Shadow Hand

by Sacchi Green

  At first there hadn’t even been any outright villains, although Major Ratlaff and his secretary had come close. Her shenanigans after probably made Ash herself a villain, but she’d had to get a grubstake together, as her grandfather used to say. Money was necessary in order to survive, travel, and be prepared for whatever might happen. She felt a lingering guilt at sending Mona off with less than half of what they’d scrounged in Munich because her own plane tickets—a short hop to Amsterdam and a long flight to Miami—cost more than Mona’s trip to relatives in the UK.

  At the airport in Miami, there’d been tourist flyers promoting a shipboard casino. Just what Ash needed. Some of her winnings had even been legitimate, but gaming the roulette wheel had been so easy that she’d had to move on quickly from casino to casino and state to state in order to stay anonymous.

  The fact that so many casinos were owned by Native American tribes made her feel guilty after a while; her own Montana heritage included a sixteenth or so of Absaroka bloodline. She’d decided after a while to go to Las Vegas in spite of the tight security there.

  After raking in a substantial amount, she got out just in time. A croupier was watching her a little too keenly and spoke a few words into his headset. Her description must have been getting around. A quick trip toward the restroom, a fur stole appearing suddenly on her shoulders while its oblivious owner was engrossed in a blackjack game, and Ash was out the door. The fur, having served its purpose, reappeared right back where it belonged.

  The casinos had given her a chance to encounter a few truly nasty characters and separate them from their ill-gotten gains, with some punishment on the side. She’d learned to tie sturdy knots in ropes from a distance, and even to activate items like fancy canes or pool cues. Being beaten by inanimate objects that seemed to have wills of their own was even harder on the recipients’ minds than on their bodies. But she was coming to realize that to do any real good, to have a far-reaching effect, even a superhero needed organization, and assistance. And she needed Cleo.

  She’d chosen Boston because Cleo used to reminisce about knocking around the city and hanging out in bars on Dyke Night when she was scarcely old enough to get in. Maybe, just maybe, Cleo would visit those old haunts when she got out of the Army. Assuming she’d even continued with her plan to get out, with Ash gone. Any reasons she’d had for leaving Cleo didn’t matter anymore. Ash wished achingly that she hadn’t done it.

  Well, what was done was done. Now to figure out how to help this girl, and fast. If she could get her away, where would she take her? What was Massachusetts like? Back in Montana, Ash had assumed that all of New England was densely populated, one big city, but Cleo had told her about the forests and farms and small towns of New Hampshire and Vermont and western Massachusetts as well as the enticements of Boston.

  The Fasten Seatbelts light came on. The flight attendant moved along the aisle to make sure trays were back up and carry-ons stowed securely. Ash heard her speak pleasantly to the girl, and the man answer sharply.

  The plane’s angle of descent increased briefly, then flattened out. They came out of the cloudbank so close to the ground that nothing of the city could be seen but the airport itself and the dull glint of a harbor.

  Then they were down, standing up, gathering their gear. The man and the girl had no carry-on baggage at all. Ash followed them through into the terminal and looked around for inspiration. The women’s restroom just down the hall—a steady stream of travelers pulling huge rolling suitcases—yes. One suitcase rolled suddenly away from its owner and hit her target hard enough in the shins to knock him over.

  Ash grabbed the girl’s unresisting hand and pulled her into the well-populated restroom. “Do you want to get away from him?” Ash muttered in her ear.

  “Yes! But...” And then they were in a relatively roomy handicapped stall. “He’ll kill me, miss! Ma’am!”

  “Not if he doesn’t find you. Do you have somewhere to go if I get you away safely?”

  The girl looked blank for a moment, trying to process the situation. “I think so…I’ve a sister in Dublin would take me in for a bit.” A bit of color returned to her cheeks. “Scold the skin off me, but take me in.” Her accent revealed her origin as much as the mention of Ireland. “But I’ve no money for an airline ticket!”

  What a relief. Somewhere to send her. “Don’t worry about that part.”

