“What’s that all about?” Hudson asked the truck.
I could have answered, but the truck did it for me in the form of a grinding squeal under the hood.
“Uh . . .” I said.
“Shit.”
Hudson steered toward the off-ramp we were approaching at a crawl. The truck lurched, then lurched again on the echoing jerk of the trailer. I felt like a bobblehead.
“Hang on.” Hudson pulled into the breakdown lane, but he didn’t stop. Moving barely faster than the traffic, he drove straight for the off-ramp. Pings and clangs of debris hit the undercarriage of the truck, and behind us, Kyoko trumpeted her displeasure. “Hang in there,” Hudson coaxed. I didn’t know if he was talking to me, Kyoko, or the truck.
We coasted off the freeway and into the parking lot of a dilapidated strip mall, serenaded by the frantic metallic-chicken clucking of the engine.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Hudson said.
I refrained from commenting on the obvious.
Hudson cut the engine and the truck shuddered like a dog shaking off water. I trotted back to the trailer and saw what Hudson meant. One of the two tires on the trailer’s passenger side was shredded. The trailer canted at an angle, the back corner dipping toward the pavement.
I hopped onto the step and peered inside. Kyoko bugled, not moving from where she quivered against the front of the trailer. White showed around her dark eyes, and she swung her head and trunk back and forth in agitation.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s over. You’re safe.”
“It’s definitely over,” Hudson said from behind me.
I turned and fought a grin. The silver top hat sat at a rakish angle. The round barrel was mirror smooth and just as shiny; the sunlight reflecting off it would have blinded me if it were real. Maybe President Lincoln could have pulled the look off, but not Hudson, especially not in a short-sleeve T-shirt. The silver terrier stood on point at his side, as large as a Great Dane now. Beneath its feet lay a recognizable square of a Monopoly game board with a green bar across the top: Pennsylvania Avenue. I looked around for a silver iron or boot or wheelbarrow, or better yet, the horse and rider, but it appeared Hudson’s emotions were linked to only these two pieces.
Hudson scowled at the ruined tire and ran his hand through his short hair—and the metal hat. The reality of the situation punctured my momentary humor.
“Now what?” Hudson asked. “Where are we supposed to find another trailer in this town?”
The trailer wasn’t our only problem. “Uh, how’s the truck?” I asked, eyeing the worn cowboy boots engulfing Hudson’s shoes. Perhaps he fancied himself a cowboy? We did have a horse trailer, after all.
Hudson swung his gaze to mine. “Okay, where are we supposed to find another trailer and truck in this town?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had the need.”
“Me, neither.” He pulled out his cell phone and glared at it, mashed at the black screen, then shoved it back in his jeans’ pocket. “I can’t even access my contacts list.”
I surveyed our location. The strip mall looked like a thousand others in the greater LA area, though this one fortunately had a large parking lot; the truck and trailer took up six spaces at an angle. A Thai restaurant, Laundromat, window blinds store, tattoo parlor, nail salon, and yogurt shop filled the two-block strip. The dull roar of the freeway mixed with the revved engines and stereo sounds at the crossroads. This wasn’t anywhere I recognized: It wasn’t near a familiar bus route, and I’d never had a feng shui consultation in this neighborhood.
“I’m going to get a new phone, then figure something out,” Hudson said. He pointed across the street at a hole-in-the-wall electronics store crammed floor to ceiling with tiny doodads and gizmos.
“Okay. I’ll stay here with Kyoko.” It was the best solution for everyone, especially the proprietor of the claustrophobic shop.
Hudson waited for a break in traffic before running across the four-lane road. The statue-still, pony-size silver terrier gliding along on its Monopoly square wasn’t what pulled my gaze from Kyoko to watch him go.
It took a few minutes of soothing babble before Kyoko calmed enough to mosey across the trailer to whuffle my hand and arm.
“I wish you could talk.” That’d make everything a whole lot easier.
