Chloe dressed much like Lorenzo—clothes either purchased at a thrift store or about to go there.
She nodded toward her brother. “Lorenzo came along to help carry, and with . . .” She waved to indicate the hallway Kira had just passed through. “. . . you know.”
Kira took her hand off the door handle and stepped farther into the room. “Pleased to meet you both.”
A few awkward seconds ensued, in which Lorenzo managed to say “Hi,” but mostly stared at Kira as if she’d just emerged from the ocean naked on a half shell. Chloe eyed him with a mixture of amusement and annoyance.
If this was going to move forward, it was apparently on Kira to do something. “Look, Chloe and I have an early start tomorrow. Mind if I unpack?”
Chloe turned to her brother. “Thanks for the help, but she’s right. We’ve got an early day coming.”
Lorenzo accepted his dismissal, but he stopped at the door to address Chloe. “You’ll be at the house Sunday? After Mass?”
Chloe frowned. “If I can. It’s my only day off.”
“Mom and Dad expect you. Especially now.”
After a few seconds of nonverbal standoff with his sister, Lorenzo turned to Kira. “You can come, too. Mom makes great spaghetti.”
A vision washed across Kira’s mind: a big table full of good food, surrounded by people talking and laughing, with the smell of cooked meat and spices in the air—basil, thyme, and oregano. In the middle of it all, a place for her. Like Professor Fowler’s parties for students who couldn’t go home for Christmas, or when the Carlyle family had the whole cast over for dinner at the end of a play’s run. She shook it off. Lorenzo was just a smitten teenager looking for an excuse to stare at her some more. All she needed was a polite deflection. But still . . .
“Thanks. I’m still figuring out my schedule.”
Lorenzo responded with a small bob of his head before leaving.
Chloe looked after him for a moment, scratched a russet curl that had somehow survived her hairdo’s transition into the gunfighter’s cut, and turned her attention to Kira. “Sorry about that. He’s a good kid, but he’s a kid.”
Kira responded with a noncommittal shrug. “No problem.”
“I took the left side, but I’m not unpacked yet.” Chloe pointed to a suitcase and a couple of boxes on the far side of the room. “Do you care?”
Kira dropped her backpack. “Right’s fine. I can’t see much difference.”
The room’s mirror-perfect split represented another step back to college-like living, along with the desk, chair, dresser, and single bed on either end of their quarters, all made from the same cheap, heavy wood. The durable gray carpet, extended from the hallway, confirmed the impression of space that had seen a lot of hard use and expected to see a lot more.
Kira unzipped her backpack and unloaded her portable terminal, Empire State Building paperweight, data pad, and a stylus onto the desk. The rest of the unpacking went easily enough; there were some advantages to selling almost everything for moving money.
The big gray bag sitting on the bed turned out to be full of uniforms in shrink-wrap. Kira tugged at it.
Elbow-deep in a moving box, Chloe announced, “They said to try them all on, to make sure they fit. Do the boots, too.”
Kira dragged the bag into the bathroom. It opened with a pop and released the smell of freshly extruded synthetic fibers and an illustrated guide explaining how everything should fit and what to check.
She unpacked the first tunic, shook out the wrinkles, and did the same for a pair of pants. They used the same design and materials as professional gunfighter’s uniforms, but the two-tone beige color scheme marked the wearer as a trainee. The reflection in the full-length mirror made it obvious the uniform’s color didn’t do her hair or her complexion any favors, but it fit. With the drawstring pulled, the pants hugged her hips just tightly enough to feel secure but didn’t restrict motion. The tunic sleeves ended where her wrist joined her hand, exactly as the directions said they should. Her name, in block letters over her left breast, was spelled correctly. The company logo was indeed printed on both shoulders, though there was no escaping the fact it looked like a midair collision between the letters TKC and a Cubist rendering of a seagull. It didn’t express “security, stability, and competence” to her, but she wasn’t the target audience. She didn’t have any assets to insure.
The soft leather boots fit like socks and smelled like hunting and work. Their tan color complemented the uniform, and when she stood, the pants ended just above the foot and fell high enough in back that her heel couldn’t get caught in them.
The bathroom lighting and gray wall made her image in the mirror look like a publicity still. Which is what it was, really. For the next year, she would play Kira Clark, gunfighter trainee. Like her three months as Juliet, nearly six months as Ophelia, or her five glorious, well-paid weeks as the Higgins Sky-Yacht Services Girl—before Higgins and most of the corporate treasury departed for a non-extradition country.
Kira worked through all seven uniforms and two pairs of boots, focusing on the look and feel of the clothes while trying to ignore their purpose.
A lot could happen in the next year. Legislation restricting debt slavery could pass. Lawsuits overturning punitive charges in her contract could move forward. A decent job could turn up. And, if none of that happened, she had twelve months to think about what to do next. Ideally, an option that didn’t involve shooting at anybody, getting shot herself, or adding repayment of her signing bonus to her already monstrous pile of debts. Potentially, those were some hard choices. But for now, all she had to do was play the part.
God knows she’d spent enough time and money learning to do that.
She pulled the seventh tunic over her head, shook it into place, struck a pose, and checked the mirror. How should a gunfighter look? Or more to the point, how should she look, as a gunfighter? Not angry. An angry young blonde wouldn’t be taken seriously, especially because she was only 5'4". Something else, then. Efficient. Competent. Cold. Like Beatrice the Assassin in Bellamy Beach. She straightened her back, squared her shoulders, and adjusted her expression. A relaxed, alert, and utterly unsympathetic face stared back from the mirror—a lioness sizing up a herd of gazelles.
A paid killer.
That’s what Rob had called her that last night in New York, right before he put a gob of spit between her feet and stalked off down the street. He’d been drunk, not to mention mad because she’d abandoned his play just three weeks into the run, but he wasn’t wrong. On the other hand, it was pretty damn easy to be critical when nobody was trying to foreclose on your life.
Time to try the look out on an audience. Kira returned to the main room. “What do you think?” She took the same pose she’d taken in front of the mirror and spoke in her character’s voice: low, cool, and flat, with an undertone suggesting she didn’t really need the opinion she was soliciting, but chose to be polite.
Chloe, seated at her desk, looked up and blanched. “Holy shi— Pardon my French. You look good.”
Kira laughed. No need to stay in character now that she’d seen the effect. “Thanks.” She patted the pants. “These things are ridiculously comfortable.”