Disruptor (2 page)

Kevin opened his mouth to speak but Sean
steamrollered right over him. “At some point you’re going to have
to grow up. If you still don’t want to work at Moynihan
Consolidated, that’s fine. Olivia’s made a very fulfilling life for
herself as a doctor. Find something that speaks to you. Something
you’re good at, and passionate about. Something productive. You
don’t even have to give up the women and the nightclubs completely.
Just do something useful with yourself.”

Kevin kept his smile pasted in place, glad he
was wearing sunglasses. Not to hide the red in his eyes from lack
of sleep, but to hide his frustration. “I happen to be good at, and
very passionate about, dating models and going to parties.
Shouldn’t I play to my strengths just like you and Liv do?”

“Surely you want more out of life than to
just be Point Sable’s most notorious playboy?”

“Notorious?” This time Kevin’s grin was real.
“I like that. Great-grandpa Paddy was the city’s most notorious
bootlegger, you know. Kind of makes me feel a connection.”

Sean shook his head, amusement briefly
lightening his normally stern features. “I can just see you
drinking bathtub gin and dancing with flappers.”

Kevin wagged a finger. “Now see, that speaks
to me.”

“You want to party on the weekends, fine. I’m
not saying you have to completely change who you are. God knows no
one in this family would be able to do that. You forget I know you,
Kevin. You’re smarter than you let on. I’d like to see you use that
brain for something other than calculating tips.”

“Oh please.” Kevin downed a quick swallow of
orange juice. “I don’t calculate tips, I just pass out twenties and
hundreds like confetti.”

Sean sighed as he reopened his tablet.
“That’s a great use of your trust fund.”

The spring air had just enough bite of winter
left to make a jacket necessary but this morning the sun was bright
and crisp. The faint whir of equipment reached the second-story
veranda as several dark-skinned men from the lawn service company
were busy at various tasks with the yard and the landscaping. The
scent of fresh blooms from the flower garden below drifted up,
gradually covering the smells of food.

Kevin fiddled with the silver utensils next
to his plate. Last night he’d loaded old, tarnished forks and
spoons into the big industrial dishwasher at the homeless shelter
where he was doing his court-mandated community service for yet
another drunk and disorderly charge. Four hours of washing dishes
and cleaning the kitchen. He’d ruined a perfectly good pair of
loafers when he’d clumsily dumped a bucket of dirty mop water down
a drain he hadn’t known was clogged. As many shoes as he had in his
closet, he wouldn’t miss that pair.

One of the kids who’d come to the shelter for
a meal wore ratty sneakers held together with duct tape.

Kevin opened his mouth to speak but the words
wouldn’t come. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say. That a
mere four hours of community service in a homeless shelter had
opened his eyes in a way that watching the news never could. Just
the drive to the shelter had been an education in and of itself.
He’d lived in Point Sable his entire life and last night was the
first time he’d ventured below 110
^th
Street. That
knowledge made him feel like the worst sort of dilettante, but he
couldn’t talk about that with Sean.

So he closed his mouth and let the emotions
drift away, to be resurrected later via paint and canvas. For now,
he drank the gourmet coffee brought by a servant and listened to
his older brother drone on about the family’s business
dealings.

He was scheduled to work another four hours
tonight. Hopefully it would be easier than the first, both on his
wardrobe and his conscience.

Dani dressed in the clean clothes she’d
picked out of the donation bin. The jeans were too long, she had to
roll the cuffs up. The t-shirt was too big but she’d taken it
anyway because it was solid black. Somehow she’d have to scrape up
some money to wash her black hoodie at a laundromat along with the
older clothes she’d decided to keep. She pushed her wet hair off
her face, zipped up her backpack, and left the Women Only area of
the Lee Street homeless shelter.

A shower and clean clothes had helped her
state of mind considerably, but it didn’t last long. The line for
dinner already snaked around the common room. Dani joined it,
careful not to make eye contact with anyone.

Three months of this and she’d had enough. It
wasn’t her first time on the streets but it was different now.
She’d gotten used to relative safety, or at least the closest thing
to it possible in the lab. A bed to sleep in, regular meals, a
shower every day and clean clothes. Her freedom was worth giving
all that up, but now she was sick of living like a ghost.

