Soldier of Fortune: Gideon Quinn Adventures Book One

Chapter 12

"You were dodging during the Occupation?" the girl said, clearly impressed. "You're even older than I thought."

This time he did laugh, but the laugh was wet and turned to a cough, and Elvis, disturbed by his chosen person's obvious distress, crawled along the edge of the tub to press his head against Gideon's leg.

"Good boy," Gideon said, stroking the draco's head. "It's okay, you did okay." Yes, he'd be feeling the slices from Elvis's talons for a month, but it beat drowning.

He glanced up, saw the girl watching their interaction.

"So, one dodger to another, why did you target me?" Because it should have been obvious to the rawest thief he wasn't rolling in starbucks. What could he possess that she'd have wanted enough to scale a building in the rain?

Even as he thought this, her eyes darted to Elvis, then to the floor, and the bruise deepened with her flush.

It was the blush that told him. "You wanted Elvis. You wanted my draco." He thought about that. "Why did you want my draco?"

"Not me," she said quickly. "Ellison's the one wants it and he only wants it because ain't no one else in Nike has one, they're that rare."

"And rare means pricey," he said, quietly furious with himself for not giving a second thought to traipsing the streets of Nike with Elvis perched on his shoulder.

By doing so, he'd basically invited every thief in the city to come after the draco. The smart thing to do would have been to let Elvis take flight and tail Gideon to the inn.

Of course, had he done that, there would have been no dodger at the bathroom window when the morph took effect and he wouldn't be standing here, in a tub, with a towel wrapped around his middle, making himself dizzy playing what-if.

He looked at the girl who was watching him, balanced forward on the balls of her feet, ready to run.

"Tell me about Ellison," he said.

"Naught to tell," she said, looking away.

But not running, which was something.

"Okay," he said as, with some care, he stepped out of the tub where he imagined he looked the utter dodo. "I get where you're coming from, but this is where we are now. First, don't worry about me calling the cops. After all this?" He indicated the tub he'd likely have drowned in without her, "There's no way I'd swear a complaint. I also won't let you go back empty-handed, but your fagin's going to have to make do with whatever cash I can spare, because taking Elvis is not an option."

"Then I'll be out!" she protested in a voice sharpened by fear. "S'what he said when he marked you. To come back with the draco or not at all. If I don't bring Elv—that draco—then I'm as good as dead."

"That's not—"

"Not gonna happen? Is that what you think?" She lifted her chin, all youth and defiance. "Maybe you was a dodger, maybe you wasn't, but you ain't one of Ellison's—"

"Aren't," Gideon murmured.

"—hive," she continued over his grammatical distress. "Ain't a dodger in Nike ever left Ellison's protection before graduatin' and lived to tell it."

"It's not supposed to work that way." Even as he said it, Gideon knew it was an asinine statement because obviously—

"That's how it is," she confirmed his thoughts with a weary certainty. "I do what he says, or I'm done." She gave Elvis, peeking from behind Gideon's leg, another look. "Guess I'm done."