The gym was three blocks behind her before Mia let herself relax into a walk. Smoke still sat in her throat. Every breath scraped going down, thin and hot, like she’d swallowed a lit cigarette.
A produce truck idled outside a shuttered market, exhaust curling through the streetlight. She crossed behind it, keeping the vehicle between herself and the intersection camera mounted on the pole above.
The headache had been building since the fire, a slow pressure behind her left eye that now felt like someone had wedged a thumb into the socket and was leaning on it. Her left ear rang, a thin, constant note beneath every other sound, and when a bus braked hard at the corner, the screech seemed to come from inside her skull instead of the street. She put a hand on a mailbox to steady herself.
Her stomach lurched. She swallowed and breathed through her nose until the nausea eased. The streetlamps had grown too sharp, halos bleeding around them. She knew what that meant. A clinic wasn’t an option. Not with her name going into a system that people might be watching.
Her jacket smelled like the inside of a chimney. At the mouth of an alley behind a hardware store, she emptied the pockets into her trousers, balled it up, and pushed it into a construction skip half full of broken drywall and a mattress someone had dumped there weeks ago.
Two streets later, a charity donation bin sat outside a church, unattended, chained shut except for the drop flap. She worked her arm through the gap and pulled out the first thing her hand found, a gray hooded sweatshirt. It was too big and had a stain on one sleeve, but she put it on.
Her phone vibrated.
“Shit.”
The phone was still live.
She’d spent the last few blocks avoiding cameras while carrying something that could lead them straight to her.
Two messages from Carla.
THE LOCATION ON THAT PAGE. I FOUND IT.
Then:
DARIO’S HERE. ALIVE. THANK YOU.
Mia powered it down, worked the SIM free, and slipped the tiny card into the smallest pocket of her wallet. The handset went back inside her pocket.
The city had cameras on every corner, but they were only part of the problem. She was tall and broad through the shoulders in a way that turned heads in gyms and intimidated men in bars. She wasn’t built to disappear into a crowd.
Near the terminal’s east entrance, Mia stopped to get her bearings. She caught her reflection in the glass beside the doors. Soot across her face. Blood dried along her hairline. An oversized sweatshirt hanging off her shoulders. She looked like someone who needed help.
“You need a hand?”
An older man, khaki jacket, rolling suitcase with one wheel that squeaked. He’d stopped a few feet away, not too close.
“No.” It came out hard.
He raised both hands, not quite an apology, and wheeled his suitcase around her and away.
Inside, the terminal’s ceiling swallowed the noise and gave it back distorted: announcements looping over one another, a departure chime, a child crying somewhere near the ticket counters. Mia found a bench along the wall with a pillar at her back and a clear view of both the main doors and the security desk, and sat.
The screen above the newsstand showed the fire first, footage taken from behind a police barrier while flames worked through the roof of Renato’s gym. The caption identified it as one of the city’s oldest gyms, a fixture of the neighborhood for more than 50 years. At least three people had been taken to the hospital. The number still missing had not been confirmed.
The picture changed to a dark industrial building surrounded by police vehicles. Alejandro Valdés had been found dead inside a private venue, the presenter said. Investigators were examining possible connections between his death, the gym fire, and the murder of Luis Herrera.
Then Mia’s professional photograph filled the screen. PERSON OF INTEREST, the caption read.
Police were seeking information about her whereabouts after witnesses placed her at Valdés’s venue. She had a long-standing connection to Renato’s gym, which had been targeted in the arson attack.
They were joining the pieces now.
She looked at the screen. The photograph was from another life: clean skin, dreadlocks loose around her face, sponsor logos behind her.
A cleaner pushing a mop bucket past the kiosk slowed. Mia caught it in her peripheral vision. The woman looked at the screen and then back at her.
Mia pulled the hood lower over her face, got up, and moved toward the escalators like a woman with somewhere to be.
In the dark glass of the newsstand, she saw the cleaner set down the mop handle and reach into her apron pocket.
She needed to move.
The upper concourse had a smaller ticket counter, self-service machines lined beneath a departure board that clicked and rearranged itself every few minutes. Mia stood in front of the board, running the options.
A long-distance coach left in 40 minutes for a border town six hours north. A regional train left in an hour for somewhere closer, a suburb she’d visited once for a fight card. Either would put distance between her and the city, if she could get a ticket.
She walked to the counter.
“Where to?” The clerk didn’t look up from her screen.
“Coach to Valmera.”
“ID, please.”
Mia’s hand stayed at her side. “Cash only. No ID?”
The clerk glanced up, tired rather than suspicious. “Doesn’t matter how you pay. I still need to scan ID.”
Mia glanced up and caught the small camera above the clerk’s head, angled down at the counter. Her eyes dropped and her chin followed. She nodded once and stepped away.
She kept the hood low as she crossed the concourse.
A man coming the other way glanced at her, then looked back. After that, Mia seemed to catch eyes everywhere, at the ticket machines, beneath the departure board, near the escalators. Every glance seemed to linger a second too long.
The hood was hiding most of her face, but pulled this low indoors, it was attracting attention.
