by Gina LaManna
“What’s that?” he asked, looking up.
“What’s an Audi S8 like?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?” Clay muttered. “You sure as hell don’t care about cars.”
“Just because I don’t baby my car…” I started. “Anyway, I want to know.”
Clay glanced up. “An Audi S8? It’s a beast. It’s gorgeous to look at, but not flashy. The interior is comfy and spacious – definitely a luxury car. But whooee,” Clay whistled. “Take a peek under the hood and your mind will be blown. Powerful, that baby. It’s out of this world.”
I considered the description and paired it with Anthony. Interesting…
“Seriously,” Clay continued with a dreamy expression on his face. “It’s magic. The engine on that puppy will change your life. Understated on the outside, but if you get to the insides…” he shook his head.
“Enough, enough,” I said, waving my arms. I couldn’t tell if Clay was talking about cars any more, and the whole description paired with the image of Anthony was doing weird things to my stomach. “I should get some rest. I’ll be up late tonight.”
“Have fun,” Clay said, his cheeks reddening as he beelined straight towards his computer setup in the living room.
“Not that sort of fun,” I groaned. “By the way…” I spun around one last time and poked my head into the living room. Clay had started tinkering with the laying desk and barely looked my way. “What were you doing on the Internet when you met Horatio?” I asked. “He mentioned something you’re apparently doing all the time online?”
“None of your business,” Clay grunted. “And it will remain that way as long as you’d like my help on this case.”
I smiled on the inside as I plunked my feet back towards my room. Was Clay breaking into something top secret? Nah, I thought, slipping into some cozy purple shorts and my favorite bright yellow sweatshirt. Clay was more likely to be embarrassed about online dating than he was about getting behind NASA’s firewalls.
I became distinctly less enthusiastic when the impact of Clay’s earlier words dawned on me. Even if Anthony and I were able to stop the firework bomber tonight, that still left an entire aggravating, albeit small, mystery of the special sauce for tomorrow. My birthday.
With a sigh, I slipped under my covers. An almost thirty-year-old shouldn’t care about birthdays anymore, right? I gave myself a quick pep talk and reminded myself that I specifically told Meg I didn’t want a party. It’d be hypocritical to complain that nobody remembered my birthday after saying I didn’t want to celebrate. Maybe it was a good thing I had to work. All these mysteries and gunshots and motorcycle rides tired me out. I closed my eyes just to rest for a moment. Just a single, quick catnap…
Chapter 7
The hand on my shoulder startled me from a sleep so deep that when the hulking figure shook me awake, it took me a full thirty seconds to process my surroundings.
“I see you’ve spent the evening preparing for a stakeout,” Anthony’s low voice rumbled. “Excellent work, detective.”
Blinking, yawning, and stretching, I rolled over and came face to face with a handsome, freshly showered Anthony. I could smell the evidence of expensive soap and, coupled with his clean shaven face and cute smile, I discovered a longing desire to run my fingers through his still damp hair.
Luckily, my hand did no such thing, as the realization that I had not showered before my “catnap” hit me. I smelled like a bonfire, minus the pleasant smoky sensation.
“AH!” I choked out. “Get away.”
“Sugar, I’ve seen worse,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve been in the field for a long time.”
“Noo,” I moaned, pulling the pillow over my head and trying to halfheartedly smother myself. It only took until my first cough and a slight difficulty in breathing for me to push the pillow away and cover my face with my arms instead. This time, I left plenty of room for air to get into my lungs. Apparently, I wasn’t ready to die. “Go away.”
“It’s ten thirty,” he said. “I thought you wanted to come to the warehouse.”
“I thought we were going at ten?” I took a chance and peeked through a small hole between my elbow and my nose. I re-covered my face when I caught his gaze in mine.
“I was ready at nine thirty,” he said. “But you were snoozing, and it seemed like you’d been through a lot. Clay and I thought you might be better off with a little extra rest, so we let you sleep.”
