Greg Rucka - Critical Space

"Let me buy you coffee."

Erika opened her mouth to invite me in again, and in the process introduced me to the fact that she'd gotten her tongue pierced at some point in the past few months. Without another word she turned back to her desk, saved the document she'd been working on, and set the computer to shut down. Then she grabbed her black leather biker's jacket, the one Bridgett and I had bought her over the holidays the previous year, and joined me out in the hall.

We were silent in the elevator and out of the building, and when we hit the street, she zipped up her jacket and asked, "Now?"

"Not yet," I said.

"There's a place on Christopher with good Java, big fucking cups. You need a crane to lift them."

"Lead on."

She did, with me walking beside her, and after another block and a half, she asked again. "Now?"

"Now," I said, and she threw her arms around my chest and squeezed me tight, and I returned the hug just as fiercely.

"I am so fucking angry at you," she told my chest.

"So am I," I said. "You started smoking."

Erika pulled back and punched me lightly in the chest. "Not the same! Not the same at all!"

"And you got your tongue pierced."

"And you got rid of the glasses and grew a dead animal on your face. Oh, excuse me, that's a beard, my mistake."

"I'm in disguise."

"As what, a pimp?"

"That's cold. I don't look like a pimp."

"I don't know what you look like." She moved her head back, as if trying to adjust the focus on me. "Well, shit. Bridgett said you'd gone…"

"Diesel," I said.

"No, not diesel – crazy. You don't look crazy."

"Us lunatics seldom do."

"You gonna tell me where you've been?"

"I'm going to tell you everything," I said.

Erika listened to me holding her cup of coffee, which, though big, did not require a crane. She held the cup in front of her the way Tibetan monks hold their prayer bowls, her blue eyes intent on my face as I spoke. Her hair had been its natural dirty blond the last time I'd seen her, but she'd since dyed it a matte black that matched her jacket. As ever, her hair hung long on the left side of her face, concealing the ear that had been mutilated by a man with a knife four years earlier.

She looked different to me, no longer the teenager who'd come into my home years ago, pulling chaos in her wake. She was nineteen now, a young woman and, to my eyes, coming of age very nicely. I was so glad to be with her I didn't even give her grief when she set the cup down and lit herself another cigarette.

After I'd finished she started giggling, and then she started laughing, and then she choked on the smoke she'd inhaled and coughed. Then she laughed some more.

"Only you," she said. "Only you would go away as someone's prisoner and come back as that same person's knight in shining armor."

"It's a unique gift," I admitted.

"Bridgett's right, you are totally mad."

"When'd she talk to you?"

"Yesterday, we had lunch at Anglers and Writers. She says she doesn't want anything to do with you. I asked if she meant until this was over or forever or what, and she said she didn't know."

"Bridgett's got her reasons, and they're good ones. I understand why she's angry."

"I think she's overreacting."

That surprised me. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. Last year she pulled the vanishing act on all of us, remember? And when you found her – you- she was strung out on smack and sitting in her own shit. You took her home, you cleaned her up, you watched her back when she got into the heavy stuff. I think she owes you the same courtesy here."

"It's not the same situation," I pointed out.

"You've always given her more slack than she's given you." She took another drag from the cigarette, then blew a jet of smoke up at the ceiling. When she'd finished the display, she indicated my bag, which I'd set on the floor by my chair. "Either you're going somewhere, or you've got something in there for me."

"I'm going somewhere."

"I'm disappointed. I was hoping something like a shirt, you know, one that said, 'My Legal Guardian Went To A Caribbean Island With A Professional Assassin And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.' "

"Tell you what, I'll have one made especially for you."

"Make sure it's black with white lettering if you do. Can you tell me where you're going?"

"No."

"So you just came by to say hi-and-goodbye?"

"That and something else. This thing with Alena could get dangerous. I want you to be careful."

"I am always careful, big brother."

"I'm not talking about condoms in your purse, Erika. Don't take any stupid risks. If you go out, go out with friends. Don't get drunk, don't smoke pot, any of that wacky college stuff."

"I've never smoked grass," she said, indignant.

"I'm speaking generally. You want specifics, here's a list. Don't go by the apartment, not for any reason at all, it's probably under surveillance. Lock your door whenever you're in your dorm room, don't leave it open like it was just now. I want you on your guard until I tell you otherwise, and when I do that, I'll do it in person. If someone tells you that I sent them and you don't know who they are, you raise an alarm and run like hell. If I want you I'll get you in person or it'll be someone you know very well, and I mean someone like Natalie or Scott or Bridgett. And if you see anything – anything at all – that makes you just the tiniest bit suspicious, I want you to call one of them ASAP. Don't worry about overreacting, don't worry about looking foolish. We're talking about your life."

"You're totally serious, aren't you?"

"If anything happened to you, Erika, I would go crazy," I said. "Please be careful."

"I will."

"Your word?"

"You know you have it."

"Good." I checked my watch, saw that I had just over two and a half hours to make the flight. From one of my pockets I took a bundle of bills, counted out five thousand dollars beneath the cover of the table, then folded the money and handed it over. "Emergency funds. Don't blow it on fast boys and loose cars."

She pocketed the money without bothering to see how much I'd given her. She'd already put the cigarette out, and she could tell I was getting ready to leave, because she was up before I was, and she gave me another hug.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," I told the top of her head.

"I know," she said. "You always come back for me."

At seven fifty-three that evening, I was a man named Dennis Murphy, in seat 29B on a British Airways 747, making my way to London.

It took looking in the first copy of The Sun that I could find to confirm that Lady Antonia Ainsley-Hunter was in London, and I caught a cab from Heathrow into the city, got dropped off in front of the Burns Hotel in Kensington. It was just past seven in the morning when I checked into my room, a double with an almost queen and a passable bathroom, and I fiddled with the alarm clock until I got it to work, then crashed on the bed until a quarter past ten. When I woke I did some yoga and some sit-ups, showered, then headed out in search of a pay phone. When I found one I liked, I called Robert Moore on his cellular phone.

"Moore."

"This is Mr. Klein," I said. "You're holding a letter for me."

He didn't miss a beat. "Yes, it arrived several days ago. Do you need it delivered?"

"If that's possible, and the sooner the better."

"Where can I meet you?"

"There's a tube stop at Earl's Court."

"I can be there in fifty minutes."

"That would be fine."

"I'll come in on the train." Then he added, "Mind the gap."

I was laughing as I hung up the phone.

London subway stations, even at their worst, make New York's look like they were constructed by giant rats, and that the giant rats still reside in them. Those in London are also, for the most part, far less crowded, and as a result I spotted Moore as he came off the train. He was wearing a Burberry coat and holding a black plastic shopping bag, and he waited by the tracks until the train had pulled away again before moving forward.