Max Collins - Before the Dawn

Max looked back and forth from Original Cindy to Kendra. Finally, she said, “Cool — let’s do it.”

“Next thing,” Original Cindy said, “we got to find a way to get some cash.”

Screwing up her face, Max said, “You mean like a job?”

“What else you gonna do, Boo... steal for a livin’?”

Max said nothing.

Kendra perked up, getting an idea. “We should go talk to Theo!”

The two women turned to her.

“Theo?” Max asked.

“Yeah, he lives next door with his wife, Jacinda, and their kid, cute kid, Omar. Place Theo works is always looking for help.”

Max and Original Cindy exchanged glances — that was a rarity in this economy.

Original Cindy said, “Well, let’s not keep the man waitin’... Original Cindy needs some money, honey, to allow her to live in the high style she’s become accustomed to... Luxuries, like eatin’ and breathin’ an’ shit.”

Kendra led the way and they knocked on the door to the adjacent apartment. A tiny, knee-high face peeked out, his eyes big and brown, his skin a dark bronze.

“Omar, is your daddy home?”

The adorable face nodded.

“Can we come in?”

Omar looked over his shoulder and a female voice said, “That you, Kendra?”

“Yeah, Jacinda — I’ve got a couple of friends with me. They’re cool.”

“Well, come on in, then.”

Stepping back, Omar, who couldn’t have been more than five, opened the door for the three women.

Max took in the apartment, which looked a lot like Kendra’s. A thin black woman in a brown T-shirt and tan slacks stood in front of the couch, an Asian man — shorter than his wife, his hair black, his eyes sparkling, his smile wide — standing next to her.

“Jacinda, Theo,” Kendra said, “this is Cindy and Max.”

“Original Cindy,” the woman corrected.

“Original Cindy. They both need jobs and I thought maybe Theo could hook them up.”

The smile never faded as he waved for the women to sit down on the couch. Jacinda moved to a chair with Omar climbing into her lap, Theo standing next to them, a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“There’s been a ton of turnover lately,” he said. “It’s a hard job... very physical, and you go into dangerous parts of the city, sometimes. Lots of times.”

Original Cindy asked, “What kinda job we talkin’ about, Theo? Repairing power lines? Filling in potholes?”

The smiling Asian asked, “Either of you young women ever been a bike messenger?”

They looked at each other and shook their heads.

Theo asked, “You got bikes?”

Max half grinned. “I do — Ninja, two-fifty.”

Theo’s smile actually grew wider. “Bi cycles. Either of you have a bicycle?”

“No,” Original Cindy said.

“But we will by tomorrow morning,” Max said.

Original Cindy looked at her disbelievingly, but Theo took it in stride, his smile unfailing.

“Excellent,” he said. “You can go in with me. The place is called Jam Pony Xpress. Normal, the fella that runs it, he’s a bit uptight... but he’s not evil. Pay’s lousy, hours are worse; but the other riders are a nice, easygoing group.”

“Original Cindy’s up for givin’ it a shot, least till somethin’ better comes along.”

“What is it exactly we’d be doing?” Max asked the Asian.

Original Cindy answered for him. “We ride around on bikes delivering packages to different places, what else?”

“I don’t know anything about the city,” Max said.

“You will, Boo, you will. Original Cindy’ll show you the way. Middle next week, you be tellin’ taxi drivers how to get around this town and shit.”

Theo said, “Bike messengers cover the whole city. Very interesting... they see everything and everyone in Seattle.”

That made Max smile.

“What you thinkin’, Boo?” Original Cindy asked.

“I’m thinking we were lucky to meet Kendra,” Max said, “and luckier to meet Theo.”

But she was thinking: Bike messenger. Ride all around town... an invisible person, wheeling here, there, everywhere... That could work.

That could work...

Housed in a run-down warehouse, a world of dented lockers and rough wood beams and ancient brick and obscene graffiti, Jam Pony Xpress turned out to be just the sort of madhouse where Max could blend in and lie low, while she looked for her sibling.

Having had the whole trip up the coast to replay that grainy video in the theater of her mind, Max was now a gnat’s eyelash away from convincing herself that the “young rebel” she’d seen kicking cop ass on that news show was indeed her brother Seth.

The X5 didn’t know how long it would take to find him, but this innocuous cover was looking like it could work for the long haul: no one, not even Moody or Fresca or any of the Chinese Clan, had any idea she’d booked for Seattle. Dodging Manticore all these years had given her very few peaceful nights of sleep; but somehow here — in Original Cindy’s Emerald City — Max felt safer, more underground even than in LA, where she’d drawn attention to herself and her singular abilities by her cat-burglar activities.

As Original Cindy had predicted, the bike messenger gig allowed Max to learn the city at a far faster rate than if she’d just been bouncing around on the Ninja, hoping to get lucky in her search for Seth. Living with Kendra in the off-the books apartment was working out just fine, too, though the rent was a bitch, thanks to that greedy bent cop.

But living in a squatter’s hotel was perfect: no sign of Max would appear anywhere in the city records, and amiable airhead Kendra was easy to live with and was turning into a good friend.

At the same time, Max’s friendship had grown with Original Cindy, cemented by Max staking Cindy for the cost of the bike you needed to even apply at Jam Pony. The two women were spending almost every leisure moment together, with Kendra frequently in the mix.

Original Cindy had found her own pad, after only a week at Jam Pony. Not only was she more independent, her crib was closer to Max’s apartment than the friend’s place she’d initially crashed at. Every morning Max would hook up with Theo, then bounce over on their bicycles to pick up Original Cindy, and the three of them would ride together. They would get coffee and bagels, stop in a park on the way and eat, then wheel on in to work.

It was during these light, chatty breakfasts that Original Cindy, Max, and Theo started getting to know more about each other. Max knew she was learning a lot more about her friends than they were finding out about her, and sometimes she could feel Cindy’s hurt vibe that Max was remaining overly secretive.

But since O. C. and Theo didn’t seem to be genetically enhanced killing machines, developed in a supersecret government lab, they had a tad fewer secrets than she did.

A month had glided by since Max had left Moody and the Chinese Clan, and the only thing she had to complain about (to herself, that is) was that she hadn’t found Seth... hadn’t even turned up a lead. Even the news had been devoid of any mention of the “young rebel” in league with “Eyes Only.”

Of course, as good as Max was at looking, Seth would be better at hiding. He’d had the same training as her, and — like Max — had been on the run a long time, knew how to cover his tracks far better than she knew how to uncover them. After years of running and hiding, Max found it difficult to turn the process around, to look through the hunter’s end of the telescope.