I was sitting on the step of the trailer, arms outstretched, ankles crossed, soaking in a little sun with my eyes closed when Hudson returned. He plopped down beside me, shifting the trailer fractionally. The top hat was gone, and the terrier was normal size again, minus the Monopoly square.
“There’s good news and bad news. Good news: I have a phone, crappy as this burner is.” He held up a small black flip phone. “The guy over there had a phone book, so I found us a car rental place. Bad news: No one around here rents horse trailers. That meant trucks were not an option since we’re trying to keep Kyoko out of sight, and they didn’t have any work vans, so I went with the next-best thing. A Suburban.”
I knew cars like I knew HBO’s fall lineup, which was to say, not at all. When you can’t drive and every vehicle you get in breaks down after one use, what’s the point of learning more about cars? “Remind me what a Suburban is.”
“Big SUV. Hopefully, there’ll be enough clearance to fit an elephant.”
That’d make a great slogan for a billboard ad. A vehicle so big, it can fit an elephant.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Hold off on the thanks until we see if she fits.” He leaned back against the hot side of the trailer and closed his eyes, gripping the edge of the step with his hands. “What a day.”
My gaze slid down the tanned column of his neck. His shirt had flattened against his pectorals and bunched across his stomach. He was lean, but I could see muscle definition under the contours of the thin cotton. Visions of six-pack abs had my mouth watering, and I forced myself to look away, but it wasn’t long before my gaze drifted back. He looked like a model in repose, right down to the disgruntled expression.
Muffling a sigh, I forced my eyes closed and tried to think with my brain instead of my ovaries.
“How are we going to get the Suburban?”
“They bring it to you. Part of their shtick. We just have to drive the guy back to his office.”
“Convenient.”
I shifted my bag closer. I’d used some of the time Hudson had been gone to go through it, straightening what Kyoko and Hudson had messed up. Now I pulled out a water bottle and the remaining packet of crackers. These had peanut butter sandwiched between two tiny Ritz. I cracked open the plastic and offered one to Hudson. He took it, proving his eyes were open behind his shades.
“Do you always pretend to be the boyfriend of women you’ve just met?” I asked after I chewed my cracker sandwich.
“Only those with red hair. What about you? Do you always kidnap men who pretend to be your boyfriend?”
“Only the tall ones.”
Hudson grinned and took another cracker.
“Is there anything important I should know about you?” I asked. “I mean, I know your name and that you work for a security company, but, well . . .”
“Am I a serial killer in my spare time?”
“Something like that.”
“Let’s see. I’m twenty-seven. I don’t have any pets. I like football. And I have no desire to be in a movie.”
“What? You live in LA and don’t aspire to being an actor? I’m shocked.”
“I’m the lone man left. What about you? Any plans for stardom?”
“No, thank you. I’m quite happy as a feng shui consultant.”
“A what?”
“It’s like a specialized form of interior design,” I clarified, more than used to the question. “Basically feng shui is a practice of arranging your environment to suit, attract, and maintain the life you want.”
“That sounds . . . New Agey.”
“Ancient Chinese, actually, but I can see how you’d say that. There�
��s a lot of chi flow and energy movement to what I do, but also a lot of organization and spatial arrangement.”
“Huh. So you do what? Go into people’s homes and fluff their chi?”
I recognized his attitude. I got it from about half the people I encountered. It seemed you were either a believer in energy outside yourself working to influence your life—the universe, chi, God—or you weren’t. Typically, nonbelievers didn’t believe in feng shui. I didn’t take offense, and I wouldn’t try to make him believe. I’d seen feng shui work a thousand times; I didn’t have anything to prove to Hudson. “It’s a little more complicated than that. Less fluffing and more heavy lifting and bell ringing.”
“I wondered about the Christmas bells,” he said.
I shook my bag, and it gave a faint jingle. Bells were a great cure for a multitude of feng shui problems, most commonly to get chi flowing in stagnant areas of a house.
“You do that full-time?”
I shrugged. “I work for myself, set my own hours. I don’t have to work full-time to get by.”
