“You’re serious?”
“You have a better idea?”
I shifted to give him access to the handcuff.
“Hold your hand out. No, the free one.”
I held out my free hand, palm up. He rested the open packet on it and selected a slender tool from a dozen similar-looking flat instruments. Bending close, he began to prod the lock. I stared at the top of his head. Yep, the broadsword was an apparition. The hilt was silver and black, with an engraving of a running horse. Rust covered the scabbard, doing little to bolster my confidence.
I went over what I knew of my would-be rescuer. Name: Hudson Keyes. Profession: security installation. Drove a company van; masqueraded as the boyfriend of women he just met; carried picklock tools; was unfazed by a baby elephant; went through women’s purses without asking. It wasn’t much to go on.
“Uh, thank you for your help,” I said.
He looked up, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. I added sexy as hell to my list. The scales tipped in his favor.
“You’re welcome.” He wiggled the tool in the handcuff hole. “You’ve got some strange friends.”
“Jenny is not my friend. I’m not even sure we really did go to school together.”
“Yet she left you an elephant.”
“I don’t think she’s sane.”
Hudson snorted. The lock clicked and the handcuff dropped away.
“Holy crap, it feels good to be free. Thank you.” I shook my wrist, then impulsively kissed his cheek, barely registering his stubble before pulling back. He smiled, the tips of his lips curling up and a flush staining his cheeks as he put away the picklock tool. The rust disappeared from the scabbard. The moment he took the tool set back, I rubbed my bruised wrist.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now I get out of here.”
We slipped out the back before Kyoko noticed, but when the elephant heard the latch click, she bugled her displeasure and the trailer bounced against the curb. I didn’t stop moving until I was across the sidewalk and leaning against a storefront, breathing fresh air. I flapped my dress’s bodice to dry my sweat. Dirt streaked across the hem of the purple skirt, and my legs were smeared with trunk trails. My hand smelled like elephant.
“I meant in a larger sense,” Hudson said, coming to stand beside me.
I had been doing a pretty good job of not thinking about the larger picture. The one in which an insane baby elephant kidnapper threatened to expose my most closely guarded secret to the world. Despite what I’d told Hudson, I was positive we had gone to school together. The facts Jenny had cited were too specific. Anyone could have looked up the power problems that plagued Santa Monica High during my four-year attendance, but Jenny had known about Byron’s car battery, too.
To my knowledge, no one had ever connected the dots between me and the electrical destruction left in my curse’s wake. Not good friends, not boyfriends, not clients or landlords or teachers. It was just my luck the one person who had figured it out was a whacko. Ironically, it didn’t matter if she was insane or a criminal or had a whole menagerie of endangered animals she planned to deposit around LA; if she convinced just one person to do tests on me, my life would be over.
With the accuracy of a sniper, Jenny had hit the bull’s-eye of my single greatest fear: becoming a lab rat. I’d had years to map every possibility of being exposed, and the topography always spelled doom. At best, scientists would study me. It wasn’t a matter of giving my consent. I couldn’t turn my visions off, which meant I couldn’t stop my curse from draining electricity. Anyone spending extended time in my vicinity would see it work. If by some miracle I wasn’t turned into a lab rat, it wouldn’t stop people from talking. My secret would spread. I’d end up on the cover of newspapers or, worse, tabloids—“Los Angeles Woman Eats Electricity for Breakfast, Electrocutes People for Lunch” or “Electricity-Eating Woman Threatens to Cripple Civilization to Stone Age” or “Eva Parker: Sign of the Apocalypse or Antichrist?” The source wouldn’t matter: eventually strangers would know about my curse, refuse to do business with me, treat me like a pariah, and run in fear, clutching their beloved phones, laptops, and tablets.
