Reflex by Steven Gould Page A

specifically, then asked Millie, "Are these friends of yours?"
    Millie hesitated for the briefest interval before saying, "Allies." She brushed some beaded water off of Sojee's coat. "Are you all right?"
    "I'm gonna need some more pepper spray."
    Millie nodded. "I may get some myself." She linked arms with Sojee and started walking, wondering what had happened at the end of the alley. When they'd gone several yards, she said, "Thanks, Sojee, for protecting me back there."
    Sojee snorted. "Looks like you didn't need no protectin'. Those assholes who jumped us sure did, though. They better stay away from me, I'll whup their asses again." Then she smiled. "You nailed that man in the nose. You pretty hot with that can of whup ass, yourself."
    "You hold 'em, I'll kick 'em."
     

EIGHT
"I like a man in chains."
     
    Thug One, the blond man with the nearly invisible eyebrows, put the lunch tray down just inside the door, then slid it within chain reach.
    Davy was ravenous for lunch. He'd not had breakfast and the involuntary purging of his stomach worsened matters. He ate slowly, though. His throat was still raw from the bile and he didn't want to risk repeating this morning's experience—with or without outside help.
    After finishing every crumb, he used the bathroom. On the way back the chains started retracting through the wall again.
    Oh, great.
    When he'd been pulled up to the wall again, they came back, the blond Thug One who'd brought breakfast, the brunette who'd killed Brian, and the hook-nosed man with the reddish brown hair—Thug Two.
    What now?
    They ignored him. The woman held a small plastic meter of some kind, with a stub antennae. She was watching a digital readout closely as she walked across the room. When she was in the middle of the room, about three feet out from the foot of Davy's bed, she crouched and began moving it from side to side. At several points she made marks on the floor with a felt-tipped pen, then, after about ten minutes of this, she waved at the other two.
    "There. As marked."
    Thug One held a roll of two-inch-wide gaffers tape in fluorescent green. He put long strips of it on the floor, forming a square four feet across.
    While they were doing this, the woman was working farther out, again, looking closely at the meter and making marks on the floor. When the men had finished the square, she said, "Yellow tape here."
    When the men were done, they had a yellow square with truncated corners eight feet outside the green square. They didn't bother completing this larger square near Davy or the bed, but when they were finished, the woman ran her meter around its perimeter both inside and out, then checked the green square again.
    "Right. We're good to go." She handed Thug One the meter and jerked her thumb to the door.
    Both of the men went to the door. Thug One turned right before he went through the door and looked at Davy, then, for the first time since entering the room. "Be a good dog," he said, his mouth twisted oddly.
    When the door was shut again. The woman backed up, outside the line of yellow tape. Almost immediately, the chains went slack again and Davy sat down on the edge of the bed, just inside the larger square.
    "You'll not be staying there," she said.
    "Great. I'd love to get out of this room."
    She shook her head. "Not my meaning."
    "Who are you, anyway?"
    She didn't answer him.
    "Well, I might as well call you something. Murderer is accurate, but it just... well it lacks something. I believe I'll call you Miss Minchin."
    The woman looked intrigued, despite herself. "And this refers to?"
    "Miss Minchin's Seminary for Select Young Ladies." Davy wasn't sure he wanted to get into the plot of A Little Princess with this woman, especially detailing what a cast iron bitch Miss Minchin was. "She liked little boxes, too, and people to stay in them."
    "I don't have time for sweet talk. Get in the green square."
    Davy stayed where he was.
    She lifted a hand toward the mirror and snapped her