Lev Rosen - Depth

“What are you doing here?” Simone asked. “Some dry out-of-towner get held up by a sea rat, and you’re here to take the statement?”

“Apparent suicide in room 3307.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Simone turned back to her drink. The ice fell against her lips, bitter and cold. She put the empty glass down.

“I didn’t know the guy, nothing to apologize for. How about you? Little early to be on your second.”

“You watch me finish my first?”

“Took time to get the nerve up to come over.”

“Since when do you lack for nerve?”

“Since you came into the picture.”

He smiled, then creased his brow, realizing what he had just said. Then he looked down and ran his hand through his brown curls.

“So,” he asked after a beat, as if pretending there hadn’t been a moment of unsaid things, “working on a case?”

“Yeah,” she said, “can’t live off salt.”

“Something interesting?” he asked, sitting on the stool next to her.

“Not at the moment,” she said with a shrug. In her ear, Lou was complaining about how stingy traders from the EU were and asking Henry to close up. The door slammed, leaving Henry alone. Simone shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“Anything you can talk about?”

“Usual wife thinks husband is cheating story.”

“And do you think he’s cheating?”

“I try not to think anything until I know for certain.”

He nodded, looking steadily into her eyes. She noticed his chest inflate slightly and knew he was going to start a real conversation. But in her ear, the door slammed again and locked. Henry had left.

“I gotta go,” Simone said before Peter could speak.

“Oh,” he said, exhaling.

“Case,” she said, trying to look disappointed they couldn’t talk. “It’s walking out the door.” Peter turned to the door of the hotel. It was empty. In her ear, Henry was out of the office and walking somewhere already. “Other door,” she said. He looked at her as though she were trying to get rid of him. “Really,” she said, trying to smile.

“Well, be careful, soldier,” he said, standing. “I should get back to the station, anyway. Kluren doesn’t like us taking time off to talk to…” He let his sentence fade.

“Take care,” Simone said, smiling. Peter grinned at her. She didn’t know if they should hug, but she didn’t have time to find out, so she just nodded and put a hand on his shoulder for a moment before heading for the door. She had a flash of memory to their last time in bed together, the cool roundness of his thighs and the soft pressure of his nose against her neck as he kissed her. Then, her sneaking out in the middle of the night and not returning his calls. It could never have worked, of course. She was right to end it when she did. She missed him. But then she missed a lot of people. One more wasn’t going to make much difference.

Outside, the mist had risen up like a soft wall, and the temperature had taken its usual early-evening plummet. The sensors in Simone’s trench coat felt this, and the thin gel that lined her coat began warming up, but the initial shock of the cold scattered the little traces of inebriation that had muddled her head.

Henry was nowhere in sight, and there were a few directions he could have gone. If he was going straight home, he would be taking the bridge that went past the cruise ship Xanadu , but if he wasn’t… Following her gut, she took off down the bridge towards downtown, where he had met The Blonde.

The sun had started to set, and the fog was getting heavier. Rose and gray mixed as darkness overtook the city. The buildings grew harder to see, but you could always hear the water rushing underfoot. She walked quickly, hoping Henry would come into sight through the mist. She should have hit him with a tracker, too, but then she would have needed to actually hide the bug on his jacket and get it back later. Or hit him with two dissolving bugs. She caught sight of a yellow jacket like the one he’d been wearing last night and took off after it. She was only a few steps behind him, but in the fog, no one would notice a tail. To make sure it was him, she coughed loudly. The cough echoed in her ear. She fell back a little, now that she’d found him. He walked down small winding backway bridges, where there were few people around. Some didn’t have banisters, and the waves splashed over them onto her feet. She would be easier to notice now, so she hung back even more, speeding up occasionally to get a look at him, then falling back again.

She couldn’t tell where he was heading. That worried her. They seemed to be moving farther and farther from central downtown, heading west and north. New York was always dangerous, but the more central areas of the city at least played at being civilized. The people who lived out in West Midtown were people who couldn’t pretend anymore: MouthFoamers who would do anything for a fix when they weren’t catatonic on a bridge; people who had given up everything but their own lives, hoping someone else would take them; people who had come to the city looking for an escape but found themselves completely trapped, clawing at anything they thought might offer some form of release. She could handle herself out here, but she didn’t think Henry could, so the ease with which he walked felt wrong. She didn’t think it was a trap—though that was always a possibility—but she sensed something off. She checked the small pistol inside her boot, making sure it was easy to reach.

Henry stopped. She heard his footsteps fall silent on her earpiece. His breathing seemed a little heavier, too. Wherever he was, it was where he was going to stay. She looked ahead. A short building, barely a full story above water, was in front of her. She couldn’t see anywhere else he could be waiting. She quietly walked closer until she got a better read on the building. There was a large hole in the wall leading in and another hole at the other end. The building itself seemed to have been totally cleared out—just bare concrete walls and floor and fluorescent lighting making the place glow. No shadows. Nowhere to hide. A good place to meet someone you didn’t totally trust. A bad place for Simone to eavesdrop.

She looked around for someplace higher, where she could see who came and went. She toyed with the idea of climbing to the top of the building itself, but there was no fire escape, and it would have been a noisy undertaking. She settled for a bridge a little ways away, but higher up. It faced the side of the building. She’d be able to see who came and went but not what happened inside.

She took her camera out again, watched the fog, and listened to Henry’s heavy breathing in her ear. Someone else approached the building. All Simone could make out was a shadow, a hat, and a trench coat. She took some photos anyway, hoping she could enhance them later. Henry’s voice came in clear on her earpiece.

“Why are you here?” he asked. Apparently, this wasn’t the person he was waiting for. There was a long pause; she couldn’t hear the other person’s voice. “Yes,” Henry said, “I did. You didn’t care about it.” Damn. Still nothing but Henry’s voice. “Not yet.” The other person must have been standing far away or talking softly—like he knew he was being observed. “No, I won’t. I need it.”

Then, all at once, the sound of Henry yelling “what?” and a gunshot. Simone ran for the building. Too fast—she slipped on a wet plank of the bridge and went skidding towards the edge. No railings. Once she hit the water, she’d be dead. She’d be sucked under by currents or thrown into underwater debris. She grabbed for the space between the slats, and caught one, but she was already dangling over the water, her toes just touching the surface, her chin and neck just barely higher than the bridge. Splinters dug into her fingers, and she could feel blood making her skin slippery. She took a deep breath. She wasn’t falling anymore—not until her fingers slipped off—but a wrong move and the wood she clung to could snap off. She turned her head towards the building anyway. A shadow was leaving the building from the opposite exit, carrying something large. Carefully, she clawed her way back onto the bridge as quickly as she could, the rough wood gouging into her palms over and over. She pulled slowly, trying to test each moment of pressure so nothing cracked or snapped. It took far longer than she wanted, but soon she was back on the bridge. There was no time to catch her breath, to dwell on her near-death plunge, to pluck the splinters from her bloodied hands. She ran down the bridge and around another, heading for the building. The bug in her ear fizzled out into static. She reached the room, her heart pounding, and stepped slowly inside.