by Audrey Faye
Besides, I liked the side of her that felt comfortable hanging out with the occasional guy these days, even if it was just the one making her dinner. She still claimed to hate men as a species—but nights like this told me her soul had mellowed some, even if her words hadn’t yet.
She plopped back down in her seat, face sheathed in satisfaction. “He’ll make us good stuff. His dad’s a Texas farmer—raises about a billion cows. His mom’s Japanese. He grew up spending summers in Okinawa, working in his uncle’s sushi restaurant.”
And then started up a cowboy sushi bar in the middle of Ohio. Takes all kinds. “Do you know what he names his pet lizards, too?” Carly loved a good human-interest story, and she dug them out every damn place we went.
Her eyes brightened. “Nope. But you could ask—it’s your turn to talk to somebody.”
I tried one of my superior-grade scowls. “I’m not up for your dumb rules tonight.” Madame Daytimer also thought it was her role in life to make sure I had at least modest social encounters with actual people on a regular basis.
“Careful, or your face will get stuck that way.”
I knew better than to hope she’d give up. I looked around at the inhabitants of the bar, mostly ensconced on stools watching the silent action on a series of really big flat screens. Maybe I could get away with a quick mutual exchange of grunts on the way to the loo.
“Nuh, uh.” Laughter bubbled in Carly’s throat. “No cheating. A whole conversation in reasonably complete sentences. Or else.”
I was well familiar with the “or else.” If I failed to strike up a conversation that my insane accomplice deemed appropriate, she’d find someone and bring them to me.
And nobody ever left Carly’s table at a restaurant. Ever. So I could either talk to a total stranger for thirty seconds or eat dinner with one.
A little desperate now, I cast my eyes around the joint again—and saw someone who was almost as big a sore thumb as we were. Heading straight for our table.
Oh, hell. “I think you’re about to get your wish.”
Carly turned, curious. My eyes traveled again over the teenager striding our way, pretty sure she wasn’t old enough to be in a place that served alcohol.
The cowboy sushi dude clearly thought the same. He headed around the end of his bar, aiming the newcomer’s direction, and then caught the look on Carly’s face. I didn’t have to see it to know it was her business look.
Nobody messed with that look.
The teenager was closer now. Dressed in scruffy black from head to toe, with a backpack as big as she was slung over one shoulder. Her walk said she had a mission—and her eyes said we were it.
I held up three fingers to the cowboy sushi guy. We needed another order.
He backed up slowly, nodding an affirmative.
“Hey.” The kid slung her pack down at Carly’s feet and grabbed a chair, wrapping her arms around the spindly back as she sat down. She tipped her chin at my partner’s t-shirt. “I need to hire you guys.”
I was pretty sure she didn’t think we were a band. “We don’t take many jobs.”
“You’ll take mine.” Said with all the confidence a teenager in black could muster—and just the tiniest trace of desperation.
It was the bravado that got me—and it was the desperation that would get to Carly. Neither of us moved, but the kid wasn’t remotely stupid. She looked each of us square in the eyes and knew she had a chance.
Carly shifted forward in her chair—the game still had to be played. “Maybe. How’d you find us?”
A tinge of chutzpah now. “Someone I know on a forum knows someone you helped. A friend of mine cloned and triangulated your cell signal.”
“Did not.” My partner snorted. “I have that thing rigged—the NSA couldn’t track it.”
A shrug that had me worried about both the NSA and the teenager in our midst. “It would have been easier if you guys have stayed put for a bit—I’ve been chasing you for a week. My friend says the new OS rollout has a bug. You have a blip in your secondary firewall. Might want to do something about that.”
“Shit.” Carly grabbed for her phone. And then stopped, eyeing our new arrival a lot more carefully. “Wait. I have the alpha OS loaded. It’s not anywhere near public yet.”
“Nope. It’s not.” A shit-eating grin. “My friend’s pretty good.”
