Fieldwork
"I'm intelligence," Julia said. "You're a rich kid with good training. Let me show you how it's done."
She was lacing her boots in the foyer, sitting on the bench by the coat rack, one ankle crossed over her knee. Field boots. Same ones from the front door three days ago, worn at the heel, resoled at least once. Her hair was pulled back tight. The jeans were dark. The jacket was the kind of jacket you wore when you didn't want anyone remembering what you were wearing.
"I've been scouting the East End for two weeks."
"Which is why you need someone who knows what scouting actually looks like." She finished the second boot. Stood. "You're good at reading people. You're mediocre at reading infrastructure."
He considered arguing. She was already at the door.
The East End started where the streetlights got worse.
It was a gradient. You crossed a couple intersections heading south from the Bowery and the buildings got shorter and the windows went dark and the street vendors thinned and the ones that stayed were selling different things. A pawn shop on every other corner. A liquor store with a handwritten CASH ONLY sign in letters that had faded from red to the color of old rust.
Julia worked the blocks like Ducard worked a room. Grid-pattern, nothing skipped. But she wasn't reading people. She was reading the neighborhood.
"Drug house," she said. Didn't point. "Second floor, third window from the left. Foil on the glass, tape fresh, window frame painted shut. Foot traffic goes in single, comes out single, nobody stays long."
She was right. He'd walked this block twice and missed the foil.
"Bodega on the corner. Overstock display out front. Nobody's buying that much detergent in this zip code. They're laundering through product orders."
He'd been tracking people. Who moved where. Whose body language said armed, whose said watching. She was tracking the system they moved through. The infrastructure under the infrastructure. The money.
"You're good at this."
"I know." She said it without looking at him. The SRR had taught her to read a neighborhood and she'd learned it well enough that the reading was automatic.
They turned south on Barrett. A woman was sitting outside a nail salon in a plastic chair, smoking, watching them with the careful disinterest of someone who noticed strangers. Next door a barber shop with three chairs and a television nobody was watching.
"Two tails," Julia said. Same tone. Same pace. "Six o'clock, gray hoodie. He picked us up at the intersection. And the woman in the blue jacket. She's been matching our pace for a block and a half."
He checked. She was right about the hoodie. He'd read the woman as a commuter. Looking again: the gait was wrong. Too even. Too matched.
"Falcone territory. They watch for unfamiliar foot traffic."
"So we stop being unfamiliar." She slowed their pace. He matched. They stopped at a street vendor selling water and pretzels and he bought two bottles and made sure the transaction was visible and unhurried. The gray hoodie drifted past. The woman in the blue jacket crossed the street.
"Better," Julia said. She took one of the waters and didn't open it.
Three blocks later he caught the thing she missed.
"Gun. Man at the bus stop, right hip, inside the waistband. Compact. His jacket's too light for the weather and he keeps touching his right side when he shifts weight."
She looked. Looked back at him.
"I had him as a phone check."
"It's both. Left hand on the phone so his right stays free. He's armed for a meeting."
Her eyebrows went up a fraction.
"Mutual competence confirmed," she said. Dry. The corner of her mouth pulled.
The truck was refrigerated but the unit wasn't running.
It turned left into an alley between a warehouse and a building with blacked-out ground-floor windows. Chain-link gate open. A man inside who was dressed wrong for a warehouse.
"That's not produce," Julia said.
The truck backed into the loading bay. Two men came out of the ground floor. One with a radio, one with a clipboard and the same compact bulge at his hip as the bus stop. Falcone distribution. Supply chain. The truck was moving product into the warehouse and the warehouse fed the drug houses Julia had already mapped and the whole operation ran at two in the afternoon because in this part of Gotham it was a regular business.
"We need to go."
The radio man was looking at them.
Julia linked her arm through his and leaned into him and her voice changed. Light. Warm. "Left at the corner, babe." She was smiling at him and her hand was on his arm and her body language had shifted from SRR field operative to Gotham girlfriend in about half a second. The radio man watched them go. The radio stayed down.
Half a block.
"They're coming," she said. Still in the girlfriend voice. Still smiling. "Two from the loading bay. Fast."
He checked the cross street. Gray hoodie ahead.
"Run."
Three blocks. Julia ran low and quiet, feet flat on the pavement, the SRR training visible in how she stayed close to the building line and used the parked cars as cover. He ran long strides, Kirigi's form, eating ground. They rounded the first corner together and his hand found her elbow and steered her left into an alley he'd mapped weeks ago.