She couldn’t hide beneath a hood all night.
On a television above one of the departure gates, her face appeared again. The same professional photograph she’d seen downstairs. Mia slowed.
The dreadlocks stood out immediately. Dark, thick, framing her face. They were there in every fight poster, every interview, every photograph anyone looking for her would be using.
The hair had to go.
The women’s restroom on the upper level sat past a bank of vending machines, its entrance a wide, doorless opening beneath a sign. There were fewer people up here. As Mia approached, a woman came out with a phone to her ear and passed without looking at her.
Mia went in and stood at the sinks pretending to wash her hands until the last stall door opened and a teenage girl left, earbuds in, unaware of Mia at the mirror.
Dried blood had gone rust-colored along her hairline. Soot sat in the crease beside her nose. Both eyes were bloodshot.
She ran the tap hot and worked a wet paper towel over her face until the soot lifted and the water in the basin went gray. Then she scrubbed the dried blood from her split knuckles until they stung.
She looked at herself in the mirror and lowered her hood. Her fingers found the lock at her temple, the one Luis always said curled differently from the others. He used to wind it around his finger when they sat together, usually without even realizing he was doing it.
For a moment, she could almost feel his hand there again.
She took her hand away, pulled the hood back up, and left the restroom.
The terminal pharmacy was little more than a kiosk, stocked with travel pillows, aspirin, and a rack of cheap grooming supplies. Mia found a pair of stainless-steel scissors with black plastic loops, paid cash, and left while the boy behind the register stayed focused on his phone.
Back at the farthest sink, she pushed the hood back and let the dreadlocks fall loose.
She gathered one lock in her fist and set the scissors against it.
Then she cut.
The lock dropped into the sink basin and coiled on itself. After the first one, the rest came faster.
Her hands weren’t steady and the scissors were made for trimming split ends, not this. Some of the thicker locks took four or five bites from the blades before they gave.
Dark coils collected in the basin. Mia kept her eyes on the scissors, working from one side of her head to the other until she reached the lock at her temple.
She stopped.
Mia caught the lock in her fingers and brought the scissors up.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t close them. When she did, tears ran down her face and dropped onto the porcelain. She let it happen for maybe 20 seconds, wiped her face with her forearm, and continued cutting.
When she’d finished, the hair sat close to the scalp in some places and hung longer and ragged in others. A nick behind her left ear bled until she pressed a paper towel to it.
She gathered the locks, loose hairs clinging to her fingers, and wrapped them in paper towels from the dispenser. Then she pushed the bundle deep into the sanitary bin fixed to the wall and wiped the scissors clean on her sweatshirt.
She made herself look in the mirror once it was done.
Without the dreadlocks framing it, her jaw looked wider, her neck thicker. Her eyes looked lighter, bluer. She turned her head one way, then the other. At a glance, she no longer matched the woman on the posters.
She left the restroom without hurrying, hood up, and stepped into the upper concourse.
A teenager sat three benches down from the entrance. Backpack between his feet, phone in one hand, hood pulled low, a paper cup from the coffee kiosk beside him. He glanced up as she passed, and his eyes followed her for a moment before dropping back to the phone.
A few steps later, Mia looked back.
He was looking at her again.
It could mean nothing.
She took the escalator down one level, doubled back through a corridor of shuttered shops, then stepped into a 24-hour convenience store and waited near the drinks cooler.
Nobody followed her inside.
She stayed there for a few minutes, then took the escalator back up.
The teenager had gone.
She found a seat with her back to a pillar, facing the main doors. A discarded newspaper had been left on the seat beside her.
Two transit police came through the doors. One had a phone in his hand, glancing between the screen and the concourse as they moved.
Mia picked up the newspaper and opened it in front of her face.
They came closer.
She caught fragments as they passed. Injured woman. Description. Possible sighting near the terminal.
She kept her eyes on the page.
The officers continued toward the ticket hall. Mia waited until they were well past before folding the newspaper and putting it back on the seat.
She crossed the concourse toward the main exit.
She went through the doors and out into the covered bus bay. Cold air moved, carrying diesel fumes from a bus idling three slots down, its interior lights on and nobody aboard.
Another coach pulled into the loading lane, engine grinding as it swung toward the bay.
Movement near the terminal doors caught Mia’s eye. The teenager from upstairs had appeared again, backpack over one shoulder. He glanced in her direction, then started toward her.
Mia watched him come. For a second, she considered moving, putting some distance between them. But he was just a kid. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Backpack, coffee cup, no obvious threat.
He passed close enough for his shoulder to catch hers.
His hand brushed the front of her sweatshirt and slipped something into the pocket as his eyes met hers. “Sorry.”
Then he was moving again, backpack over one shoulder, phone in his hand.
Mia slipped her hand into the pocket and found a folded strip of cream paper.
A phone number in block numerals. Beneath it, two words in black felt-tip:
SAY: MERCY.
Below that, smaller:
THE LAST ROUND ENDED EARLY.
She read the last line again.
Mia folded the slip, tucked it inside her sleeve against her wrist, and headed away from the terminal.