Dempsey circled the volleyball game, huffing and puffing as she ran as easily on her five-inch wedges as I did in my flats. “Not . . . there,” she said.
I fought to focus my vision and not give in to the blur of panic. The exchange was happening now, and I didn’t trust Jenny to do it without me; she cared far more about Kyoko than she did my aunt.
“There!” Hudson pointed toward a two-story mesh-enclosed spiral staircase and lookout tower that resembled a child-size version of an airport control tower. An enormous misshapen wedding cake and a paper clip angel filled the top of the tower. Exiting from the bottom were three women. Jenny was impossible to miss in her familiar straitjacket and racehorse blinders. The other two women were short, with dark hair and slim bodies. A mountain peak flowed beneath one woman’s steps, and the other was adorned in jewels and snakes.
I tripped over a pile of shoes, scattering them, before I realized I was running again, Dali galloping at my side. Hudson was a half step behind us. The snake lady spotted me, said something to her companion, and they both grabbed Jenny’s elbows. Jenny twisted to look over her shoulder. When her eyes met mine, a pyramid of naked babies swelled between us. She spun forward and began to run with her captors. My heart lurched, then plummeted to my toes.
“Jenny!”
They had a head start, but I might have caught them before they got to the street and the van parked at the curb if I hadn’t spotted the wolf. It snarled, teeth bared beside an oblivious woman seated on the concrete bench in front of the metal control tower. The woman needed an ambulance. Deep, oozing claw marks cut across her arms and neck and disappeared under her T-shirt.
Sofie.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Sofie!” The raw scream startled me even as it burst from my lungs. I fell when I tried to turn too fast, scrambling on hands and knees until I got my feet under me again. Dali spotted Sofie and barked, racing ahead of me. Sofie didn’t react. She stared somewhere between me and the escaping ninjas, body stiff, hands on her lap under a folded sweater. Unfamiliar enormous black shades covered her eyes.
“Sofie?” I grabbed her arm and she flinched, swallowing a whimper. The wounds on her arms were all apparitions, and they morphed into thorns that projected from her flesh as much as they pierced it. “It’s me, Sofie. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
She twisted away from me, and her auburn hair fell back to expose a bright orange earplug and a black strap wrapped under her hair. Tucked under the glasses was a thick mask. The ninjas had left her blind, deaf, and vulnerable in a public place.
Fury and relief made my hands shake as I gently slid my fingers through her hair. She shuddered and then stilled when I grasped the earplug. I pulled it free.
“It’s me, Sofie. You’re safe.”
The wolf grew leopard spots, and the locket it always wore around its neck turned into a puffer fish. Rose blooms unfurled, replacing the thorns.
“Eva,” she whispered, lips trembling.
“It’s okay. They’re gone.” I reached around her and took out the other earplug, then slid the glasses off. She reached up to push the mask off, revealing hands bound by a thick plastic zip tie.
“Where are we?”
“Clover Park.”
Dali, who had planted his butt in front of Sofie, wriggled forward and licked her fingers.
“Dali?” Sofie’s voice broke, and tears slid down her face. She buried her face in Dali’s neck and he let out a sigh of contentment. I wrapped an arm around Sofie and held her.
“Is this”—pant—“Aunt Mom?” Dempsey barreled up to the bench. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, and her warrior apparition was shackled to old-time prisoner ball weights. “Where’s the elephantini? You hide it in that thing?” Dempsey pointed toward the tower just as Atlas—the paper clip angel—trotted out. He faltered.
“Holy shit! Are you the clown?” Atlas asked.
“You think Eva rounded up a second short hottie?”
Atlas looked at me, then back at the tiny blond Barbie. “But . . . but, you’re not disfigured and you don’t look like a perv.”
“Catch me. I’m gonna swoon,” Dempsey said.
“Hey. You work as a clown. What’d you expect me to think?”
“That I like kids.”
Atlas shuddered. The wings disappeared and a heavy dog collar choked him.
Sofie sat up and swiped tears from her face. Dali pressed up against her legs and rested his head on her knee. My aunt’s gaze bounced from person to person, scanning their apparitions, and she clutched my hand.
