Page 43 of Dead Girl Running

“A date? It never takes him long, does it? Who’s got him now?”

“That snooty girl at the reception desk.”

“Frances? Wow.” No wonder Frances had smirked when Kellen told her to call him. “That woman…well, she’s not as bad as Sheri Jean.”

“That’s like saying Dracula’s not as bad as Hannibal Lecter. They’re both going to kill and eat you.”

“Think Mitch is in trouble?”

“I think if Frances eats him, he’ll be a happy man.”

Kellen was tired. It had been a long day. She was worried about Annie, the body, the communications blackout. She leaned her head on her hands and giggled. Finally, she looked up. “What about you? Why are you here so late?”

“I sleep in maintenance most nights, what sleep I get. I had them put a cot in the loft.”

Kellen looked up at the spiral staircase, the open-mesh metal floor, the steel railing. “A little industrial up there, isn’t it?”

“I feel safe here. Tonight especially. If the ghosts wake or the grief comes on too strong, I can always wake up and go to work. You remember. You used to do that…in the war zone.”

“I remember.” Kellen did remember leaning against a boulder blasted out of an Afghan mountain peak, watching the sun rise and spread glory across the broken landscape and seeing that hint of something Not Quite Right. An hour later, the unit was hunkered down, taking fire and returning it, and all because of Kellen’s sleepless night.

“You were a legend. They said you couldn’t be killed.”

“And here I am.” That general, the way he’d looked at her when he told her of her discharge, as if he knew about her missing year, as if he wondered what she had done and what she could do…and who would die.

Birdie sipped her hot chocolate. “Lately I’ve been sorting through the old maintenance manuals they store up there. No one has ever thrown one away. If you can believe it, there was a vehicle manual for a 1957 Dual-Ghia D-500.”

“Whoa.” Kellen felt the awe. “I wonder where the car went.”

“I don’t know, but I saved that manual. Most of the rest are trash. I fill a box full, recycle it, fill another box full. It keeps me off the streets.”

Kellen indicated the ATV. “Can I help you?”

“Not tonight. I’m winding down and you should be, too.”

“I am. But for a few minutes, I need something to do with my hands. It takes my mind off…what’s on my mind.”

“Have at it, then. You have a way with circuitry, and that damned thing has a short somewhere and I haven’t been able to locate it.”

Kellen fixed herself a mug of hot chocolate, pulled on a pair of Birdie’s coveralls, slid an LED lamp onto her forehead and went to look at the mechanics and the wires.

In a conversational tone, Birdie said, “I told the guys you got that scar on your forehead when you were a teenager in Turkey.”

“Huh? Oh. This is your story about me? What was I doing in Turkey?”

“I told them you were raised by a spy family.”

Kellen lifted her head from her work. “Birdie! You didn’t!”

“I said your parents were on a secret mission to free a diplomat’s kidnapped daughter and they got killed. You freed the daughter and got her away, but at the last minute you were shot in the head.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” Kellen groped for her mug and took a drink.

“You miraculously recovered because your parents were part of a breeding program that produced superheroes.”

Kellen snorted hot chocolate.Thathurt.

“You joined the military to change your identity and escape repercussions. You told the CIA that espionage was your parents’ choice, not yours, and now, despite government pressure, you refuse to return to the life of a spy.”