Her arm began to ache, and blood was dripping on the computer case. Scowling, Grace pressed her right hand over the wound. She had acted with a disgusting lack of presence of mind, she thought as she strode along. She had felt so tough and well prepared because she’d had a kitchen paring knife on her belt, and instead she was so far from being street smart she hadn’t even thought of the knife.
Look at me now, she thought furiously. She was walking openly down a busy sidewalk, dripping blood marking her every step. She could walk smack into a cop at any second, and that was only the most immediate danger. Any number of people were taking note of her, and Parrish was capable of putting a small army on the streets to locate her. Surely the search had moved to Chicago by now, it being the most logical place for her to hide, not to mention affording her the resources she needed to work. She had to assume the worst, and that meant she had to get off the street and change her appearance, immediately.
Just ahead of her, a couple entered a busy bar and grill. Grace barely slowed down, darting through the closing door. She stood close to them, angled so that the man’s body hid her bleeding arm from the hostess, who smiled as she asked, “Smoking or non?” and plucked three menus from a stack.
“Non,” replied the man. The hostess checked her seating chart, made a notation, then led them through the maze of close-crowded tables and booths. Grace spied the sign indicating the location of the rest rooms down a narrow hall, and she walked swiftly in that direction.
The ladies’ room was small, dark, and empty. The decor didn’t invite people to linger. The lighting was dim, and swallowed by the dark glazed tiles of the floor and walls. A pink and purple neon flamingo was poised over the upper right corner of the mirror, casting a decidedly unnatural tint on the face of anyone repairing her makeup or admiring herself. Grace did neither. Instead she pulled several paper towels out of the holder and swiftly washed her hands and arm. Blood welled from the cut as fast as the water rinsed it away.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she whispered. Glancing in the mirror, she saw that the blond wig was askew. Hastily, using one hand, she removed the pins that still halfway anchored the wig in place, then snatched it from her head. Her long, matted hair tumbled down her back.
She needed the use of both hands, if only for a minute. Taking one of the folded brown paper towels, she pressed it over the bleeding wound, holding it until the paper adhered to her arm. The red stain immediately began spreading, but for the moment she wasn’t dripping. She stuffed the wig into the computer case, wound her hair into a knot on top of her head, and pinned it in place. Pulling out her baseball cap, she jammed it on and pulled the bill down low over her eyes.
Using her arm made it ache even worse. The makeshift pad was soaked with blood already, and coming loose. She peeled it off and tossed it into the trash, then pressed another towel over the wound. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she stared at her pale, sickly reflection in the mirror. Essentially the wound was negligible; she wasn’t likely to bleed to death, and she still had the use of her arm. Niall wouldn’t even have paused for so paltry a wound, but continued the battle.
And so had she, Grace realized with a spurt of surprise. Granted, her counterattack hadn’t been well thought out, but she hadn’t even realized she’d been cut until the fight was over. Niall would be proud of her, after he got over his murderous rage that she’d been hurt at all—
“I’m losing it,” Grace said aloud, blinking. She must have lost more blood than she had realized, to be thinking of Niall as if he were someone she actually knew, instead of an obscure medieval warrior who had been dead for hundreds of years. She would be better off figuring out how to bandage her arm, and with what.
The answer followed on the heels of the thought. Holding the pad of towels in place with her right hand, she used her left to untie her shoe. Slipping out of it, she removed her sock, then shoved her bare foot back into the shoe. The sock had considerable stretch in the fabric. She laid the sock on the vanity top, then positioned her arm across it. Using her teeth and her free hand, she knotted the sock around her arm, pulling it as tight as possible over the pad of towels and then knotting it again for security.
The makeshift bandage wouldn’t last long, but it should do to get her home. The effect was pretty noticeable, so she pulled off her other shoe and sock, and tied the remaining sock around her right arm. At least now it looked as if she’d done it for some reason other than necessity, maybe insanity, or membership in a gang. Socks around the arms weren’t exactly in the same class as ’do rags, but there were a lot of crazies in Chicago.
An hour later, Grace let herself into the boardinghouse. She intended to slip quietly up the stairs, but as luck would have it she met Harmony herself in the hallway.