It was time to think about what came
next.

They had to be looking for her. No one had
ever escaped the lab. So far there’d been no sign of a search party
in Cabrini, but Point Sable wasn’t the only city where she could
have been hiding. She’d deliberately avoided closer towns when
she’d fled.

She couldn’t do anything about her looks.
Even if she had the resources, she’d had enough surgeries and
procedures to last a lifetime. But if she could manage to get
enough money, a new identity might be possible. It would take a lot
of cash, though, and she had no way of making that much money that
she was willing to do. Any woman on the street could find someone
willing to buy and sell her body. The thought of doing that chilled
Dani. Her first time on the streets, she’d opted for lots of petty
theft and occasionally running drugs for a dealer who got a kick
out of taking stray kids under his wing.

Petty theft and this shelter had been keeping
her going in the three months she’d been free.

The line moved slow and steady. Conversation
flowed around her, mostly young runaways who knew each other. A
girl with ratty braids and hard green eyes caught Dani’s attention.
The kid was fifteen, sixteen at the most. Those flinty, bleak eyes
had seen more than she should have, and it was all ugly.

Like looking in a mirror. Dani dropped her
gaze back to the floor and closed the lid on memories before they
had a chance to become overwhelming.

An actual job – that was what she needed.
Something legal so she stayed out of trouble, but just shady enough
that her lack of ID wouldn’t be a problem. How the hell was she
supposed to find something like that? She had no connections in
Point Sable, even after three months. Mostly because she’d avoided
even the slightest interaction, but crap, it was time to change
that.

Dani ate her meal at the far end of a long
table, hunched over her plate and avoiding conversation. Once
finished, she dropped off her tray and spoke to one of the
volunteers. “Is Thorpe around?”

The volunteer, gray-haired and wearing an
apron, gave her a baleful look. “What do you need with
Mr
.
Thorpe?”

Dani swallowed a surge of irrational anger
and the desire to tell the old man to mind his own damn business.
“I wanted to ask him if he knew about any jobs.” Thorpe ran the
shelter and made himself available to anyone wanting to talk or
needing help. This asshole didn’t trust anyone under fifty and was
protective of his boss. Dani was pretty sure he’d been homeless
once himself. That didn’t put her in the mood to put up with his
shit but she didn’t want to shove her way past him.

“A job, huh? You wantin’ a real job or some
bullshit? Cause Mr. Thorpe, he don’t deal in bullshit. You know
what I’m saying?”

“I want a job, not bullshit.” She jerked her
chin toward the kitchen entrance. “Can I go talk to Mr.
Thorpe?”

The
mister
seemed to mollify the
self-appointed watchdog. He gave his best glare for several more
seconds before his features softened and he nodded. “Go on.”

The shelter used to be a community center
years ago, back when communities on the south side of Point Sable
had such things. Dani didn’t know much more than that about the
place. The kitchen equipment looked original, including scarred,
decades-old prep tables and big, clunky industrial appliances.

Thorpe attacked the cooktop with a metal
spatula, scraping grease and other food debris from the
still-cooling surface. He was a rangy man in his late fifties. His
skin was a sepia brown, deeply lined with a scattering of dark
freckles across the bridge of his nose and under his deep set eyes.
Most of his short, curly hair was gray but a few lingering strands
of black held on here and there. Dani watched him work, unsure of
how best to approach him.

He took care of that for her. “You just gonna
stand there, or do you have something to say?” He glanced at her, a
faint smile softening his words.

“I heard you sometimes help people find jobs.
I’m looking for work.”

“Work’s a good thing to have.” Thorpe
continued to clean while he spoke. “You been to the Workforce
Development office?”

She’d never heard of it. “What’s that?”

“It’s a state office, help people find jobs,
get training.” He glanced at her. “You got ID?”

Her first time on the streets, years ago,
she’d learned the hard way not to give away too much about herself.
That instinct returned, a screaming urgency in her head and her
gut. But Thorpe had a solid reputation. She’d never seen him treat
anyone badly, and she’d been watching.