  “And he keeps my passport!”

  Okay, a minor challenge. “Where does he keep it?”

  “In the pocket inside his jacket, ma’am.” She touched a hand to her adolescent left breast to indicate the position.

  Good. No waiting for the baggage to be unloaded.

  “Will you just trust me?” Stupid question. What if the girl said no?

  But she just shrugged, as though whatever happened couldn’t be any worse than what she’d already been through. “I guess. Just don’t let him get me.”

  “I won’t. I promise. Wait here.”

  Ash got to the restroom exit just as the man tried to shove his way in. She stepped one way and another, pretending to try to get out of the way while actually blocking him.

  “Bridget, you fucking bitch,” he yelled. “Get out here!” He pushed further into the room, Ash still blocking him. The other women there saw his contorted face, heard his torrent of profanity, and shrank back or surged forward, depending on their natures.

  Ash backed him into a corner by a hot-air hand dryer. “Somebody go get a security guard!” Several somebodies did. The guy tried to beat her off, but she didn’t let any of his blows land with much impact. It was all she could do to resist physically grabbing him in a neck hold and twisting until something broke, but there had to be some semblance of an accident, so by the time security guards arrived the intruder had mysteriously managed to bang his head against the towel dispenser hard enough to knock it off the wall, and was unconscious and bleeding on the floor. Ash herself had been seen to step back just before this happened, so when the guards questioned witnesses they all agreed that he had fallen and struck his head all by himself. “Drunken bastard!” was the general opinion.

  In the chaos Ash grabbed Bridget and got her out of there. “Any baggage to pick up?”

  “No, but… Ma’am, my passport!”

  “No problem.” She flashed the packet of documents that had been in the scumbag’s pocket, then slid it back into her own.

  In the taxi pickup area, a cab pulled right up to the curb for them. The driver looked startled, but when Ash shoved fifty bucks at him and told him to take them to any hotel within two miles of the airport, he seemed just as glad his cab had stopped where it did.

  The hotel was glossier than Ash would have liked, but no irritating questions were asked, and she paid in cash. Her ID, forged in Miami since she knew the one she’d stolen in Hohenfels would have a trace on it by then, was the best money could buy.

  Bridget was wilting when they got to their room. Ash ordered room service and sent the girl to take a shower while they waited. Later, after they’d eaten and Bridget had revived quite a bit, there was the awkward part where Bridget thought she should offer herself in case that was Ash’s motive for helping her.

  “I wouldn’t mind with you,” she said, when Ash gently turned her down. “I used to get…no, I didn’t get anything. Harry got a hundred dollars an hour for me early on. Sometimes more, but those times when the fucker wanted something…extra, those were the worst.” She looked away, trying to hide her face. Ash stifled an impulse to hug her, for comfort. In this touchy situation, the gesture could be misinterpreted.

  “Now, though,” Bridget said, her voice so low Ash could barely hear her, “now that I’m so… used up, he said the high rollers in Vegas won’t pay so much, so he brought me to Boston ‘cause he said they like an Irish look here. He could get twenty bucks a shot for me in a hotel, twenty times a night. Better than selling drug
s.” She searched Ash’s face for disdain, saw none, and went on. “And there’s a big football playoff going on at the end of next month, with great crowds, and girls are delivered in vans to pay-to-play parties. But if I didn’t do well enough, he swore he’d sell me to a guy who works the truck stops—no rooms, just the back of a van, and that would finish me off.” By then her voice was shaking.

  “He won’t get anything now.” Ash’s throat was tight. “You get some sleep. We’ll see if we can get you on a plane to Dublin tomorrow, and if there’s time we’ll get some clothes and a suitcase for you first.”

  She tucked the girl into one of the beds and sat on the other one, wondering whether she should ask more of the questions raging in her head, or wait for morning. At least the girl showed no signs of being on drugs.

  “Ma’am,” Bridget said sleepily, “excuse me for asking, but are you some kind of nun? One of the other girls said in America, some of the nuns, and other ladies like them, try to help our kind.”

