by Lois Greiman
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head, guilty yet again. That I’d barely spared a moment to realize how terrified she would be for me. “It was just…” What was it? I had no words to explain, and maybe no real desire. Not now, anyway. “Really busy.” Okay, maybe that was a bit of a stretch, but seeing her so shaken rocked me to the core.
“Mac…” She squeezed my fingers, held my gaze, reading me like no one else could.
“I’m okay,” I said, and took a deep breath as my world settled cautiously. “Really.”
She inhaled audibly, exhaled long and slow. “You scared the life out of me,” she said, and winced as if in physical pain. “Almost.”
“You shouldn’t have come all this way,” I said, remembering her delicate condition. “You know—”
“Chrissy…” Rivera said, but I ignored him.
“Where’s Solberg?”
Laney grimaced, and I froze.
“What’s wrong? He didn’t let you drive alone, did he? Holy crap! He’s such a moron. I’m going to rip him a—”
“Chrissy…” Rivera said again.
“Don’t you defend him!” I snarled. “Look at her, she’s practically falling off her feet. How could he—”
“Lie down,” he said.
“What?” I turned toward him with a start.
“She’s in labor,” he said.
Chapter 33
Bitchiness: still cheaper than the pill.
—Shirley Templeton, mother of many and a firm believer that teenagers’ tater tots should be laced with birth control
Laney gave birth in Rivera’s hospital room. One perky nurse and two snotty ones tried to convince her to mosey along to the delivery ward, but by then she was entrenched on his bed.
A doctor—female, of course—later insisted that she relocate to the birthing center, but Rivera was adamant that she do whatever she wished, and she wished to remain where she was. And to…God help us all…give birth naturally. I held her hand and tried not to pee in my pants until her husband arrived wild eyed and wiry haired.
“Angel!” He burst into the room like a disheveled little tornado and fell to his knees beside the bed. “Sweetie, what are you doing here?”
“Having a baby.” There was some gravel in her voice by now. Apparently, pushing a watermelon out of an orifice more accustomed to a cucumber is not as pleasant as it sounds. “Been preparing for some time. I thought”—she paused to pant like a Labrador—“you knew.”
“But this isn’t how we planned it.” His voice was squeaky, his Adam’s apple bobbed wildly. “We were supposed to deliver at Del Mar, with our doula and our midwife and our doctor and our footed bathtub with the—”
“We’re doing it here,” she growled. “And we’re doing it now.”
Across the bed from me, I saw Solberg’s face pale to cocaine whiteness. He and I had some history. Most of it consisted of him calling me a hundred versions of the word babe and trying to cop a feel, but since meeting Laney, he’d forgotten there were other women on the planet. His adoration was all-consuming, and because of that, I could forgive him for the fact that I had once risked my life to save his. In fact, I could almost forgive him for having once inadvertently touched my boob.
“Rivera,” she said, face contorting, “promised she was safe. But he wasn’t answering his phone anymore. And I had to find out…” Another pause as she blew out hot, gusty breaths of air. “Find out about Mac.”
Remorse swamped me. I squeezed her hand tighter, though honest to God, I thought if I tried to pull my hand away my fingers might remain in her fist. “I’m okay, Laney. I’m okay now. Let’s just worry about you.”
She caught my gaze, emerald eyes solemn. “And the baby.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and she smiled.
Then she screamed, convulsed, and tried to yank my arm out at the shoulder. After that, there was a lot of gasping and sweating and crying. But they let Solberg stay anyway, until Rivera had to pick him up off the floor and drag him, paddling pathetically with one limp foot, into the hallway.
“Almost there. One more push,” the doctor said.
Cheeks red, brow scrunched, Laney pushed, and in that second she was almost…not the most beautiful woman in the world.
But in the end, she was presented with a baby. It was wrinkled, purple, and ugly as an ogre. But that wasn’t the only surprise. It was also a boy.
She cried when she saw him…for obvious reasons, I thought, until she was able to speak.