“They took Jenny?” she asked.
“Yes.”
A lopsided wedding cake squeezed down the stairs of the mesh tower and pried itself free of the open doorway just as Hudson jogged back across the lawn. Unlike me, he’d continued to chase Jenny and her captors—without success.
“They got away?” Wedding Cake Edmond asked.
“They got away,” Hudson said.
“With the elephantini?” Dempsey hopped onto the bench beside me and raised her hand to shield her forehead like a sailor spotting land.
I scanned the grass along the street side of the park. A young couple generating their own sunset apparition walked a dog in a sweater—the sweater was real—but there was no elephantini in sight. The van had disappeared.
Hudson glanced over my head toward the parking lot. “Here come the FBI. Fast, but too late.”
Atlas whirled toward him. “Why are the FBI here?”
“Because I called them,” Dempsey said.
“I asked her to,” I said.
“You what?” Edmond bellowed.
“Why?” Atlas loomed over me.
“Because my aunt is more important than an elephantini.”
“Like hell she is! Animals have rights—equal rights!” Dempsey said.
“Jenny said no feds,” Edmond said. “I can’t believe you, Eva. Jenny trusted you.”
“The ninjas just kidnapped Jenny. Don’t you think it’s time we talked to someone who could help rescue her?” I asked.
“No,” Atlas said. “Jenny said no feds, so no feds. We can’t let them near the elephantini.”
“Why not?” Dempsey asked.
“Because they’ll kill it,” Atlas said.
“No, they wo—”
“Jenny said they would,” Atlas cut me off. “She’s my cousin. If I say we don’t tell the feds anything, we don’t. Got it?”
I glanced at Sofie. She tucked her bound hands back under her sweater and took a deep breath. “If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do,” she said.
“Are you sure? You don’t have to do this. You were kidnapped. You have every right to talk to them. Those women need to be caught.”
“Did Jenny tell you why she didn’t want the FBI involved?” Sofie asked.
“Yes.”
“Was it a good reason?”
“No.”
Sofie arched an eyebrow.
“It wasn’t a reason worth your life. It wasn’t worth letting the women who did this”—I gestured toward her bruised jaw—“get away.”
“Is that what Jenny would think?”
“Are you seriously going to be this calm about it?” I demanded. I felt like I was going to shake out of my skin with relief and fury and the aftershocks of panic, but Sofie, the actual kidnap victim, looked like she had spent the day reading in the park.
“We need to do what’s best for Jenny and Kyoko.”
I stared at Sofie, searching her eyes, then scanned her divinations: thorns, a flicker of gashes and a blindfold, the enormous wolf, roses blooming on the thorns. The roses were what decided me.
“Fine, but I have to tell them something. We did call them, after all.”
We watched Coutu and Sevallo make a beeline for us across the park, and I wondered if Jenny now wished she hadn’t told us to avoid the only people who had a chance of rescuing her from her kidnappers.
“Is this where you’re going to meet Jennifer Winters?”
Agent Coutu said by way of greeting.
“She’s already come and gone. You just missed her.”
That earned me a long, hard stare from Coutu, complete with a riding crop and a bologna sandwich. After looking our group over, Sevallo ignored us to scan the park.
“Obstructing justice is a crime. So is interfering in an ongoing investigation and wasting my time.” The whip slapped rhythmically against her leg.
“That was never my intention,” I swore, and it was the last honest thing I said. “We were here when Jenny called and said she wanted to meet. You made it clear that Jenny was in some trouble, and I shouldn’t get involved in it, so I called you.”
“Only it wasn’t you who called me.”
“Right. It was Dempsey. I lost my cell phone.”
“Which must have made it difficult for Jenny to call you.”
“I gave her Hudson’s number when the truck broke down since my cell phone’s been missing for a while.” I thought it was a smooth save, but Coutu was a pro at detecting lies, and the bologna sandwich grew larger than most of the dogs in the park.
“Who is Dempsey?”
“Family friend,” Dempsey said, giving the agent a wave. “Just hanging out here with Eva and Aunt Mom and this hunk.” She tossed a thumb at Hudson.