And she needed help. So she swallowed her
trepidation and answered his question. “No. But I don’t want to do
anything bad. Maybe wait tables or clean houses for cash. Something
like that.”

A clatter came from the back of the kitchen.
Dani nudged her hearing up, like mentally turning a dial, and found
the source. Someone was outside the back door, in the alley. She
clenched her fists and rose slightly on the balls of her feet,
ready to run at whoever was on the other side of that door.

It opened, and a slender man with dark gold
hair struggled to wrestle a mop and bucket through the door.

Thorpe paused in his cleaning to observe the
much younger man. “You look like you stayed dry this time.”

Golden hair laughed. “Mostly.” He maneuvered
the mop bucket to a space marked off for cleaning supplies as best
he could on its worn out wheels.

Thorpe gestured at a spot on the floor. “That
drain’s been stopped up for months. Don’t have the money to get
someone out here to work on it.”

The guy from last night – she’d taken a
twenty from him and told him to go back uptown when he’d asked for
directions to the shelter. Had he seen her face? She’d done her
best to hide herself with the hoodie, but it wasn’t perfect.

He looked right at her. No recognition, but
something sparked in his electric blue eyes that made her
nervous.

Don’t run. Walk out like it’s no big deal.
Just don’t run and draw more attention to yourself.

Dani eased backward a couple of steps and
forced herself to sound casual. “Hey, I think I’ll check back about
a job another time.”

“Oh, don’t mind him.” Thorpe chuckled. “He’s
just serving his community.”

“In a sober and orderly fashion.” The guy’s
smile was as brilliant as his eyes. He didn’t belong here. Too
clean, too pretty, too untouched by the kind of things that kept
her awake long into the night.

Should she say something else, or just walk
out? She had no idea. With a half-hearted wave directed at Thorpe,
Dani left the kitchen. Once clear of the swinging metal doors, she
sped up and didn’t slow down until she was two blocks away.

***

Kevin spent the rest of his shift wondering
about the brown-eyed girl who’d apparently changed her mind about
asking Thorpe for help. Swallowed up by clothes too big for her,
she looked young and fragile, like so many of the girls he’d seen
in the shelter in his two nights here. The sight of a blond teen
who resembled his sister at that age had nearly caused his heart to
burst with a confusing mix of anger and guilt. How did these kids
survive on the streets? How did they wind up like this, with no one
but each other and a stranger or two to care about them? All the
arguments he’d had with his parents growing up, all the times he’d
disappointed both himself and them, and he’d never once considered
leaving. As much as he’d frustrated his parents, they’d never come
close to throwing him out, either.

Would it have been different if his father
had worked on a factory floor, instead of owning several? Kevin
didn’t think so. Family meant everything to the Moynihans. More
than the fortune, more than the social standing. That bond,
instilled since birth, was why Kevin felt no jealousy over his
brother’s position at Moynihan Consolidated. Why Sean would have
gladly welcomed his younger brother into the company. A united
front and always having each other’s backs – that was the
Moynihans. Even when they annoyed the hell out of each other.

So it was inconceivable to Kevin that so many
people lacked the support they needed, especially kids. It was as
foreign to him as the extreme poverty he’d glimpsed, the people
with eyes full of fear and desperation or worse, nothing at
all.

White liberal guilt, he told himself. That’s
what he was feeling. So be it. Tomorrow he would arrange for a
plumber to come to the shelter to fix the drain and any other
similar problems.

Or rather, have someone do it. Kevin may not
have worked at the family company but there was an assistant on the
payroll to take care of things for him. He would call her in the
morning.

Tonight, he would finish up his four hours of
community service, clean the kitchen as best he was able, and try
to stay out of the way.

A singular pair of dark eyes stayed on his
mind, though. Even malnourished and ragged, the girl was beautiful.
So much so that he worried for her safety. Hopefully she would
spend the night in the shelter and not on the streets, and soon
find a more permanent solution. It wasn’t up to him to save her. He
would do his community service and he would use his money and
contacts to help the shelter itself, but he was nobody’s
savior.