“He’s beautiful. Oh, he’s so beautiful.” She touched his goopy face, hugged his little ogreish body. “Isn’t he the most beautiful thing in the world?”
At this point in my life, I had elevated lying to an art form, but I hesitated a moment, maybe to make sure she wasn’t pulling my leg.
“Mac?” She looked up at me, eyes swimming with baffling adoration.
“Yeah, he’s…He…” I winced, cocked my head a little. “Sure is.”
“We’ll name him Wesley.”
“Like Buttercup’s Westley?”
“Like my father, Wesley.”
“Oh, right,” I said, and it wasn’t as if I was disappointed. I didn’t need some slimy little ogre that she loved more than life named after me, even if I had shared my ice cream with her in grade school…kinda. I mean…
“Wesley Macaulay Butterfield Solberg.”
“It’s that kind of mean? The name’s longer than—”
“But we’ll call him Mac.”
“Holy sh…moly!” I breathed, as a dose of Laney’s mommy hormones struck me. “Mac? Really?”
She laughed. “If it’s okay with you.”
“Yeah,” I said, and felt dumb-ass tears swim in my eyes. “I guess that’d be all right.”
Chapter 34
Kids, just say no.
—Chrissy’s mom, who forgot to do so on at least four occasions
I wandered hazily through the Maze Runner corridors of Cedars-Sinai in search of an exit, mind whirring fuzzily. No, little Wesley Mac wasn’t much to look at, except maybe to lower primates…and, apparently, mothers just recovering from the throes of torture, aka labor. But little buck-toothed Laney hadn’t exactly been a beauty, either, for the first decade or so, and look at her now.
High on hormones and lack of sleep, I found a door and wandered into the parking lot. Danshov’s ugly Beetle winked its lights at me when I managed to press its fob. I stumbled to the driver’s door.
“Hey.”
I turned, startled. The man in front of me looked plump and pleasantly innocuous. Or he would have if it had been fully light and I hadn’t recently been attacked by every passing Tom, Dick, and Hiro.
“Who are you?” Not very convivial, maybe, but sometimes murder attempts make me kind of snippy.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m Jeff. Jeff Halloway. Get inside, will you?”
“What?”
He smiled a little. “Get inside,” he said, and lifted his hand. Hiro’s key fob dangled from his fingers. I gasped, glanced at my empty fingers, and jerked back a step.
“How did you—?”
“Never mind that,” he said.
“But I do mind. I do. Why are you…” I was babbling already. “Just take the car. You can have it.”
He gave the rusted Beetle a dubious glance and smiled. “Believe me, honey, I don’t want your car.”
“What do you want?”
“Just a little conversation.”
I shook my head and backed away, ready to punch or kick or scream, but suddenly I couldn’t speak, could barely move.
“Don’t worry,” he said, tone oddly dramatic as he reached past me to open the driver’s door. “You can’t talk right now, but it will only last a short time.”
I gawked at him, but he was already pushing me inside. I seemed unable to resist. My hands felt strangely disembodied against the steering wheel.
“That’s right. Just relax. Everything’ll be—”
“Stay right where you are!”
I shifted my gaze groggily to the left.
Rivera was hobbling toward us. A kindly breeze kicked up his hospital gown, giving me a momentary glance of a few of the goodies I had been bereft of for so long. But Jeff seemed unimpressed.
“Ah, shit!” he moaned. Abandoning his staged drama, he raced around the car and jammed himself into the passenger seat. “Go. Go. Go!”
The Beetle seemed to start of its own accord. We were already zipping forward before I could get my bearings.
“Holy cow, lady,” Jeff said, and twisted his head to look behind him. “Another one?”
I yanked my gaze to the rearview mirror. Hiro Danshov seemed to be racing after us, running flat out, overtaking Rivera as if he were standing still.
“Eyes on the road! On the road!” Jeff yipped, and grabbing the wheel, turned us onto Beverly. “Geez, you wanna get us killed?”
I shook my head, emphatic.
“Good! Excellent. You got any others?”
“Any other what?” My voice was scratchy but functional.