Computer geek I am not—but I know when two of them are about to have one of those weird piss-and-bond contests, even if one was pissing by proxy. And as interesting as that might be, we had a few things we needed to know that were slightly more important. “Who are you?”
The kid blinked. “I’m Lelo.”
It had the ring of truth. And since nobody actually named their kid anything like that, it probably wouldn’t help us trace her. “And you’re about twelve, right?” I might be a recluse, but I knew how to deal with shit-eating teenagers. Kindred souls and all.
Lelo rolled her eyes. “Sixteen. I’m legal to drive, and after you guys left all the main bus routes, I was seriously tempted to jack a car.”
“You’ve been following us on the freaking bus?” I visualized where we’d been in the last week and winced.
“Yeah.” A truckload of pained attitude loaded into one word. And then a bit of smug. “Saw you scare the crap out of that guy in the alleyway earlier today, but you took off so fast I lost you for a few hours.”
Carly’s eyes had gone empty and hard. “You saw us?”
Lelo didn’t miss the eyes—but she didn’t run from them, either. “Sort of. I saw you leave. I waited for a bit and then I went to look.” She took in a deep breath. “How come he’s still alive?”
Crazy-dangerous territory, for all kinds of reasons. Brave, stupid kid. “We have more than one way to fix problems.” Which was truth, as far as it went.
Carly was doing frightening things with her fingers on an innocent bread knife. I sent her a meaningful scowl. Lelo was a freaking kid.
“I know that,” said our visitor quietly, keeping her eyes on Carly’s face. “I’ve been following you for a week, but I’ve been checking you out online for longer than that. One of the guys you went after about six months ago lives in the town my best friend moved to. She followed him around for me. He still wets his pants every time you text him.”
My appetite for raw fish crawled away to find a good spot to die. We had teenagers following our past dickwads around? Not all of them were reformed.
“What town would that be, exactly?” My partner’s voice hadn’t gotten any less flat, but her eyes were easing away from hard and into worried.
“No way.” Lelo shook her head, doing a pretty damn good imitation of Carly’s dangerous look. “First you have to promise to help me.”
She probably scared all the other sixteen-year-olds silly. I figured she had about a breath left before she discovered neither of us were sixteen.
“You don’t get to make the deals.” Carly slammed her phone down on the table. “This is my signal, locked onto yours. It’ll take me about ten more seconds to figure out who owns the account, and five more to figure out who you are.” She raised an eyebrow. “So start talking, sister. You can start with why we shouldn’t load you into our van and drive you back to wherever the hell you spawned and toss you out on the sidewalk.”
I had a dozen reasons, beginning with the five loads of dirty laundry stacked in the backseat of the van. But I also knew when to keep my mouth shut. Really good threats weren’t nearly as effective if the recipient knew they were bullshit. Carly had already stationed herself in Lelo’s corner—but apparently it wasn’t time to let the kid know that yet.
She needed to believe my partner was a total badass first.
And I knew my role in the good assassin, bad assassin routine. I laid a calming hand over Carly’s. “Let’s eat first and hear her out.” Cowboy dude had been busy with his knife, I was suddenly starving again, and this had all the makings of a really long story.
One we were
apparently going to listen to.
Carly has a marshmallow heart. I have no idea what my excuse was.
CHAPTER 3
The kid could eat. Cows-in-Texas eat—impressive enough that the sushi dude brought her out two more rolls.
We’d been smart enough not to interrupt. Full bellies first, and then we’d get her story. I picked up a last edamame pod and tried to avoid burping—not because this was a classy joint or anything, but because raw-fish burps are nasty.
Maybe it was time for a beer.
A server slid a couple of glasses of sake onto the table and some sort of green ice cream concoction for Lelo. “Kids get free dessert. Owner says you guys get free sake for feeding her.”
Lelo scowled. “I can pay for my dinner.” She pushed the ice cream away. “And I’m not a kid.”
“Yup, got that.” The waitress, barely old enough to be serving alcohol, grinned. “That’s why I brought you the wasabi gelato. The kids always wail if they get that one, but it’s really good. Spicy enough to make you cry, too.”