“That’s some getup,” Harmony drawled, taking in the baseball cap, the absence of the blond wig, and the socks tied around Grace’s arms.
“Thanks,” Grace muttered.
“Arm’s bleeding,” Harmony observed.
“I know.” Grace started up the stairs.
“No point in running. Anybody in my house gets in trouble, I want to know what it’s about, in case the cops gonna beat my door down in the middle of the night.” Her green eyes narrowed, Harmony was right on Grace’s heels as they climbed the stairs.
“I was mugged,” Grace briefly explained. “Or rather, someone tried to mug me.”
“No shit. Whadja do, scare ’im off with that wussy little knife you carry?”
“I didn’t even think about it,” she confessed ruefully, wondering how Harmony knew about the knife.
“Good thing. Any self-respecting mugger would’ve laughed, then made you eat it.” Harmony waited while Grace unlocked the door, then followed her inside. After eyeing the spartan neatness of the room, the tall woman turned her attention back to Grace. “Okay, Wynne, let’s see the arm.”
After two weeks, Grace had accustomed herself to her pseudonym enough that she no longer hesitated at the name. Two weeks was also long enough for her to learn that Harmony Johnson considered her home her castle, over which she had a dictator’s authority, and anything that went on in her house was her business.
Silently she untied the bloodstained sock. Beneath it, the pad of paper towel was completely soaked. She removed that, too, and Harmony studied the sullenly oozing cut.
“Needs stitches,” she pronounced. “And when was your last tetanus shot?”
“Not quite two years ago,” Grace replied after a little thought, and with some relief. She hadn’t even considered tetanus. Fortunately she’d updated all her vaccinations before going with Ford on a dig in Mexico. “No stitches, though. I can’t afford an emergency room.”
“Sure you can’t,” Harmony said shrewdly. “Any street bum can see a doctor for a cut, but you can’t? More likely you don’t want to answer no questions. Anyway, forget about a hospital. You want, I can sew that up for you, if you don’t mind not having nothing for pain.”
“You can?” Grace asked, astonished.
“Sure. I useta do it for the other girls all the time. Wait here while I get my kit.”
While Harmony was gone, Grace pondered her landlady’s undoubtedly colorful past. She wondered how successful a streetwalker Harmony would have been, with her brusque manner, unusual height, and equally unusual looks. Today she was wearing scarlet leotards and a sleeveless scarlet T-shirt, which revealed remarkably well-muscled legs and arms. Men who frequented prostitutes were looking for sexual gratification rather than sexual attraction, but still, how many would choose a woman who was not only taller than most men, but more masculine? Grace would have thought Harmony a cross-dresser or even a transsexual, if it hadn’t been for a throwaway comment she had once made about having a miscarriage when she was fifteen and never getting pregnant again. Modern surgical procedure could outwardly change someone’s sex, but it couldn’t retain fertility for the patient.
Awkwardly, because her left arm was really aching now and she used
only her right hand, she retrieved the tangled wig and bloodstained knife from the computer case. She laid the knife on the tiny round table she used for eating, and gave the frizzy wig a shake before placing it on the bed. Remembering it was supposed to be bad luck to put a hat on a bed, she wondered wryly if a wig qualified for equal status in the superstition.
Harmony returned, carrying a bottle of whiskey, a small black box, and an aerosol can. A clean white towel was draped over her arm. She set the first three items on the table, and eyed the bloody knife before pushing it aside and placing the towel over the clear space. “Yours?” she asked, nodding toward the knife.
“I guess it is now. I knocked it out of his hand.” Exhausted, Grace sank into one of the chairs and laid her left arm across the towel.
Harmony’s eyebrows rose. “No shit? He musta been surprised.” Taking the other chair, she opened the bottle of whiskey and shoved it toward Grace. “Take a few good swallows. Won’t stop it from hurting as bad, but you won’t care as much.”
Grace warily eyed the bottle. It was an expensive Scotch whiskey, but she had never drunk whiskey before and had no idea how it would sit. Given her exhaustion, and the fact she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, it was likely to knock her on her butt. Shrugging, she seized the bottle and tipped it to her mouth. She could get her arm stitched while on her butt as well as she could sitting in a chair.
