“Never mind,” Kris snapped and arranged Nelly over her belly button. The computer’s straps expanded to fit, no problem there. The wire to the jack in the back of her head extended. YOU HAVE ENOUGH BANDWIDTH, NELLY?
I’M FINE, KRIS.
“The pom-pom on the beret is an omni-use antenna,” Abby said. “Your Nelly will know what to do with it. Can I merge it with your jack wire?”
“Will it damage anything?”
“The instructions on the box says it won’t. If it does, I’ll take it to the nearest Radio Shack and demand a refund.”
Kris didn’t believe a word from Abby anymore. She waited. NELLY, ANY PROBLEMS?
“The merging of the input went smoothly,” Nelly said. “The antenna is . . . unusually adaptive. Please give me a few moments to adjust to its capabilities.”
“Take all you want, honey child,” Abby said, then pursed her lips. “I think we’re ready for the dress.” Defiant as Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Kris raised her arms, and the maid settled it on her. Hanging from thin straps, the front and back plunged. Kris had wondered how she’d reach her guns; with this flaming red wisp of nothing, it was easy. The skirt ended before it began.
Kris took stock of herself in the mirror. Even Mother had never worn anything this skimpy. Kris tried to see herself in the rear mirror. “Are my cheeks showing in back?” she asked.
“Yes,” both women answered.
Kris shook her head. “Women really wear things like this?”
“Women with the job you’re faking tonight, honey.”
“You ever?” Kris asked Abby.
“My momma did. She wanted something better for her baby girl.” Kris raised an eyebrow, unsure whether to believe it or not. Abby was busy putting on her own camouflage of the night: work boots, baggy trousers, worn coat.
“Am I going barefoot?”
“Some girls do. Good for business,” Abby said, but she produced worn shoes. “They’ll hold up better than they look.”
Kris bent over to put them on, flashing everything she had at the mirror. “How am I supposed to bend over in this?”
“Just the way you are, honey. Business is business.”
Kris stood up and tested the shoes. “Not bad.”
“You’ll be surprised how easy they are to run in. Jack, you got some toys for us working women?”
“Is it safe to come in?”
“All that’s left to do is put on her makeup.”
Jack came in as Abby went for the finishing touches to their disguises. Her Secret Service Agent took Kris in with slowly rising eyebrows and a low whistle. “This is a whole new side of you that I’ve never seen, Princess.”
Kris looked down at herself; the dress had strategically placed cutouts as well as not being much there. “There’s a whole lot of me that you’re seeing for the first time.”
Jack smiled. “Can’t argue that.”
“You’re enjoying this way too much, and—”
Abby saved Kris from finishing the sentence by tossing Jack and Penny small bottles. “You’re too clean for real working stiffs. Dirty up. Honey, you are way too understated for tonight. Sit down and let Momma doll you up good enough to eat.”
Kris sat, tried to pull the dress down to cover herself, and only ended up revealing more bra . . . and a gun’s handle. “Can’t do that, Princess,” Abby warned her as she put large gobs of powder, rouge, mascara, and lipstick on Kris. Kris started to make a face at the face looking back at her. “Hold still. Tonight, Cinderella, you ain’t going to no ball.”
Kris held still.
Done, Kris stood, took a long look at herself in the mirror, and swore she’d never do this again. Risking her neck in full battle gear was a rush. Hanging herself out for the cheap leer turned her stomach. Kris knew some women did this, had to do this. Knowing it was one thing. Being it. Being laid out like this. Kris swallowed; she’d think about it later.
Abby was back with raincoats. “What’s right for Katyville is all wrong for the Hilton. We’ll dump these later.”
Jack issued a small armory to the two women. Abby pulled back expertly on the action of a small but wicked-looking automatic, saftied it, then pocketed it. Penny did the same. Jack offered no explanation with the grenades and explosive charges he next handed out. Neither Abby nor Penny asked for any. For a maid, Abby knew too damn much about things that had nothing to do with Kris’s wardrobe.
We have to talk, woman.
When Jack finished with the weapons, they stood for a long moment, staring at each other, Jack looked like he still wanted her to call it off. Penny was breathing quickly, her excitement showing. Abby wore a blank, game face.
“Let’s get Tommy,” Kris said.