The darker scenarios involved government agencies detaining me in some underground bunker for the rest of my life, dissecting my brain for clues of how to re-create my curse, using me or my ability as a weapon—
Sofie said I had an overactive imagination, but I’d watched this country’s reactions to scientific discoveries long enough to know I wasn’t far off base. I loved my life. I’d found my niche in the sprawling landscape of Los Angeles, learned to adapt my activities to hide my curse, and had created a little slice of almost normal for myself. The thought of all that crashing down on me because some woman I went to high school with could expose my secret brought me close to hyperventilating. Her bargain—keeping my secret in exchange for me hiding her stolen baby elephant—was no bargain at all. It was blackmail.
And it was going to work.
“I don’t know,” I said, finally answering Hudson’s question.
A couple walking by stopped to examine their shoes. I sniffed my dress. Pee-yew.
“If Jenny thinks telling the world you had the elephant is going to hold up in court, she’s wrong. All we have to do is tell them what happened today. She’s got nothing on you.”
I blinked at Hudson’s earnest, confused expression and tried to process the conversation from his point of view. He was right. If we went immediately to the authorities, we could convince the police (or a jury, if it came to that) of our complete innocence in the abduction of Kyoko from wherever she had been taken. Logically, we should be rushing to the nearest police station and telling them everything we knew.
Doom.
“You know, this isn’t really your problem,” I said.
“You want me to walk away? Pretend I didn’t see anything?”
Yes, damn it. The fewer people who knew of even the hint of my curse, the better. Jenny had practically spelled it out for him, and after the shock of the elephant wore off, he would—consciously or subconsciously—make the connection.
“You got swept up in this,” I said. I met Hudson’s deep sapphire eyes. He really did seem like a good guy. “This is crazy and you should have—”
“Let that insane woman kidnap you? Because that’s what it looked like she was doing.”
“No. You’re right. Thank you for getting me out of there.” I wriggled my bruised wrist.
“Do you really think I could walk away from this?” Hudson asked. “A baby elephant mysteriously dropped off in a trailer in downtown Culver City. An attractive woman I rescued from handcuffs who smells like elephant poop. How could I resist?”
My heart sank. The broadsword glowed bright enough to halo Hudson. He thought this was some grand adventure. He thought he was going to rescue me.
“Look,” he said when I didn’t respond with the enthusiasm he had expected. “I’ve got a laptop in the van. Let’s figure out where this elephant was taken from, drive her back, and sort this all out with the police once that baby is reunited with her mother. Hopefully we can get Jenny some mental help in the process.”
Well, crap. He really was going to rescue me. I was doomed.
CHAPTER THREE
I ordered us both drinks from the nearby café, scrambling furiously for a plan. One that wouldn’t involve Hudson putting Jenny in a position to expose my secret to the world. Hudson hunched over his laptop at one of the outside tables, engrossed in his grand rescue strategy.
“Nothing. Can you believe it? At least not on the major news sites. I’ll check more locally . . .”
I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I wiped the dirty trunk marks from my legs with wet paper towels, then stared at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were paler than normal, and my slate-blue eyes looked haunted.
“This won’t do,” I told myself. I fixed my ponytail, reapplied lip gloss, and patted some color into my cheeks. I’ve never
been impressed by white knights or their co-conspirators, the damsels in distress. Their whole relationship was predicated on the belief that the white knight could intuit the damsel’s needs, but I had yet to meet a man with telepathy. Like Hudson, the knights bumbled along, using logic based on only half the facts. Left alone, my white knight would mess everything up in his endeavor to be the hero. So, like women throughout history before me, I had to rescue myself from my problem and from the “help” of the hero. Only, I didn’t have logic on my side, and I couldn’t explain my reasoning without revealing my secret. I’d have to get creative, and as much as I didn’t want to, I’d also have to trade on the attraction that had drawn Hudson to me and this mess in the first place.
“Any luck?” I asked when I sat down at the table.
“Nothing. You’d think it’d be a top story, at least locally. How often are elephants stolen?”
“What if Jenny was on to something?”
Bright blue eyes lifted to my face. “Meaning?”
“She seemed to think Kyoko is in danger. What if she’s right? What if we were to return her to wherever she came from, and they were torturing her?” I nibbled at my bottom lip, giving him Bambi eyes.
