Meetings!
Typical Shamus luck: instead of a cage, I got a room with a door and a lock. With not a sprig of hay to break my fall as Local Boy and some other guy tossed me in. I almost broke my nose on the floor; well, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d need to wait before I should come to, but I had that problem solved for me; there was somebody else in the room. After a minute had passed without anybody coming back, she moved forward to check my pulse. When she found the whatever-it-was on my wrist, she muttered something under her breath. It didn’t sound polite.
Then she moved away for a moment, then came back with what felt like a wet rag. When she started to wipe some of the crap off of my face I was really tempted to just let her do it for a while. Did I mention that it had been a long night?
But the job never ends. I sat up, startling her more than a little. As she retreated, I nodded politely. “Irene of Deseret, I presume?” I said.
“I may have been called that,” Irene said. There was enough light to see her; she was dressed in a fairly shapeless dress, had hair that been recently shorn, and had a bracelet that — I looked down — yup, it matched mine. She also looked seriously unhappy. The kind of unhappy that slops over onto other people.
“We’re getting out of here,” we both said, at pretty much the same moment.