  “Um, no, not a nun.” What was Ash getting herself into? It looked like she’d stumbled into the edges of something big enough to be the major mission she’d been looking for, and she’d figured out roughly what was going on, but in a way she felt like a first-timer, a virgin just discovering how cruel and complex the world could be. Strange, considering all the things she’d seen and done, in the Army and out.

  Sex trafficking. She knew thousands of women were captured as sex slaves in the various conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, but hadn’t thought much about it happening in the US. “How about you tell me about yourself. What made you come here from Ireland?”

  “Just stupid. A rich lady offered me a job as an au pair, got me a passport and all, but once we’d come here she turned me over to Harry, and I never saw her again.”

  “Probably not rich, at least not legitimately, and certainly no lady.”

  Bridget nodded despondently. “I know, but it’s too late. A lot of girls do the same, some from abroad, some from here, runaways met at the bus station, like that. And now we’re all nothing but trash.”

  “No!” Ash mentally kicked herself for getting the girl going. She should be drifting toward sleep. “You’re safe now, and you’ll never, never be trash.” Bridget’s eyes closed tightly, tears leaking out between her eyelids. Ash did hug her then, and stayed with her, but on top of the covers, stroking the red hair that even felt like Cleo’s except for its length, until the girl slept. Ash herself stayed awake for hours thinking of what she’d learned, what she should do, and how; and wishing desperately that she could talk it over with Cleo.

  In the morning they went by taxi to a chain store to buy clothes for Bridget, and a suitcase to hold them. Over lunch, Ash made one more low-key attempt to get additional information, but Bridget had no idea where exactly Harry had been taking her, just that they usually stayed in hotels, run-down ones lately, occupied by other girls like her with their keepers and guarded by guys looking like ex-wrestlers who had got the worst of all their matches. All she knew about how customers found them was that there were classified ads online.

  That evening, Bridget boarded the plane for Dublin, nervous but resolved. Just before getting in line she turned and hugged Ash, the way people all around them were doing to each other.

  “You’ll be all right?” Ash asked, then wished she’d made it a statement rather than a question.

  Bridget shrugged, then said timidly, “Could I write to you?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t even have an address right now.”

  The line moved on. Bridget looked back once, her face set, probably thinking she’d been deliberately cut off. Ash felt a surge of guilt, knowing she was glad to shed the responsibility. She could at least have asked for the address of Bridget’s sister, but it was better not to fuel any expectations. At least she had sent the girl off with enough money to get by for a month or two. On a remorseful impulse, she made another couple of months’ worth transfer from her wallet to the pouch Bridget had sewn inside her blouse. Out of habit she put her hand in her pocket in the process, even though it was all done with her mind, and found a piece of hotel stationery there. Bridget must have managed to slip it in while Ash was showering that morning.

  “Ma’am,” she’d written, “I know it was a sin, but I opened the door a crack and saw you in the shower when you dropped the soap and made it float up through the air to you. I thought already that you might be an angel, and now I know for sure. Please forgive the sin. And thank you.”

  An angel? No! Absolutely no. But when Bridget found the extra cash, she’d be even surer. If Ash had to be seen as some supernatural being, she’d rather go with Cleo’s Shadow Hand gimmick.

  Well. Now for Boston, and all those locales Cleo had mentioned in her stories of youthful wild abandon. Things would have changed in the years since, but there’d still be a community, a network; and sooner or later, just maybe, there’d be Cleo.

  Over the next couple of weeks Ash found several women who remembered Cleo. When they heard how Ash had met her, the most common reaction was amazement that Cleo had ever signed up for the Army. The manager of the Galaxy Bar shook her head. “Can’t see that firebrand taking orders.”

  Ash hadn’t mentioned rank, but she couldn’t resist a casual, “Well, she took them from me. Twisted them to suit herself, but took them.” That got her a round of laughs.

  “Impressive,” the manager said. “You’re not from around here, are you? Idaho?”