7
It was raining in Katyville, large teardrops of water that splattered on the sidewalk and sent spray flying. The cracked concrete, still hot from the day, steamed. The rain, rather than cleaning the air of the stench of the squalid river, open sewers, and refuse, seemed to surrender to it.
They ditched their raincoats in trash cans near the space elevator. For an hour Kris walked out of place and was ignored by respectable people. She’d been embarrassed before. Anyone that spent two years mostly drunk had faced that moment when you sobered up just enough to realize how bad you’d been. Tonight, Kris discovered she could blush down to her belly button.
And it got worse. A chilly breeze came up, sending cold wind up her tiny skirt. The armor might stop a bullet, but it gave no warmth. Kris had goose bumps where she’d never had them before. As they moved into the darkened part of town, a pouring rain began. Rivulets ran down her hair and into her eyes, blotching her makeup. A clown’s face looked back at her from empty store windows. Wet, the red dress fit her like a thin coat of paint. Men ignored her face to leer at her other assets.
Kris was no stranger to strange men in strange places. Her father sent her to most of Wardhaven at one time or another to patch up sagging poll numbers. Running her brother’s campaign, she’d spent much of her time being where he wasn’t. But in all that, she’d been a Longknife, respected, honored. Not tonight.
The Navy sent her up against armed kidnappers to free a kid. She’d led confused recruits against overgunned rebels in planned and unplanned fights. At the Paris system, she’d ended up commanding an Attack Squadron. So why did walking into this fight leave her knees weak and her gut in a knot?
Tired men passed her on the street; they took her in with a glance and bedded her with a second look. She could feel their fingers crawling over her long after they passed, their backward stares measuring her for a mattress. Kris swallowed hard; this disguise had seemed so logical in a warm hotel room.
I am one of those Longknifes, I am a naval officer, a Princess, worth a trillion plus, and I’ve got on armored undies to boot.
Still, undressed like this, she felt worse than a beggar.
What was it like for the women who really did have nothing but an ass between themselves and a roof for tonight, a meal tomorrow? She saw them, other women standing on street corners or walking in the numb embrace of men. Their eyes met hers and slid off like the water running down their faces.
Kris held tight to Jack’s arm, faked a laugh at a joke he hadn’t whispered in her ear, and hoped none of the lonely men or groups of men challenged Jack’s right to have her tonight.
THE BUILDING ACROSS THE STREET IS THE FIRST RENTAL, Nelly said. Kris passed that to Jack; he swung her around in a semidrunken lurch.
“Guess we ought to find a room out of this rain, Kitten-face,” he said.
“We’ve got a problem,” Penny said, coming up beside them. “The elevators in that place only work if you have a key.”
NELLY, CAN YOU FIX THAT?
I DO NOT THINK SO. THAT BUILDING IS OFF NET. IT MUST BE STAND-ALONE OR VERY LOW-TECH.
“Looks like Jack rents us a room,” Kris whispered. She’d come this far; she was not going back empty-handed. “We can rent a room for an hour,” Kris said too loud, dropping into character. “Maybe thirty minutes if you really are fast.”
Jack took a drunken stumble, righted himself, then gave her a bleary-eyed grin. “You bet, sweetie.”
As Kris ducked and bobbed her way across the empty intersection, as much to keep her feet out of growing lakes around the potholes as to look her part, she got a good look at four blocks of Katyville. There was nothing good about it.
Here and there, buildings were blackened and crumbling. Broken windows showed others were abandoned. Several vacant windows had feeble lights. Was someone so desperate that such a wreck was their best escape from the night chill? The still-occupied buildings seemed taken by some sort of cancer. What had been a front porch or a back stoop was boarded up and crudely fashioned into a room. Often a shed leaned against it, showing by a tenuous light that it, too, was occupied. Was there a building inspector on Wardhaven who would look the other way for such travesties of her father’s building codes?
A second thought struck her. Were there girls dressed like her walking the back streets of Wardhaven tonight? Kristine Anne Longknife, political campaign manager and owner of a hell of a lot of real estate, could not venture an answer. Suddenly that hurt more than the rain and the shame and the risk she was taking. Kris gritted her teeth. Once Tommy was back safely with the Navy, Princess Kristine was going to skip a few balls until she found the right, true, and full answer to tonight’s questions.
