by Jamie Quaid
I couldn’t take it all in. I was just a lowly law student and underpaid bookkeeper. I didn’t know anything anyone would want to kill for. But I couldn’t think of any good reason the guys would lie to me. That they thought Max liked me didn’t ease my anger or guilt. I was just one terrified, roiling stew of emotion.
“I can’t quit school now,” I murmured. That this occurred to me first showed my twisted mind. Earning my law degree was more important than my life. I’d spent a lifetime searching for justice, and the paper to put me on that path was nearly at my fingertips. If I couldn’t right wrongs, what was I?
I could answer that one—nothing.
Milo had climbed out of my bag when I dropped it to greet Lance. Now that I held my head in my hands, with my elbows propped on the bar, not paying attention to him, he rubbed against my jaw and purred.
I stroked him, reminded that I had friends here. Those kids to avenge. A job to do. A new apartment I wanted very badly.
And good legs. I would never be normal again, so maybe I should just go shoe shopping. I had all those clunky boots to replace.
“And you guys think I should run and hide and not try to find out who killed Max?” were the first astonishing, angry words out of my mouth.
They looked at me as if I were crazed, and rightly so. It wasn’t as if I had brawn or wealth or sources of power—I wasn’t even making any progress in tracking those diplomats whose names Cora had given me. And if I didn’t get to work, I wouldn’t have the money for the new apartment, much less to pay Geek Boy for tracing the guy who’d hit the kids. Finding Max’s killer was an even bigger task.
I was losing it, but if someone had killed Max . . . they would suffer. The anger sank deep into my bones much as the pain in my leg once had.
“How you going to do that?” Lance asked.
“Did you tell the police about the Escort?” I demanded, thinking official resources were better than mine.
“They had the car hauled to a junkyard. They’d say the evidence had been tampered with,” Lance said scornfully. “They’re not going to believe us.”
“Max would want us to get you out,” Gonzo repeated.
“If Max had wanted me out, he should have told me so,” I said stubbornly. “It’s too late now. I’m staying. And I intend to find out what’s going down. Will you help me dig into his father, or do you want no part of it?”
The guys looked alarmed. They were tough war vets. I couldn’t believe I’d scared them. A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, and I sighed, just before ramming my elbow backward into a taut, hard abdomen. Chest. My aim was off because of my new height. “My party, Legrande. You’re not invited.”
He didn’t bother backing off even after I put all my strength into the blow. “Your guests endanger you as well as my property,” he said as if I hadn’t registered an objection. “It would be wisest for them and their loved ones if they departed and didn’t return.”
Lance got a mean look in his eyes. “You and who else gonna make us?”
I rubbed my temples and watched Milo crouch as if deciding which man to leap on for his supper. I so wasn’t up for Testosterone Wars.
“Did I say anyone would make you?” Andre asked with that amused undertone that made me want to jab him again. “You are free to come and go at will. But just as we don’t allow smoking because it’s hazardous to the health—especially if the building blows when you light up—I like to advise Clancy’s friends of the dangers to their health if they linger in the Zone.”
He damned well should have warned me. But I heard the ominous undertone of admonition that the boys probably didn’t. Andre’s next step would be to throw them out on their asses, while smiling and telling them farewell.
“He’s not shitting you,” I muttered. “I guess that’s why Max hated the Zone. It’s a chemical explosion waiting to happen. And if his dad is involved in not cleaning it up, or placing his factories over the safety of people, then he’s sitting on an atomic lawsuit. He would be my very first suspect. Andre, remove your hand from my neck before I cut it off.”
“Your wish is my command, princess.” He backed off, leaning against the sink counter and crossing his arms. Amusement still flickered around his mouth, but the tension in his muscles spoke differently.
Lance and Gonzo never looked amused on a good day. They glared at Andre, then looked at me. Lance was apparently appointed spokesman by some unseen communication. “Another good reason to take you out of here,” he said with a growl, scrawling his phone number on a napkin. “You don’t think we’re letting Max go down without a fight, do you?”
