Smokescreen
Authors: Meredith Fletcher and Vicki Hinze Doranna Durgin
Doranna Durgin
“One of fantasy’s new stars…
a rare, shimmering aura of mystic legend.”
—
Romantic Times
Meredith Fletcher
“…Meredith Fletcher walks a tightrope to balance heartfelt
emotion, tightly plotted action and growing sexual tension.”
—
Romantic Times
Vicki Hinze
“The incredible Hinze generates a thriller
of mind-blowing intensity, delivering action and suspense
with an incredible punch.”
—
Romantic Times
Doranna Durgin
Meredith Fletcher
Vicki Hinze
Dedicated to the one
with whom I can be my true self, good and bad!
Doranna Durgin
Greetings, all!
When I started to write this story, I took it as a fun opportunity to write about a heroine with something extra. But in my fantasy novels I’ve always had to have a deep understanding of the magic involved, and here, with this new kind of “magic,” I felt myself searching for that same understanding. And since the cool idea of having Sam bitten by a radioactive creature had already been taken, I had to dig a little deeper.
Turns out that for a superheroine, Sam isn’t so different from you or me. Many of us present a different face to the world than that of our true selves; many of us hide something of ourselves away from others. Sam (whose story was initially called “Sam I Am” just because I’m a smarty-pants) just happens to have the talent to truly keep herself hidden away…which makes it twice as hard for her to peel away the layers. I came to appreciate her strength more than I expected as I learned more about her through the writing…I hope you see that something special in her as well!
Doranna Durgin
Y
up. He’s definitely going to be a problem.
Sam Fredericks stuck her hands deep in the pockets of her baggy cargo boarder pants, fully decked out as Punk Boarder Chick—blocky black and red long-sleeved Burly Girl shirt, skater beanie pulled down over jet-black hair with electric blue streaks. Stud in her nose and tongue, hoop at her brow, tiny hoops climbing the outside rim of her ear. Battered ice-blue Fiberlight skateboard at her side.
Only Sam knew she wasn’t really as she seemed. Oh, the accessories were real enough, as was the practiced sneer of youthful attitude. But underneath this assumed appearance, the real Sam had thick, wavy copper hair in need of a trim, a flaring jaw, and a chin with a little notch she didn’t much like. The real Sam had only two earrings per ear, and her nose…
Nuh-uh. Her nose had only the original number of holes in it.
But the Boarder Chick guise served her well, hiding her in plain sight—unlike the man making his too-casual way down the street.
Does he really think no one’s going to notice him?
Tonight she hung under the corner streetlight and
exchanged boasts and insults with the kids who’d gathered to eye the liquor store halfway down the block. Down the block in the opposite direction, a scarred residential area still clung to life. The houses were small, the yards nonexistent and the paint peeling. One of those houses provided rooms for the streetwalkers hanging off the curb not far from here—sometimes Sam pretended to be one of them. Nearby, a recently closed-down crack house had already crept back to activity. And in the middle, the quiet gray duplex with the clean yard, a single hanging flowerpot on the front porch, and the very many excellent locks on the door….
That was the house Sam protected.
It was a refuge, camouflaged as neatly as Sam herself. Battered and desperate women fled to this place, this new version of the underground railroad. They started their long journey here, moving from house to house until they could emerge in another city, in another state, as another person.
Sam spent her days and some of her nights tailing subjects for a local P.I., but she filled her free time here. Taking advantage of her unusual skills—her ability to make people see her as she wished, as whatever she wished—to do what others couldn’t. It was only ever in their heads, but it was enough. At first she’d only done it because she knew she could…and because it also filled time that might otherwise feel suspiciously empty. But after seeing some of the refugees…
Now she protected them with a fulfilling passion, completely aware of the irony of it all. A woman of a thousand identities but no real personal life, helping protect countless women who risked everything to find new lives.
And as long as she didn’t run into anyone watching the world through a camera, her endless guises hid her from the world, let her move through it unnoticed, blending in wherever she happened to be—as whoever she wanted to be. Unnoticed, and ultimately, unknown. Sam I Am, ever unseen.
The women who passed through this refuge remained just as anonymous. Even, theoretically, the high-profile woman who’d recently moved to deeper hiding places. The woman had been terrified of her husband, and she’d warned the Captain—the only name Sam had for the ex-cop who ran this house—that he would cause trouble any way he could. That he would rampage through this city in a temper tantrum of Godzillan proportions, flinging threats and blowing through women’s shelters hunting for her.
And he had. He still did.
Wary and unwelcoming, Sam eyed the out-of-place lurker as he moved closer to the refuge.
