Data…

I had ridden all night to get to her. The GPS had declared the ride would be eight hours, but with traffic and other setbacks, it had been more like nine and a half. When I’d reached Indigo City, it’d taken me the better part of the morning setting up at an internet café to do the recon required to make such an exit strategy.

Now, four hours into the ride back the way I’d come, I could feel Mali flagging against my back. We’d made it two hours outside the city and I’d pulled off behind a strip mall. I’d swapped out the bike’s plates with still-shaking hands and peeled off the artificial skin to reveal the real one underneath. I dug out my cut from the saddlebag, big ass safety pin along the side of it. That was to let any territories I was passing through know I meant no harm. I gave Mali one of my old jackets that I’d grown out of but had kept around and she’d tucked her hair into the collar.

Inside ten minutes worth of effort, it was presto change-o, and we were off of any law enforcement’s radar. Not that they’d be looking too hard, especially once they realized that nothing had been stolen from the bar. I couldn’t say if they’d be looking for us after the stunt Mali had pulled back near the on-ramp to the bridge. That’d been crazy. As for what had gone down before that at her place? I somehow doubted the guy I’d winged there wanted any kind of attention. I mean, what was he going to say? That he’d busted up her place trying to kill her and that I’d shot back?

Still, we needed to go to ground. The rocket fuel of adrenaline had worn off what already felt like an age ago, and combined with the utter lack of sleep that I’d had, and the fact that when I’d knocked on her door, she didn’t look like she’d had any either? We weren’t fit to ride much further. Especially not under the dangerous conditions of getting rained on while fuckin’ doing it.

I pulled the bike into the driveway at one of the nicer hotels my phone had pulled up for me. It had a garage, which was a bonus. I parked on one of the lower tiers and we took the elevator up. Mali didn’t speak. If anything, she stood probably as far as she could get from me inside the small box. Shivering, and silent, uncomfortable and… broken. It blew my mind, especially after what I’d seen her do. After what we had pulled off. That was one hell of a getaway.

Seeing her like this, it was like a punch to the gut. So far removed from the vibrant and carefree best friend I had grown up alongside since the third grade.

She wasn’t a child anymore. Nor was she a teenaged girl. She had aged beautifully into the woman that stood beside me. Her long dark hair as long as it had ever been, the ends dipped neon pink. Her figure filled out and lush, her dark eyes still lined in black but something about it, the line of it too crisp to be makeup – that, and it hadn’t run with the rain at all.

When she’d answered the door I’d seen the watercolor fantastic ink beneath her skin. Her arm sleeved out in vivid flowers. I wanted to see more of her, but I wasn’t about to push my luck. As it was, I pulled out one of my more impressive, black credit cards from my wallet that was under the name of one of the many shell corporations I had set up just for an emergency like this one.

I marched to the hotel’s front desk and ordered a suite while Mali stood off to one side and a bit behind me. I could feel her like my shadow and I was grateful she hadn’t cut and run on me. I didn’t know the shit she’d been through, had no way of knowing, not until she told me.

There were more immediate needs to be met, though. While I was dying to know what had taken her from me for the last seventeen years, I was more interested in making sure she was warm, dry, rested, and fed, first. That she was capable of going back into what was likely to be a very dark place. My obsession for answers took to riding bitch in the face of all of that. I had her by my side. No one knew where we were, yet. We had time, for the first time in forever.

She stood apart from me again in the elevator up to our room, her gaze vacant and fixed on the buttons. I didn’t try to make her talk. I didn’t try to intrude on her thoughts. I simply stood by and watched her, my own gaze roving over her from head to toe. Her hair was windswept and tangled, the dark roots fading into a bright, neon pink where it trailed over the cracked black leather of my old jacket. She clutched at the broad strap of her messenger bag between her breasts, her knuckles mottled white with how hard she gripped it.

She was still on high alert, hours and hours later, and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to get her to relax or calm down. It had to be exhausting. I knew I was tired, I’d been here multiple times before, but only to visit. She lived in this state, all the time… I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that was like.

The elevator dinged when it hit our floor and Mali nearly came out of her skin, she jumped so hard. I held out one hand, gesturing for her to go first; the other hovering over her back, but I didn’t touch. Not yet. She looked both ways before stepping off and I had to use my arm to stop the elevator doors from closing on us.

“No one knows we’re here, it’s cool.”

“Credit cards can be tracked,” she said and I smiled.

“True, but they don’t know who I am and the card isn’t in my name. Cash for a place like this would be even more suspicious, as it is – we’ll be lucky to have a night before we have to bounce. The only thing more likely to draw police scrutiny than paying cash for digs like this is a scruffy looking fuck like me dropping a black corporate card like I just did, even if it is legit mine.”

I slid the key card the front desk had given me into the lock and pressed down on the handle. The door swung open and I gestured for Mali to go through ahead of me. She searched my face, looking me over with serious scrutiny before she took a deep, steadying breath and preceded me into the room.

