Greg Rucka - Critical Space

Dan took me by the shoulders, straightening me up, and adjusting my glasses before letting me go. His mouth and nose were leaking blood, but he smiled as if he was having the time of his life.

"Okay, we're friends again?" he asked.

I sneezed, trying to get the carbonation out of my nose. "Friends," I said.

Dan tucked his arm around my shoulder once more, and together we followed Katrina into the back.

The room had a queen bed, a wet bar, and a speckled mirror on the ceiling. Attached to the head and footboard of the bed were leather manacles, lined with fur. There was also a couch, a Sony television with a Toshiba VCR, an ornate coffee table, and a cheap particleboard armoire. Despite all I've seen and done in my life, it was my first time in a brothel, and for some reason, I hadn't believed that people really liked this sort of thing.

Katrina crossed the room to another door, holding it open and beckoning for me to follow. It was a bathroom, the main fixture of which was a raised Jacuzzi. A shower filled the opposite wall, separated by a toilet and sink, both of which could have used a scrubbing. There were more mirrors.

As soon as I'd stepped inside, Katrina started to remove my jacket.

"Don't," I said.

Her attention stayed focused on my chest, and she cooed something I didn't understand and tried to lift my jacket off again. I caught her hands, felt them small and cold, and tried to get her to meet my eyes.

"I don't want to get undressed," I told her.

She turned and looked at Dan, who was standing in the doorway, said something in whatever it was they all seemed to speak. Dan, who was wiping at his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, grunted a response.

"You have to strip," he told me, studying the bloodstains on the fabric in his hand. "Either she helps you or I do."

The frustration made it into my voice. "I'm not looking to get laid."

Katrina glanced from me to Dan, then back, then cooed something again. Dan shook his head in response. This seemed to satisfy her, because she reached out for the side of my face, touching my skin where the soda had dried.

"Huh?" she said. "This? Yes?"

"You don't have to fuck her," Dan told me.

I brushed her hand away, trying to be gentle about it, though the truth was that my anger was threatening to get the better of me. She understood or she didn't, but either way she mimicked the gesture, perhaps mocking, and then moved to the Jacuzzi and sat at the edge.

"I gave you a choice." Dan dabbed at his nose once more, then folded the handkerchief tidily and put it in his back pocket. "Look, Mr. Kodiak, this is how it goes. You're staying here couple hours, okay? Maybe five, six. All paid for, best girl in the house, best room in the house, you get everything, all paid for."

"I don't want…"

"Yeah, I know, you don't. That's okay, you don't have to have her, nothing like that. But I need your clothes."

At the Jacuzzi, Katrina was gently splashing the water with her feet.

Dan was watching me closely, serious, and I saw in his eyes that I had misread him earlier. If he was a hood now, he hadn't always been one, and something in his expression reminded me of Moore.

This was what I'd been afraid of, what I knew would happen, and if Dan and I mixed it up again, I was pretty sure the result would be the same. Only this time, he wouldn't be concerned that we remain "friends." When he said he needed my clothes, I knew he meant that he needed all of them, and I knew that once I lost them they'd be gone for good, most likely burnt or dumped. I wasn't going to be able to keep the tracker, either; there was no way I'd be able to get it loose and hide it on my person with him watching.

I could only hope that the tracker had worked, that Natalie or Corry had been able to mark my location, and that someone was on the way.

"All right," I said.

He looked relieved, spoke quickly to Katrina, who swung her legs out of the water and reached around to the back of the door, pulling a terrycloth bathrobe from the hook there. I took my jacket off, then my shirt, and when she saw my vest, she made a comment to Dan. He answered, and she nodded, as if his explanation was perfectly valid.

I stripped down and stood in the middle of the bathroom, both of them looking at me, and I decided that I was still too pissed off to be embarrassed, so I looked right back at them. Katrina moved forward with the robe, and Dan stopped her.

"Your watch," he told me. "Your earrings."

I unfastened the Oris and handed it to him, saying, "I'm going to want that back."

He was turning it in his hand, and he nodded, and I was pretty certain I'd never see it again.

The earrings were another matter entirely. I hadn't removed the two hoops since I'd first gotten them over twelve years earlier, and while they moved easily enough in their holes, I couldn't get them unfastened, even using the mirror over the sink as a guide. My fingers kept slipping off the tiny bead that closed the gap in each hoop, and I couldn't get a grip to free them. After almost two minutes of my struggling, naked, tugging on my ear, Katrina took pity on me and draped the robe across the sink, then moved in to help. She had to lean against me to get a good grip on the hoops, and the heat of her body touched mine, and her breasts pressed against my arm and chest, and my body reacted.

When they were out, she handed them to Dan, then offered me the robe.

"You have anything up in your ass?" Dan asked.

I needed a second to properly parse the sentence. "No."

"You telling the truth or do I need to check you?"

"I'm telling the truth."

He rubbed at his goatee, then held out his hand. "Glasses, now, please. You will get them back."

I gave him my glasses, and finally felt naked.

"Okay, this is good, now," Dan said. "Take the hot tub or the shower, Katrina will stay with you."

Katrina closed the door after him, then went back to the Jacuzzi, shucking what little she was wearing and lowering herself into the water with a gasp and a sigh.

"You come in?" she asked, and I caught a blurry motion of her hand that I assumed was an attempt to beckon me closer. "Come here, da?"

I took a shower instead.

When I emerged wearing my robe, Katrina was on her back on the bed, idly toying with one of the manacles from the headboard, her hair carefully draped across her breasts. I shook my head and she finally took the hint that I had no plans to avail myself of her body. She left the bed and took some clothes from the armoire, putting on a pair of cutoffs and a yellow Powerpuff Girls T-shirt, then moved to the couch and switched on MTV. Every so often she would glance my way, and a couple of times she tried communicating with me in broken English, asking if I wanted anything, and each time I said no.

There were no clocks in the room but for the VCR, and that one hadn't been set. Best as I could figure from the television, it was over an hour before the woman who had been at the desk came back to check on us, carrying my glasses. I checked them before slipping them back on, but nothing seemed different about them. Katrina and she had a brief conversation that seemed to be about me, with the older woman making some interesting gestures and sounding unhappy or, at least, displeased, though whether that was with Katrina or with me, I never knew. Then she left us alone again.

This was clearly a holding position, someplace Drama wanted me stored until she was ready to move me to the next phase of the game, ideally the return of Lady Ainsley-Hunter. The longer I was in the same place, the greater the chance that someone would be able to locate me. What they did then would depend on whose head prevailed, but I suspected it would be Moore who assumed command in the field. Bridgett would be all for rushing in to save me – she felt I was one up on her in that regard, and I think it bothered her – but Moore would try to set up surveillance and wait for me to move again.