“Knights. Heroes. Cavalrymen just dying to come to your…” He glanced behind him. “Holy crapola, what is he, part cheetah? Step on it.”
I did, though to this day I don’t know why.
“Take a left. Here!” he ordered.
I squealed onto Third.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice was raspy, my hands shaky, as if I were coming out from under anesthesia.
“I just wanted to get to know you a little.”
“You wanted to…” I glanced sideways. “Oh God.” The earth fell out from beneath me. “You’re the guy from the parking lot. From the gym.” Memories, half forgotten over the traumatic weeks, stormed in. “And from my house. You’re—”
“Watch the road!” he squawked, and steered us back on track.
“Are you a Black Flame?”
“A…” He glanced to the right. “Pull in here.”
“What?”
“Take a right!”
Trader Joe’s parking lot was packed to the gills.
“Pull in there, between those two vans.”
I did as ordered, though I was certain he was going to shove me into one of those vehicles. I’d never be seen alive again. I knew it, but I was unable to rebel.
“Damned SUVs. You can’t throw a dove in the air without it crapping on one of them. Get about, what? Go ahead and turn off the car. They must get, like, two miles to the gallon? Climate change on wheels, that’s what I call them. And folks wonder why their kids are yakking up their lungs with asthma and stuff. Do you want kids, Christina?”
I felt like my head had cracked open. “Who are you?”
“My brother,” someone said.
We cranked our heads to the rear in tandem surprise.
Tony Amato, Sunrise Coffee’s barista, sat in the tiny back seat, as cool as a Slurpee, surfer-dude hair attractively tousled, pretty eyes irritated.
“Hey, Chrissy,” he said, and slumped a little against the cracked vinyl.
“I…I…” I tried to clear my head, but it seemed perpetually foggy. “How did you…? Where did you…?”
“What the hell, Cosmos?” my abductor asked. He sounded more miffed than surprised.
“Cosmos?” My mind was stumbling with fear, stuttering with questions. “What happened to Tony? You said your name was Tony. I like the name…” I stopped rambling with a gasp. “You said if family determined…Holy shit! You’re a hit man! You’re a family of hit…people.”
“What? No! I wish it was something that…normal.”
“Tony?” My captor snorted. “Jesus, Cosmos, you might as well call yourself Eugene or Ralph or—”
“This is Zephyr Zovello,” Tony said, sounding disgusted. “He’s a magician.”
“Conjurer! God damn it, Cosmos, what’s wrong with you? Ulysses said you sold us out, but I wouldn’t believe it. I suppose you’ve told her everything?”
“Everything?” My voice was misty.
“The levitating alligator. The disappearing head.”
“Disappearing—”
“Nobody cares how you levitate an alligator, Zeph.”
“The Middleton News called it bitingly brilliant.”
“Middleton, Ohio, population: fifteen.”
“It was standing-room only.” The volume was rising.
“In the little boys’ room?”
“At the renowned Middleton Lyric—”
“I told you my family was crazy,” Tony said.
“Why are you here?” I sounded fuzzy and kind of faint.
“Crazy!” Jeff/Zephyr cried. “We’re magic geniuses.”
Tony rolled his eyes, then settled his gaze on me. “You have to have a rudimentary understanding of physics, of course. But most of the work is done with pulleys and magnets—”
“What the…Well, that’s just great!” Zephyr huffed. “Now we’ll have to disappear her.”
“Disappear—”
“We’re not going to make her disappear,” Tony said. If his tone were any more bored he’d have fallen into a coma. I wasn’t quite so insouciant.
“He’s right. You’re right,” I agreed, twisting vaguely from one brother to the other. “You don’t have to—”
“She’s just using you to gain the sacred secrets of the amazing Zovellos.”
“There are no secrets of the Zovellos. Sacred or otherwise. And we’re not amazing.”
“She’s in cahoots with Menkaura,” Zephyr hissed, and snapped his accusatory gaze on mine. “Aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Menkaura! The Mystical Menkaura.”