“You made conversation with Clay for an hour?” I asked. “Here, in the living room?”
“If you’d like to call it conversation,” Anthony said. “About half the time he talked to me and half the time he talked to his computers. Then his friend Horatio showed up, and I disappeared into the kitchen.”
“Smart,” I said. “Horatio is a chatterbox. You could have woken me up, you know.”
“I just did.” Anthony smoothed the blanket from around my neck, and I had a distinctly cuddly feeling I wouldn’t mind holding onto for some time.
“I meant before,” I said. “I could’ve saved you from an awkward three-way conversation.”
“I can handle a three-way…conversation, of course.” His face cracked into a grin. “And anyway, I wanted to pick their brains a bit about the sauce fiasco. When I realized the conversation had the added bonus of giving you an extra hour of rest, I was glad.”
“That’s sweet,” I said.
“I’m hoping it’ll put you in an extra good mood on our stakeout tonight,” Anthony said. “So it was a little self-serving.”
I narrowed my eyes, though he couldn’t see them from behind my arms. “What do you mean by extra good mood?”
Anthony looked surprised, but not unhappy, based on a quick assessment between the fingers still covering my face.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, leaning in and speaking close to my ear. “But I’m not disappointed to see your mind went there.”
“I just meant,” I shivered from his closeness, realizing that I was trapped here and unable to back away. “You know, I need to shower.”
“You might want to put some pants on first,” Anthony said as I pushed the covers back and sprinted to my closet.
“I have pants on – oh,” I said. I looked down, noting that my shorts had very inconveniently ridden up and my extremely over-sized sweatshirt hung nearly to my knees. The combination made me appear pants-less.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” Anthony said, raising an eyebrow. “But Horatio’s out there and you can tell me if I’m wrong, but he doesn’t seem like your type.”
“What is my type?” I retorted, adjusting my clothes to an appropriate position.
Anthony shrugged. “You tell me.”
“Speaking of Horatio—” I said over my shoulder, as I retrieved a clean towel from my closet. “Something funny happened earlier today…”
“Why don’t you shower,” Anthony said. “I think we’ll have plenty of time to chat tonight.”
“You, chatty?” I grinned before I opened the door. “That’s a new one.”
** **
“Now, I said we’d have time to chat,” Anthony said as we pulled away from the curb. He’d left his Lambo behind in exchange for a nondescript, silver minivan. “But just to be fair, I should warn you.”
“Warn me of what?” I asked, still getting used to the idea of Anthony and me together in a minivan.
“I have a limited number of words I say per day before I start to get crabby. So ask your questions wisely,” he said.
“The way I’ll interpret your warning is quite different. You’re saying that if I force you to use all your words quickly, then you have to listen to me chatter the night away, and you can’t say anything?” I asked. “By the way, nice minivan. It just screams ‘soccer dad.’“
“I’m not going to use my allotted words to comment on the choice of vehicle. It’s practical.”
“I think you used about fifteen words to say that. Next time, just stick
with no comment,” I flipped the mirror down and checked to see how much damage I’d removed with my shower.
For a quickie shower, the results weren’t half bad. But the improvement could’ve been because my before photo hadn’t been stellar. Considering the day I’d had, and then throwing bed-head into the mix, any amount of improvement to my appearance wasn’t hard to come by.
I’d taken the extra minutes to blow dry my hair, dot some lipstick on my lips and brush mascara through my lashes. I normally didn’t get so decked out for a stakeout, but this time I’d be sitting with Anthony for an extended period of time. Besides sore behinds, sitting in vans for long periods at once resulted mostly in boredom. Boredom led to talking. And talking led to, well – I wanted to be prepared for anything.
I slid a sideways glance at Anthony in the mirror. He seemed intent on driving, which gave me an additional moment to stare at his nice, full lips. I flashed my eyes back to the mirror the second he glanced my way. I wondered for a moment if I should be relieved or upset that Anthony had given himself a certain number of words for our meeting tonight.
