Biting Oz: Biting Love, Book 5

by Mary Hughes

  So I reined back my own feelings and tried to edge things toward normal by being domestic and hanging up Mishela’s costume. “I don’t think it’s possible to hurt him. Not Mr. Big, Grim and Invulnerable.”

  “He’s self-contained, not invulnerable.”

  “Says you.” As I picked up the Dorothy dress it revealed Mishela’s street clothes, jeans neatly folded beneath her underwear. On top of the pile was a pair of pink panties with a green blob which reminded me of the incident with Steve running across the stage at our first rehearsal. I looked closer. The green was a tentacled monster—with a cute pink hair bow. Under the picture was written “Hello Cthulhu”.

  Had Steve stolen these the panties? How twee. Mishela’s first fanboy was a weenie of a stalker. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to talk about the incident.

  Then a thought struck me. “Damn, my instruments. They fell in the hallway. I’d better go get them before they get tromped into scrap metal.”

  My flute and clarinet were propped right outside the door.

  Had Glynn found them? Angry as he was, had he really stopped to think about me, take care of my instruments?

  Keeper.

  No, not thinking about that. I picked up the flute. The G-sharp lever was bent but that was all. I tweeted a few notes, then tried out the clarinet. Everything worked, a huge relief. Hugging instruments, I grabbed a chair, scraped it up next to Mishela, sat and watched her.

  Her scrubbing was brisk, expert—not a beauty routine, but as if her face were a palette to be cleaned.

  I caught her eye in the mirror. “What I don’t get is, why kidnap you? If they’re trying to disrupt the show, wouldn’t it make more sense just to disable you with an accident or something?”

  “You’re assuming they’re after me.” She tossed down the towel, eyes stabbing mine in the mirror. “I’m not convinced. After all, they took Dumas. Now they’ve taken you. If it’s about me, wouldn’t they take me?”

  “I don’t know. Why’d Glynn suggest Scarecrow? Doesn’t he like him?”

  “Glynn thinks Jon has an unnatural interest in me. I keep telling him it’s paternal interest. Or maybe a crush, but it’s entirely innocent. The man’s old enough to be my father.” She looked away. “Mr. Elias says it’s someone connected with the show.”

  “Maybe he’s wrong.”

  “Mr. Elias? He’s never wrong.” She blew a disgusted breath, turned back to the mirror and finished cleaning in silent concentration. It seemed to calm her.

  I wasn’t calm. I’d been abducted. Despite my martial arts training, despite a building full of people, I’d been taken. Who had done that to me? Slim and connected with the show could be any one of several dozen people. Most were from Meiers Corners.

  One of us.

  If only we knew why the person was attacking. Was he/she after a specific person, or just trying to generally disrupt the show?

  I was lost in possibilities and about to panic when I realized I had tools to unravel this. I was a businesswoman, used to solving problems from delivery logistics to the intricacies of stacking pounds of misshapen stock.

  I could slice through the whole tangle with one sharp Sales Maneuver: “Follow the money”. Long run, who or why didn’t matter. Kidnapping Mishela or Dumas or even me would cripple the production at this late date. “Mishela. Who stands to gain if the show is trashed? I don’t, you don’t. Meiers Corners loses, especially businesses relying on tourists. Who’d gain by disrupting show?”

  Tidying her work area, she paused. “A rival show, maybe?”

  “Competition. A good, strong motive. Was someone passed over for a starring role? Revenge is also good.”

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t suppose this is connected to the fire that destroyed our New York production?”

  “Maybe.” Which widened the field of suspects from Meiers Corners to the whole United States. Though I’d asked the right question, it had the wrong answer.

  “There are too many suspects,” I said finally.

  “You’re giving up?”

  “Not in this lifetime. I have a cunning plan. A plan so cunning it has a British Museum wing named after it.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Look, whoever grabbed Dumas and then me will try again. All we have to do is trap him. Her. It.”

  “Okay.” Doubt shaded her tone. “How?”

  “If the kidnapper holds to form, tomorrow after the show he-she-it will try again.” I smashed the pronouns together, pronouncing it “heesheeit”.

  “Bless you.”

