“No more riding the ‘L’—it is too exposed.”
“I can’t call you for rides every time I need to go somewhere.”
“Yes, you can. For now. If I am working, you can call Donovan. No more public transportation. Promise me.”
I sigh. “Okay. No more public transit.”
She scrutinizes me. “Are you crossing your fingers?”
“Jeez, I’m not five years old.” I uncross my fingers.
“Your school is safe enough. I could never get closer than across the street.”
Now who’s the liar? “You put the rat in my locker, remember?”
She gives me a confused look. “What rat?”
“What do you mean, ‘What rat’? The dead rat you put in my locker. Tyler said he saw you put it in there.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I did not put a rat in your locker.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Then it clicks. Tyler. That brilliant bastard. He was the only one who gained from the rat incident. He needed an excuse to earn my confidence. He planted the rat himself and said he’d seen who had done it so I’d open up to him. He must have seen Dani in passing while getting his orders from Petrov and decided to use her description. This is what I get for not confirming details.
“Rats are not the problem now,” Dani says, interrupting my self-recrimination. “School is safe. Your coffee shop is not. Too many entrances, not enough exits. And not enough population.”
“Aw, man.”
She searches my face, but I can’t tell what for. Understanding or agreement, or something. “This is important, milaya. This isn’t a game.”
I close my eyes and see NO GAME spray-painted across the poor Chevelle. It’ll take at least the rest of the week to get it back from the body shop.
“I get that it’s not a game, I do. But it’s a pain in the butt working without an office.”
“Then stop working until we know what we are dealing with.”
I give her a sour look, but her face is set, and even if it weren’t, I know she’s right. About the Ballou, anyway. There’s no way I’m not working.
Dani’s gaze softens into uncertainty. She opens her mouth to say something more when my phone buzzes.
“It’s Mike,” I say before I even pull out the phone. “I’m late for curfew.”
“You should tell him.”
I don’t really want to argue about it with her, so I answer the phone. “Hi, Mike. So, funny story…” I climb out of Dani’s rental Nissan, mouth Call you later, and shut the door before returning to the phone conversation with Mike.
“I imagine it’s a gut-buster,” he says sardonically. Ha. If he only knew.
“See, I thought I had a lead on my mom, so I went to this bar.”
“You went to a bar.”
“Yes, and I knew you’d be upset, but see? I’m telling you everything like I promised.” I feel a small twinge of guilt at the lie. Because I have no intention of telling him about the contract. He’d fly back on the next plane out here, and I’d be immediately reassigned to some new cop in some new city, and I’m just not risking that. Death? Sure, I’ll risk death. Exile? No.
“Were you drinking?” Mike asks, voice hard.
“Yes. Club soda. Notably lacking the twist I ordered.”
He sighs heavily. “Just get home, will you? It’s bad enough I’m not there to chew you out in person, but you’re making Angela worry.”
I walk in through the front door and note that Angela is curled up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. Yeah, she looks really worried.
“Hi, Angela,” I say.
“Hi, Julep,” she says, and smiles at me.
“I’m only”—I check the clock in the kitchen—“twenty minutes late.”
“You’d be amazed what can happen in twenty minutes,” Mike says.
“Yes, well, nothing happened,” I say. Angela looks up again, a small frown on her face. “The lead at the bar turned out to be a random coincidence. But I do have a favor to ask.” Misdirection—a grifter’s greatest asset. It’s even better when you can get something extra out of the misdirection. “Murphy found an article in an Alabama paper about my mother being reported missing. Can you pull a few strings and see if there’s an official police report on it?”
“Pull a few strings? Julep, that’s a state police issue. It’s outside my jurisdiction.”
“But kidnapping’s in your jurisdiction, right?”
“Sometimes. But usually only when it involves ransom or a child. Do you actually think your mom was kidnapped?”
Not really, no. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” I say instead.
He sighs again. “Fine. I’ll look into it, if you promise you’ll be home by curfew every night until I get home. No bars.”
I think about Dani making me swear off the “L,” the Ballou, and pretty much everywhere that isn’t Mike’s house or school.
“Done,” I say.
He mumbles to himself about grifters and headaches and something else I don’t catch. Then we sign off for the night.
“Interesting day?” Angela says.
“I turned in my history paper,” I say, smiling a little too brightly. It took all my reserves maintaining a front for Mike. I’m worn out and starting to lose my focus.
“That’s good,” she says, assessing me.
I should probably explain about Angela. First of all, she’s a saint. I mean, what kind of woman lets her FBI-agent husband take in a known criminal for an indeterminate length of time? Angela, that’s who. She’s a NICU nurse. She literally saves babies for a living. But she’s no fool. She knew what she was getting into letting me stay. And she hasn’t held it against me even once.
“Well, I’m turning in,” I say. “I have two finals left to study for.”
“All right,” she says, but she doesn’t say good night, which is kind of awkward.
I make it to the guest room and shut the door behind me with a soft click. Then I lean against it and slide down till my butt hits the floor. I wonder if Angela noticed that I didn’t have my backpack with me. I left it at the Ballou, because I couldn’t take it into the bar. I’ll have to risk the Ballou in the morning. If I make Dani go with me, she’ll be less likely to object.