“No, I didn’t expect you to let this go,” I agreed. “But right now, I have no idea how to follow your lead. You let me know if I can help you, and I’ll do the same. How’s that?”
“You want us to rearrange that guy’s face?” Gonzo asked with a trace of eagerness.
“Nah, I can do that all by my little lonesome, but he’s pretty, and I like looking at him. So we’ll let him think he owns the place for now.” I was tired of serious business. I bit back a smirk at Andre’s grunt.
Then, just to tick him more, I traveled back around the bar to hug my boys. They were lugs, but they were my lugs. I smooched them both on the cheek. “Max will be real happy to hear that you’re looking out for him. Don’t keep me out of the loop, okay?”
Fortunately for me, the dunces didn’t question my foolishness about Max being happy. Or maybe they’d lived so close to hell that they understood the fine line between life and death.
“Don’t like this, babe,” Lance said, hugging me. “Maybe we’ll go over to visit Max’s folks and bust a few heads and see what leaks out.”
“Just as long as it’s not your brains, I’m okay with that. I need you guys to stay alive.”
I got teary-eyed as they stomped out. Hands on hips, I swung around to let Andre have a piece of my mind.
His gaze dropped to my new legs and sandals and he swore, in French.
16
Fortunately, the deposits began arriving as Lance and Gonzo walked out, so I didn’t have to do more than glare at Andre, don my reading glasses, and return to work, after tucking Lance’s number in my bag. If Andre had said anything in English about my new enhancements, I’d have had to punch him out, and broken knuckles would have slowed me down. I’d much rather hit someone than try to rationalize what was happening to me.
Damn Andre for noticing what no one else seemed to.
With the boys gone, Sarah came out to mop and Andre found better things to do than nag me. I wondered if Frank had traced the license plates he’d been taking pictures of the other day, but I was pretty certain Andre wouldn’t tell me in any event.
Knowing someone had killed Max—and that that someone was very definitely not me—I could barely concentrate on what I was doing. Just as he’d been telling me from my mirrors, Max hadn’t been trying to kill me. He’d felt the brakes go out and had been trying to steer the car away from me. Max had died for me, and I might have sent him to hell.
I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering, and tears kept filling my eyes so I couldn’t see what I was writing. By the time Cora arrived with her deposit, I was practically snarling with frustration, fear, and grief. She took one look and poured me another Sprite.
“Frank says the van on the corner belongs to a corporate spy agency,” she offered without my asking.
“Those same ‘corporate spies’ probably killed Max,” I said without preamble. “His brake line was cut and his steering tampered with. And they’ve bugged my apartment.” I didn’t know that last for certain, but it made sense. Bugging places was what spies did.
Cora released a string of truly creative epithets that would have made Shakespeare blush, and I could have sworn I saw a snake’s head slither across and disappear from her arm like a demented tattoo. She pulled out one of her many phones and apparently called Frank to relay the information.
When she hung up, she covered t
he tally sheet I was working on with her hand, forcing me to look up. “We gotta get you somewhere safe, hon.” She gave my legs a knowing look. “Before you whack anyone else.”
I’d been afraid killing people and my new perks might be related, and now Cora seemed to be verifying it. I had no idea how this worked, and was too afraid to ask.
“I’m on it,” I declared, not letting my sinking stomach intimidate me. “Next time I whack someone, I’m going to ask to be invisible.”
She snorted. “You’re not taking this seriously. Those big guys don’t play fair, and they have the funds to make problems disappear.”
I smiled perkily. I’d gone far beyond proactive paranoia to clearly insane. “Oh, do they get prettification rewards for killing people, too? Maybe I should go looking for a guy with great hair and big pecs so I know who cut the brakes. Only it would be nice to know why.”
