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fainted inside the door. “Let it go, everyone,” he said. “See you tomorrow, yeah? Pame! ”
    “ Efharisto ,” they chorused back at him, completing their little ritual of the scant Greek he ever used these days. Chatter and laughter and subdued commentary rose as Malik stormed out and they trickled out behind him. By then Steve had reached Mickey’s side, and it was his hand at her elbow that kept her on her feet.
    “Naia,” she murmured. She looked at her hands, ran fingers over the inside of an elbow that had seen far too many recent injections.
    But he frowned at his own immediate assumption. Not just drug hits. IV needle. Bigger, and it had left a spreading bruise. Had she ODed? Made it to rehab? Been mixing drugs with her prescribed meds?
    “I should get you to the clinic,” he said.
    “No!” She twisted away. He hadn’t been ready for that wiry strength, no matter how he’d just seen it used on Malik. He stepped back, hands raised to placate her; in that moment he could find none of the smiling, charismatic woman who’d sat on the cot in his office and nibbled his lunch down. Just …
    Wild fear. Confusion. A woman about to run.
    “I need—” she said.
    “I can’t—” she said.
    “I—” she said, and finally stopped for good.
    “Just breathe,” he told her. “It’s okay.”
    “Naia—” She looked up at him in utter confusion, and the confusion made way for pure frustration, that quick gleam of perfectly composed and self-possessed awareness. “Dammit. I almost had … well, some thing. Blasted memory. They said the drugs—”
    “Some of them do that,” he agreed, and added gently, “You’re still better off if you take them.”
    She gave him a startled look. “What are you talking about?”
    Suddenly he felt like the one whose reality had to be skewed. He cleared his throat. “Schizophrenia medications.”
    She laughed. Right out loud, she laughed. Hard enough so she staggered a little, and this time she let him catch her. “Oof,” she said. “I needed that. But no, I don’t think so. I need help, all right, but …” She trailed off again, distracted by her inner landscape. Not good thoughts, those. Steve didn’t have to wonder long. “I could have hurt that boy,” she said. “I could have killed him.”
    She had that much right.
    But he remembered what he’d seen. How precise she’d been. How controlled. And almost in spite of himself, he said, “I don’t think so, Mickey. You’re trained. You’re good . You did exactly what you meant to do, how you meant to do it.” And at that, he hesitated. “You’re sure there’s no one I can call—?”
    He expected resistance, not the rueful twist of her mouth as she shook her head. “I just need a few days,” she said. “Somewhere I can stay out of sight. Just until I can figure out—” she stopped, shook her head. It wasn’t in response to anything he’d done, but he was used to that. Overlapping conversations with the same person. Abruptly, she said, “Can I stay here?”
    “I don’t—” he started, and stopped as she wavered.
    “I’m sitting,” she said abruptly. “Don’t stop talking. I need this conversation to happen.” And she sat. She barely gave him time to follow suit, bemused and wishing the air conditioning could handle the heat of the offshore flow just a degree or two more efficiently. “Look, I know this place isn’t a shelter. And I know I could find a shelter if I went looking. But that’s where they’re—” She stopped short on those words, probably catching the paranoid sound of them. “I need a few days to—” she said, and decided against finishing that, too. “I know what you think I need. But I won’t get in the way … I’ll do whatever work you want me to, and …”
    He hadn’t said anything. He studiously hadn’t said anything—although there was plenty to say. He couldn’t establish a precedent … he couldn’t say yes to her and no to everyone else. And