“That sounds nice. Nine-to-fivers suck the soul right out of you.”
I nodded, though I’d never worked a nine-to-five job in my life. The closest I’d come was shortly after high school when I worked at a nursery where I could spend most of my time out with the plants and far away from the building’s phones and lights and cash registers. It had been a peaceful job that built up my upper-body strength, but it didn’t pay well and it ruined all my clothes. It also hadn’t fulfilled any creative spark in my soul, something feng shui did in spades.
“So, a feng shui consultant with an artist aunt. That’s all you’re going to give me? If today’s any judge, I’m going to have to do something spectacular to impress you on our first date, so help me out.”
I lifted my glasses to my forehead, and he mirrored me. He looked sincere. “You still want a date after this?” I gestured behind us at Kyoko inside the trailer.
“This is a hiccup.”
“A hiccup.” My eyebrows met my hairline. “Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot?”
“It’s a first, but I’ve got high hopes.”
I looked away, but I couldn’t suppress my grin. We were in the middle of an illegal scheme we were only peripherally aware of, poised for prison time if we didn’t get this elephant back to a questionably sane woman, and he was flirting with me. I liked his style. “Okay, I’m twenty-six, like softball, play a mean game of Bunco, and don’t have any pets either.”
A few questions later and Hudson knew I could converse passingly in Spanish, had lived in LA for my entire life, and had attended UCLA. The last was a stretch. While I’d gone to UCLA for college classes, I couldn’t enroll in a full graduate program. I couldn’t use a computer to type the reports. I couldn’t take the requisite lab classes. Instead, I’d taken extended education classes in interior design and feng shui, and I’d audited a few business management classes.
In turn, I learned Hudson had grown up in Austin, Texas, moved to Santa Barbara for college, was headhunted for a cush electrical engineer position his senior year, and had been in LA ever since. He’d since found a new passion in designing custom high-end security systems for EliteGuard.
I envied how casually he mentioned relocating. Travel for any reason was out of the question for me. Cars couldn’t get me out of LA without breaking down. Trains lasted longer, but I’d never stayed on one more than a half hour, afraid of what would happen if something that large and carrying that many people malfunctioned. Even sailboats had too much electronic navigational equipment to get me to Catalina Island and back. Planes were out of the question.
An enormous boxy black vehicle pulled into the parking lot. There wasn’t a speck of dirt or a smudge of a fingerprint on the entire gleaming surface, and the black-wall tires glistened around silver rims. Hudson stood up, verifying the tank was our ride. I eyed the back end of the Suburban. It looked big enough to fit an elephant, at least a baby one.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me while I drop the guy off?” Hudson asked.
“I’m sure. I don’t want to leave Kyoko alone.”
“Okay. I’ll be back.”
I fervently hoped so. Until I watched him stride away, admiring the view, I hadn’t considered what I would do if he didn’t return.
The shiny black SUV disappeared around a corner, and I turned back to the trailer. Kyoko dozed on her feet, trunk relaxed against the floor of the trailer. I sat back down. The fumes of her excrement had aired out while we were on the freeway, or else I’d become immune.
The sun warmed my skin, and the city sounds soothed my anxiety. It was tempting to turn my brain off, but I forced myself to review my bizarre day. Taking Kyoko to Sofie’s was a temporary fix, and one I wasn’t happy with. I didn’t want to involve my aunt in anything illegal. I didn’t want to be involved in anything illegal. But it would give us time to find Jenny—or for Jenny to find me again—and for us to force her to take Kyoko back.
Us was another topic to ponder. The superficial information Hudson and I had shared made great first-date material, but it didn’t provide much to go on when forming an opinion about a partner in crime. Other than the obvious white-knight broadsword, the apparitions I’d seen had been predictably useless. A sombrero, a pair of well-worn cowboy boots, and a few Monopoly pieces all told me nothing. Maybe Hudson liked Mexican cowboys. Maybe he’d played a lot of Monopoly as a child.