She pounded my skull with the heel of her hand. “This is serious shit, girl. We’re all at risk here. I’m paying to keep my mama in a real nice nursing home. I lose my job and she goes into the street. We get corporate assholes down here investigating this cesspool, they’ll shut the whole damned place down. Where else are we gonna go?”
I smacked my palms against the bar and glared back at her. “Max wasn’t an asshole, but he was the one trying to shut down the Zone, and all that got him was dead. I don’t think the ‘assholes’ are shutting anything down. Suits who hire corporate spies exploit people like us. Read your history. We’re expendable waste, cannon fodder, no more than animals to be used for experimentation. They’re far more likely to be using us than shutting us down—because that’s how the money is made.”
I had not consciously been thinking any such thing, but my tongue flapped faster than my brain. And I thought I might actually be onto something, so I let it keep flapping. “As far as those guys out there are concerned”—I jabbed my finger in the direction of the front door, where the suits in the Escalade hung out—“we’re a mutant breeding ground, and they’re either trying to figure out how to breed more of us, or exploit what we’ve got, or both. Our best bet is to keep a low profile and let the air out of their tires.”
“I take it that’s a metaphor,” Cora said carefully.
“For all I know, they’ve bugged this place like they’ve bugged mine.” I shrugged. “Maybe we all ought to talk in metaphors.”
Her gorgeous eyebrows raised to her hairline. “I’ll get Frank on that. You have the deposit ready for me?”
I shoved the bag over with the final tally. “All yours. I’m off to study.”
In truth, I was operating on overload, so jittery that I could barely stand still. The injustice of it all was juicing me like some freak meth high. I needed my law books. I needed focus. I needed . . . organization. I wanted to take all the irrelevant weirdnesses, gather them into a ball, and give them direction, preferably a cannonball trajectory straight toward Max’s killer.
I couldn’t do that, of course, so I settled for law books. Then I ate supper in the kitchen. I scrubbed pots like a heroine. And I took Schwartz outside with me when I was ready to leave.
The new security lights reduced the blue glow to near-invisible and eliminated shadows. The good detective frowned when I checked under the chassis for tampering, but he caught on quickly and helped me look.
Once I eased my fears, I climbed into my car with relief and waved good-bye to the unsmiling Schwartz. If he approved of my new legs, he didn’t show it. I hoped Cora told him about Max, because I could handle only one problem at a time right now, and I was focused on my living space.
• • •
I avoided a tail by leaving the Miata at the old place and hitching a ride to the new, so it was after eleven by the time I tested the front door of the old Victorian. Mrs. Bodine had very properly locked her foyer. I used my new key in the lock. The same one worked on the door to my place. I figured I’d change that first chance I had. I didn’t want anyone snooping while I was out.
A bedraggled sheet of notebook paper had been pinned to my door with a safety pin. I grimaced at the damage it had probably caused to the old wood. I’d thought Mrs. Bodine couldn’t climb the stairs. No one else besides Jane knew I was here—unless the note was for a former tenant.
Once inside my gorgeous new palace, Milo scampered around the hardwood floor, hunting for kitty entertainment while I opened the pencil-scrawled paper.
the universe is one and you need me to help you understand. yr mother refused to accept her calling and is unfulfilled as a result. you were born to this, justine. but violence is not the answer—themis
Themis? The writer of the creepy messages about Saturn being in conjunction with Mars or whatever knew where I lived?
Freak-out. Clenching my teeth to prevent them from chattering, I collapsed cross-legged on the floor, no longer surprised that I could do so without pain. How could this invisible personage know so damned much about me? Invisible. Was this related to the thief? Or did the devil watch me from Hades?
Someone or something obviously noticed my actions. My skin crawled at the idea of all these unknown forces intruding on my privacy.
How did my tree-hugging hippie mother fit into this? If roaming the globe and never having a relationship left a person “unfulfilled,” whoever had written this had nailed Dee Clancy all right. My mother was still looking for love in all the wrong places. Or maybe just acceptance. Because she wasn’t happy with herself?
