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“Yeah, I figured. But remember that favor you owe me?”
After another pause, there was the sound of a throat getting cleared. “Yes, I do. Of course I do.”
“I wasn’t sure whether you’d kept this phone.”
“Always, Danny. Ah, what can I do to help you? Do you need money—a place to stay or—”
“Nah, it’s nothing like that, but thanks, my man. I’m just going to send you some pictures.”
“What… kind of pictures?”
“Nothing that’ll get you in trouble with the law. I know where you work, I’m very aware of whereall those brains of yours have taken you. I just need you to tell me if you’ve ever seen something like this before.”
“How do you know where I work?”
“I went up in this world, too, as it turned out.” Daniel lowered the phone, and did the deed. “Okay, they’re going through. It may take a little bit. I’m in the sticks.”
“What happened to you, Danny? I mean, if you know where I ended up… where did you go?”
For a moment, the past came rushing back, and the memories were crystal clear. After Daniel’s mother had jumped off a bridge to get away from him and the life they were living, he had been left alone at fourteen. Fuck foster care. And besides, learning to survive on the streets had been a training and proving ground for what lay ahead for him in the military—and then later in Blade’s happy troupe of troublemakers.Oh, the places you’ll go?Yeah, he’d seen a lot, and not much of it good—and didn’t that make someone stick to themselves.
Unfortunately—fortunately?—every once in a while, in the midst of his own survival-of-the-fittest drama, he’d found himself drawn into someone else’s problems.
Like that of Rubik Cube, and his little sister, Annie.
Tim was Rubik’s real name. No last name. He’dbeen a runner for a mob bookie because he was a human calculator who’d also been able to keep every one of the clients’ bets and outcomes in his head.
No pesky paper trails.
No clue how Rubik and Annie had ended up homeless, but one night, Annie had been attacked, and Rubik, at five feet eight inches and one hundred and forty pounds soaking wet in sweats, hadn’t been fast or strong enough to defend his sister.
Daniel had been.
He’d saved both of them from the pimp who’d decided a fifteen-year-old Annie could be put to better uses than in the rotation of women’s shelters she’d bounced around while her brother had survived sleeping out.
“Hello?” Rubik prompted. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, sorry.” He snapped back to attention. “And to answer your question, I’ve been here, there. Everywhere. You know the drill.”
“Oh, okay—hey, they’ve come through—hold on.”
There was a rustling. Then Daniel could have sworn he heard a soft gasp. After which, he ripped the unit away from his ear as a crashing sound blared into his brain.
Like the phone on the other end had been fumbled and dropped.
“You okay there, Rubik—”
“Where did you get these?” came the breathy demand.
“So you’ve seen something like it before? What can you tell me about—”
“This is proprietary technology. There should be no photographs of this unitever—but the background isn’t my facility. I don’t understand how you have this outside of my team at MIT?”
Annnnnd there it was.
Talk about your success stories, Rubik had gone from the streets to the highest echelons of education: The shit with Annie had scared him so badly, Rubik had quit it with the mob, and gotten the two of them into the proper foster care system. Only one year for him, but he’d used it wisely, acing his GED classes, writing a helluva essay, getting a full ride to MIT—where he’d stayed for the last almost two decades. And Annie had ended up okay, too.
Daniel only knew about all the what-next because eighteen months after Rubik had gotten off the street, just before his own eighteen-year-old b’day, the guy had made a point of visiting their old haunts, finding him and… thanking him.
