Ex-Communication: A Novel by Peter Clines Page A

looked between them. “Special? What have you two been keeping from me?”
    “Beats me.” She pushed the wheelchair into the apartment and her shoulders relaxed by a few degrees once they were inside. “Is it just us?”
    “Not exactly,” said St. George.
    “Please tell me it’s not Freedom,” said Barry. “I’m sorry, but that guy can be so upti— … oh.”
    Stealth stood by the table. Her arms hung straight at her sides.
    St. George stepped forward and took her hand. Her fingers wrapped around his. “Guys—Barry, Danielle—this is Karen.”
    Danielle’s eyes went wide. Her shoulders tensed back up. Barry gaped.
    Stealth shifted under their gazes. “Good evening,” she said. A moment passed and her free hand went up to sweep a strand of ebony hair away from her face. As she lowered it, she paused to tug at the collar of her blouse.
    The silence stretched out for another few seconds before Danielle cleared her throat. “Hello,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting … we … We didn’t know George was … seeing anyone.”
    “You,” said Barry, “are very pretty.”
    Stealth’s lips twitched and she dipped her head to him. “Thank you.”
    Danielle set the wine down on the table. Then she picked it back up. “George, do you have a corkscrew?”
    “Yeah, I think so.”
    The redhead nodded, glanced at the other woman again,and vanished across the room. St. George separated his fingers from Stealth’s and followed Danielle into the kitchen.
    She turned on him as soon as he stepped through the doorway. “It’s her, isn’t it?” whispered Danielle. It wasn’t a question.
    “What?”
    “Don’t play stupid, George.”
    “I’m not playing.”
    She glanced back at the living room with wide eyes. They could hear Barry filling the air with small talk. He was quizzing the dark-haired woman on her favorite movies.
    Danielle looked at St. George. “Want to know something? Women size each other up all the time. We’re way more competitive than men. That’s why no one ever knows who I am out of the armor.”
    “What are you getting at?”
    “I know those hips and that rack, I just never see them without black spandex and leather straps stretched across them. And besides, I screened her when we moved into the Mount, remember? I didn’t see her face, but I know she’s black.”
    A wisp of smoke sighed out between his lips. “Don’t say anything, okay?”
    “Don’t say anything?!” Danielle swung the bottle back at the doorway. “What the hell is going on?”
    “She’s trying to socialize, okay? She hasn’t dealt with anyone without her mask on in three years.”
    “And you know what that says to me? She’s going to kill us all because we’ve seen her face.”
    “Please,” he said. “Just be cool about this. For me. She needs it.”
    She glared at him for a moment, then thrust her hand out. “Corkscrew.”
    He pulled open a drawer, fumbled through the collection of kitchen tools, and held up a corkscrew. “Thank you,” he said.
    She pulled it from his fingers. “Don’t thank me yet.” She took a deep breath and headed back into the living room. Sheran into Stealth in the doorway. They stood eye to eye for a moment.
    “Have you started the pasta?” Stealth asked.
    Danielle swallowed. St. George shook his head. “No, I was just about to.”
    “I will take care of it,” she said. She stepped to the oven. Danielle vanished back to the living room.
    Barry gave a couple frantic waves when St. George returned, and the hero crouched by the wheelchair. “Where?” demanded Barry. “Where in God’s name did you find a woman like that?”
    “What?”
    “Her. Karen. Where’d she come from?”
    He blinked and exchanged a glance with Danielle. “Are you serious?”
    “Of course I am.”
    “You … you probably just never noticed her before.”
    “It’s the Mount,” hissed Barry. “You can’t hide someone who looks like that. Was she from Yuma?”
    St. George shook his