Point to ponder, but still not helpful.
Who the effing crap knew my mother? Scrambling for sanity, I’d have dismissed the note as door spam—except they knew my name and apparently knew what I’d done. That shot another shiver of fear down my spine. Fear that then turned to anger.
I didn’t like being chastised for defending someone against a rapist. If violence wasn’t the answer, what should I have done, polished his nails?
Maybe the Zone or the Universe was trying to communicate with me. I was flipping nuts enough by this time to have expected answers in cereal boxes. I could sure use a few answers. In the spirit of insanity, I dug paper and pen from my pack and wrote back:
Fulfillment for me would be finding out who killed Max. Do you have a phone number?
Okay, that was brave. But now what did I do—set it on fire and let the smoke blow up the chimney like a message to Santa Claus? What the hell . . . I stuck a wad of gum on the back and attached it to my door. I had officially taken a flying leap into the loony bin.
After flinging my impossible question to the Universe, I needed to ground myself in something more practical, like who had run over the kids. I had no idea where to start hunting down corporate spies, but I had names to go with license plate numbers that I could research. It wasn’t as if I had a bed to sleep in.
I turned on my netbook and looked for an open wireless connection. It’s amazing how many schmoes leave their networks without password protection. I found three and chose the strongest. I was uncertain how reliable the Internet would be this close to the Zone, but my choices were limited.
I Googled all four names associated with the partial plate the kids had given me—two representatives and two senators were using cars with those plates. One senator was old and had been around since time began. The second senator was from a filthy rich local family who’d bought his way into power. The representatives were fairly new to D.C. and had probably never been to Baltimore. I doubted that they would know the Zone existed. I checked their websites but they were meaningless unless one lived in Kansas or Nebraska.
So I focused on the senators: the old one, Senator Ted Towson from Tennessee—you could write a country song about that name—and the younger one, Senator Dane Vanderventer from Maryland. Rhetorical question—if you were me, which one of those two would you pick as the bad guy? The local one, of course, the rich, young power broker who’d probably grown up knowing about the Zone.
But just in case I was wrong, I checked out the old Tennessee guy. Teddy Boy had
a head of glistening white hair and a big toothy smile of expensive dental work. His website showed a good ol’ boy wearing jeans and a cowboy hat, shaking hands with farmers in front of golden haystacks. He had a mouse of a wife, two daughters, and three grandchildren. The wife was an orthodontist, which explained the good dental work on the entire family.
I didn’t want the hit-and-run driver to be a family man, no matter how unctuous. So I looked up the local boy with total prejudice. If cowboys can judge villains by the color of their hats, I could judge by the color of their websites.
Sure enough, Dane wore a tailored suit and his page featured him standing with the president and several world leaders. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the fat cat I was expecting. Widowed and childless, this guy was looking goo-ood. He had to have a personal trainer to look that toned dining on the rich food they served up in D.C. Styled, chestnut hair framed a warm smile and cleft chin, better than James Garner and Clint Eastwood rolled in one. He kind of favored Max, actually, without the long curly hair. But the eyes looked flat and soulless, I decided, based on nothing.
If I could have picked perps by picture, I’d have been all set. But even I knew that wasn’t rational. So I put Dane on the top of my bad-guy list, opened the window overlooking the harbor, and curled up on the floor to sleep.
• • •
For a pleasant change, come Saturday morning, no one knocked on my door at some unearthly hour, and my phone didn’t ring to wake me up.
I did, however, wake to the sound of my window sliding open wider and turned over in time to catch a glimpse of blue-jeaned leg climbing out. I lurched from sleeping to awake in two seconds flat and lunged to grab a grubby athletic shoe, but the owner had already disappeared.
Literally.
I blinked, got up on my knees to look over the low sill, and saw no one. This window was to one side of the porch, not over it, so I’d felt safe in leaving it open. But it might have been possible to sit on the porch rail and swing over the sill if one was long-legged and limber enough.