  “Thanks. You’re probably the target, but just in case, all three of us will head to Nieman’s. You, me and Dumas. We’ll make a big deal of it, make sure everyone knows just the three of us are going.”

  “What about Glynn?”

  “See, that’s the cunning part. Instead of doing his hulking protector thing, he’ll be shadowing. Hidden enough that it looks like we’re totally alone. When the kidnapper attacks—”

  “Glynn nails him. Her. It.” Smiling, Mishela clapped her hands. “I like it. When we get the kidnapper, we sweat him-her-it for answers.”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “Thanks.” Her smile faded. “The hard part will be convincing Glynn to stand back. Especially after what happened tonight.”

  She was right. If he’d hovered before, the scare would make him a second skin. Nothing would shake him loose.

  Except maybe a few well-placed kisses. “Convincing Glynn. Yes.” I took a deep breath. For the show. “Leave that to me.”

  While my brain churned on well-placed kisses, nibbling carved cheeks, defined lips, flat waist, muscular thighs, thick, long…my pocket started vibrating. I half-stood and pulled out my cell phone, saw the number and swore. But I answered, ever the dutiful daughter. Yay, me. “What’s up, Mom?”

  “It’s Papa,” a booming male voice said. “There is work to be done. I need you to forgo partying with your little friends. Sausage doesn’t—”

  “—sell itself, I know.” Explaining after-rehearsal burn to Pop was useful only if I had five lungs and an hour. Though it’d make a good wind exercise. “What do you need?”

  “Uncle Otto has run out of breakfast sausage. How can he make his famous Southern German Guten Tag Y’all sausage gravy if he has no sausage?”

  “He needs it tonight?”

  “It is almost tomorrow. And Otto’s wife must be frying by five for the smorgasbord to be ready by six.”

  Some inns kept business hours, some country hours. My uncle Otto kept military hours. Frying by five meant shower at four which meant up at oh-dark-thirty. “All right, Pop. Be right there.”

  I lugged instruments home, wishing for a nice limo ride and a nicer kiss… Instead of after-rehearsal rush, I got presausage letdown.

  Got the job, do the job. Besides, Uncle Otto was one of our best customers. Stiegs never let nepotism get in the way of profit.

  At home, I picked up the box my dad had packed for me, mapping a mental route to haul my tired ass to Uncle Otto’s. I’d been the brothers’ courier since the age of six, when I’d been a brat pedaling brats on my little bike. I’d ridden or walked every single combination of those eight blocks over the years, knew every flamingo and garden gnome, every decorative pebble. Not much changed in our small town.

  I left by the side door, saw a new Cheese Dudes webcam staring at me. Okay, some things changed, and not always for the better. But I was too tired to give them even a courtesy finger.

  I emerged onto Fourth. Across the street, lights glowed inside the bombed shell of Kalten’s skate rink. For the past month, contractor trucks had parked in front, so I knew they were renovating it. I wondered what business was going in, whether it was compatible with sausage. The builders were working awfully late. Maybe they were close to finishing and putting on a push.

  I know I should’ve been planning a way to “convince” Glynn to help us trap the kidnapper. But it was late and I was so tired. My brain hopped from idea to id
ea without any of them sticking, that cross-pollination state between Teflon Zen and a kangaroo on crack.

  I headed east. Yellow streetlights and early summer mosquitoes were my only company. Here I was, alone, just me and my basket of sausage goodies. Little Red Riding Junior. And we hadn’t caught Mr./Ms./Meh Wolf-in-Trench-Coat-Clothing.

  In fact, it was almost like our trapping scenario, with me as bait instead of Mishela. Oh, and without Glynn to spring the trap.

  I picked up my pace.

  If only I knew who the attacker was really after. Why grab me? A deterrent to Glynn, maybe, but why would Glynn care? Just because we’d shared a couple kisses, and a little more…okay, a lot more, but Glynn walked away, acted invulnerable—

  “You’re alone,” a baritone snarled right behind me.

  Shock spun me into a groin shot, knee rising sharply. With my whole body powering it, testicles would have achieved low earth orbit.

