She set down the backpack and removed a mountaineering grappling hook—four steel prongs she had coated with spray rubber and attached to a length of knotted climbing rope. She re-shouldered the pack, took hold of the rope, and swung the grappling hook up onto the fire-escape landing. The hooks caught with a quiet thud, and she was up the rope, arm over arm, in under five seconds. She paused on the first landing to reel in the rope, scooted noiselessly up the remaining sets of stairs, raised the window, and slipped into her apartment.
The lights were off, but there were so many windows exposed to the city’s ambient glow that the space was never really dark. Everything was exactly as she’d left it: mattress on the floor in the corner. Desk and chair alongside it. Dresser and wardrobe opposite. Next to the window and fire escape, a small shrine. Several judo and jiu-jitsu gis hanging from pegs on the wall. A cinderblock-and-plank bookshelf containing a row of volumes, among them Alice Vachss’s Sex Crimes, and The Essential Abolitionist, John Vanek’s comprehensive guide to human trafficking. Everything else belonged to the shop—drill presses, grinders, lathes, and the other tools of the trade, most of it older, put in storage here on the third floor as the shop acquired newer, more efficient equipment.
She checked the mobile phone she’d left on the rug alongside the mattress to corroborate that she’d been in all night. Not that it would come to that, but she’d put away enough rapists based on cell phone metadata to know not to take the chance. No messages. Good, everything was good. Just a few small matters to take care of, and she could relax.
She opened a window on the southwest side of the loft and turned on the industrial fan facing out from it. The electric motor and loud rush of the blades brought the still space to life, and a cool breeze immediately drifted past her as air was drawn in from the fire-escape window and sucked out by the fan. She grabbed a steel bucket and placed it under a shredder, moving quickly and easily, the layout and the machinery all comfortable to her, familiar. The press of a button, and the shredder started up with a loud whine, its twin shafts spinning toward each other, the teeth of each sliding smoothly into the grooves of its counterpart. She tossed in the stolen plate. There was a brief metal shriek, and then the plate was gone, reduced to confetti-sized scraps deposited at the bottom of the bucket.
She shut off the shredder and carried the bucket over to an oxyacetylene torch next to the fan. She attached a rosebud tip, pulled on a pair of welder’s goggles, fired up the torch, and melted the license plate scraps, keeping the torch moving to make sure she didn’t go through the bottom of the pail. The contractor bag with the wig and other potentially contaminated materials went in next. She scoured everything down with the 6,000-degree flame. Billows of black smoke rose from the pail like an evil spirit, but the fan sucked it all away and expelled it, and in seconds, the contents of the pail had been reduced to an undifferentiated, glowing lump.
She killed the torch, removed the goggles, closed her eyes, and let out a long breath. Out of danger now. And nearly done.
Keeping the lights out, she stripped off everything—the gloves, the boots, the leathers, even her underwear. The riding gear got hung near the door. The underwear she threw into a small washing machine in the kitchen, along with some other laundry, running it on a hot cycle. She grabbed a yogurt drink from the refrigerator, keeping one eye closed to preserve her night vision against the interior light, chugged it, and chased it with a big glass of water. Then she took the hottest shower she could stand, washing her hair, scrubbing her body with an exfoliating cloth, standing in the billowing steam to let the heat boil the last of the night’s tension out of her. She wasn’t worried about the open windows. The Glock, always close at hand, was on the toilet tank next to her.
When she was done drying off, she went back to the shredder. The contents of the bucket had cooled, and she threw the entire thing in, bucket and all, collecting the newly made confetti in a new contractor bag. She’d get rid of the bag in some dumpster tomorrow, but even if it were found here tonight, it could no longer incriminate anyone in anything.
The first light was beginning to show in the eastern sky. She turned off the fan and closed and locked the two windows. Just one last thing to do.
She knelt on a mat in front of the shrine—a small wooden Buddha, an incense brazier, and a photograph of her and Nason, all that remained to her of when they were girls in the forest. She set the Glock on the mat next to her, lit the candle and the incense, and placed her palms together at her forehead in the traditional Sampeah, closing her eyes and dipping her head forward as she did so.
“I love you, little bird,” she whispered in Lahu. “I will never forget. I will never stop looking. And one day I will find you.”
She paused, and added in English, “I’ll learn something at the funeral. Something I can use against Weed Tyler. I’m so close, little bird. I’ve waited so long. And I know you have, too. I know.”