There had been nothing vague about his actions, though. He had a hero complex, he reacted quickly, and he hadn’t flinched or backed down when he had a chance to extricate himself from this bizarre situation. All in all, pretty good qualities. Qualities I would have preferred to admire in a nice social setting, one that didn’t involve crimes, cars, or crazy women.
Oh, yeah, or the pesky blackmail threat that could ruin my life.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I did some thinking on the drive back,” Hudson said, taking a seat next to me on the trailer step and opening a container of Pad Kee Mao I’d set aside for him. When no brilliant solutions to Jenny’s blackmail had surfaced, I’d decided to refuel at the Thai restaurant. My own box of Pad Thai sat empty by my feet. “This smells good. Thanks. How’s Kyoko?”
“Sleeping.”
“She didn’t try to break out and trample you? Chew off an arm?”
“Until you’ve been shackled in there barefoot, you don’t get to laugh.”
“You’ve got to admit it was a teensy bit funny.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You were about to prove you’re more than just a pretty face,” I prompted.
Hudson grinned. “Okay, here’s a puzzle for you: How do we get Kyoko into the Suburban?”
I stared at the thigh-high back bumper of the Suburban, then down at the trailer, whose floor stood a foot and a half off the ground. A dog could make the jump easily, but not a stumpy-legged baby elephant.
“Well, crap.” I glanced around, looking for inspiration. No convenient loading dock, no steel-enforced plywood we could fashion into a ramp, no wheelchair lift.
“Exactly,” Hudson agreed around a mouthful of food.
We brainstormed while he ate and came up with nothing.
“Where’s a weightlifter when you need one,” I joked, walking back from the trashcan.
“You know . . .” Hudson jumped up onto the step and peered at Kyoko. He turned to look at me over his shoulder. “That’s not a bad idea. She can’t weigh that much, right?”
“More than I can lift.” She had to weigh at least twice as much as Hudson. “More than I can lift even half of, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No. Even if she played along and didn’t struggle, that would be too much for the two of us. But if we had help . . .”
“You have weightlifter friends in the area?”
“Not a single one. But I have cash.”
Hudson’s idea turned out to be two parts of horrible. First, he wanted to pay t
he gangster-looking guys loitering around the tattoo shop to assist us. Second, he wanted me to enlist their help.
“Men are much more likely to assist a woman than they are a man,” he explained.
“Or maybe that’s just you.”
“Trust me. You walk in there and ask them for help and they won’t even need a cash incentive.”
“And the fact that there will be a whole bunch of witnesses to us carting off an elephant?”
“That’s where the money will come in.”
“Just like that. I walk in and ask for some help.”
“Unless you’re afraid to.”
I shot Hudson a look over the top of my sunglasses. He could have played the you-got-us-into-this-mess-you-deal-with-it angle, but he hadn’t. He’d pricked my pride instead. I smiled and tossed my bag into the Suburban. I pulled my hair free of its ponytail and finger combed it while checking myself in the side mirror. A quick reapplication of lip gloss, and I was ready.
The front window of the tattoo parlor mirrored the sun’s glare, disguising the interior. Through the propped-open door, the bass of rap music pulsed beneath a mechanical whine I’d not heard outside a dentist’s office. I could see two Hispanic guys through the doorway, both dressed in baggy jeans and work boots. One had a tank top under an open plaid shirt, and his long hair was pulled back in a tight, low ponytail. Tattoos covered his chest, arms, and shins, and I didn’t guess about the areas in between. The other was younger, had a colorful sleeve that looked like a Día de los Muertos tribute, and wore a black ski mask apparition. Like the straitjacket I’d seen on Jenny, the ski mask didn’t need sophisticated interpretive skills.
I took a deep breath and put some sway in my hips. My hair floated around my shoulders in scarlet waves, my own personal neon sign to attract attention when I worked it right, and I was working it. I sauntered through the open door and settled my glasses atop my head. Conversation stopped.
Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance Page 4