I rest my head on my knees. For the first time since the attack, I start running through my mental list of usual suspects. A scant handful of angry perps I caught in the act of either breaking the law or breaking their spouses’ hearts. But none of them had this kind of reach. Or vindictiveness. I can’t see any of them going to the trouble of hiring a contract killer. Which leaves Petrov. I guess it’s possible he did it. He’s in a max-security facility serving nine consecutive life sentences or something, but stranger things have happened.
This is all so far beyond my ability to handle. For a split second, I even consider telling Mike. But then I dismiss it as the Really Bad Idea it is and come to the conclusion that I’ll just have to rely on Dani’s underworld contacts for more information.
A light tap pulls me from my circling thoughts. I stand and open the door, admitting Angela to her own guest room. She sits in the desk chair, and I sit on the bed.
“Checking up on me?” I ask.
“I just saw the news. Gunshots near Loyola.”
I could lie and tell her it has nothing to do with me, but I can already tell she won’t believe me. “Are you going to tell Mike?”
She pauses, thinking. “I should tell him. But…”
“But?”
“Mike is kind of an idiot,” she says.
I smile. “You’re not getting an argument from me on that.”
She smiles back. “He has a big heart, but he often acts when he should listen. Especially when it comes to you. It doesn’t sit well with him, feeling like he can’t protect someone he cares about.”
My throat tightens. “You should try to get him to stop. Caring about me, I mean.”
She laughs. “Right.
Like that’s possible. He’s more stubborn than anyone else on the planet, present company included.” She looks pointedly at me. “Besides, even if I could, I wouldn’t.”
I shift, uncomfortable. She settles more deeply into the chair.
“You probably wonder why we don’t have kids,” she says finally. “It’s not because we don’t want them. We came close several times. But I had too many miscarriages to keep trying. We almost adopted once, but it fell through at the last minute. Eventually, we got old enough that we decided to throw ourselves into our work instead. It was a painful decision, but it was the best for us at the time. And then you came along—a Molotov in a china shop.”
“Oh, Angela,” I say, intensely regretting having agreed to live here. I’ve done more damage than I realized. “I’m not that kid. I can’t be normal. And I’m an awful person anyway. You don’t want me.”
“That isn’t why I told you,” she says, her eyes a bit shinier than usual. “I’m not trying to keep you. It would be pointless and selfish to try, I know that.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
She’s thinking hard about what to confess. I know that particular expression well. I invented it.
“It’s Mike’s job to keep you out of trouble, but he won’t always be able to. I’m hoping that when trouble finds you again, and he puts himself between you and whatever’s out there, that your understanding him will help you protect each other.”
She gets up and touches my shoulder, holding my gaze for a moment before leaving.
After she shuts the door, I crawl under the covers into a miserable heap. Dani, Mike, Angela. Their care weighs heavily on me, because I care about them, too. But every time I think I might be able to have normal relationships, I remember the people I’ve failed—Tyler, my dad, Ralph—and I realize I can’t let any of them depend on me.
I rub my face into the pillow and pretend I don’t still notice the foreignness of the fabric-softener smell. It’s a nice smell, but it’ll never give me the same feeling of peace and safety it would have if I’d been born Mike and Angela’s daughter. Which is appropriate, I guess. I shouldn’t be allowed to feel peace and safety while sheltering with people I constantly put in harm’s way.
I comfort myself with the idea that I’m not completely useless—that even if I can’t wield my skills to save the people I love, I can at least use them to save total strangers. After a criminally long time, I finally drift off to sleep, clutching this meager consolation to my dysfunctional heart.
Dani pulls the Nissan up next to the Ballou’s front door. She wasn’t thrilled when I explained that I needed to make a quick stop for my backpack, but she agreed on the condition that she go with me.
I wave a quick hello to Yaji, the barista, as I head up the back stairs to my office. Dani squeezes past me, the hand under her leather jacket no doubt resting on her gun. She gestures at me to keep quiet as we ascend the stairs. This time yesterday, I’d have rolled my eyes at her excessive caution, but this time yesterday I didn’t know there was a contract out on my life.
As she rounds the stairwell corner, she stops suddenly, causing me to run into her, and says sharply, “Who are you? Why are you here?”
I lean to the right so I can look over Dani’s shoulder. Mrs. Antolini is standing next to the closed office door, clutching her purse like it’s about to get snatched. Dani’s shoulder stiffens as if she’s about to draw her gun.
“Mrs. Antolini,” I say loudly in Dani’s ear as I step around her. “How nice to see you.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” Mrs. Antolini says, her voice quavering. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“What happened?” I ask as I unlock the door to my office and usher her inside. I hear Dani’s grunt of disapproval, but really, it’s just Mrs. Antolini. And anyway, who ever heard of a hit attempt at seven-thirty in the morning? Dani follows us in and shuts and locks the door behind her. Then she stations herself by the front window to monitor traffic in and out of the coffee shop.
