. The aluminum still snapped and thumped as she moved. She tried seeing with her peripheral vision, but got nothing but black.
The ceiling of the top floor had to be right below her. She just needed an opening. As sweat began to tickle her neck and the first drop caught in her eyebrow – and she thought she was medium-rare pushing medium – she found one.
She lay in an air shaft with her chin resting on the edge of a two-foot drop. At the bottom was a grate like the one on the roof – not designed to be opened. Bright light shone through it. She reached down with the star and carved it out, peeling it back and pulling. When it came loose, she s
et it in the shaft ahead of her.
Through the opening, about eight feet below, lay dull brown-gray carpet. A hallway, with blazing fluorescent lighting.
She lowered herself head-first, inching along, and stopped when she could see along the hallway's length. It looked like a typical hallway of offices, with evenly spaced doors on either side of the hall.
Except the doors were white, like the walls. Painted metal, not wood. Reinforced steel? And there were file folders clipped to each door, sort of like a patient room in a doctor's office. So maybe she had found the prison floor after all.
No bars or windows to peek through. Even standing in the hall, she wouldn't be able to see Elsbeth. Ash hung upside down, annoyed. She craned her neck, twisting her body to see the other direction.
And noticed the video camera three feet away.
37
Ash yanked her head up, turtling into the shaft, wincing.
Caught on a prison camera... wait. Ash slowly lowered herself and peeked into the hall again until she could see the camera.
It was massive, white, and rectangular... and angled down so it could see the floor along the length of the hall, not the ceiling where Ash was. She was above it, too high, too close. It couldn't see her. She let out a sigh of relief.
But if she went any lower, it would definitely see her then. Ash pressed her molars together, thinking.
She'd have to break it.
She reached behind her and – upside down in the ventilation shaft, not easy – worked the sword loose. She fed the long blade through the hole she had cut and reached for the camera with it. The blade wavered, glimmering in the bright hall lights. With a gentle flick, the blade's tip sliced the camera's power cable.
The little red light went out. There!
Ash tucked her legs close to her chest, and as she held the vent hole's edge with one hand, she flipped into the hall and landed smoothly on her feet... without stabbing herself, either. She put the sword away, so she could have both hands free, and so if a prison guard saw her, he wouldn't freak out and shoot.
Ninja Girl: The Nine Wiles Page 19
