Rising Waters by Chloe Garner

Author:Chloe Garner [Garner, Chloe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-09-08T22:00:00+00:00

Jimmy nodded.

“I have no doubt.”

They drove for a time and then Jimmy and Metric shook hands and Sarah got out again, taking the cases from Jimmy and waiting as he joined her on the curb.

“Not far,” he said with forced cheerfulness, walking once more.

Not far turned out to be almost a mile and a half through some of the worst slums Sarah had ever seen in her time outside of Lawrence.

The buildings were tall, to either side, and shadow covered the entire road in the early afternoon. Children played on side streets, yelling obscenities at each other, and young men with facial markings sold things discretely out of their pockets.

“You have contacts here?” Sarah asked.

“I have contacts everywhere,” Jimmy said. “Everyone comes from somewhere.”

Intec had the smell of any port city. The breeze came in off of the bay and up the hills, smelling salty and humid and vaguely fishy and oily, but here, the smell off of the buildings was stronger. Cement, dusty brick, and too many people, the smell of sweat and oil and smoke and stale food. A pair of little boys ran across the street in front of them, one chasing the other with a malicious expression, and Sarah had half a mind to grab hold of both and demand they tell her what was going on.

People shouted at each other, audible through open windows, and men and women hurried past in working clothes, on their way to or from jobs somewhere else in the city. There was no parking, and there wasn’t much traffic. Everyone here would walk.

A block further along, Jimmy turned into a building and started up a long bank of stairs.

“Buildings this tall have to have elevators,” Sarah said.

“I wouldn’t want to wait for one,” Jimmy answered. “We’re only on the fifth floor.”

She nodded, listening hard. Everywhere, she heard anger, violence, the hallmarks of hopeless desperation, but she hadn’t heard the sound of a gun, yet. Outside of the children, she hadn’t seen a fight, yet, either. As much as she preferred the open space of Lawrence, she couldn’t say for sure it was safer than here.

Four sets of stairs later, Jimmy pulled out an old-styled mechanical key out of his pocket and unlocked a door, letting her into a dim apartment. She set the bag down in the front hall and went to look out the window. The glass was cracked, and what would have been blinds were hopelessly bent and tangled up above the window, but it would keep the wind out, and that was something.

Jimmy stood in the center of the room in his black coveralls, and Sarah shook her head.

“All right, Lawson. Tell me what’s going on.”

--------

They sat knee-to-knee in the middle of the empty living room, take-out food containers sitting to either side.

“I don’t know a lot,” he said quietly.

“Tell me what you found out,” she answered.

“There’s a man, Silas Prosper, who paid the men who broke into the house. He may or may not know who paid him, because he’s a known broker for this kind of work.

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