Read Online Hidden Steel by Doranna Durgin - Free Book Online

believed things of her that conflicted with what she needed to believe of herself.
    She wished she could run her hand down short, sleek fur, feel the rumble of a deep purr. No point in that. So she turned her thoughts toward action. Not for the moment, but for the morrow. She’d had her freedom less than a day, and already it seemed that time was running out. Naia was still out there, still somehow tied to Mickey—somehow depending on her. Partners in crime, partners in business … Mickey didn’t know. But she was younger, and she evoked in Mickey all those feelings—
    Younger sister, acting out at school … surrounded by bullies, coming home with bruises and tears.
    Mickey had done something about that. She was sure of it. Slingshot.
    The image swam up from her thoughts with surprising assertiveness and would have sunk back down just as quickly if she hadn’t grabbed at it—learning to recognize those things of herself that were true.
    She’d best learn fast.
    Tomorrow she had to leave this place. She hadn’t wanted to face it, but in that, Steve was right. She couldn’t chance another encounter, one in which she wouldn’t pull her punches. And that car … those men. If they were looking for her as her instincts insisted, she couldn’t bring them here. She wasn’t the only troubled soul who considered this a safe place, and none of the others deserved her trouble raining down on them.
    But she wouldn’t go out there without more advantage than she had now. Steve …
    Steve had known about throwing knives. He’d known . He’d handled that letter opener as though he wanted to try his own mettle on it, seeing if he, too, could compensate for its weaknesses, assessing its turn speed and distance to bury the point in the wall.
    Tomorrow he had a woman’s self-defense class. Tomorrow, Mickey would see if his upstairs apartment held the bladed weapons she thought it would. And then it was time to leave this place so its people would be safe, time to find herself, time to find—and protect—Naia.
    It had been a luxury, thinking she might stay here until she could get some kind of a foothold in this maze that was apparently her life.
    It had been a mistake.

    * * * * *

    Morning at the pottery co-op came early—kilns firing up, people checking on projects—and Naia was only one of several to climb the narrow stairs to the second-floor warehouse before most people were brewing their first cup of coffee.
    None of the others had a chaperone, of course.
    An unhappy chaperone, not understanding why Naia had to make this trip into San Jose at this time of day.
    “This is my schedule,” Naia told her, walking briskly up those stairs and drawing from the early days of her rebellion to get the convincing tone in her voice—to hide her concerns and uncertainty. “If you prefer to stay on your own schedule, that would suit me perfectly.”
    Badra obviously preferred just that. But she had little recourse other than to say, “That isn’t an option.”
    “If it seemed you were imposing significant restrictions on me, it wouldn’t present the image of Irhaddan that my father is trying to portray,” Naia reminded her, turning around the narrow landing to take the final flight of stairs. Badra wasn’t a young woman and she wasn’t physically fit, and Naia in no way accommodated her. So it was natural that she reached the pottery co-op before Badra … not surprising that her firm stride took her straight to the shelves with their assigned project space, or that she’d managed to palm her short, concise note— need help/advice—blown?— between her fingers, slipping it into the dead-drop behind her own current project even as Badra entered the huge, open area. Naia kept her composure, pushing the hollowed brick back into place.
    Because Anna’s people had prepared it, had smoothed it top and bottom and inserted a slick Teflon base, the brick slid easily. Silently. And when Naia turned around to Badra, she had a