Soledad left, hurried to get home to Ian.
Wow. I can't believe you did that."
"She's… uhhhhh… she's good cop. If I'm honest with myself, I've got to admit at least she's got the bones to be good. Doesn't heeel… Right there."
Soledad was stretched out on the floor. Ian was straddling her, rubbing her back. Soledad liked—loved—getting her back rubbed. Deep tissue. She loved it so much it seemed to Ian that he was just about always giving her a massage. Hard as he rubbed, she could always take it a little harder. Made his fingers hurt like hell. Stiff, tight, cramped for a long while after. There was a day the week before, he couldn't do any drafting. He couldn't keep up the pace. Not doing Soledad's back three or five times a week and still have working digits. Ian had a feeling no matter what else they worked in their dysfunctional relationship, Soledad and her needy back were always going to be a problem.
Soledad: "Doesn't help us any to lose her without giving her a fair shot."
"No, I get that. That's not the part I'm wowing. That you'd put your neck out for somebody; that's not very…"
"Not very what?"
"It's not very Soledad."
"Hell of a way to put it."
"Just trying to emphasize your uniqueness."
"Yeah. Good luck making that into a compli—ahhh. That's good."
Ian was getting to know Soledad's back real well. He knew what kind of pressure she liked, where she liked it most. Where she needed it even if she didn't care for the hurt that came with loosening overtight muscles. Ian was earning himself a long-standing gig.
Not all bad, he thought. Not all.
"It's not that big a deal. A little lower."
"I think it's a huge deal. You told me you didn't even want the girl on your team."
"Element."
"Then in the span of a couple of days, you go from hating her to—"
"Little lower."
"Fine. Cool. We'll avoid the conversation. But I appreciate you're, I don't know… whatever. Growing as a person."
Soledad rolled onto her back, faced Ian. She said: "Okay. Now work this side."
Soledad!"
Soledad turned and saw Yarborough rushing the hall toward her. She stopped, let him catch up.
"I gotta ask you something."
"Make it quick. I have to get to the hospital."
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing with me. I'm supposed to go see the speed freak."
"What about?"
Soledad made a look that said she didn't know."DMI told me to go down, I'm going down." Soledad paused, waited for Yarborough to do his asking.
He didn't ask anything.
"Well?" Soledad prompted.
"Uh…"
"What?"
"It's about Aoki."
"Told you: Me and Vin, we've both got confidence in her. I think she can still work out to be—"
"You think maybe she'd go out with me?"
An empty look."What?"
"You think she'd go out with me?"
"For crying… Yar, bad enough I've got to go deal with some freak, and you—"
"Just want your opinion."
"How about this: How about you ask her out, then we'll all know." Just then remembering Yar was now SLO: "Sir."
"I can't do that."
"You can't ask a girl out?"
"Not her."
"Not her? What, is she magic?" SLO or not, Soledad was going to laugh. She was going to but realized: "You afraid of her?"
Yarborough's feet scuffed at the floor.
"I don't believe this. You hunt muties for a living, but you're afraid of some girl?"
Afraid, yeah, but mostly, thinking of Reese, Yar was afraid of not taking a chance.
But to Soledad: "She's not some girl. You see how hot she is."
"I guess."
"You can't tell me she's not hot."
Soledad flipped her wrist, read her watch both to check the time and to let Yarborough know that she really didn't have any to waste."Yar, I'm a woman. What do I know from a good-looking woman?"
"You know a hot chick when you see one. Come on, you see a hot chick and you know it. You don't think any of those supermodels are hot?"
"I'll tell you right now I don't much care for anything that's got 'super' attached to it. Why don't you get Vin to ask—"
"Oh, Christ, I can't ask Vin."
"Can't ask Vin, can't ask Eddi, but me you can ask?"
"Vin told me I was gonna meet a chick like Eddi, a chick that's got my number."
"Here's some, uh, advice, sir: When you do talk to her, you might not want to call her a chick."
"For real? I thought Vin and them were just ribbing me. Chicks don't like that?"
"It varies. Most of the good ones don't care. But why take the chance out of the gate?"
"Soledad, the thing about Eddi, she's hot, yeah, but she's not just hot. She's, she's a lot of things, and I like her. It's… everything is different when you like somebody."
Soledad and Ian; she knew the truth about being fond of someone.
Yar was preaching to the converted. She didn't have the heart to tell him different as things were when you liked someone, they really got messed up when you loved them. Yarborough was already looking more distressed than Soledad could remember seeing him. She believed, right then, if he had a choice between going head-to-head with an invulnerable or having to ask Eddi out, Yar'd be rushing toward the nonkillable freak.
She said to him: "Look, if you're going to move on Eddi, now's the time to do it. I was talking to her the other day and I told her she needed to get with someone; have a guy in her life."
"She hasn't got a man?"
"Nope. And she sort of hinted around she thought you were hot too." A lie, but a righteous one.
"She said that?"
"Not in so many words, but women have a way of talking, you know?"
"… I guess."
"Well, I'm telling you: We do. And she… she said in her woman way that she thought you were hot."
"Wow."
"Yeah. Wow. So why don't you go ask her out?"
Yarborough did more floor scuffing."She say how hot she thought I was?"
"Yar, I gotta go."
Two days after Herbert Lewis had gotten out of surgery he'd recovered enough that he could carry on a coherent conversation. Or finally cared to. A DMI officer, one of a rotating team of three who'd been planted just outside his hospital room, came in tape recorder rolling, ready to collect intel. The only thing Herbert Lewis had to say: "I want to see Bullet."
The DMI officer got his meaning exactly.
Word got sent to Central. Forty-two minutes later Soledad trekked up the hospital corridor. The mediciny smells, the sights of rehabbing bodies: Right away she thought of her own most recent stay in a hospital. Two-plus weeks for burns and a popped knee. She thought of Reese's final stay in a hospital. Months and months of wasting away.
Her hand to Herbert's door, a cop posted one to each side. This was going to be good, Soledad thought. It was going to be good to be in a hospital not because a freak put her there, but because that's where she put the freak.
Herbert was in bed, his right shoulder well bandaged. As Soledad came in, his head turned toward her very, very, very slowly. The sluggishness was courtesy the Versed he was being fed by IV drip, the midazolam HC1 spiked with a double dose of hydrochloride. A special cocktail mixed just for hyperkinetic freaks. Kept them lucid but put their metabolism in near suspension. It'd be enough to drop a normal man into oblivion. Herbert's speech was slowed but hardly slurred.
He smiled when he saw"… Bullet." Words seeping from him gradually."You came."
"I don't like that; getting called Bullet."
"And I don't like getting shot, but that didn't stop you."
"I'm sure that MTac you wounded didn't much care for it either."
Herbert gave a slow roll of his eyes. Only kind he could."He was going to kill me. I tried to grab the gun from his hand." He squirmed a little, worked at making himself comfortable but found he couldn't. A bullet wound—the flesh and bone the slug tears away. The deep-tissue surgeries required to mend the defect— tends to keep you from getting cozy."All he got was a graze to the thigh. I'd trade him any day."