The threats had spread until the woman’s identity became obvious by who made them, and Sam didn’t blame her for running deep. Even she’d heard of the man, a gangster with old world ties and godfather aspirations. Carl Scalpucci. The East Coast had proven too challenging, so he’d moved to the western part of New York state—here where the shadow of the coastal players landed darkly enough to give him power, and yet left him independent.
He was cruel. Ruthless. And not the least bit reluctant to show it.
Scalpucci was hunting hard enough that he just might end up here; he couldn’t know that his wife had already moved on to a secondary house. That made the refuge
and everyone in it vulnerable to one evil man’s threats—and it left Sam the perfect person to keep an eye on things, night after night, without giving away the fact that anyone watched it at all. One day her disguise was of a slight young man of color, the next this pale goth boarder.
It left her in the perfect place to watch this man cruise down the sidewalk, holding something at chest level. As he came into the light of a streetlamp, she suddenly recognized the object as a camera.
Dammit, he’s been taking pictures all this time.
She eased away from her corner gang, dropping the skateboard to rest one foot on it. Considering him.
On closer examination, she doubted he was one of the outraged hubbie’s evil henchmen after all. The evil henchmen would be better than this—if they even bothered with surveillance. And this man definitely didn’t have the knack for going unnoticed. There was something about the way he held himself—an unconscious presence, an awareness of self. He had no cockiness in his walk, just a forthright manner that made Sam doubt he could fade into the background if his life depended on it.
Which it might, if he got himself mixed up in the business of this street. Not necessarily a bad thing. If he wasn’t one of Scalpucci’s people, then he was hunting his own wife or girlfriend. Bad timing for someone to get this close,
now
—he could lead Scalpucci straight to the refuge. He had to go.
He discovered her attention; he eyed her for a moment, and decided he didn’t care. Which was, of course, the whole point to the Boarder Chick guise. She got to stare sullenly at him, and she didn’t need any more excuse than his presence on her turf. She got to study him,
from the subdued black cross-trainers to the chinos defining his butt to the lightweight bomber jacket outlining his shoulders. Physically, he could have done the job—could have been sent to intimidate. And even emotionally—there was something to the set of his jaw under that thick, dark mustache, and the way a slight frown shadowed his eyes in the streetlight. This man had a mission.
Sam wasn’t much for mustaches, but this one suited him. So did the stubble darkening his jaw, but neither would stop her from chasing him away. Husband on the hunt or reporter on the prowl, the refuge didn’t need him and his camera.
She pushed off against the sidewalk, a lazy kick that took her exactly as far as she’d meant to go. He looked at her as she arrived, and she flipped the board up without looking, catching it against her thigh. “You taking pictures of the crack house or the whorehouse?”
“Neither,” he said, which both surprised her—she’d expected a lie—and dismayed her. Yep, he was trying to zero in on the refuge house.
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “They’ll both figure you’ve got them on film. The beeper boys really take offense at that sort of thing.”
He raised an eyebrow. It, too, was dark and thick. Expressive. He looked down at the camera and said, “It’s not film, it’s digital.”
“Even better.” Sam snorted. “The crunch of a digital camera against asphalt…mmm, yeah.” She crossed her arms. “They like the crunch of breaking bones, too.”
This time he took a closer look at her, studying her with an acuity of gaze that made her wonder if he somehow saw through her guise. No one ever had, but she’d
always known someone
might.
She hadn’t expected the rush of adrenaline that came with the possibility…or the startling hint of anticipation. She fought an unexpected impulse to be herself, to show him Sam I Am and see how he looked at her then. But she stared back at him, bluffing it out.
He shook his head, barely perceptibly. She thought he smiled slightly, but the corners of his mouth hid in the shadow of his mustache. “You’re trying to scare me off.”
It sounded like a question, leaving the unspoken matter of why.
She didn’t let his bluntness throw her. “Yeah,” she said. “You don’t belong here. You come around taking pictures, someone’s going to get upset at you. That’ll cause trouble. Then everyone’s on edge and it’s not so safe for us to hang out here. We like hanging out here. We don’t like watching nervous cops scrape dead losers off the street.”
“Loser,” he repeated flatly.
She shrugged. “You want I should go with the word I was actually thinking?”
“Don’t go to any trouble.”
“Not as long as you go away.”
He shook his head, once, his gaze back out on the street. Already distracted. “Can’t. Maybe if you skate yourself back to the corner, no one else will bother with me.” He looked over her head to the corner and nodded at it. “Your friends seem to have the right idea.”