One dare, nicely delivered.
Carly’s eyes gleamed. “I’ll have some of that too.”
One dare about to turn into a pissing match or a bonding experience—I wasn’t sure which just yet. I was, however, smart enough to stay out of either variety. “I’m old and crotchety, so I’ll stick with sake. And something chocolate, if you have it.”
Our server didn’t miss much. “I’ll hook you up.” She grinned again. “Double helping if you tell me where you got the t-shirt. My sister’s birthday is coming up, and she’d totally groove on that one.”
For some reason, I was in an oddly good mood. It happens occasionally, even to social curmudgeons. “Is she a lesbian or an assassin?”
That got a laugh, and probably a double helping of whatever form of chocolate was coming my way. “Unknown on both counts. She likes to leave people guessing.”
“Is she about the same size as you are?”
“Yeah, more or less. You sell them or something?”
Usually. “Consider it a trade for the green ice cream.”
Her eyes lit. “Cool. Thanks.”
Perfect. Chocolate for dessert, and since I’d just had an entire conversation with a stranger, that meant I got to sit back and glower while Carly handled the talk with Lelo.
Something my partner was just figuring out. She rolled her eyes at me. Discreetly. Still doing the tough-assassin routine for Lelo’s benefit.
We waited in silence until our server came back with a second bowl of green ice cream and a huge martini glass full of something rich, decadent, and clearly intended to be mine. Best trade for a t-shirt I’d made in a long time.
Carly stuck a spoon in her spicy ice cream, slid a huge bite into her mouth, and eyed the teenager across the table. “Spill your guts, kid.”
Lelo took her time, both with her ice cream and the beginning of her story. “His name is Chadwick Berrington.”
That was the kind of name I could easily dislike. Names don’t always fit the people wearing them, but I was pretty damn sure nobody in this bar was named Chadwick. “He sounds rich and obnoxious.” Blue-blooded New England, which those of us who grew up in the flannel hinterlands of Vermont think of as curse words.
Our informant shrugged a little. “He’s working on the rich part. And he’s only obnoxious if he thinks you don’t matter. Most people think he’s God’s gift to our town.”
Carly raised an eyebrow. “How big’s your town?”
Somehow Lelo caught the humor in that—most people wouldn’t have. “Big enough that they have more than one candidate.”
My partner’s spoon headed for green and spicy again, but I saw the quick twitch of her lips.
Lelo kept matching her, spoonful for spoonful. “He’s smooth. Kind of like that beer that tastes really good so you miss the bad taste underneath until you’ve drunk half of it, you know?”
Now probably wasn’t the time to bring up the drinking laws for sixteen-year-olds. “So he has everyone fooled.” Not generally grounds for assassination. “Who’s this guy to you?”
“Nobody. He’s nobody to me.” Anger spurted, quick and fierce and edgy. “But in two months, he’s marrying my sister.”
Hell. I looked over at Carly and her half-finished bowl of wasabi gelato. We had rules. I had to talk to strangers and she had to think hard before we took on a new client.
She rolled her eyes at me again, more obviously this time, took a swig of sake, and then pinned a look at the angry girl in black. “I hated the schmuck my sister married too. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die.”
I sat in mute shock. Carly never talked about her family—I barely knew they existed. She’d grown up in a good one, until the day something awful happened to her and they all joined forces to shovel it under the carpet while spewing some bullshit about trying to protect her, while really protecting themselves from the truth that sometimes really shitty things happen out there in the world.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” said Lelo softly.
Carly scowled. “What are you, a stalker?”
“No.” Lelo held up her finished bowl. “I’m the person who just kicked your wasabi-gelato-eating butt. And I’m not a stupid sixteen-year-old kid with a grudge because my big sister’s boyfriend isn’t being nice to me.”
Holy shit. I sat very quietly and stirred my lake of chocolate.
Carly raised an eyebrow. “Okay. So why the grudge, then?”