“I got your message,” Mrs. Antolini began. “I know you said you couldn’t take the case, but I’m hoping you’ll reconsider.”
“Mrs. Antolini, I’d love to help you, but…” But someone is trying to kill me, and I really can’t add a possibly evil corporation to the list of Julep haters right now. “But something’s come up and I don’t have the time to devote to your case.”
“I know it’s probably far-fetched. You probably think I’m crazy—”
“Not at all,” I say, reaching across my desk for her hand. “In fact, I know you’re on to something. That’s why I can’t take the case. I can’t give it the time and attention it deserves.”
“It’s just, I don’t trust anyone else. There’s something I haven’t told you yet. It only occurred to me last night after I got your message.”
“I’m sorry, I—” I start. Then I make the mistake of looking at her devastated expression and cave like the softy I am. But really, how much damage could looking at one piece of information do? Maybe it would help me steer her toward a better PI for the job. “All right, what is it?”
She opens her purse and pulls out an envelope. “I didn’t think anything of it until I saw on the news about that shooting outside the bar.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach and I reach for the envelope. I pull out a stack of receipts with Bar63 printed at the top. A folded sheet of paper shows an accounting of every expense corresponding to the receipts. The NWI logo is printed in the top-right corner of the expense report. The receipts are dated from before the bar officially opened.
“Where did you get this?” I ask.
“My husband’s files. Apparently, he wasn’t just a member of New World Initiative. He did some work for them on the side that I didn’t know about. Something having to do with that bar.”
I lean back in my chair, staring at the receipts and expense report. What could Bar63 possibly have to do with the New World Initiative? The only thing that connects them is…the blue fairy.
“Please, Ms. Dupree.”
I lift my gaze to her face, and then farther up to Dani, who is shaking her head at me.
“All right, Mrs. Antolini,” I say, standing. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you so much,” she gushes, grabbing my hand. It takes me several minutes to see her to and out the door. I tell her I’ll be in touch, and she thanks me about fifteen more times before I can finally shut the office door.
“Are you out of your mind?” Dani hardly waits for the latch to click before starting in. “You need to focus on staying out of the line of fire. Not infiltrating a cult.”
“I told you, it’s not a cult,” I say. Semantics, but still. “Besides, I can’t ignore the connections happening right under my nose.” I shove the report and receipts at her, but she barely glances at them.
“I don’t care about connections. I care about keeping you alive,” she says, her glare frying me to cinders.
“What’s the point of being alive if I have to stay in hiding? I cannot stay holed up at Mike’s house all summer. I’ll go insane.”
She grabs my wrist. “You are not taking this seriously enough, milaya. Someone is trying to kill you. Someone we don’t know anything about. I cannot protect you from that if I don’t know where you are.”
“I am taking it seriously,” I say, staring her down. “One of your contacts is going to know something. We’ll figure out who it is and we’ll stop them, like we always do.” She’s still not convinced. I’m not even sure I’m convinced. But I have to do this. “I can’t lose this chance to find my mother.”
And just like that, all the intensity gutters out of Dani like the death of a cheap tungsten filament. She pulls back, releasing my wrist. “All right. It is your decision. But nothing else has changed. No public transportation, no office. Just school and the Ramirezes’.”
School. Crap. “What time is it?”
I grab m
y phone. Eight-fifteen.
“Crap! I have a lit final that started five minutes ago.”
I snag my backpack and start to make a dash for the door when Dani grabs my upper arm to stop me. Giving me a grouchy look, she precedes me into the hallway and down the stairs.
• • •
Three hours and several rounds of mental gymnastics later, I finally stagger into the dining hall for lunch. I set my tray across from Lily’s and slump into a plastic chair.
“I have an explication hangover,” I say, downing a glass of grape juice. “Ugh, Flannery. And people think I’m twisted.”
“Only half of that made any sense to me,” Lily says.
“See what I mean?” I prop an elbow on the table next to my tray and rub my temple.
Murphy and Bryn join us. Bryn actually brings her lunch from home, such as it is. I don’t understand her obsession with acai-berry-flavored everything.
“How’d it go at the bar?” Murphy asks. I shoot him a dirty look and motion at him to keep his voice down. I’m not trying to get busted before I even have a chance to investigate.
“It was a dead end.” I almost laugh at the unintentional play on words. “Or at least, I thought it was until this morning.”
“What happened this morning?” Bryn asks, snagging one of Murphy’s fries.
“I had another visit from Mrs. Antolini.” At Bryn’s blank look, I add, “The client.”
“What does that have to do with Bar63?” Murphy asks.
“She shouldn’t have anything to do with it. But she had these receipts of her husband’s. There was a whole stack of them, and they were all for Bar63 from before it opened.”
“Before it opened?” Murphy says, perplexed.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t get it,” Lily says, her face drawn into a frown. “What does a bar supposedly connected to your missing mother have to do with the New World Initiative cult?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“There’s still the dean problem,” Murphy reminds me. Unnecessarily.
“What dean problem?” Bryn asks, stealing another fry. Murphy, the doormat, doesn’t appear to mind.
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