“Let’s see some ID,” Sevallo said.
“Why? What is this? Pick on a little person day? What about their IDs?”
“You made the call. You’re the one we’ll arrest if—”
“Arrest! For what? For being little? That’s sizest!” For such a small woman, she possessed the volume of a giant.
Sevallo waited, hand outstretched, until Dempsey relinquished her ID.
“Dempsey Semenchuk?” The agent guffawed.
“Not ‘Semen-chuck.’ It’s pronounced ‘Sim-ens-huk.’” Dempsey yanked her ID from his hand. “What are you, five?”
Atlas sniggered and punched Edmond in the arm. Dempsey rounded on him, but Coutu was faster.
“Mr. Grant. Mr. Zambo. Care to enlighten us about the whereabouts of your cousin?”
Edmond looked like a squirrel staring down the headlights of an SUV. Atlas’s angel wings unfurled and lifted from his body, flapping into the sky and disappearing.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” Edmond said, jerking his gaze to his shoes.
“She left without telling us where she was going,” Atlas said. He had no problem holding the agent’s gaze. I wished I had his calm. I felt like my face was glowing with a fine sheen of sweat, and it was all I could do to not look at Sofie and her bound wrists hidden under the sweater.
Sofie was pale, her eyes haunted, but she was doing her best to appear relaxed. She’d swung her hair forward to hide the bruise on her jaw, and when Agent Coutu looked at her, she managed a passable smile.
Two planes departed and one landed before the agents finally gave up. I stuck to my day-in-the-park story, claimed Jenny had wanted another favor, which I’d refused, and that Edmond and Atlas, who had also been called by Jenny, had stuck around at my request so we could talk about them making cupcakes for a party Sofie was going to host. Years of lying came through for me; the cobbled-together story wasn’t half bad. Not that it fooled Coutu or Sevallo, but with no reason to hold us, they eventually let us go.
We shuffled toward the parking lot in a huddle, and as soon as we were hidden from the agents’ view, Atlas sawed through Sofie’s plastic restraints.
“What did they do to you?” I demanded
“They were just rough with me. They were gentler with Kyoko.” She scanned Atlas and Edmond. “What happened?”
“Jenny was going to do a trade—her research for your release. We were her backup,” Atlas said.
“Her research?”
In the terror of Sofie’s kidnapping, I’d forgotten I hadn’t had a chance to explain Jenny’s full sci-fi horror story to her. I wasn’t sure if Jenny’s most recent explanation of a life-lengthening formula wasn’t as bogus as her first “lonely herd animal” lie. Back-to-back kidnappings lent her latest story credit, but I was too emotionally exhausted to think of much beyond the fact that Sofie was safe. Since Jenny had warned us not to reveal the full truth to her cousins, I edited my answer. “Kyoko is an elephantini, a miniaturized elephant. She was genetically altered. That’s what Jenny does for a living. Or did.”
“Wow. Kyoko’s full grown?”
“Yep. They need Jenny to make another miniature elephant, but she’s scared to do it. That’s why she stole Kyoko from the lab in Japan where she worked and has been on the run since,” Hudson said.
“Oh, and this is Atlas and Edmond, Jenny’s cousins,” I said, remembering that Sofie hadn’t had the misfortune of meeting them. “And this is Dempsey—”
“Protector of animal rights wherever they’re wronged,” Dempsey said. She puffed up and projected a gossamer cape twice as long as she was tall, blowing in an unfelt wind.
“She was snooping and saw you taken,” I said.
Sofie’s wide eyes bounced from person to person. A lifetime of living with me had given her the ability to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances, but being kidnapped, held hostage for ransom, and staked blindfolded and deaf in a park; lying to the FBI; and now being bombarded by all this information was taking its toll. Guilt rolled through me like a physical force, and I wrapped an arm around Sofie and held on. I longed to whisk her home, bundle her up in blankets and safety, and help her forget today ever happened, but first we had to take care of Jenny’s mess.