“He’s slime.” Lelo’s eyes were steady and hot. “He has this whole God’s-gift thing going with the town, and he works really hard at it. Schmoozes all the important people, and he knows how to talk to you and make you feel like the most important person in the world.”
I knew a little something about guys like that. “Used it on you, huh?”
“Yeah.” Squiggles of guilt and disgust ran across her face.
I pushed my bowl her direction. I knew a little something about feeling like a fool, too.
“He’s got money—he’s not rich, but everyone thinks he will be, and they’re probably right. And he oozes charm and sweet-talks old ladies and they all think he looks like a prince in some stupid fairy tale.”
“And your sister’s the princess?” Carly was sending scouting forces into my lake of chocolate.
“He plans to be the big man in town and my sister is a useful appendage. She only sees what he wants her to.” Lelo sucked in a breath and looked straight at me, pleading. “But when he thinks nobody’s looking? His eyes are mean. And there’s more.” She was babbling now. “He makes things the way he wants them to be. He ignores anybody who doesn’t matter, including Ally’s best friend, and he molds my sister like she’s a damn Jello pudding cup or something. He wants a cream puff and he makes sure she knows it. He’s sucking her brain out through her ears.”
That would make him the first zombie we’d ever been hired to assassinate. “You’ve tried talking to her about this?”
“Yeah.” Her fingers tightened on a spoon that was no longer anywhere near my chocolate. “She used to listen to me. Now I’m just her dumb kid sister who doesn’t know anything about life or men or how you have to make compromises to make any relationship work.”
That could be true, or it could be a whole lot of spin by a woman who was having all her brains sucked out through her ears. But something in me was inclined to believe the kid who was holding her spoon like a weapon.
“You got parents?” Carly was still wearing her tough-assassin face. “Do they have any opinions on all of this?”
“Nah.” The sixteen-year-old attitude was back. “My dad split when we were little. My mom’s doing the drama-queen hide-her-head-in-a-Xanax-bottle routine again—husband number four left in the spring. When she’s not stoned, she’s all happy Ally’s getting married.”
Lots of words left out of that story, but I could read between the lines well enough. Both parents had picked ways to abdicate, and the sisters had each
picked a classic response. Lelo had decided she could damn well take care of herself and probably everyone else too, and her sister had fallen for a white knight. I didn’t hold it against Ally—I’d believed in happy endings once too.
These days, I contented myself with decent ones. Getting our visitor home safely might be one of those. “Stoned enough to let you wander all over the country on a bus?”
A quick head shake. “Nah. Mom doesn’t get a say in that stuff anymore. I did the emancipation deal.”
Carly looked as confused as I was.
“I sat down with my mom and a mediator the day I turned fourteen and worked out an agreement. I live on my own, pay my own bills, and nobody can mess with that.” An indifferent shrug. “It suits me fine.”
Apparently. “You go to school?” Even asking made me feel old.
“What are you, the truant police?” Lelo shook her head and drowned a last piece of sushi roll in soy sauce. “I finished high school ages ago. Online gig. My sister thinks I should do the college thing so I have a career to fall back on and stuff.”
“Fall back from what?” Carly sounded casual, but her hands were a dead giveaway. Still and poised. I wasn’t the only one worried about our feisty guest. There were all kinds of things a sixteen-year-old could be doing to make money, and plenty of them weren’t happy thoughts.
Lelo swallowed and raised an eyebrow. “Wrong track. I’m not anybody you need to save—did that for myself a long time ago.”
It was hard not to believe her. “Color us skeptics. Care to tell us what you do to make enough money to chase us across half the country?” On the bus, so that probably ruled out carjacking as a career choice.
“Computer stuff.” She glanced Carly’s direction, clearly smelling the tech geek of our duo. “Game hosting, sysadmin stuff, a little coding. Nothing fancy.”
I had no idea what most of that meant, but I could read my partner. Apparently at least some of those things were credibly gainful employment.