by Hannah Jayne
“Alex!” I screamed again, kicking aside heaps of Mort’s stuff. “Where are you?”
I swam my way toward the back of the house just as Alex was able to smash through what remained of a solid door and kick his leg through the fallen stash of eyeglasses. I yanked on his shoulders and Alex wriggled his way out.
“I was pinned in here by this crap?”
I tossed aside a soiled Care Bear and grabbed Alex’s hand. “And don’t think the entire police department isn’t going to hear about it. Let’s get out of here.”
“Lawson, you’re covered in blood.”
“Let’s go!”
The explosion of movement in the house caused every stacked item to stir and walls started sliding, giving up puffs of dust as magazines teetered and flopped from the tops of stacks, sailing to the floor. I heard Mort yelling as Alex and I took the obstacle course at record speed, finally stumbling through the cluttered foyer and over the front porch.
“Are you okay?” Alex said, slowing down.
“In the car!”
My heart was still thudding, adrenaline still racing through me. I had positioned myself in the front seat by the time Alex kicked the car in gear, was gripping the end of my seat belt when we flew in reverse, dust coughing up to the windows.
“What the hell happened to you?” I yelled the second our wheels hit paved road.
“Me, what the hell happened to you? That asshat shoved me in his ‘library.’” Alex made air quotes around the word. “And kicked down three piles of shit to pin me in there. What about you, Vidal Sassoon?”
“What are you talking about?”
Alex jerked the car off the road with a squeal and pulled down the visor in front of me.
I gaped.
“That fuck!”
“You didn’t notice that?”
I narrowed my eyes at Alex. “No, I was a little busy trying not to have him slice my head off.” I glared at myself in the mirror. “I had no idea he sliced my hair off.”
Though I’ve never been incredibly crazy about my mane of unruly red curls, I did have at least the minor pleasure of an even haircut.
Not so now, thanks to hoarder turned hairdresser, Mort Laney. His scissors of doom had lopped off a fist-sized chunk of hair just over my left eyebrow that left my scalp oddly naked all the way to my left ear. Baby sprigs of inch long hair shot up around my newly exposed scalp.
“He couldn’t have just attacked my car like everyone else?”
I heard Alex stifling a laugh and I smacked the visor shut, then slumped back in my car seat. “I suppose you think this is hilarious.”
“Hey, I was neck-deep in stuffed animals and wrapping paper. I’m not judging. But Lawson, I saw blood.” He leaned over and awkwardly patted my new buzz cut. “Are you sure he didn’t get you?”
I looked at my hands, then down at my blood-spattered jeans. “He stabbed me.” It was matter-of-fact, and I waited for the surge of pain.
Nothing.
I moved my leg.
And there it was.
Another stab of nausea-inducing pain. “Shit! He stabbed me in the leg!” I touched the wound gently and recoiled.
“You were running on adrenaline.” Alex leaned forward, his palm resting gently on my thigh as he fingered the tear in my jeans. “That’s going to need stitches. Are you okay?”
“It hurts,” I said miserably. “It hurts, I got a shitty haircut, and you got bombarded by an avalanche of crap, all for nothing.” My eyes started to burn and my throat tightened. The tears started, burning hot tracks down my cheeks. I sniffed. “I’m sorry.”
Alex pushed the car into drive again and pulled onto the road. “You really think I’d let a crazy-ass half-breed hoarder stab you for nothing?” He grinned at me with that cocky half smile, which seemed strangely comforting, and flopped a heavy sheaf of papers onto the console between us.
“What’s this?”
Alex shrugged, maneuvering the car into traffic. “Honestly, it could be the answer to everything we’re looking for or eight thousand expired Enfamil coupons. I just took what I could grab.”
My newly naked scalp was cold. My leg throbbed and ached. But things were finally—if only a little bit—starting to look up and that felt good.
“Hey, where are you going? The city is that way.”
“Yeah, but the hospital is this way.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” I said, hiding my wince. “A little Bactine, a couple of Band-Aids, and this baby will be fine.” I was itching to get back to research, to saving Sampson—but the throb in my leg was starting to make me a little woozy. “And maybe just an aspirin or two.”
