Water to Burn by Katharine Kerr

Author:Katharine Kerr [Kerr, Katharine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fiction, Fantasy, C429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780756406912
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

I SUPPOSE I FELT NERVOUS ABOUT MEETING CALEB for lunch. I woke up too early on Saturday, at any rate, and staggered into the kitchen to make coffee. I’d just poured myself a cup when my cell phone rang. I yelped and nearly spilled the coffee. On the fifth ring I answered it.

“Hey, Nola? It’s me, Mike.”

I sighed in relief. “You’re up early for a weekend.”

“Yeah, Or-Something just turned up. It barfed a letter onto my bed. I guess I shouldn’t have given it all that strawberry ice cream last night. The barf looked just like—”

“I don’t want to know,” I said. “What was in the letter? Could you read it?”

“Yeah. It was from Sophie. She’s kind of upset. Jeez, I hope she can get away after all this.”

“You hope? What do you mean, you hope?”

“Well, she’s got to lie to José. He’s not going to want to let her go. She’s in his stable. So I was wondering, like, if you and Ari could come over, when it’s time to fetch her, you know? Because if Ari’s there with a gun or something, then José won’t cause trouble.”

“Uh, Mike, just how much trouble are you expecting?”

“Maybe none. I dunno.”

“I thought you said José was cool.”

“He is, but he’s had a hard life. Seriously. Y’know?”

I did know, which is why the obvious occurred to me. “Have you thought about buying her from José? Trading him the kind of goods the gang can use.”

Silence hummed on the phone for a couple of seconds, before Michael said, “Hey, that might work! But I don’t have a lot of cash to buy stuff with.”

I groaned, but I’d gotten myself into this, and Ari did have a fabulous expense account from his deep cover agency. I figured he could come up with the whole rent if I spent too much of my salary to pay my share. “I’ll front you the money,” I said.

“Cool! Then I can go over tonight and get Sophie to calm down. She’s, like, hella worried.”

“About these nighttime visits, bro, the ones in the middle of the week. How are you staying awake in school?”

“I’ve got study hall first period, and I sit way in the back.”

I took this as meaning that he slept for an hour instead of studying. I decided I wouldn’t complain about something so trivial, considering everything else my sneaky little junior agent had going on.

“I’ll be over tomorrow after mass,” Michael went on. “Ari’s going to teach me how to shoot.”

“I know,” I said. “We can talk more then.”

With Latin book in hand, Ari joined me not long after. We sat at the kitchen table and looked out the window at our new view of a driveway and the flat wooden side of the apartment building next door. The gray cold light told me that the fog hung thick across the sky.

“What time are you meeting Caleb?” Ari said.

“One o’clock.” I paused for a yawn. “What are you going to do while I’m there?”

“Wait outside, somewhere where he can’t see me, but close enough to intervene if I have to.

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