The smoky taste of the whiskey lay smooth and rich on her tongue, but when she swallowed, it was like swallowing fire. The liquid flame seared its way down her esophagus and into her stomach, stealing her breath along the way. Her face turned red and she began gasping and wheezing, trying to draw enough oxygen into her lungs to cough. Everything inside her was in revolt. Her eyes watered; her nose ran. She coughed violently, bent over at the waist while spasms wracked her. Finally, when she could breathe half normally again, she tilted the bottle and took another healthy swallow.
When the second bout had ended, she straightened to find Harmony watching and waiting with unruffled patience. “Not much of a drinker, are you?” she observed neutrally.
“No,” Grace said, and drank again. Perhaps the nerves in her esophagus had already been burned out, or perhaps they were merely numb. For whatever reason, this time she didn’t choke. The fire was spreading through her entire body, making her head swim. She broke out in a sweat. “Should I take another one?”
No smile cracked Harmony’s angular face, but the corners of her green eyes crinkled in a subtle expression of amusement. “Depends on whether or not you want to be conscious.”
Suspecting that she had only begun to feel the effects of the whiskey, Grace pushed the bottle aside and capped it. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Let’s wait another few minutes.” Harmony leaned back in the chair and crossed her long legs. “Guess the guy was after that computer you tote around like it was a baby.”
Grace nodded, unaware that her head bobbed unsteadily. “Right outside the library. People saw what was happening, but no one did anything.”
“Guess not. He’d already proved he meant business with the knife.”
“But even after I’d knocked the knife out of his hand, and tripped him, and was punching him in the face, no one tried to help.” Grace’s voice rose indignantly.
Harmony blinked, and blinked again. She threw her head back and a deep, full-bodied laugh erupted from her throat. Rocking back and forth, she whooped until tears ran down her face and she was gasping for breath, much as if she had been into the whiskey bottle herself. When she could breathe, she hunched first one shoulder and then the other to dry her wet cheeks on her shirt. “Hell, girl!” she said, still giggling a little. “By that time they were probably more scared of you than they were of that stupid son of a bitch!”
Startled, Grace considered that. She was much taken by the possibility. Her face brightened. “I did good, didn’t I?”
“You did good to come out of it alive,” Harmony scolded, despite the grin on her face. “Girl, if you’re gonna get in fights, somebody’s gotta teach you how to fight. I would, but I ain’t got time. Tell you what. I’ll fix you up with this guy I know, meanest little greaser son of a bitch on God’s green earth. He’ll teach you how to fight dirty, and that’s what you need. Somebody as little as you don’t need to be doing something as dumb as fighting fair.”
Maybe it was the whiskey thinking for her, but that sounded like a fine idea to Grace. “No more fighting fair,” she agreed. Parrish certainly wouldn’t fight fair, and neither did the street scum she would have to deal with. She needed to learn how to stay alive, by whatever means possible.
Harmony tore open another antiseptic pad and carefully washed Grace’s arm, examining the cut from every angle. “Not too deep,” she finally said. She opened a small brown bottle of antiseptic and poured it directly into the wound. Grace caught her breath, expecting it to burn like the whiskey, but all it did was sting a little. Then Harmony took up the aerosol can and sprayed a cold mist on the wound. “Topical analgesic,” she muttered, the medical terminology somehow fitting right in with her street slang. Grace wouldn’t have been surprised if her landlady had begun quoting Shakespeare, or conjugating Latin verbs. Whatever Harmony was now or had been in the past, she certainly was not ordinary.
With perfect calm she watched Harmony thread a small, curved suturing needle and bend over her arm. Delicately squeezing with her left hand, Harmony held the edges of the wound together and deftly began stitching with her right. Each puncture stung, but the pain was endurable, thanks to the whiskey and the analgesic spray. Grace’s eyelids drooped as she fought the fatigue dragging at her. All she wanted was to lie down and sleep.
“There,” Harmony announced, tying off the last stitch. “Keep it dry, and take some aspirin if it hurts.”
Grace studied the neat row of tiny stitches, counting ten of them. “You should have been a doctor.”
