Read Online White Bone by Ridley Pearson - Free Book Online Page B

the wrong direction for Knox’s taste, saleswoman-to-guide. He could have taken it as a payoff for the guide steering the tourists in this direction, but the look the guide gave Knox told him it involved him. Another surge of adrenaline. Knox had three exit strategies at the ready.
    As the guide herded the rest of the group to a larger shop across the hard-packed dirt, she blocked Knox with an extended arm. Knox stopped, every nerve sparking.
    “You, Mr. Knox, are certain to find this other shop the more interesting.”
    He told her he was in no mood for a sales pitch.
    “These particular goods are special. They are important to you, Mr. Knox. This shop is
just for you
.”
    “I don’t think so.” Knox could see himself outnumbered and pushed through the shop’s black plastic wall, carried deeper into Kibera. Into a van. Into a pit.
    The guide rose to her toes. “You
must
trust me.”
    “But I don’t,” Knox said. He rummaged through some of the craftwork laid out on a board supported by inverted milk crates, ready to run. Dried pieces of eggshells, reinvented as decorations. Paper litter, now sculpture; leopards, gorillas and chess sets made of discarded computer parts.
    “Please, mister,” said the stall’s bone-thin proprietor. He had drooping eyes and a pencil neck. “More in back.” He motioned Knox toward the plastic wall at the back. Knox didn’t move.
    “This was arranged for you,” the guide whispered.
    “I’ll bet it was.” Knox reached inside the Scottevest, the Mary Poppins bag of windbreakers. Inside its seventeen zippered pocketshe carried everything from money to a switchblade, which he now palmed and hid up his right sleeve.
    He couldn’t blame the tour guide or hope to get anything out of her. She’d been paid to deliver him. The people behind such arrangements created multiple layers of self-protection.
    “You go first,” Knox said.
    “I must see to the group,” she said.
    “And you can. Right after you go through and hold open that sheet.” To his surprise, she didn’t quibble.
    “Very well.” She stepped forward.
    Knox grabbed the back of her shorts. She caught her breath. He held tightly, cinched the shorts into her crotch to remind her who was in control. He nudged her forward, watching the bottom of her short-cropped hairline. The neck was the tell-all of danger. As she drew the plastic sheet aside, the static electricity lifted her fine hairs. But her neck did not incriminate her. Knox glanced over her head to see a fashionably dressed, blue-jeaned African woman in her early to mid-thirties. His first guess was journalist. His second, lawyer. No wedding ring. Hands empty, she carried a messenger bag purse, slung at her side.
    The shack had walls assembled of junkyard materials but was sturdily built. The crate the woman sat on was immediately adjacent to someone’s former screen door, now blockaded by an improvised metal crossbar. At first blush, it appeared that the woman was being cautious about their security.
    “Leave us,” she said to the guide. She spoke with confidence, the tone of one in charge.
    Knox released his grip and the guide slipped around and past him. “We will not leave,” she told Knox. “You will find me and join us after. She knows where.”
    Knox swallowed dryly as he looked back at the mud-rutted lane. He propped open the plastic sheet in order to see out.
    Before him was a cramped, sour space: a mattress made of three garbage bags filled with Styrofoam peanuts. A tattered piece of a former green-and-white awning apparently served as a blanket. A wall of stacked cardboard boxes held everything from food to toiletries.
    He moved closer. The woman had baker’s-chocolate skin, haunting brown eyes and a nearly shaved head.
    “I am called Maya Vladistok,” she said.
    “I left you a phone message.” She’d been on Winston’s list.
    “Indeed. And I am answering that message.”
    The two shook hands—hers were callused, with short nails.