I stiffened and didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. A wonderful, horrible thought had just popped front and center in my mind: My problems were over. With Kyoko stolen, Sofie could no longer be implicated in a crime. No one was going to be following me, waiting to ambush me in hopes of getting clues about Kyoko’s whereabouts. Jenny was no longer in a position to keep me buried in her mess. I could walk away clean with my aunt and Hudson.
Jenny had torn through my life like a tornado—an apt analogy since I’d be paying for the damages she wrecked for years to come: paying Hudson back for the rental and cleaning of the Suburban, purchasing new furniture to restore my loft, swallowing the hiked insurance fees that would no doubt be included in my next year’s bill, and financing the landscaping to replace Sofie’s yard—Annabella was on her own.
Take Sofie, find the nearest bus, and leave, dispassionate logic argued. Jenny and Kyoko weren’t my problem. Jenny had gotten herself into this mess, and she could get herself out.
Yet, my muscles refused to obey my logic. I couldn’t abandon Jenny now, despite the fact that I hardly knew the crazy scientist and despite the hell she’d put me through. We were the only people who knew who had abducted Jenny and the only ones in the United States who knew about Kyoko. I suffered no delusions about the violence the ninjas were capable of. Abandoning Jenny to their mercy wouldn’t be right, and I reluctantly admitted to myself that I wouldn’t be the woman Sofie raised and was proud of if I walked away now.
That was more than enough motivation to try to assist any efforts to rescue Jenny, but heaped on top was the threat of the life-lengthening formula. As much as I didn’t want to believe Jenny, if she was telling the truth, that formula in the wrong hands—in anyone’s hands—would lead to massive problems, if not the complete devastation of the human race and, possibly, of the planet. In some inconceivable twist of reality, I had the possibility of influencing the future of humanity, and I couldn’t walk away and hope for the best. Whether I wanted it or not, I was a part of Jenny’s conspiracy, and I would see this through.
“How did the ninjas get Jenny?” Hudson asked. Rubik’s Cubes at his fingertips, rotten banana slices falling to his feet, and jellyfish floating through his torso—Hudson appeared as conflicted as I was. He met my gaze and tried on a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Did he wish he’d never met me? In his place, my answer would have been yes. Curse aside, I wasn’t worth this kind of insanity. Hudson, though—I wouldn’t have made it through the las
t three days without him. I couldn’t think of a single man I’d dated who would have handled an elephantini, being kidnapped, and the rescue of my aunt with such aplomb. The only possible contender was Keith, and he was a Navy SEAL.
Edmond slumped against Dempsey’s truck, where we’d all clustered. “We let them. Atlas had a gun, but they had two, and they were going to shoot Sofie if we didn’t let them walk away.”
“Oh.” Sofie patted his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“What are we going to do now?” Atlas demanded.
“I can’t think,” Edmond said. He paced away from us, a revolving selection of cooking utensils swirling around him. “I need to bake.”
“Do either of you know where they might be taking Jenny?” I asked.
“Sure. We’re all meeting later for coffee.”
“Not helping, Atlas,” Edmond rumbled.
“Of course we don’t know where they took her!”
“Do you have any idea how to find her? Any clues? Anything Jenny might have said?” I prompted. A looming clown hovered behind Atlas like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. The clown had razor-sharp teeth and goat horns, with fingers that kept growing longer and longer clawlike nails. I turned to look at Edmond.
“How are we supposed to know?” Edmond asked.
“Tell us about Jenny, about what she’s been having you do,” Hudson said.
“She came by a couple of months ago,” Edmond said. “Out of nowhere, she’s on our doorstep talking nonsense and waving money in Atlas’s face.”
“She hired us,” Atlas said. “To help her. Always insisted we meet her in public places, like she was in some spy movie. At first we did little jobs, you know? Found her a house. Bought groceries, some burner phones. Then she had us, uh, watch Eva pretty much full-time, and you know everything after that. She never talked about these ninjas until they snatched you two.” Atlas pointed at me and Hudson.
“When they snatched you?” Sofie echoed.
I shook my head. “It was nothing. I’ll tell you later.”
“She didn’t mention anything else when it was just you guys?” Hudson asked.
“Nope.”
Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance Page 25