“Don’t have the patience for dealing with nitwits.” She began repacking her small first aid kit, then slid a sideways glance at Grace. “You gonna tell me why you don’t want nothing to do with the cops? You kill somebody or something?”
“No,” Grace said, shaking her head, which was a mistake. She waited a minute for the world to stop spinning. “No, I haven’t killed anyone.”
“But you’re running.”
It was a statement, not a question. Denying it would be a waste of her breath. Other people might be fooled, but Harmony knew too much about people who were running from something, whether the law or their past or themselves. “I’m running,” she finally said, her voice soft. “And if they find me, they’ll kill me.”
“Who’s this ‘they’?”
Grace hesitated; not even the stout whiskey was enough to loosen her tongue to that extent. “The less you know about it, the safer you’ll be,” she finally said. “If anyone asks, you don’t know much about me. You never saw a computer, didn’t know I was working on anything. Okay?”
Harmony’s eyes narrowed, a spark of anger lighting them. Grace sat very still, waiting for this newfound friend to become an ex-friend, and wondering if she would have to find a new place to live. Harmony didn’t like being thwarted, and she hated, with reason, being left in the dark about anything concerning herself and the sanctity of her home. She pondered the situation in silence for a very long minute, before finally making a decision and giving one brisk nod of her lemony-white head. “Okay. I don’t like it, but okay. You don’t trust me, or anyone else, that much. Right?”
“I can’t,” Grace said softly. “It could mean your life, too, if Pa—if he even suspected you knew anything about me.”
“So you’re gonna protect me, huh? Girl, I think you got that backwards, because if I’ve ever seen a babe in the woods, you’re it. The average eight-year-old here is tougher than you are. You look like you lived your whole life in a convent or something. Know it’s not your style, but you’d make a helluva lot of money on the street, with looks like yours.”
/> Grace blinked, startled by the abrupt, and ridiculous, change of subject. Her, a successful prostitute? Plain, quiet, nerdy Grace St. John? She almost laughed in Harmony’s face, which would never do.
“Yeah, I know,” Harmony said, evidently reading her mind. “You got no sense of style, you don’t wear makeup. Stuff like that’s easy to change. Wear clothes that fit, instead of hanging on you like a bag. You don’t want loose clothes no way, gives people something to grab, understand? And your face looks so damn innocent it probably drives a lot of men crazy, thinking how much they’d like to be the one to teach you all the nasty stuff. Men are simple sons of bitches about stuff like that. A little makeup would throw them off, make ’em think you’re not so innocent after all. Plus you got one of those pouty mouths all the models pay good money for, having fat or silicone shots in their lips. Damn idiots. And that hair of yours. Men like long hair. I guess I know why you’re wearin’ that tacky wig, though.”
Harmony’s speech was a fast-moving mix of accents and vocabulary, from Chicago street to Southern drawl, with the occasional flash of higher education. It was impossible to tell her origin, but no one listening to her for more than thirty seconds would have any doubts about her mental acuity. Sprinkled among the comments on Grace’s appearance had been a nugget or two of sharp advice.
“Is the wig that noticeable?” she asked.
“Not to most men, I don’t guess. But it’s blond. Blond and red stand out. Get a brown wig, light brown, in a medium length and a so-so style. And get one that’s better quality. It’ll last longer and look more natural.” Abruptly she got to her feet, first aid kit in hand, and walked to the door. “Get some sleep, girl. You look like you about to fall outta that chair.”
As exhausted as she was, and with the effects of the whiskey thrown in, Grace expected sleep was all she would be able to manage. She was wrong. Several hours later, her head finally clear of alcohol but her body still heavy with fatigue, she still hadn’t managed to doze. She sat propped against the headboard, her left arm dully throbbing, with the laptop balanced on her blanket-covered legs. She had tried to work, but the intricacies of ancient languages, written in an archaic penmanship style, seemed to be beyond her. Instead she logged on to her personal journal and read her past entries. She couldn’t remember some of the entries, and that disturbed her. It was as if she were reading someone else’s diary, about someone else’s life. Was that life so completely gone? She didn’t want it to be, and yet she was afraid that she couldn’t survive if she held on to it.