“No offense, Lawson, but I’m less worried about a little pain than I am about you getting norovirus or mad cow from Mort’s scissors. You have no idea where they’ve been. Actually, I’d be surprised if Mort has any idea where they’ve been.”
I shot Alex a glance and he curled his upper lip into a disgusted scowl. “There were two boxes of plus-sized lingerie in the ‘library.’ I don’t think Mort’s picky about the shit that he hoards—or from whom he gets it.”
I shuddered, suddenly certain that each throb of pain was delivering a whopping cocktail of bubonic plague, alopecia, and bird flu.
“Can you drive directly into the emergency room?”
It’s one thing to have just survived a shearing-slash-stabbing at the hands of a psychotic hoarder. It’s a whole different thing entirely to actually have people gape at you at the emergency room of San Francisco Memorial. The blood from my scissor wound had dried into an immovable hunk so I leaned on Alex, swinging my leg pirate peg-leg style when a stooped man who looked like he had gone man-o-a-machine-o with the business end of a weed whacker slid three plastic chairs away from us. I glanced up at Alex, my arm threaded through his.
“Does my hair really look that bad?” The whole ride down I had avoided the vanity mirror. Now I patted the little furry nubs that Mort had so kindly left on the left side of my head.
“No,” Alex said. “You look fine. You look like one of those cutting-edge chicks with one of those edgy, funky new hairstyles.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Look at me when you say that.”
Alex pressed his lips together, still avoiding my gaze. “Don’t make me look directly at it,” he whispered.
By the time we got through the emergency room—with a very vague explanation as to how one gets a scissor to the calf and fifty percent of a horrible haircut—plus a dramatic request by yours truly to be pumped with every inoculation, antidote, and drop of hand sanitizer possible, I was discharged with a handful of painkillers and a pair of hospital scrubs.
I limped into the waiting room and glanced around at the selection of slightly injured, severely injured, and hypochondriacs, and gulped.
Had Alex left me?
I had gotten nothing from Mort but tetanus and a bad haircut, and now Alex had deserted me. Sampson could be a rabid murderer, Mort could be making redheaded Sophie Lawson voodoo dolls, and I would die here, while being stared at by a man with a fork mashed into his right ear.
So this is how it ends, I thought dejectedly. With a tombstone that said, Sophie Lawson: Probably Should Have Listened.
I sniffled.
Though the painkillers took the edge off the pain, I could feel hot tears at the edges of my eyes, and the niggling flick of anger starting in my chest.
“Oh, hey, you’re out already.”
I whirled, then groaned, doubling over. “Not enough painkillers!” But I steeled myself and pushed my fists against my hips. “Why did you desert me? Where were you?”
Alex patted my shoulder, his palm a delicious, comforting weight against my skin. “If I deserted you, do you think I’d come back?” he asked.
I frowned. “I have bad hair. I’m a little sensitive.”
“Here.” He reached into a plastic SF Memorial bag and produced the ugliest—but sweetest—hat I’d ever seen. It was a navy-blue trucker
number with the words Somebunny at SF Memorial Loves Me written in hot pink glitter. A pair of floppy, plush, pink bunny ears shot out either side.
My heart melted. It could have been the painkillers, or the fact that I’d bludgeoned a man with a taxidermied owl just hours before, but the gesture was enormous and touching. I took the hat in both hands, holding it delicately like the treasure that it was.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, as Alex blurred in front of me.
He took the hat and perched it on my head, pulling it low over my mangled scalp. “How does it feel?”
“Like the crown jewels,” I said, stroking one of the shoulder-length bunny ears.
“How much pain medication did they give you?”
I was leaning on Alex as he led me through the double doors into my apartment building, and by the time we reached the third-floor landing, he was carrying me, my head was lolled back like a rag doll, and I thought I was flying.
“Did you—did you kill her?” I heard Nina ask.
