High Country- Pigeon 12 by Nevada Barr

face?" Nicky asked in the voice of a three-year-old.
     
    "In a minute." Anna didn't want her washing anything till she'd satisfied herself there would be no evidence going down the drain with the soap and water. She turned on the bedside lamps and switched off the overhead light, making the room feel homier, less bleak and transient. Sitting in the desk chair, she rocked back, propping her feet on the bed next to Nicky, consciously staying close but not too close, and choosing a pose that was both relaxed and unofficial.
     
    "Now why don't you tell me what happened. Start at the beginning when you left the Ahwahnee and tell it till you get to the part where Diane and I came in."
     
    Nicky heaved a big sigh, then winced as the attendant shoulder-shrugging inflamed her bruised muscles. Pushing her hair back with both hands she tied it out of the way with a soft band that she'd had around her wrist. Eyes red and puffy but focused, she looked at Anna, confusion clear on her face.
     
    "Who are you?" she asked.
     
    For half a beat Anna thought the girl had slipped a cog. When she realized the question was actually astute and perceptive, she felt a stab of alarm, wondering where she'd failed in her cover persona.
     
    "Just a lady who's been around the block often enough to smell a rat, especially when the rat leaves a paw print the size of the one you've got on your shoulder," Anna replied. With intonation and expression, she suggested she'd been on the receiving end of physical abuse a time or two herself.
     
    Nicky looked at her suspiciously, then chose to accept things at face value. The moment of insight passed. Her eyes lost the sharp look. "Okay," she said.
     
    "Tell me," Anna said, taking pains to sound kind rather than curious.
     
    A number of emotions could be read on the girl's open countenance: fear, hesitation, need. Need won out after an exceedingly brief struggle. Anna doubted Nicky had ever kept a secret for more than ten seconds in all of her short life.
     
    "You've got to promise not to tell anybody," Nicky said earnestly. "Especially not like rangers or cops or anything, okay? They said they'd kill me if I told anybody."
     
    "I promise," Anna said. Lying was getting easier and easier. After the big lie of who she was and why she was waiting tables, the little ones rolled off her tongue effortlessly. Of course she would tell law enforcement. Villains thrived on fear and secrecy. The ones who would really kill a victim for telling were those who never would have left a victim alive to tattle in the first place. "Your secret is safe with me," she added for good measure.
     
    "When I came back I was going to-to clean up some stuff-before I went to the clinic." She looked at Anna to see how the story was going.
     
    Anna nodded reassuringly. "You came back to get rid of the dope you and Cricket were smoking before we went on shift," she said matter-of-factly and without a hint of judgment or condemnation.
     
    "Yeah!" Nicky showed the pleased surprise of a teacher getting an unexpectedly correct answer from a dull student.
     
    Anna stopped herself from smiling. The last thing she wanted was for Nicky to regain that spark of insight that suggested Anna was not who she pretended to be.
     
    "Did you get rid of all of it?" she asked neutrally.
     
    "All of it, I even flushed the baggie."
     
    Again Anna nodded. This time to hide her disappointment. When analyzed, a sample of the marijuana might have given them a clue as to where it had come from and what might have been added that had nearly proved fatal for Cricket.
     
    She wanted to ask who Nicky had bought the stuff from but didn't dare. The instant she sounded like a cop-or disapproving parent-she sensed Nicky would clam up, retreat into that place youth suffer with such painful pride: that imaginary world where they are so unique, their experiences so rarified, that adults cannot possibly understand them. Instead she asked: "What then? After you'd gotten