Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

the blue Buick. Then I got back into the cab, which had been patiently waiting for me out front. I’d been feeding the driver twenties as we drove around town, and cabbies were like stray cats when you fed them twenties.
    The driver wasn’t happy with me when I climbed back into his cab, however. “No way, man,” he told me. “I saw what you did in my mirror. That tire is going all the way down. Get out and walk.”
    I thought about pulling my gun on him, but he’d never done me any harm. If it came to that, I would rather shoot it out with the asshole in the alley. So I tried cash instead.
    “Two hundred bucks, two miles,” I said, “but decide fast.”
    “Crazy mother,” he muttered, then gunned the cab.
    I gave the driver Holly’s address and we were flying down the street in seconds. I figured if I’d been followed from the casino hotel, Holly’s place was safer. As we left, I sank downin the backseat, looking this way and that for the gunman, who had to be truly pissed by now after his little jog around the block. But I didn’t see him.
    A few minutes later, I stood on Holly’s doorstep in the pink glow of dawn, the cab hauling ass away behind me. I’d asked the cabby to wait, but I couldn’t blame him. He knew trouble when he saw it.
    I tapped on the door and waited. After half a minute, I did it again. Still nothing.
    After the fourth set of knocks, I put on my sunglasses and twisted the knob, which squeaked as the lock relented. I let myself in.
    “You’ve got balls,” Holly said, standing inside in a long pink T-shirt and little else.
    “People keep telling me that,” I said, smirking. I could tell she’d heard my knocks, checked the peephole, and decided to take a pass. I didn’t hold it against her. After a long night, I probably looked like hell.
    She had a tattoo on her bare thigh I hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a hummingbird hovering around a flower. Right then, I thought I wouldn’t mind watching her pole-dance. It must be quite a show.
    “What are you doing back here?” she asked. “At frigging daybreak, no less?”
    “Sorry,” I said, “but I’ve got new information and I was wondering if I could crash here. I’m dead tired.”
    “Get a room. You’ve got the cash.”
    “Hotels in this town want plastic.”
    “Not the crappy ones.”
    “OK,” I said. “I shouldn’t have come.”
    Holly stared, then shook her head, sighing. “OK, you might as well come in, since you have already turned my lock into Jell-O.”
    “It will turn back, as long as the lock hasn’t been twisted to an impossible position,” I said.
    “I know that.”
    After ten more seconds of hesitation, she finally stepped out of the way and let me in. I sank onto her couch with a sigh.
    “Look,” she said, standing over me with her fists on her hips, “we both have Tony’s money, and we had a nice chat yesterday. But we aren’t roomies. You got that?”
    “Yeah.” It was a good pose for her, so I admired the view.
    “What did you do, anyway, kill somebody?” she asked after staring at me suspiciously for a few long seconds.
    I squirmed a little. I must have had that kind of look on me, the look of a hunted, worried man who was grateful to be in a relatively safe place. I had to wonder how often she’d seen it before.
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    Holly began rubbing her temples. “I don’t believe this,” she said.
    “You got any beer?” I asked, knowing that she did.
    She got me the beer and slammed it down on the coffee table. “You’re like one of those bums my mom used to let move in with us,” she complained. “I never should have fed you.”
    I chuckled. I drank the beer and ate the open bag of chips she tossed onto the couch beside me a minute later. The beer was lite and a little warm. The chips were half-stale, but I was hungry. After a breakfast of champions, I fell asleep on her couch.
    Coming to her place and crashing was becoming a habit—one I didn’t half mind.

I woke up to the sound of a ringing phone. It wasn’t a traditional ring, nor was it a traditional phone. It was a cell phone, and as I blearily opened my eyes, I saw it was buzzing on the coffee table.
    I groaned into a sitting position and reached for it. Holly showed up and snatched it away.
    “It’s mine,” she said.
    I shrugged, leaned back, and stretched. I looked for a clock and found one on the TV set, which decorated one wall of the apartment. It was four thirty in the