I heard someone sniff heavily at the air. “No, she’s definitely not dead. But she smells like she’s on the verge.”
I rolled my eyes to the back of my head and saw Vlad, upside down, hands on hips.
“Where’s your cape?” I mumbled.
“She’s been drugged,” Alex explained. “Painkillers. I think I’ll just put her to bed.”
“No!” I sat up in Alex’s arms and all the blood that had rushed to my head drained to my feet while my plush bunny ears flopped against my cheeks. I blinked at the symphony of electric spots that danced in the living room. “Shower first. Must remove layers of dusty crap from skin. Hey, Nina, when’d you get here?”
Alex positioned me on the couch and Nina held out a hand for me. “I can take it from here.”
I don’t know why—or how, exactly—but I lurched forward, throwing my arms around Alex’s leg. “I can’t let you go,” I warbled into his kneecap. “I have to make things right.”
“Sophie.” I felt Nina’s ice-cold fingertips on my shoulder, working to loosen my vise-like grip on Alex’s leg. I wouldn’t let him go.
“Don’t leave,” I said, pressing my cheek against his rock-solid thigh and trying to talk to him over his crotch. “Please.”
I saw the alarm in Alex’s eyes—but there was a twinge of sympathy in there, too. “I’ll stay.” He looked at Nina. “I feel partly responsible for this anyway. I should have been protecting her.”
Nina pulled her hand out of mine and put her hands on hips. “Yeah, you should have. What happened? Where were you when—what the hell is on your hat?”
“Somebunny loves me,” I cooed.
“It was the only hat in the place,” Alex murmured.
“I love it so much,” I said, stroking one of the ears, my eyes starting to mist again. “This man is a prince.”
Nina furrowed her brow.
“He tried to save me, Neens, honest. But he was pinned by one-armed Care Bears and Cool Whip containers.” I mimicked Mort’s stack falling, pinning my hero Alex in the library. “And I saved us with an owl.”
“How many painkillers did they give her?” Vlad asked.
Nina dragged me into the tub, where I blubbered into the water and tried to explain away my new haircut. I guess I wasn’t making much sense because before long she plucked me from the bath, rolled me in a bathrobe, and dumped me on my bed. I think I heard her mumble, “She’s all yours,” to Alex as I wrestled myself into a pair of underwear and my Giants nightshirt.
Alex knocked on my open door frame. “Are you decent?”
I felt my grin spread to my earlobes. “You’re so gentlemanly.”
With his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulder pressed up against the door frame, he looked like an Abercrombie model, or one of the headless guys from a romance novel cover.
My whole body was weighted with the far-reaching ooze of the painkillers, but my mind seemed clear enough and I was desperate not to be alone.
“Can you come in here, please?” With enormous effort, I snaked a single arm free from my blankets and patted the mattress next to me. “Sit with me.”
Alex looked uncertain, but he came into the room and stood beside me.
“Sit.” I patted the mattress again.
“I don’t think—I mean, you and Will . . .”
I tried to sit up, tried to get my eyes to widen and focus on Alex’s drawn face. “No me and Will,” I finally said, though my lips felt like flapping bananas. “No me and Will.”
Alex’s sweet lips pushed up into a half smile and he sat. “You don’t have any idea what you’re saying, Lawson, do you?”
His voice was soothing and melodic, the tone making my eyelids heavy.
“I know what I’m saying,” I mumbled. “Will, me . . . not serious. It was—it was . . .” My tongue felt immovable. “It was you.”
I felt Alex’s palm on my forehead. A shiver shot through me as he gently brushed my hair away, his fingers playing through the long strands. I closed my eyes, letting the feeling flow through me.
“It was always you,” I said.
“Shh, Lawson. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do,” I said, certain I was nodding my head emphatically. “It’s not Will. Will is my Guardian. You’re my angel. My angel Alex.”
I pried an eye open to see Alex’s eyes on me, the intense cobalt fixed, focused. He licked his lips, his smile soft. “I’ll always be your angel, Lawson.”
