Heart Of Atlantis

to find and help that child, and she was smart enough not to let Luke Oliver break her heart all over again. Not that it mattered. She’d seen the terror on the little girl’s face. Nothing was more important than that.
    A knock on the door broke through her temporary paralysis and scared her so badly she stumbled and nearly tripped over her milk-crate coffee table.
    “Rio? Rio, it’s me. Are you okay?”
    Rio’s heart slowly dropped out of warp speed, and she took a deep breath and opened the door. Mrs. Giamatto, her landlady, stood just outside the door in a pale pink robe that had to be older than Rio. The elderly woman gasped when she saw Rio, and the tips of her ever so slightly pointed ears turned a vivid pink where they peeked out of her fluffy white hair.
    “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry to bother you at this time of night, but I had a very odd phone call just now, and I wanted to warn you—”
    “I know. I’m leaving.” Rio picked up her bike and stepped into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind her, locked it, and handed Mrs. Giamatto the keys. “Thank you so much. I might be in a little bit of trouble, so I’m going to go stay with friends for a while. I don’t want to bring any problems here. Linda down the hall just had her baby, and of course I don’t want anybody to bring you any—”
    “No!” Mrs. Giamatto folded her arms across her frail chest and raised her chin. “I won’t have it. I know you, Rio Green, and you’re no troublemaker. Even if you did do something you shouldn’t have, and the gods know that’s easy enough to do in Bordertown, well, we stick together. Nobody is going to mess with my tenants.”
    For an instant—only a fraction of a moment—Rio saw someone else underneath Mrs. G’s little-old-lady surface. Someone ancient, far older even than the renovated Victorian home in which they stood, and maybe older than New York itself. Her landlady was more powerful than she appeared, it seemed, like so many in Bordertown. But the memory of the kidnapper flashed into Rio’s mind, and she shuddered before shaking her head.
    “I love you for it, too, but it’s not an ordinary bad guy. This is more trouble than we can handle. I have to get help. There was a child. He . . . took her. I think he plans to kill her. Or worse.”
    Neither one of them mentioned the human police. They both knew better. And Bordertown didn’t have any law of its own. That was the draw for most of the creatures who lived, worked, and played there.
    Mrs. G slowly nodded. “You’re going to Luke?”
    “I don’t think I have a choice.” Rio took a deep breath and hugged her landlady and dear friend. “I’ll try to keep in touch. I’ll try to come back.”
    They both knew neither might be possible. When trouble came to somebody in Bordertown, it was often of the permanent kind.
    Mrs. Giamatto fiercely hugged Rio back and then let her go. She put a hand in her pocket and held out an envelope.
    “Take this. It should help.”
    Rio glanced in the envelope, which was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
    “I can’t take this. I’m fine. I have money; I just need to get to the bank in the morning—”
    “You’ll take it,” Mrs. G said firmly, closing Rio’s fingers over the envelope. “I never paid you for planting those flowers last week.”
    Rio heard the edge of panic in her own laughter, and knew it was time to go. “The going rate for landscapers is not a thousand dollars an hour, but I’ll take it as a
loan
for now. I have to go. If they called you, they know where I live.”
    “Go. The back stairs.” Mrs. G hugged her again and then gave her a little push toward the dimly lit stairwell. Rio grabbed her bike, ran lightly down the stairs, and opened the always locked door a couple of inches. What she could see of the garden from her vantage point was empty of anybody and anything other than the marble statue of a very plump Pan eternally playing his lute in the fountain. She slipped out and made sure the door clicked shut behind her, not that a door would hold out anybody who really wanted to get in, and headed for the garden gate, only to skid to a stop when the gate crashed open and three enormous, oddly misshapen men pushed their way into the yard.
    “Is that her?” one of them said, in a broken, growly voice, like only part of him was human and the other part was something ugly. Nothing unusual for Bordertown, but this guy was big. World Wrestling Federation big. Half