Behind them, footsteps. Fast.
The second alley was tight. Dumpsters, pallets, a closed restaurant's back door. Chain-link at the far end with a gap at the bottom.
The footsteps were closer. Two sets now.
He pushed her behind the dumpster and his body covered hers. She went flat against the brick wall, his chest against her back, his hand on her hip holding her still. Her ribs moved with fast, controlled breathing. Even running from armed men her breathing stayed professional. His didn't. He could feel his pulse in his throat.
Footsteps into the alley. Slow. Stop.
Radio static. A low voice. Then footsteps again, moving past toward the chain-link.
His mouth at her ear. "Don't move."
She didn't.
The footsteps went through the gap. Faded. The radio faded with them. The alley went quiet.
He was still pressed against her. His hand on her hip. Her face turned into his neck. Her breath hit his throat, warm. His heartbeat was fast against her back and hers was fast against his chest.
Her hand was flat on his chest.
She tilted her face up. Grey-green eyes, close. Pupils wide. Her mouth parted.
She closed the distance.
Her mouth hit his and it was hard and sure. Four years of letters and phone calls and the photograph and the scarf and the doorway in Paris. She kissed him with her hands on his jaw, both of them, holding his face.
He kissed her back. Immediately. His hand went from her hip to the small of her back and pressed her into him. Her tongue found his and she tasted like the bottled water and underneath that just her and her fingers were in his hair now, pulling, and the alley smelled like garbage and rain and neither of them cared.
"Safehouse," he said against her mouth. "Three blocks."
"Lead."
The safehouse was a second-floor walkup above a laundromat on Eighth. Back entrance through the service door, stairs that smelled like detergent and warm lint. The deadbolt took him four seconds because his hands weren't steady and she noticed and her mouth twitched.
The room had a cot, a table, two chairs, a sink. He pulled the curtain shut. The light through it was thin and warm and the room was cold from being empty and the laundromat's heat came up through the floor.
Julia kicked the door closed and her mouth was on his before the deadbolt clicked. She put his back against the wall and pressed into him and her hands were under his jacket pushing it off his shoulders. The jacket hit the floor. Her fingers went to his shirt buttons, starting at the collar, working down. Fast. Her knuckles brushed his chest as she opened each one, the calluses on her fingers catching against his skin.
She got the shirt open. Ran her palm flat across his chest. Slow. Her hand warm. Fingers splayed. Measuring.
"You weren't this solid in Paris."
"You weren't this close in Paris."
She laughed against his mouth. Short, breathy. The laugh vibrated against his lips and he felt it in his chest.
His hands found the hem of her shirt. Untucked it. His palms slid up her sides, ribs under warm skin. Her stomach flexed when his fingers moved over it. She breathed in sharp and her heart rate was fast under his palms, right through the ribs.
She pulled back and stripped her jacket. Then her shirt. Efficient. No hesitation. Plain bra, black. A bruise on her upper arm. The scar on the inside of her wrist.
He kissed her throat. Her head went back and her hands went into his hair and her fingers curled and pulled and the sound she made was low and involuntary and it went straight through him. He found the tendon on the side of her neck and followed it down to her collarbone and she shivered. The terrace shiver. Except this time she pulled toward him.
"Bruce." Against his ear. Her breath warm and quick.
He put his mouth where her pulse was beating. Her hand tightened in his hair and her hips rolled forward against his, deliberate. She did it again when he responded. His hands on the small of her back pulling her closer. His shirt open. Her bare stomach against his. The contact hot and smooth. She smelled like soap and warm metal. Paris.
She hooked one leg around his hip. Her boot heel on his thigh. He took the weight. One arm under her. Her mouth found his, open, less controlled, and her teeth caught his lower lip. The sharp edge made his grip tighten and she felt it and bit harder.
His mouth on her collarbone. Her fingers pulling his shirt off his arms. Her hands ran up his arms, across his shoulders, down his back. Then her nails scraped his shoulder blade and her breathing went ragged and she made a sound against his ear that was half breath and half his name.
"The cot," she said. Her eyes were dark. A flush across her chest. Her hair coming loose, pieces against her jaw. She looked like herself and he couldn't stop looking.
She pulled him toward the cot. Her hand in his. Calluses rough against his palm.
He went.