Then, I realized that Anthony didn’t allot very many words to very many people. His sentences were short and sharp and often necessary to the conversation. Feeling a bit warm in my stomach, I knew that he didn’t show his intelligent, sweet – even sometimes funny – side to everyone. I was quite lucky, in fact. Anthony was a quality-over-quantity sort of guy when it came to words, and he could say more in a sentence than I could in an entire speech.
“What are you thinking about so hard?” Anthony asked, one hand on the wheel, his head turning slightly in my direction.
I surveyed myself in the mirror once more – golden (fine, brown) hair tucked behind my ears, light brown eyes I’d inherited from my mother, and a face that hadn’t yet betrayed me too much with lines and wrinkles. I was only hours away from thirty now, after all.
I debated lying to Anthony, but it would be worthless to do so. He’d see through me in a second. “I’m wondering why you gave yourself an allotment of words for tonight.”
“Next question,” Anthony said. “Don’t be offended. It’s not you, sugar, it’s me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, okay, fine. Well, how about this: I propose that anytime we talk about work it doesn’t count for your word count.”
“Deal,” he said. “But I want the words Next Question also included in my Do Not Count list.”
I hesitated. “Fine.”
After agreeing to the deal, we continued the ride in silence. I wondered if Anthony was conserving his words for later, and if so – exactly what he was planning on saying. The ride went by lickety-split, my mind churning through hundreds of words and not finding any of them worth uttering. Before I knew it, Anthony pulled onto a side street somewhere on the outskirts of downtown St. Paul.
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around. I didn’t see a warehouse anywhere.
“We’re a half mile away,” Anthony said. “But I want to go over some things.”
“Work things?” I asked with a playful nudge.
“Yes,” Anthony said. “These words don’t count.”
“What’s the plan, Stan?” I asked.
“My name’s not Stan,” Anthony deadpanned.
“I, uh…I know that.” I looked his way, trying to determine if he was serious. “It’s a saying.”
“But my name’s Anthony, not Stan,” he said. “Call me Anthony.”
“Oh, uh, okay.” I flashed a confused smile. “Sorry, Anthony.”
“That was a joke,” Anthony said. “Can’t you see I’m sarcastic?”
“No, actually, I can’t,” I said.
“My smile doesn’t give it away?” he asked.
“Anthony—” I leaned over and delicately ran my thumb over his lips. “You weren’t smiling.”
“Oh.” He sat back in his driver’s seat looking completely bewildered. “Sometimes I feel like I’m smiling on the inside, but for some reason it doesn’t appear on my face.”
I grinned and pulled my hand back. “Emotions are tricky. Don’t worry; I won’t even count those words. Now, tell me what’s on the agenda for tonight.”
Appearing grateful to talk about something he understood better than sarcasm, he exhaled a sigh that sounded like relief. “We’re going to drive across the street from the warehouse. There’s a parking ramp open twenty-four hours a day, and since there’s a bar in the strip mall across the street, there’s always people coming and going. Our car won’t be suspicious.”
“Do people normally drive minivans to the bar?” I asked. Fearing Anthony wouldn’t catch the joke, I continued quickly. “And what about after the bar closes?”
A glimmer of amusement showed in Anthony’s chocolate-chip-brown eyes. “Well, I’d say we have ‘til about five or five thirty a.m., when the bartenders count their tips and cash out. After that, you start getting the early morning shoppers for the farmers’ market. This parking ramp is never quiet.”
“Smart,” I said. “Good work.”
Anthony looked as if he wanted to say thanks, but felt uncomfortable. I was fairly confident he didn’t know how to take a compliment. Not that it was his fault; Carlos wasn’t known to be proactive in terms of positive reinforcement, and if I were to guess, I’d say Anthony had spent most of his working life under Carlos’s supervision.
“Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “the plan is simple. I have men on the street monitoring the facility. They’ll be there all night. We’re just going to keep an eye on the place. There’s rumors – not ones I trust, but rumors still – that our man will be making his entrance tonight.”