  A hard palm blocked my thigh, judo-style, tossing me completely around and pitching me toward concrete.

  Sausage leaped from my grasp. The box made a beautiful arc before hitting pavement. The smack-crunch of cardboard was loud but I knew the sausage was fine. One good thing about Pop’s it-vill-be-perfekt packaging.

  I wouldn’t be so lucky.

  At the last second, hands netted my arms, yanked me flush to a hot torso. A big, familiar torso, the monster sock puppet nestling into my butt like home, cinching it.

  “Glynn? What the fu…?”

  “I might ask you the same thing. Out at night. Alone.” He spun me, hands clenching as if he’d like to shake me. “After being attacked by three monsters only last night. I thought you were with Mishela. What are you doing?”

  “I’m—”

  “What were you thinking?” His voice crescendoed like “Bolero”. “Abducted by a maniac just tonight. Yet here you are, alone. Are you trying to drive me mad?” By the end he was practically yelling.

  My mouth fell open. Why was he so angry? Could he possibly be worried about me?

  Ridiculous. “What do you care? It’s not like you’ve been smothering me all my life or are here to take the job over from my parents.”

  Which sounded like I wanted him to. Oh, my foot did not taste good, but I bulled on. “In less than two weeks you’re going back to Iowa. I’ve walked these streets for years. I’ll be walking them after you’re back in the land of corn and…and corn.”

  “There’s more to Iowa than corn.” He growled it, but a glint of sapphire humor warmed his eyes.

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like trucks. And cows.”

  “The universities and international businesses?”

  “Those don’t count.” The corner of his mouth quirked. Stunningly handsome lips became downright edible. But I’d be a fool to tell him that.

  “Did you know your lips are really yummy?” I slammed a hand over my idiotic mouth.

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me.”

  “I doubt that. I’ve seen how women look at you.”

  “Perhaps it’s not the words, but the one saying them.” He pulled me tight, stroked my head. “Babi. I can’t live through seeing you in such danger again. As long as I am here, you will not go unescorted at night.”

  “I’m not helpless.” I pushed him away. “I fended off a burglar last year. Side-kicked him on his ass.” A Meiers Corners-style burglar, a teenage kid with midnight munchies and no sausage in the fridge, but Glynn didn’t need to know that. “And I nearly kneed your balls to the moon. I’m not helpless.”

  “You’re not.” He considered me with proper seriousness. “But you’re facing a different kind of foe, far stronger and faster than you’re used to. Inhumanly so.”

  “Oh, right. Like monsters? Space aliens?” I snatched up my dropped sausage.

  “No. Chicago vam…hoods. Big city thugs.”

  “Big city automatically makes them worse somehow?” I started across the river. “Meiers Corners folk are narrow-minded because they’re stuck in the echo chamber of small-town tradition and don’t know any better. What’s your excuse?”

  He caught up easily with his long legs. “You think big cities are somehow better? I’m to be open-minded simply because I’m more urban?”

  “Urban, urbane. They’re related for a reason.”

  “A small town can teach people many things, Junior. Things found only in the smaller group, a tight-knit family, a home—”

  “Sure, if you want to learn about being an intolerant, tight-knit idiot.”

  He made a tch of dissent. “Being an idiot isn’t a function of community. There are idiots in small towns and big cities. But there is love in both, too. Acceptance, nurturing.”

  “Sure, but a fish grows to the size of its pond. Simple physical fact. Small pond, small fish. Wanna grow, you gotta get into the ocean.”

  “That may be true of fish, but not of people. There are big people in small towns, and small people in big ones.”

  “I’m not talking good-hearted, I’m talking broad-minded. Name one Meiers Corners resident who thinks outside the box. Just one.”

  “Julian Emerson—”

  “Was a hotshot Boston attorney before he settled here last year. Boston’s kinda fair-sized.”

  He blew a frustrated breath. “Nixie Emerson.”

  “Thinks everyone is out to repress anything fun or spontaneous in her—because they are. She doesn’t count, Glynn. She’s our oppressed minority.”

  “Oh? What about your parents? They strike me as worldly. They’d have to be, to run a store with imported sausage.”