  Ash had noticed their similar accents, though both had been muted by years away from their roots. A far cry from the Boston voices around them. “Western Montana. Pretty much the same thing, right?”

  The manager laughed and thumped her on the shoulder. “Damned right. Well, if you run into Cleo again, tell her Mags asked after her.” She held out a big hand, and they shook with a subtle, affable testing of each other’s grip.

  Mags was a classic salt-and-pepper butch with an infectious grin, a square jaw, and ice-blue eyes that didn’t miss a trick.

  “Glad to meet you, Mags. I’m Ash.” She glanced around at the half-dozen women sitting at the bar. “I’m brand new to Boston, but I can sure see why Cleo used to get so nostalgic about the city and the people.”

  That got her some instant pals, and an invitation to a party, which she turned down with a laugh and “maybe another time.”

  On Ash’s second visit to the bar, it was Dyke Night. She stood watching the dancers and tapping her foot to the music until a gaggle of drunk straight guys paused outside, hooting with laughter and trying to push each other through the door. Finally they managed to shove their way in and started shouting lewd insults.

  Her military training kicked in. She was instantly right up in their faces. “Out! Now!” she ordered, her Lieutenant-Who-Takes No-Shit tone making some of them back off and out. Two stayed, bristling with bravado in spite of the unsteadiness of their feet. She sent one to the floor and rolled him right through the door, tripping up the other on the way and tumbling them both out into the road.

  For effect, in case anybody had been watching closely, Ash dusted off her hands—hands that hadn’t actually touched them, not that she couldn’t have handled them physically with her martial arts skills. She looked around. Folks were certainly staring at her, but they’d all been drinking, so she could hope that no one had seen too much, or at least not enough to be sure something weird had happened.

  But maybe Mags had. She came around from behind the counter with a funny look on her face. “Hey, what just happened? Great work, but how—”

  “Oh, you learn in a lot of useful stuff in the Army. Tricks of the trade.”

  “Got any more tricks up your sleeve? How’d you like a job here as a bouncer? My last one went off to a cabin in the Maine woods to write the Great American Lesbian Novel.” She shook her head in disgust.

  “Sure. I’ll try it for a whi
le.” Ash figured it was as good a way as any to win the confidence of the community. Besides, rousting those bastards had been fun. Good exercise.

  The community of Boston-area lesbians turned out to be much more extensive and more welcoming than anywhere else Ash had been. She maintained a stance of confidence without challenging anyone except would-be troublemakers in the bar, and soon had a wide range of casual acquaintances. Most of her time, though, was spent alone, researching information on sex trafficking in newspapers and magazines at the public library and searching online sources on the iPhone she’d literally picked up in Miami. She felt that she was getting a handle on the sex-trafficking situation in New England, but it was maddeningly diffuse. Where was Cleo to help her sort it all out?

  Massage parlors, nail salons, classified ads—hundreds of small outfits that would need one-by-one attention, and even then required the police department to take notice. In the massage parlors and nail salons, many of the girls didn’t speak English well enough to understand that you were trying to help, or even to tell you if they wanted help. Fictitious superheroes got to battle with super-powerful individuals or criminal rings, so if they put just a few villains out of commission they won the battle.

  Real life was a lot more complicated. No single villain had a monopoly on evil. Greed was everywhere—greed for power as well as money—and knocking off bastards who’d risen to power just made room for others to pop up from the same ground like venomous mushrooms.

  Just the same, Ash’s own power nagged at her to find, uproot, and smash the villains who trafficked in sex slaves. Until she found out how and where to accomplish this, all she could do was vent her frustration on the everyday minor evils common to city life.

  In her first three weeks in Boston, she flattened and rolled to the curb a shitbag stealing money out of a handicapped panhandler’s cup, slung a bicycle thief over the limb of a stately tree on Boston Common, and administered invisible punches where they would do the most good to a dozen or so guys harassing women on the street. Useful in their way but small change. That wasn’t all she should be doing.