City of Saints & Thieves(39)

“One of my practice pairs,” I say. “I keep a few stashed around.”

“You’re just leaving me here?”

“I’m not going far. I’ll be right up there.” Michael starts to protest, but I say, “I’m not running away; there’s nowhere for me to go.”

Michael looks around. “I’m going to start yelling,” he says. “This is some sort of secret hideout place, right? You didn’t want anyone seeing me go in.”

I narrow my eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Why not? You leave me here and I’m going to shout my head off. Try me. I’m tired of this, Tina.” He takes a deep breath and opens his mouth.

“Wait!” I look around, knowing how his voice will echo in here. “Fine! Look, I just need a few minutes first to talk to Boyboy in private. Can you give me that?”

“Your friend’s name is Boyboy?”

“Business partner.”

Michael gives me an appraising look, like he’s not the one in handcuffs. “Five minutes.”

“Ten.”

“And then you’ll toss down the key to these cuffs?”

“Then I’ll come down and we can get you home.”

“Nope, I want to meet this Boyboy kid.” He waits. “I’ve got a really good set of lungs, Tina. Want to hear?”

“Okay, okay! I’ll throw it.”

Michael looks at his watch. “Ten minutes, then I start yelling to raise the dead.”

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” I tell him.

Michael looks like he almost wants to smile. “So how do you get up?”

The walls are damp and covered in greenish slime, but there is just enough rebar sticking out from the concrete to climb. I grab a piece above my head.

“Do I have to do everything for you? Figure it out,” I say, and pull myself level with the first of ten floors.

? ? ?

Boyboy jumps when I pop up through the top of the elevator shaft.

“Did you get it all?” I ask before I’m even done pulling myself out.

“Good Lord, Tina, I know your mama taught you enough manners to holler hodi.” He glares at me over his computer screen. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”

The blissfully normal sight of him sitting there makes me smile, in spite of everything that’s happening. “I don’t think you have to announce yourself in your own home, Boyboy. So, did you?”

Boyboy doesn’t move from the safari chair he’s slouched in. It’s my only furniture, other than the beat-up mattress in the corner. I guess you could say I don’t do a lot of entertaining. I’d taken a liking to the chair, though, and stole it off the porch of a fancy mzungu restaurant where they serve tourists ostrich and crocodile. I stifle my annoyance that Boyboy has claimed it, like he always does when he comes over, and pull up a cinder block.

Boyboy’s fingers haven’t stopped flittering over his laptop keys, even as he grumbles, “Where’s pretty boy? I thought you two were supposed to be playing house.”

“Downstairs. He’s waiting in the pit. He, um . . . wants to meet you. Did anything transmit?”

“You brought him to the Batcave? Are you crazy?” Boyboy looks me up and down. “And what are you wearing?”

I feel heat creep into my cheeks and smooth down the green blouse automatically. I resist pointing out that Boyboy is wearing a yellow kitenge jumpsuit with a flying-toaster motif, platform shoes, and a head wrap. I’m sure he’d look right at home on a Lagos catwalk, but between his eye-catching outfit and the motorcycle, my secret hideout is looking less secret by the minute.

“Focus, Boyboy! What did you get off his hard drive?”

“Don’t shout.” Boyboy winces. “I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours, and I’m running entirely on caffeine. I may go Hulk on you and toss you off the building.”

I lean back to get a better look at him. “You haven’t slept?”

Boyboy takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “Your Goonda buddies have had me working all night. I just left a couple of hours ago.”

Guilt jabs at me. Boyboy is already in way deeper than he’s ever been on one of my jobs. “Bug Eye was supposed to let you go home.”

“Yeah, well, he did. It just took him a while,” Boyboy grumbles. He drains the contents of one of the energy drinks he’s got open at his side.

I don’t want to ask, but I bet Boyboy’s mom freaked out when he didn’t come home for two days. I’ll get an earful the next time I see her. Honestly, though, she treats him like he’s five, not fifteen. She’s not crazy about me, but on the other hand Boyboy brings home more money from our jobs than she can ever make selling tea on the corner. Five kids—that’s a lot of mouths to feed, especially for a single refugee mom. Plus there’s the protection being a friend of the Goondas gives them.

Boyboy puts his glasses back on. “Bug Eye wanted to see what we were able to get off Greyhill’s hard drive. Which wasn’t easy with Ketchup running his mouth nonstop. When he wasn’t cracking on me, he was bitching about you staying at the Greyhills’. He thinks you’re selling them out.”

“He needs to worry about his own stupid self. I’m not double-crossing the Goondas. I don’t have a death wish. They didn’t follow you here, did they?”