A Good and Useful Hurt by Aric Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

and he felt his equilibrium veer away from, and then back into, his control, but she never seemed to waver or slow. Workstations were scattered about haphazardly, but his eyes were unable to negotiate any of the gloom save for that scraped by Deb’s light.
    Weirdly, he was enjoying himself.
    They walked past two more piles of desks, through a smaller room filled with cubicles and false hallways, and then finally into an aged office. An empty safe sat plugged into the wall across from them with its door gaping. An old, but much nicer desk than the ones they’d seen piled about the larger room sat beneath the safe. Deb walked around it, knelt, and began opening drawers. Mike watched, unsure of what to do as the light was eaten by the search.
    Finally she stood, slamming the last drawer shut and making him jump. “Nothing,” she said. “Did you see any stairs?”
    “I think I might have seen some in the big room.”
    “Here.”
    She handed him the flashlight over the desk, and with it Mike felt the urgency to explore come over him. Before, he’d been a passenger, but now he felt like he was steering the course, and it was a different animal indeed. He led them from the office, past the room of decrepit cubicles, and finally back into the vast expanse. Mike flipped the light around, then marched with assurance toward what had to be a spiral staircase. He could see a balcony ringing the room; the only question was its point of access. He noticed as he walked that his feet were alive beneath him again, and the awkward waddling of before was gone. With the light in hand, everything was different.
    It was indeed a staircase he’d seen, a small metal thing that looked as though it had once been painted red. He pushed a foot onto it to test it and gave it a hard pull with his free arm. Not sure of what to look for, and happy with the results his tests had given him, Mike started up the staircase.
    When he’d ascended the thing and turned to look at Deb, he was surprised to see her still on the ground. He stepped off of the metal platform onto the balcony and said, “What are you waiting for?”
    “For you to get off the damn steps. You’ve got at least eighty pounds on me. Figured I might as well let you test how well the thing’s bolted down before I climb it.”
    “Nice.”
    “You were fine. I just didn’t want to put more weight than necessary on it.”
    Mike watched her ascend and spared a thought to the danger of being a floor up. He pushed it away as politely as possible, and they got back to their exploration. He didn’t know what they were looking for, but his adrenaline was roaring, a pretty girl was at his side, and the majority of the building lay ignored. He was smiling, not that anyone could see it, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to know that Deb was too.
    They left the balcony through the first doorway on the right. Deb strode at Mike’s side now that there was room, and they ducked into a supply closet together before striking into the next room.
    Mike had been unsure what exactly Deb was looking for, but he was pretty sure they’d just walked into a treasure trove of it.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    Marcia Ruiz knew pain. Pain was a husband who beat you, day in and day out, and took what he wanted when he wanted it. Pain was knowing that that same husband, when he wasn’t raping her, was screwing some other woman. Pain was knowing all of that but still being young and dumb enough to birth three boys by such a man, in yearly increments. Pain was spending the last two months of a pregnancy ignored, called every name for livestock in the man’s vocabulary, only to be raped two days after expelling the child.
    The first son she’d named Renaldo after his father. Marcia thought that the gift of a son might dull the abuse in some way. It hadn’t, and she’d been desperate to never let the mistake of another pregnancy hold her tighter to him, but she had no luck and no education to keep her from making