“He’s not here already?” I asked.
“No,” Anthony said. “There’s evidence he’s been here before, but he’s off on a shipment at the moment. The last shipment, it’s believed. And we want to make sure there are no more.”
Anthony’s jaw was set in a firm line. I was a little intimidated by his demeanor, but then again, that was his MO.
I nodded. “What’s my job?”
“Your job is to keep me company,” Anthony said simply.
“You know, I am more than a source of entertain—” My words began with an icy tone, but when Anthony’s face broke into a wide smile, I stopped speaking.
“I’m joking,” he said. “I make jokes, too.”
I punched him in the chest – not super light, but not so hard I’d actually hurt him. I pulled my hand away, shaking my knuckles in pain. He didn’t even flinch.
“Our job, sugar, is to be here in case the rumors are true. If our man returns here, we need to give my guys instructions. We need to okay the proper punishment for him.”
“I’m not dealing with any punishment,” I said. “I didn’t sign up for that.”
“I meant only that we’d ask him questions,” Anthony said. “It’s not my place to decide anything beyond that.”
“Oh, whew,” I said. “Fine, I’m good at asking questions. Speaking of, is there a restroom nearby?”
“There’s one in the parking garage,” Anthony said.
“You thought of everything,” I said, clearing my throat. “But can we head that direction now? I had some coffee before we left.”
Anthony’s stare said something along the lines of Rookie mistake.
“I had just woken up,” I said with a shrug. “Give me a break. I wanted to be alert.”
Anthony pulled away from the curb. “I’m not sure if this is considered work talk, so I’m going to keep my mouth shut.”
I felt a laugh bubble up as Anthony turned into the parking garage. I couldn’t help it. “You know, saying you’re keeping your mouth shut wastes words.”
“Maybe I’m trying to waste words,” Anthony said with a sly glance in my direction. He pulled into the parking garage, slipped the attendant more money than I made in a week, and picked a spot on the fourth floor. In front of our parking space sat an open window overlooking a large, dark warehouse.
>
I gave a faux pout. “Wasting words, shame on you.”
Stretching up in my seat and removing the foot I’d rested on the dashboard, I peeked through the space in the cement. It was more of an open hole than a window. Since it was hard to see anything from the car, and I needed to use the restroom anyway, I put one hand on the door handle and waited to see if Anthony would say anything about my leaving.
We seemed to be alone on this floor, and all activity was quiet below except for the bark of a dog in the far off distance.
Anthony didn’t argue when I clicked open the door.
Turning back, I raised an eyebrow. “New theory: are you wasting words because you’re afraid to talk to me?”
Anthony grimaced. “Next question.”
“Great,” I said. “This will be a fun night of deep, meaningful conversation, I can already tell.” I gave him a mock angry glare and departed to find the bathroom.
After a few missteps and detours (there was no map anywhere), I returned to the car. Anthony had little to say, so I snuggled into the seat, leaned an elbow on the doorframe, and hunkered down for a long, painful stakeout.
** **
After an hour of waiting, the clock was fast approaching midnight and I was fast approaching thirty. My leg started to jitter. Would thirty feel different than twenty-nine? Why did nobody realize it was my birthday? The only person who knew was Meg, and I’d explicitly warned her about all the painful things I’d do to her if she so much as thought about sending out an invitation.
I sighed, and once again pushed thoughts away from the subject of my birthday.
“Was that sigh work related?” Anthony asked.
I gave a mournful shake of my head.
“My question was, though,” Anthony said. “In case you’re keeping track.”
“Fine,” I said. Clearly, Anthony wasn’t going to carry on small talk. I resigned myself to talking about nothing except work for the rest of the evening. Deciding that some conversation would be better than nothing, I sighed again. “Why are you here on rumors, if you don’t even believe them?”
“You don’t get to my level in the organization by dismissing rumors because they might not be true,” Anthony said.