“The…the…Las Vegas guy?” I asked, remembering vaguely, again, that, some time ago, I had met a magician while searching for Laney’s missing husband.
“You actually know him?” Tony asked.
“No. Well, kind of. I talked to him once.”
“Hah!” Zephyr barked. “She admits it. She’s Menkaura’s spy.”
“Really?” Tony asked.
“What?” I shook my head, sure I had stumbled into some kind of alternate universe. “No. I was looking for…for…” I was momentarily at a loss, but the memories swarmed. “Solberg. J.D. Solberg. He’d disappeared in Vegas. And my best friend…she was in love with him. I know…” I shook my head. Reality was slipping away. “Inconceivable. She’s beautiful and funny and kind and smart and he’s…Well, he’s none of those things. Except smart, I guess. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Or to talk to him. Or…” I sighed, feeling foggy. “Sometimes when two people meet, there’s an exchange of qualities, a quid pro quo, sort of. Good looks for bushels of cash…that sort of thing. That wasn’t the case here. She has everything. He has nothing, except an amazing ability to make me want to barf on my shoes. I’ve considered hiring someone to get rid of him, of course, but…Hey.” I blinked. “Do the amazing…what’s your last name again?”
Tony stared at me in silence for a second, then, “She’s not Menkaura’s spy.”
“Seriously?” Zephyr said, in dumbfounded disbelief. “I came all the way from Boston to protect our sacred secrets and…” He shook his head. “No. I don’t believe it. Everyone’s heard of the amazing Zovellos.”
“She’s not a spy,” Tony said. “She’s a psychologist.”
My abductor snorted. “Like you’re a barista?” He shook his head. “And Mom thought you were the one with talent.”
“What’s wrong with being a barista?” Tony asked.
“It’s lame, that’s what. Just wait till I tell Mom you’re a traitor.”
“I’m not a traitor.”
“Are too, a traitor and—”
Suddenly, they were scrambling over the seat, trying to get at each other like rabid dogs. Somehow, the passenger door popped open. They tumbled outside, wrestling, rolling.
It took me a moment to realize I was alone in the car. I reached for the key, but the ignition was empty. I have no idea how that happened. But it wa
s hardly the first mystery of the day. And not one I was willing to hang around to figure out.
Wrenching open the driver’s door, I stumbled to the asphalt just in time to see two men racing around the corner. Rivera and Hiro! They were dodging cars, scrambling past pedestrians.
On the far side of the Beetle, the two combatants paused, rose. Zephyr hissed something. Tony scowled, then raised a dramatic arm. There was a moment of breathlessness, a puff of smoke, and then Zephyr was gone.
Tony sighed as he turned toward me. “What else could I do? He’s my damned brother.”
I blinked, at the dissipating smoke, at Tony’s disgusted expression.
“He…he kidnapped me.”
“He wouldn’t have hurt you,” he assured me. “The Zovellos are weirder than shit, but we have a catch-and-release program for spiders.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not a spider. And he…” I felt a little breathless. “He belongs in a cell.”
“LAPD!” Rivera yelled. He was still forty feet away and limping nearer, but I could see by the overhead lights that he had somehow located his badge. The amazing Zovellos weren’t the only crazies in this crowd. As for Hiro, he was nowhere to be seen which was disconcerting but not all that surprising.
“Holy fuck.” Tony scowled at Rivera. “Is that your ex? The guy from the restaurant?”
I winced, remembering how I had abandoned Tony for ten minutes of heavy breathing in a high-class restroom.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Promise your brother wouldn’t have harmed me?”
“Swear to God, he’s as odd as a two-headed bunny, but he’d give you the cape off his back.”
“Step away from her!” Rivera yelled.
“It’s okay. It’s all right,” I said. “He didn’t hurt me. Nobody hurt me.”
“Get down on the damn ground! Hands behind your back.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, he doesn’t have to get down on the ground,” I said. “This is Tony. The guy from The Blvd. Remember? My date.”
Rivera snarled something, making me think perhaps I could be handling things better.
“He saved me,” I added.
“From what?” Rivera growled.
“From his…”