Down These Strange Streets (George R.R. Martin) (Kitty Norville 6.50)

“I’m allergic to sunlight.” It was the excuse he’d given throughout the war.

“Huh. Whoever heard of such a thing?” Rick shrugged in response. “You know what I was? Infantry. In Italy. I got shot twice, kid. But I gave more than I got. I’m a hell of a lot tougher than I look.”

“I don’t doubt it, sir.”

The guy wasn’t drunk—he smelled of sweat, unlaundered clothes, and aftershave, not alcohol. But he might have been a little bit crazy. He looked like he was waiting for Rick to start a fight.

“If I see this girl, you want me to tell her you’re looking for her?” Rick said.

“No. I’m sure she hasn’t been anywhere near here.” He slid off the stool and tugged his hat more firmly on his head. “You take care, kid.”

“You too, sir.”

Finally, he left, and Rick locked the door.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d returned to the storeroom and found Helen gone—fled, for whatever reason. But she was still there, sitting on the crate in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest, hugging herself.

“Someone was here looking for you,” Rick said.

She jerked, startled—he’d entered too quietly. Even so, she looked like someone who had a man with a gun looking for her.

“Who was he? What’d he look like?” she asked, and Rick described him. Her gaze grew anguished, despairing. “It’s Blake. I don’t know what to do.” She sniffed, wiping her nose as she started crying again. “He’ll kill me if he finds me, he’ll kill me.”

“If you don’t mind your coffee bitter, we can finish off what’s in the pot and you can tell me all about it.” He put persuasion into his voice, to set her at her ease. “I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“I don’t want to get you involved, Rick.”

“Then why did you come here?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

He poured a cup of coffee for her, pressed it into her hands, and waited for her to start.

“I got this job, right? It’s a good job, good pay. But sometimes . . . well. I make deliveries. I’m not supposed to ask what’s in the packages, I just go where they tell me to go and I don’t ask any questions.”

“You told me you got a job in a typing pool.”

“What was I supposed to do, tell you the truth?”

“No, you’re right. It wasn’t any of my business. Go on.”

“There’s a garage out east on Champa—”

“Rough neighborhood.”

“I’ve never had any trouble. Usually I just walk in, set the bag on the shelf, and walk right back out. Today I heard gunshots. I turned around and there’s Blake, he’d just shot Mikey—the guy from the garage who picks up the drops—and two other guys with him. He’s holding this gun, it’s still smoking. He shot them. I didn’t know what else to do; there’s a back door, so I ran for it, and he saw me, I know he saw me—”

He crouched beside her, took the coffee cup away, and pressed her hands together; they were icy. He didn’t have much of his own heat to help warm her with.

“Now he wants to tie off the loose ends,” Rick said.

“Of all the stupid timing; if I’d been five minutes earlier I’d have been fine, I wouldn’t have seen anything.”

Rick might argue that—she’d still be working as a runner for some kind of crime syndicate.

“Have you thought about going to the police? They could probably protect you. If they can lock Blake up you won’t have anything to worry about.”

“You think it really works like that? I can’t go to the cops. They’d arrest me just as fast as they’d arrest him.”