Reflex by Steven Gould Read Free Book Online Page A

the security guard loudly diagnosed the offending object as an underwire bra.
    Her cheeks burning, Millie seriously considered dropping the bug in the nearest trash can as soon as she was away from the security station, but controlled the impulse.
    Anders had made the flight arrangements, putting her on a 12:40 P.M. Delta flight into D.C. with one stop in Atlanta. It left fifteen minutes late and there was another delay in Atlanta, putting her into Reagan National over an hour late. Her appreciation for teleportation had risen to an all-time high by the time she touched down in D.C. She'd spent the flights trying to sleep but all she could do was worry. Is he dead? Is he hurt? Where the hell is he?
    By the time she stumbled out of her taxi at the State Plaza Hotel, she was truly exhausted.
    The room they gave her was on the seventh floor facing north, away from the mall and the brightly lit landmarks of the Washington Monument and the Capitol building. She could, however, see what interested her far more: the sprawling mass of George Washington University Hospital, and the streets near it, where Davy had been snatched.
    She ordered a light salad from room service and ate with the curtains open. Tomorrow, she promised the lighted streets.
    Tomorrow.
     
    She started early, buying a portable breakfast—egg-and-bacon-on-a-roll and coffee—then sitting on the stoop of a copy shop fifteen feet from where they'd found Brian Cox, dead on the sidewalk.
    It was morning rush and she watched the crowds with unfocused eyes, trying not to filter anything, to absorb it uncritically. What surprised her were the number of homeless people out, working the crowd for change. A lot of them were women.
    I thought we were getting a handle on this. She shook her head. Maybe in Stillwater.
    The temperature dropped steadily through the morning and a thin gray fog drifted up the streets, dampening the sidewalks and the walls, and leaving drops of water hanging in her hair. She'd seen the forecast so she was wearing her powder blue raincoat. She pulled up the collar of the thick hand-knitted sweater she wore below the raincoat and sunk her neck into it, feeling like a timid turtle. She was grateful she'd chosen her Merrell Chameleon hiking boots— even though they make my feet look like boulders.
    She kept wiping her glasses off with her handkerchief.
    Traffic, both wheeled and footed, lightened, and the number of homeless on the street seemed to increase, but she suspected there weren't more of them than this morning—just fewer "normal" people on the street to hide behind.
    Hide? They're not hiding. You were just looking at the normal people instead of them.
    She edged closer to the balustrade, using it to shield her from the mist. She felt cold, but it wasn't from the weather.
    How cold are they?
    There was a group of four men talking at the mouth of the alleyway across the street, leaning against the wall. One of them had a ratty backpack, two carried bedrolls under their arms, and the fourth wore an indeterminate number of blankets, Indian style.
    She could tell that most of the blankets had been brightly colored but now they were muted, the barest hint of pastels where once primary colors ruled. The man with the blankets wore old Nikes, ripped, showing bare, dirty skin beneath. He turned his head as a brightly colored BMW went by.
    These people are nearly always on the street.
    She looked in her purse at the picture of Davy she'd taken from the Aerie. She went down the street to Kinko's and had his half of the photo blown up, black and white, a little fuzzy at eight-and-a-half by eleven, but clearly recognizable.
    She started to get a hundred run off, so she could post them, then stopped. How will they contact me?
    She rejected using her hotel room. The search might leave the area. She thought about putting the number of the NSA on there, but if they hadn't found him yet, she wasn't sure she trusted them to take the calls.
    She asked the