“Ah, well, I hadn’t considered that. We could take her to an animal rescue facility.”
Damn. Another good solution. Was he trying to ruin my life? I consciously mirrored the position of his arms on the table, then crossed my leg in his direction. Using flirtatious body language in such a calculated manner felt sleazy, but desperation helmed this train wreck. “If we did, then what about Jenny?”
“You think she’d steal another elephant?”
Okay, it sounded pretty far-fetched to me, too. “She could be an extremist. If we keep the elephant a day or two, when Jenny comes back for Kyoko, we could turn her and the elephant over to the police.”
“Or we could track her down first. Damn it, I thought this thing was fully charged.” Hudson tapped at the black screen of his laptop. When it didn’t respond, he shoved it aside. “What about the Byron guy with all the dead batteries? What was that about? Would he know where she is?”
I shook my head and sipped my drink to give myself a moment to compose my expression. “I think we have a better shot at finding Jenny than some guy she remembered from high school.” Not that I thought we’d have a lot of luck finding Jenny. I couldn’t remember meeting her once in high school, and now Hudson thought we could find her in the middle of twelve million people living in and around Los Angeles?
Hudson studied my face, then my hands, which I relaxed from their white-knuckle grip on my drink. “You sure this is what you want to do? Keeping Kyoko isn’t legal, like Jenny said. We don’t have any idea why she targeted you.” He paused, the unspoken question in his sentence clear, and I shook my head. “We don’t even know how she found you. Do you come by the gallery every Thursday morning?”
“I was here only because of the burglary. Maybe she followed me.” How had she known where I’d be? I didn’t exactly have a normal routine, but she would have been far more likely to find me at home than at the gallery. If Sofie hadn’t been out of town, I wouldn’t have been at the gallery at all. I pushed the unanswerable question into the bundle of others I’d set aside, like “Why me?” and “Where did Jenny get an elephant?” and “Was Jenny insane?” I met Hudson’s gaze and did my best to look like I had a plan. “I want to keep Kyoko at least for a day.”
Thick black-rimmed glasses settled on his face. They didn’t give me any insight into the emotions behind his closed-off expression, but the nerd look worked for him. Combined with the sombrero and a slender metal tie constricting around his throat, it was easy to guess Hudson’s feelings were mixed.
I suppressed a sigh, leaned forward to clutch Hudson’s hand, and said, “I would really appreciate your help.”
The broadsword glowed iridescent. The tie disappeared. “Then we better get moving, or someone’s going to investigate why that trailer keeps trumpeting. But to where?”
Guilt and relief sloshed nauseously in my stomach when I stood. “I have an idea.”
* * *
Hudson checked the latch on the trailer, then fiddled with the wires and chain around the hitch. I didn’t ask if he knew what he was doing. I didn’t want to hear a no.
I checked on Kyoko. She looked a great deal smaller now that I wasn’t caged in the trailer with her. Not so much frightening as pitiful. I stretched a hand through the high slats of the trailer and tentatively rubbed the top of the trunk she stretched toward me. She ran the firm tip up my arm, then lowered her trunk and shuffled to the middle of the trailer.
“The keys are in the truck,” Hudson said from behind me. He’d retrieved sunglasses from somewhere. They were sporty and mirrored to hide his eyes. “Can I borrow your cell phone? Mine died and I need to check in with my boss.”
“I lost it.” The lie rolled off my tongue, primed and ready from regular use. I’d found people accepted a lost cell phone lie more readily than a confession of never having owned a cell phone.
“Seriously? Never mind. That fits with today’s luck.”
The truck’s interior emanated the sweet chemical odor of new seats, new plastic, and new carpet. I tossed my dusty bag on the immaculate floorboards and hopped inside, straightening my skirt before pulling on the seat belt. A rigid Scottish terrier stood on Hudson’s lap, made completely out of shiny silver. It faced the window, like it was ready to put its head out. If it were real.
