Ace shook his head and opened his mouth. Alex turned away and tuned them out. He ignored the argument behind him and crossed to a desk. Deliberately slanting his letters far to the left and shifting his neat block lettering to a casual scrawl, he dipped a pen in ink and jotted down the address of the safe house. If she got picked up, this wouldn’t come back to him. He couldn’t save her ass again if he was in the cell next to hers.
He blew on the ink until it dried, then folded the paper and turned back to them. She stood serenely, as if waiting for him. Ace was still infuriated. Alex held the slip of paper aloft between his first two fingers, waving it back and forth between them as if unsure who would take it. After several seconds, he made as if he’d finally realized Ace would not be going along. He pulled a sad face at the man before crossing and giving the address to Lena.
Yeah, I’m an asshole. Oh, well.
“You should leave in about twenty minutes,” he told her, all business. “You’ll be traveling away from every area they have the manpower to watch so far. Blend in, and you should be good. Remember food and water. The address is between two storefronts, around back down the alley. Get in. Hunker down. Sit tight, ‘cause the streets will be crawling with agents in a matter of hours. I’ll be there as soon as it’s safe to make a move.”
She nodded. Her arms went around herself.
“I will be there,” Alex continued. “This time…do us both a favor and actually wait for me.”
She cracked a smile. That was good. If she realized how badly she’d misjudged him, maybe she’d stop.
Chapter 10
Lena wove through a crowd of people. Some moved against her to get to their homes and others hurried with her to make it to work. She settled the knit bag holding flatbread, hard cheese, and water further up her shoulder for security and focused on blending in. At least she looked like she belonged. She’d quickly showered away the dust and grit coating her skin and hair and shed the dress—her mind veered from the memory and instead focused on the clothes she wore now.
Ace had found them on one of his trade excursions. She’d left them with him because she had little use for bright, lapis-colored, antique blouses and silky teal skirts in her everyday life in the desert. Now they helped her look like one of the brightly clad young women who worked the power plants but hoped to catch the eye of someone in the Council building. Well, except for the bloom so bright Lena imagined she could see it herself from the corners of her eyes.
Reyes had commented on it before he left, wishing that they had some way for her to ground. It wasn’t like she could march into the grounding center. After what she’d done, the accumulated power zinging through her now would discharge spectacularly. She hoped anyone noticing the bloom would dismiss it as a young woman pushing her grounding way past the limits of what was smart.
So far, so good. Passersby were immersed in their own thoughts. The foot traffic was swift and free-flowing, citizens moving with heads down, hardly seeming happy in a city that billed itself as the comfortable, fair alternative to the unpowered wilderness.
A gust of southwestern spring wind roared through the street like a moving wall, pushing at the people. Dirt rose into the air in visible eddies. She automatically narrowed her eyes and turned her head away from the dust-filled wind that sent small, unsecured items rolling down the street with it. With her eyes squeezed into narrow slits and watering at the grit, she almost missed the faded lettering above the boarded up storefront. She darted into the small doorway. An equally faded notice informed her that Longoria General Goods had moved.
She steeled herself against the wind again as she stepped out of the slight protection the little alcove had provided. Only a few quick steps down from it, though, she could turn into the narrow alleyway between the two adobe buildings. When she reached the end of the building to her left, she turned behind it. The tiny little add-on building nestled in the far corner of the small lot. As promised, an electric lock secured it, tucked away to be as unobtrusive as possible.
Lena settled her hand against it, exhaling as she reached out to the Dust. The lock snicked open, and she slipped inside. She took the time to add her own special touch when she re-locked it. Now the Dust would send her a silent alarm if anyone attempted to open it.
She turned to the small, spare room. It covered only the essentials. A narrow cot ran along the wall across from the door. In the far corner across from the cot sat a lidded bucket. Being trapped in this tiny space with the smell of whatever waste she added to the bucket wasn’t ideal, but at least someone had provided one. She’d wait as long as she could.