Page 127 of Long Way Down

First light kissed the edges of the curtains with silver and salmon by the time everyone was gone. Dixie stood beside her bed, gaze fixed and sightless, weaving slightly on her feet. Pongo felt the hard drag of exhaustion, and knew she was in even worse shape. But she hadn’t taken off her boots or turned down the covers. Regarded her own, still-plumped pillows as if they might bite.

“Do you wanna stay?” he asked. “Or go to my place?”

She reached out, slowly, as though in a trance, and plucked at the edge of her coverlet; it was a plush gray, with the faintest stripes, and he’d awakened more than a few times swaddled in its cushy folds. She found a loose thread and tugged at it with her nails, lips slowly curving downward in the faintest of frowns.

He didn’t think she would respond, but then, finally, she murmured, “I don’t wanna stay here.”

One of the many knots in his belly loosened. “Okay, cool. Don’t blame you. Wanna pack a bag?”

Moving with the slowness of someone underwater, she went to her closet, pushed open the doors, and dug out an old, battered leather duffel bag. She set it open on the floor and started pulling clothes off hangers and folding them inside.

She was so…calm. He knew that wasn’t right. That she was in fact a bad combination of over-tired, shocked from having shot someone, and now freaked out by the message left on her door. For his own part, he was two steps away from full-blown panic. There’d been a moment, after she’d kicked the shit out of Doug Waxman’s face and laid him out cold, when he’d thought it was all over save the fallout. He was no stranger to fallout, and had known that it would take her time to get over what she’d been forced to do, and to sort out all the legalities of her IAB investigation, and tying up the loose ends of the case. But the worst was over.

He’d thought. And then he’d seen those words written on her door, and even if he wasn’t a forensic scientist with swabs, and microscopes and computers that could tell him if the blood on the door belonged to a diabetic or an albino, he’d known one thing: that blood had beenfresh. Still dripping at the edges, shiny wet. And there was no way Doug Waxman had been the one to write with it.

An accomplice?

A copycat?

Or was Waxman even the rapist at all?

He laid his hand on his gun and peeked past the curtains out onto the street below. The city was waking up, traffic crawling past, headlights illuminating all the still-dark nooks and crannies at ground level. The newsstand was open, steam from the coffee machine twining in gauzy gray ribbons that shredded as a construction worker toting his lunchbox walked through them.

He looked for threats: for a face peeking around a corner, a hooded figure watching the windows above. Nothing.

He checked Dixie again – she was still folding clothes robotically; it was damn spooky, to be honest – then went to peep out the other windows.

Now that she’d agreed to leave, he felt like a clock was ticking a countdown to their departure.Gotta leave, gotta leave. Someone knew her address. Someone had left her that message.

The back of his neck crawled with nerves, and he wished he had his bike; wished that they didn’t have to rely on a cab or uber. They needed fast, and they needed untraceable. He wanted her off the grid, like, yesterday.

When the tiny window above the kitchen sink yielded nothing but a view of the brick wall next door, he went to the bathroom to collect her toiletries, hoping he gathered everything she’d need.

His phone pinged while he was lining shampoo, conditioner, and body wash up on the counter, and he pulled it out to check who’d texted him.

Kat, to his surprise.Ur girl ok?

Pongo stood for a moment, blinking at the phone, hand stuck in a vanity drawer. “Aw, dude, you care,” he said to himself, and then an idea struck. If the guy was awake anyway…

Yeah. Someone found her place. Can u give us a ride?

He was able to find a little zippered bag for her toothbrush, razor, and moisturizer while Kat deliberated. He found her makeup drawer, debated, and finally closed it. He wasn’t going to attempt to decide between the various concealers, blushes, bronzers, etc. She didn’t wear much besides a little mascara most days, anyway.

He returned to the bedroom and found her standing, lost, strap of the bag over her shoulder. It broke his heart a little, how pale, and rumpled, and out of it she looked, the bandage on her face reminding him just how small and breakable she was.

His phone pinged.Sure. Address?

~*~

Pongo made them coffee while they waited for the ride he said was coming. The heat, the smell, a generous splash of her favorite creamer and at least three spoons of sugar, wow, perked her up a little. Some of the haze cleared…and in its place, in crowded a bone-shaking fear that left her cold deep inside, where the coffee and the hoodie she’d tugged on couldn’t reach. Her vision had a certain too-bright, neon glow around the edges, and the caffeine put a tremor in her hands and lungs.

“You didn’t call the club, did you?” she asked.

“Just a friend,” he said, and his expression kept flicking between careful – with her – and guarded, when he glanced toward the windows. He had his cut swept back, and had shifted his holster forward so it rested at his hip, in easy reach.

Her pulse picked up. “I can’t go out of town. I have to go into IAB tomorrow, and I–”

“It’s okay, it’s not far.” He gave her a fleeting smile and checked his phone. “He’ll be here soon.”

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