  “Are you joking?” I shook my head. “Mutti und Vati are the worst of the lot. So insular they could be used as parka stuffing.”

  “‘Insular’ means ‘island’.”

  “Fine. Little islands, never seeing beyond the borders of town. Half the town is related and the other half is married to it.”

  “Such connection. Such belonging.” Glynn stuffed hands into his pants pockets. “It is a rare gift. You should appreciate it more.”

  “Such inward focus. Such limiting ties. Why defend it so hard?”

  “No reason.”

  “Right.” I stopped to punch him with a good glare. “This is the second time you’ve made an issue of it. We don’t have to talk about it, but don’t lie to me.”

  “Fine.” He swept by me, snagging my elbow on the way and tugging me into motion. “I have no mother, no father. Be glad you do.”

  “Say what?” I grabbed his wrist, tried to yank him to a stop. Like halting a truck. I tried digging in my heels, but he kept going and I pitched off my feet.

  With a growl he stopped to catch me, his big strong hands splayed on my… But he’d stopped, so mission accomplished. I dropped sausage (to another crunch) and took his face between my hands. His skin felt like warm satin. I searched his eyes. “You lost your family? When?”

  He didn’t say anything. But his eyes twitched away, an answer in itself.

  “You never knew your parents?”

  He turned out of my hands, jammed his deep in his pockets again.

  “Oh, Glynn, I’m so sorry.” I caught his biceps, stopping him. Facing him, I wound arms around his waist and hugged him tight.

  At first, his body was stiff under mine. I rubbed gentle circles on his spine, let my heat sink in. He softened. His arms came around me in return…and then he was hugging me back, so tightly I thought ribs would crack.

  The pain was worth it if it helped him even a little.

  We stood in silence, drawing comfort from each other. We might have stood that way for the rest of the night.

  “Is that my sausage on the ground, liebchen? I do not think the health inspector would look on that favorably.”

  Chapter Six

  I spun. Behind us, leaning heavily on his broom, was Uncle Otto. Blushing, I stepped out of Glynn’s warm embrace.

  Otto’s shaped like a kid’s top, round in the middle with two
pointy ends. He’s usually whirling around sweeping. When he’s not, he’s leaning on something, mostly the broom, but sometimes his wife, Aunt Ottowina, who’s built like a tank. I think that, like a top, if Otto wasn’t whirling or leaning, he’d tip over.

  I should mention there are three Stieg children—my dad Gunter, Uncle Otto and Aunt Hattie. Only Hattie and Pop produced Stieg grandchildren, one each. It makes family reunions both easy and hard. While other families have to rent a park, we can gather in my parents’ flat. But while other families play volleyball, we’re reduced to lawn darts—far more dangerous because they’re nothing but big spikes with wings, and Aunt Hattie’s aim isn’t so good.

  Which, come to think, may have been why Uncle Otto never had kids. Lawn darts and testicles, not a good combo.

  “Uncle, what are you doing here?” We’d barely crossed the river. Otto’s B&BS was two blocks south.

  “Your father called to say you were coming. Then he called ten minutes later to say why have you not arrived? So I came to check. I do not like you alone on the streets, liebchen. It is dangerous.”

  “I told her she needs an escort,” Glynn said.

  “Because of our dangerous streets. Right.” I rolled my eyes. Main had hookers (part-time) and Grant had abandoned factories (now getting renovated). MC was so squeaky clean, city workers ran around checking home porches for the correct pitch. Not that a saggy old porch wasn’t dangerous. It’s just, where did the whole city get that kind of energy?

  “Now, liebchen. You should listen to your young man.” Otto tapped me on the forehead to get my attention. “He shows good sense.”

  I puffed in consternation. “And I don’t? I’m shocked I’ve made it this long, traipsing around alone since I was six.”

  “That was before the trouble in November,” Glynn said. “Now you need an escort.”

  Otto nodded. “Listen to your young man.”

  Second time, I couldn’t let that pass. Habits in the Corners were deadly. If you didn’t immediately dig them out, they’d take root, like a tree finding a nice juicy sewer line. “Uncle. Glynn is not my young ma—”

  “It’s about time you were settling down.”