I shut the door behind us and I could easily imagine the vibrating hiss of closing an airlock, shutting out the rest of the world, leaving us hermetically sealed in imaginary safety for just the time being. I latched the deadbolt and swung the arm of what passed for a chain over into a latched position.

Mali stood still by the king-sized bed staring at it, her hands still wrapped around the strap of her big vinyl messenger bag. I went over to her slowly, almost afraid if I moved too fast I might spook her. She lifted the bag over her head and let it drop to the bed and I pulled off my jacket and cut, hanging them on the back of the desk chair. She slipped out of my old coat that looked good on her and tossed it onto the bed behind her bag. Suddenly, we were just standing there within two feet of each other, her dark eyes roving over me, up and down, as if memorizing every etched line of my face.

“Hi,” she said finally, and I smiled and held open my arms for a hug. The faint ghost of a smile graced her lips and she closed the gap and fit so perfectly into me, like my lock had suddenly found its key. I let my arms go around her and held her back, close.

She made to pull away but I wasn’t ready to let go. We had a lot of missed hugs to make up for. She stood stiff and unsure and hugged back but again tried to pull away. Again, I just wasn’t quite ready to let go. She stilled and let me hold her, her body still stiff and trembling against my own. I waited and waited for it, but finally, with a harsh sigh, she relaxed and really hugged me back.

“I missed you,” I said, breathing in her slight scent of coconut and lime, whatever soap or shampoo she used. I didn’t know, I didn’t care, she just… she just even smelled the same and I felt the years pressing down on us. The pain welling up fresh. She had been my best friend and she’d just disappeared without a trace.

“I’m sorry,” she said thickly, but aside from the slight change in her voice, there was no indication that she was any kind of upset, near tears, or anything else. There was nothing except that strange, maligned tone.

“Tell me what happened and I’ll let you know if you have anything to apologize for,” I said gently and let her go this time when she leaned back to look at me. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears but she’d be damned if she would let them spill over. Instead, she looked pointedly at the gauzy curtains covering the suite’s window.

“I still don’t know exactly what he did; he took that secret to the grave, but the night that we disappeared, they came for him. I came downstairs and he was on the floor. A man was standing over him with a gun and… and I used my dad’s gun and shot him, and I kept shooting until I was sure daddy was safe. He made me pack a bag and we were gone, just like that, and we’ve been ghosts ever since.”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug and I felt mine drop slightly. It didn’t make sense. I had been past her house the day after and nothing was out of place. No blood, certainly no sign that anyone had died there… which made sense to my adult brain even if it’d gone over my teenaged head.

Whoever had died that night had likely had powerful backers that had had the mess cleaned up. No cops looking for Mali and her dad meant an increased shot at revenge. I rolled my lips together and nodded as pieces fell into place before finally asking, “Why didn’t you try to let me know, or tell me?”

She shook her head and wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t answer me, and for now, I let it go, applying a sort of triage to the situation. Deal with the immediate threat first, and then we would have all the time in the world for the rest.

“Look, get a hot shower, I’ll get the clothes you’re in washed up in the laundry here… for now…” I flipped open one of the packs I’d shoved into the saddlebags on my bike. My shit had been gone through but nothing was missing and I had a sneaking feeling that’s why the older guy back at the exit point I’d chosen had let us go. I pulled out a pair of my boxers and one of my black wife-beater tanks and handed them over. “This is the best I’ve got.”

“Yeah, thanks,” she said quietly and whatever hint of vulnerability that’d been in her voice minutes before was firmly locked behind a new veneer of steely resolve.

“Bathroom’s there, just throw your clothes out the open door. You’re good.”

She jolted like she hadn’t realized she’d just been standing there staring at me and took the shiny, nickel plated revolver out of the back of her waistband and went with my wadded up offering of dry clothes in her other hand to the dark portal of the bathroom door. She reached in and flipped on the light, letting her eyes roam over every corner and then finally stepped in. I heard the shower curtain rattle then the click of the gun against the countertop. The door shut, leaving about a five-inch gap and after some rustling, a handful of clothing appeared.

I went over and took it, keeping my back turned, which was hard for me, and held out the arm that I had her shirt and bra over. I heard her kick off her boots and her jeans flopped over my elbow.

I think she snorted and she said, “Not exactly body shy as an adult.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I am,” I said with a rue grin.

“Huh,” was her soft reply and the light from the bathroom dimmed as she swung the door an inch from closed and the water started up in the bath.

“Be back in a little bit,” I promised.

“Bring food?” she called back.

“You got it.”

I switched out my own wet gear for some dry drawstring pants and another one of my undershirt tank tops. Dry was only half the battle, though. I went in search of the laundry facility with a Ziploc sandwich bag full of quarters and got it going in one load with some of the shitty powdered soap that came from the dispenser. Someone had one of the dryers going in here and so I lingered, giving the wash enough time to finish washing while I soaked up the warmth and smell of clean clothes.

I was pretty sure Mail was going to kill every bit of hot water anyway, and I needed to think, which was tough with her right there. I was torn about that, too. Seventeen years I had been dreaming about that face and now that it was right in front of me, I needed a minute away from it to get my shit straight.