There might once have been a foyer to the Sanderson Arms, but now the bottom floor was split up into more cubbyholes. A bleak patch of carpet with two broken chairs took up a tiny space across from a desk and clerk that had seen much better days, weeks, and years. Maybe centuries.
“Got a room?” Jack slurred.
“All out.” The desk clerk didn’t even look up.
“Why you here if you can’t get me a room?” Jack demanded.
“Boss says I stay here until my shift’s over, or he don’t pay me.”
“We really need a room.” Kris tried something halfway between demure and sexy that she’d seen in a movie.
“What’s wrong with your own?” the clerk said.
“Landlady threw me out this morning. Wants twice the rent. I ain’t got no raise in pay. How I supposed to pay her more?”
The desk clerk glanced up, gave Kris the eye, and went back to what he was watching. “You ought to be able to get a raise out of a dead man.”
Kris struggled to keep a bored smile on her face. Would she have to do something for, or to, or with this wreck of a man? He didn’t look like he had more than a half-dozen yellow teeth. Even at this distance, she was almost gagging on his rank smell.
Jack pulled a fifty from his pocket and slipped it across the desk. “I only need the room for an hour. You know.”
The guy eyed the bill. “A hundred.”
Jack scowled. “Fifty and we’ll be out in half an hour.”
“What kind of place you think I’m running? We only rent by the hour. And it’s a full hundred or you can go do yourself in the corner.”
Kris glanced around. Now that she wasn’t just smelling the clerk, she got a good whiff of the room. An artillery round might make this place safe and sanitary. Make that quite a few rounds. Jack pulled out a second fifty. “I want clean sheets.”
The clerk reached for the money. “Changed them myself not ten minutes ago. That will be fifty more.”
“Twenty-five,” Jack growled and slapped a hand down on the clerk’s before he made the money disappear.
The old man glanced around the tiny foyer. “Guess the boss will never know. Okay, twenty-five.”
“With a view,” Jack insisted, producing the extra cash.
“You’ll love the view,” the clerk promised as he took the money and handed over a key. “Follow the signs to the elevator.”
The elevators were in the back; only one worked. Nelly reported both security cameras dead. Kris found the back door and let Abby and Penny in. The camera in the elevator did work; the women took one corner as Jack settled into the other. Kris did the best lap dance she knew how to do on a standing man.
“You’re enjoying this,” she whispered in Jack’s ear.
“You mean I’m not supposed to?”
Next time Kris’s knee made a pass by Jack’s rather expanded crotch, she applied pressure. A yelp replaced the sweet nothings he’d been not whispering in her ear. “You bend me over, and you’ll blow our cover.”
“Then you start thinking of the cold shower you’re going to take when all this is over.”
“I don’t know. Abby seems to be enjoying this. Maybe—”
Kris hadn’t really intended to knee her agent. But her knee was working its way up his leg, and she suddenly had this spasm and . . . Anyway, Jack swallowed his yelp like a man and, through clenched teeth, did stay upright.
The elevator groaned to the fifth floor and clanked to a halt. It wasn’t their floor, but it might be Tommy’s.
The women quickly left, whispering disgust for people who couldn’t save it for the room. Jack and Kris oozed down the hall without breaking contact below or above the belt; Kris did a good imitation of couples she remembered from high school.
Abby bent over a door, seeming to struggle with a reluctant key while she worked wonders with a picklock. Jack paused a few feet past them, seemingly deep in foreplay. His hands on Kris’s butt, he lifted her so she had a good view over his shoulder.
“Nothing coming,” she whispered into his ear. “You enjoying the feel of my ass?”
“Woman, you’ve got the equivalent of more than fifteen millimeters of steel armor on that butt of yours. Harvey gets more excited polishing the limos than I’m getting tonight.
“And that’s a dagger in the front of your pants,” she said.
Jack didn’t answer that.
“Come on in,” Abby whispered.
Kris broke from the clench to hustle into the apartment. “Is Tommy here?” she asked.
“Whoever was here,” Penny announced, “left in a hurry. Look at this kitchen.”
Kris found it . . . and gagged. The table was set with Chinese food and covered with cockroaches. Two rats fought over chicken bones in a box of takeout.