“My angel Alex,” I mumbled again. “Stay with me. Stay with me here, tonight. Stay forever.” I reached out and found his torso, then worked my fingers under his shirt. He sucked in a breath when my fingertips brushed over his bare skin. He ran his fingers through my hair; I rubbed my fingers over his navel, up his stair-step abs. “Please, Alex.”
“Lawson . . .”
Suddenly, I didn’t just want him—I needed him. Desire flowed through every inch of me and my body, heavy and leaden twenty minutes ago, was suddenly alive and on desperate fire. I sat up, clutched at him. I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled him to me, pressing my lips against his, kissing him hungrily.
He kissed me back and something inside me exploded. I gripped at his chest, slid my other hand from his hair to his shoulder, yanking to remove his shirt. He grabbed my hand and when he pulled his lips from mine, their immediate absence felt so wrong it was painful.
“What?”
Alex’s breath was ragged, labored. His skin was hot, but his eyes and his touch were gentle. “We can’t do this, Lawson. You don’t want this. You’re drugged.”
I swung my head. “No, no. I know what I want. I want you.”
Alex gently pushed me away from him, using his other hand to cup my chin. “You’re gorgeous.”
Pain filled every inch of me and the edges of my lips pulled down. “You don’t want me?”
He brushed a thumb over my bottom lip. “I want you more than anything, Lawson.”
“Is it Heaven, then? You don’t want to do anything to keep you out of Heaven again?”
His eyes suddenly went dark and bedroomy, his smile wry but slightly lascivious. “The things I want to do to you would keep me out of Heaven forever and it’d be worth it.” He brushed a tender kiss over my forehead. “But not now. Not like this.”
“But I—”
“Shh, sleep, sweetheart.”
I tried to protest, but Alex’s arms were strong around me and my body had gotten heavy again. He laid me down gently, pulling my covers up and tucking them around me. I was suddenly so incredibly tired.
“You’re a good angel,” I murmured.
I heard his soft chuckle as he straightened. “Go to sleep, okay?”
I nodded, pushing my head into the pillow. My eyes were narrow slits now; I could just make out Alex’s back as he turned to leave.
“I love you,” I muttered.
I was groggy, but I saw him stiffen and pause. Then he pulled the door gently shut behind him.
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Chapter Nine
The day after my run-in with Mort and the San Francisco Memorial emergency room was blissfully uneventful—as long as I kept my mind away from thinking about my romantic mumblings to Alex the night before. I wasn’t one-hundred-percent clear about the exact goings-on of our conversation, but every time I even considered it, my mercury rose and my complexion went from day-glow white to midlife crisis Corvette red. I had a grand plan to slink out of the Underworld Detection Agency and finish my Sampson investigation myself, while contributing to Alex’s homicide investigation via e-mail or possibly carrier pigeon.
However, I was unable to get one Payless Shoe Source faux-leather heel out the door before I came face to bloodless face with Dixon Andrade.
“Miss Lawson.” His eyes coasted over me. “That’s a lovely hat.”
My hand flew up to the enormous Titanic-style headpiece I wore. After spending twenty minutes this morning trying to perfect a half-bald-head-hiding comb-over, Nina gave up and slapped the giant saucer on my head.
“Thanks. I was just on my way out.”
“Certainly,” Dixon said without stepping aside. “But first I was hoping to talk to you about our previous discussion. If you have the time, of course.” His expression was kind enough, but his eyes were cold steel, letting me know that I’d damn well better have the time.
I took two tentative steps back into my office and slunk into one of my visitor’s chairs while Dixon settled himself across from me.
“Have you and Alex been able to come up with anything?”
I thought of my fingers ambling all over Alex’s bare chest the night before and shook my head, probably a little too emphatically. “No, nothing.”
“But you two have been working together?”
“Yes, sir.” I knew I should have been uber focused on Dixon and his werewolf hypothesis. It could be the one thing that could prove—or disprove—Sampson’s innocence, but my mind and body only wanted to head back to the relative safety of my bed and my previous drug-addled state. “Have you found anything new?”