Sam glanced over her shoulder. Off to the liquor store they’d gone, joshing and roughing each other up along the way, hoping to scam some beer. “I can catch up. You been listening to me at all? The part about dead losers?” She let a little desperation into her voice. To
tally unfeigned, too, because if he didn’t get smart she’d have to pull out her secret weapon: getting loud enough so the unsociable neighbors did indeed notice their intruder.
And she didn’t want to do that. In spite of the implications of his presence, he hadn’t yet set off her abuser alarm bells. He hadn’t gotten loud or rude with this pushy young boarder…he’d just been entirely undeterred. And now he tipped his head, pondering her; the motion let the streetlight illuminate thoughtful dark gray eyes. “You’re worried.”
She snorted. “Hell, yes. Things get messy around here, cops hang around for weeks.”
He looked back over at the houses, clearly not sure just which one was his target. Reluctant.
“Messy,” Sam told him. “Messy, messy, messy. Any minute now. Whatever you’re looking for, mister, you won’t find it here.”
“Actually,” he said lightly, turning that perceptive gray gaze back on Sam, “I think I will. But not tonight. You’ve already drawn too much attention my way. Then again, you knew that when you came over, didn’t you?”
She offered him a knowing little smile, a no-regrets smart-ass kind of smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe I did.”
The next night Sam was a streetwalker. Vinyl thigh-high boots, a leopard-print tube top under a red bolero jacket, snug shorts a size or two too small. Long lank hair, heroin skinny, her face full of sharp features and her teeth stained beyond redemption. Unlike the night before, the clothes were as illusionary as her face and knobby limbs; Sam didn’t intend to go half-dressed on a cool fall evening. Instead of the apparent leopard print,
Sam actually wore a snug black turtleneck and low-riding jeans. The real Sam. Sam I Am.
Only Sam herself knew Sam I Am.
The other girls knew her in this guise, though if their “agent” ever came around, she contrived to be
unseen.
From here she could watch the house; she could flirt with the drivers who had no intention of stopping, and she could fade back when a real john pulled up. Just short of going
unseen
she could also go
unnoticed,
and she never used it more than when she strolled the length of this block and back again.
Tonight she struggled to keep up appearances. Not the guise—she never used a guise on the job that she hadn’t practiced to perfection until it became second nature—but the attitude. For today she’d gotten a call from the Captain. A warning.
“You need to know,” the woman had said in her graveled, cigarette-damaged voice, “that there have been threats.”
Sam had been at home, rubbing her toes in the soft fur of her sprawling cat’s exposed belly and ready to snatch them away the moment Miss Kitty got that evil look in her eye. Somewhat baffled, she’d said, “I knew that.”
“Escalation,” the woman said, her voice holding a terseness she’d never revealed to Sam before. “He’s beginning to understand she’s already slipped through his fingers. And we’ve got someone new coming in. Couldn’t be helped. I can really use you out there—but I won’t think less of you if you don’t want to chance it.”
Sam laughed. “Chance what? I’m the one in disguise. I’m the one who’s not really taking chances at all.” Not that the Captain knew the extent of her disguises—that they were more than wigs and costumes
and makeup, that they came as a literal change of appearance. No, she couldn’t pull off a six-foot gym-bound hulk, but she could do a wiry, cocky kind of guy. She couldn’t clothe herself in the body of a three-hundred-pound woman, but she could pack on a few pounds and curves.
Samantha Fredericks: nine years old, sobbing her pillow wet at the latest brutal honesty from her parents. You’ll never be pretty, so get used to it. You’re not smart enough to aim high, so get used to going low. Samantha Fredericks, escaping into her own mind. She imagined she was a princess.
She didn’t ever imagine she could actually make it so.
The birth of a chameleon.
No, the Captain had no idea. But her relief at Sam’s willingness had been clear enough. “Good. If we can get through the next couple of days, I think he’ll quit looking for how she escaped and start looking for who she’s become—and by then it’ll be too late.”
“Are you setting up alternate locations?” Sam had asked, not even sure if the Captain would answer. Secrecy and compartmentalization kept the underground railroad safe. The only ones who knew the entire route through this city were the Captain and the women who’d been through the system, and by the time they reemerged from that underground, the women were in new cities and new states, assuming new identities. To talk would only reveal their past and jeopardize their present.
No one ever talked.
The Captain hesitated, and Sam was on the verge of
a
never mind
when the woman said, “Yes. If it happens, I’ll be in touch.”
And that’s when Sam had understood how dire the threats, and how close Scalpucci had come to unearthing the refuge.