Gary. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, as if she'd just caught her finger in the door.
She'd been sitting in a dim corner, waiting, chewing her fingernails up to her elbows. He hadn't come back to the dorm. Dashed up to his room, checked, back down to the study lounge, back up to his room, back down to the other lounge, the noisy one, with a card game going. And this guy had waltzed in with a pizza box and dumped it on a table and left it there.
No way he was a pizza man, letting go of that box without cash in hand. And he looked like Gary, twenty years older. She didn't know a lot about Morgans, but she knew damn well that they didn't need to earn a living by delivering pizzas on the midnight shift.
Not Gary's father, not the picture in the obituaries, but he damn sure was family. Make that capitalized Family, like in the Mafia. The way they'd cleaned out her squat, that was The Mob operating there. Scared the shit out of her. She was still shaking, just thinking about it.
His glance swept over the room, over her without pausing, and he shook his head. He was looking for somebody. Looking for Gary, had to be.
He left. Headed down the corridor, toward the east stairwell. Nobody noticed him going, either. She went the other way, up the other stair, not going to wait half an hour for the elevator to show up. If that was a Morgan, had to be a Morgan, she didn't want to try following him.
She'd tried following Gary once, waited outside a class they didn't share, wanted to see where he went when he vanished downtown. He'd noticed her within ten steps, had waited for her to catch up, they'd turned and gone to get hamburgers at the Union, no questions, not even a lifted eyebrow. She'd thought she was good at following people. Following marks and Johns without letting them notice. Part of the shakedown — know your enemy.
She'd learned not to try to follow a Morgan. Besides, she knew where this guy was going. She ran up the stairs.
Up on the fourth floor, Gary's room was on a dogleg dead-end, he paid extra for one of the rare singles. She'd thought that was weird, a waste of money, but it beat chasing out his roommate every time they wanted to fuck. Now she thought that it maybe tied into the Mafia bit, Morgan family secrets, worth paying for the privacy.
She slouched along down the corridor, wet sneakers squeaking, eyes down, shooting a glance into that dead-end without turning her head. Yeah, the guy was there. He had a key, looked like, not a set of picklocks. And he gave off a sense of belonging there, not nervous, no way he'd attract attention.
She kept on going. He glanced up, nodded to himself more than to her, then slid the key into the lock and opened it. Gary hadn't mentioned giving a key to anyone else. Her teeth were chattering. If that guy had noticed her downstairs . . .
Down the other stairwell, back into the lounge. Stay in public, watch the card game, stay close to people. People were witnesses. Even the Mafia wouldn't wipe out a dorm lounge full of students just to nail her ass. Her pictures in that DHS file, seven years old, she didn't look a bit like that kid any more. Her hands were shaking. She hadn't had anything to eat all day.
That guy wouldn't come back for the pizza. She sat in a chair close to it, a corner chair facing both doors, nobody was going to sneak up on her with a knife. Close enough to the pizza that someone glancing in would think it was hers. Claiming territory without actually touching it.
She pulled a book out of her pack and pretended to read and chewed on her nails some more. If that guy stayed upstairs, she'd have to find another place to squat. Probably should anyway, if Gary was handing out keys to every second cousin and uncle. But she had to wait. She had to know.
She heard the stairwell door. She didn't hear footsteps — she never heard Gary walking unless he wanted her to. He made noise on purpose, so he wouldn't startle her. Scare her. He understood.
The guy walked past the lounge door, didn't look in. Nobody noticed him. She turned in her chair, looking out the other door, the one that gave a view of the entry. He went out. The door clicked behind him. Locked. Safe.
Not safe. He got in once. He can get in again, anytime he wants. Morgans are like that. Gary showed me. Showed me stuff I bet he shouldn't have. Trusted me to the point I could almost trust him.
Almost.
I am the cat who walks by myself, and all places are the same to me. Jane repeated her mantra, half-remembering a story told in the long-ago when she'd lived as a normal child in a normal home, before her mother declared war on her father. I should vanish back into the Wet Wild Woods, waving my wild tail and walking by my wild lone.
But she couldn't leave. She'd found a place by the fire, and warm milk, and the Wet Wild Woods were filled with sharp teeth and Maine winter coming on. And she'd found Gary. Gary. She swallowed a moan.
Something clicked in her head, the faces, some weird ways that Gary talked. It made sense. So that was Gary's father. Or his dad. Lover Boy seems to use the two words for two different people. I wonder which one is paranoid. Or is that a family trait, describing both of them?