I pulled my eyes from Hudson’s crotch just when he looked at me.
“Where to?”
“Santa Monica.” I plucked my starlet-style sunglasses from my bag and slid them on, hoping I wasn’t blushing as bright as it felt.
Hudson pulled out into traffic and headed for the 10. I’d never been in a truck pulling a trailer, but it was a lot like riding the bus: slow off the line, slow around the corners, and slow to stop. Every so often, the whole vehicle and trailer lurched—I assumed it corresponded with Kyoko’s movements—and since Hudson made no comment, I hoped it was normal.
“What’s in Santa Monica?” Hudson asked.
“My aunt.”
“S. Sterling?”
“Aunt Sofie to me. She’s got a house with a yard. Very private.” I glanced at the clock. Her plane landed in forty minutes. We might beat her home.
“And she’ll be okay with you showing up unannounced with an elephant?”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“She sounds a lot cooler than my relatives.”
Hudson merged onto the 10, easing into speeding traffic with skill. I’d powered the window halfway down while we were on the surface streets to air out the stench embedded in my clothing, and when I attempted to power it up, the glass moved half an inch, the mechanism in the door fired off three rounds, and the door lock snapped home. I eased my arm onto the window ledge and pretended the gap pleased me.
The interior electronics were always the first to go. They were the most sensitive part of a vehicle. The entire truck was delicate, no matter what the manufacturers wanted you to believe in their ads. Cut a vehicle’s electricity, and it became little more than a lump of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Given the rate of electrical deterioration, it seemed my terror in the trailer had shortened the truck’s life span by half the normal Eva-passenger time. Our brief interlude at the café hadn’t given it the recovery boost I’d hoped for. The knot in my stomach fisted tighter.
“What do you know about Jenny?” Hudson asked. “Anything at all?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t even remember my Honors English teacher’s name junior year. “I guess she was nerdy. I have a vague memory of a skinny girl with glasses, but I could be making that up. I’m shocked she remembered me.”
“She said she tracked you down.”
“I don’t know what to do with that, either.”
“Where’d you say you went to school?”
“Santa Monica High.”
“And y
ou live in Santa Monica now, too?”
“I moved to Mid-Wilshire after I graduated.”
The truck’s clock light faded in a slow death. Hudson didn’t seem to notice. Dread sank into my spleen, and I reined it in along with the rest of my emotions. Any agitation on my part would kill the truck faster. Substitute agitation with fear, spike it with confusion, and spritz it with sexual attraction, and I was the perfect cocktail for vehicular destruction.
“You remember anything else?” Hudson asked.
I shook my head.
Hudson darted his gaze to mine, then back to the road. He’d gained a silver top hat to match the terrier. The man liked to accessorize with his apparitions.
“What was she talking about, all those brownouts? What does that have to do with the elephant?”
Adrenaline spiked, and I squashed it. “I don’t know. Maybe she was trying to prove we went to school together. She seemed skittish. Paranoid. Oh, crap. Do you think she’s on drugs?” Why hadn’t that occurred to me before?
“If she is, they’re pharmaceutical, not recreational. I’d guess she’s off her drugs.”
I dropped my head in my hands and took deep breaths. My life teetered in the hands of a mental patient.
“Huh.” Hudson tapped the dashboard. The lights had died there, too, and it no longer displayed our current speed. “You’d think a new truck like this wouldn’t have any problems.”
“You’d think.” A brand-new horrible thought popped into my head. “Is it possible this truck is stolen?”
Hudson grimaced. The silver Scottish terrier in his lap grew to Labrador size, its insubstantial body engulfing Hudson’s arms. “Probably. Trailer, too. I’ve been keeping my eye out for cops just in case.”
Traffic slowed to stop and go. It was midmorning on a weekday, but traffic in LA didn’t need a reason to turn into a parking lot. Hudson slipped into the slow lane behind a semi. The truck stuttered; then the gas caught again and it smoothed out.
Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance Page 3
