by JB Lynn
Chapter Twenty-eight
The house he drove to was in the middle of a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood. Perhaps that’s why it had been chosen, because of its very sameness.
“Go ahead,” Zeke said, after pulling into the driveway. “She’s waiting for you.”
Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to climb out of the car despite my misgivings. I was surprised to see that he hadn’t followed suit.
“I’ll wait here,” he explained. “When you’re done, we’ll go back to the B&B together.”
“I thought—” I began to protest.
“You can do this, Maggie.” He winked at me. “I have faith in you.”
“Misplaced faith.”
He shrugged. “That may be, but my faith is absolute.”
I let his faith buoy me as I slowly walked to the front door, unsure of how I was supposed to greet the long-lost sister I was now nursing a grudge against. Hesitantly I reached for the doorbell.
The door flew open before I rang the bell, Darlene emerging and sweeping me into a giant bear hug.
“Thank you for coming,” she gushed.
“It’s not like I had much choice,” I said, disentangling myself before the embrace triggered a cascade of the emotions I was desperately trying to hold back.
“You had a choice,” Darlene argued. “You chose to come here. Zeke didn’t drag you here by your hair.”
“You had a choice not to leave us,” I countered angrily. “You had a choice not to let me think you were dead for years.”
She opened her mouth to respond and then closed her eyes as though fighting for control. When she spoke, it was in a quiet, measured tone. “It’s too cold to fight about this out here.”
“I agree!” God said from between my breasts.
Darlene’s gaze narrowed, but all she said was, “Come inside.”
I stepped into the cookie-cutter house. It looked like something straight out of a new construction model. “Nice place.”
Darlene glanced around. “If middle class pretentions are your style. Let’s sit.” She pointed to two upholstered high-back chairs.
She sat in one and waited for me to sit in the other. I sat down stiffly, back straight, eyes averted.
“You’re right,” she said slowly. “I had a choice. Not the choice to leave you, at least originally, that wasn’t mine, but the choice to let you think I was dead, that I take responsibility for.”
I swung my gaze to her face, studying her. Noticing how much older she looked than how I remembered her. “So you were abducted?” I choked out even though it felt as though a vise was clamping my throat closed.
She nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
She tilted her head to the side, confused. “For what?”
“For not keeping a better eye on you. I was so preoccupied with what Mom was doing that I wasn’t watching you.”
“Oh, Maggie.” She leaned over and put her hand on my knee. “You haven’t really thought that what happened was your fault, have you?”
I nodded. “You were my responsibility.”
She shook her head. “The carnival was opportunity. I’m the one who was responsible.”
“You were just a kid.”
“So were you, Maggie!” She sighed. “The week before, I’d snuck out of the B&B and seen something I shouldn’t have. That’s why they grabbed me at the carnival, not because you were looking after Mom.”
“Something to do with Redcoat?” I asked.
She nodded.
“But you escaped?” I asked, trying to make sense of everything.
“I was rescued by the organization that Zeke works for, that I understand you’ve helped out in the past.”
I nodded slowly. I wondered if she knew what I’d done for them. Hell, I wondered if she knew that the only reason I’d “helped” was that I’d been blackmailed into it.
“They’re good people,” she said as though she sensed some of my doubts.
I didn’t want to talk about them. I wanted to talk about her. I needed answers. “And you’ve been in hiding ever since?”
She nodded.
“Yet you managed to fall in love and have kids?”
She smiled shyly. “Dave was one of my guards when things were really bad.”
“So much for not mixing business with pleasure,” I muttered.
She lifted her chin. “I won’t apologize for making a life for myself.”
“No one was asking you to,” I snapped, while thinking how massively unfair it was that I’d wasted years of my life feeling guilty for failing her.
“I want to come home, Maggie,” she said quietly, hope shining in her gaze. “I want the girls to know their aunts, to know their grandmother, to know the witches.”
I almost grinned at the “witches” nickname we’d always used for our aunts, but I swallowed the inclination. “And how do you expect to do that? You’ve got a guy with goons and helicopters…who blew up the chopper by the way?...coming after you.”
“One of the good guys blew up the chopper,” she said, conveniently dancing around the fact she had armed henchmen chasing after her.
“And did I lead them to your doorstep?” I asked. “Did my search for you put your family in danger?” My voice cracked from the guilt I carried.
“No.” She patted my knee reassuringly. “They didn’t follow you or whatever it was you’re thinking. They followed a police detective.”
“Griswald?” I asked, suddenly afraid Brian Griswald was in grave danger.
She shook her head. “Our old neighbor, Belgard.”
“But he’s dead. The Cupid Killer shot him with an arrow. He couldn’t have led anyone to you.”
“He was snooping around a few weeks ago. It had nothing to do with you,” she reassured me. “He stole something of mine.”
“A diary?” I guessed.
Her eyebrows scrunched together. “How did you guess that?”
I shrugged. “I kind of stole it from him.”
“You have it?” she asked excitedly.
I nodded, not sure why an old diary deserved so much enthusiasm.
“That’s the best news I’ve had in forever.”
“It is?” I asked slowly, totally confused.
She nodded eagerly. “That diary contains an important cipher. Where is it?”
“I think I left it under the couch.”
“You’ll have to give it to Zeke, he’ll know what to do with it.”
“Okay, but maybe my having the diary is how Redcoat’s men found you.”
“It’s not,” my sister tried to assure me.
“But I broke into his house, if they followed me…”
She huffed a sigh of exasperation that sounded a lot like a bull preparing to charge a matador. “You showed up because I asked Zeke to get a message to that reporter friend of yours,” she confessed. “Not everything that goes wrong in the world is your fault, Maggie.”
I blinked. “Zeke’s the tiger guy?”
She nodded. “I was getting ready to put my plan in motion to move back and I needed him to facilitate matters.”
“But you still have Redcoat after you,” I reminded her. “The reason you’ve been hiding out this whole time.”
“True,” she said slowly, “but I have it on good authority that he won’t be around for much longer. There’s a contract out on him.” She paused for a moment and explained further as though I, of all people, wouldn’t understand what a contract killing was. “That means someone is paying to have him assassinated. Once that happens, I’ll be free to go home.”
“That’s assuming the hitman does his job successfully,” I pointed out. “If he fails, or misses by an inch? What then?”
“Speaking of a deadly shooting,” she said, changing the conversation’s course. “How’d you do that? Shoot that guy like that?”
“I kind of dated a cop,” I explained, following one of Patrick’s rules to stick to the truth whenever possible becau
se it was a hell of a lot easier to remember that than a lie. “He taught me how to shoot.”
“Here’s to dating guys with killer skill sets,” she laughed.
I may have winced a little. “Speaking of which, Dave is a good shot,” I said to cover my discomfort.
“He’s good at a lot of things,” she confided with a girlish giggle.
And that was the moment I knew I wanted her to move back. That I wanted my sister and her family in my life.
Making that happen might be easier said than done, but I was determined to figure out a way to make that happen.
Chapter Twenty-nine
After my meeting with Darlene, which ended with us clutching each other and tearfully proclaiming our love for one another, Zeke, as promised, took me back to the B&B where I promptly retreated to the basement.
I crawled around on the floor, reaching under the couch to pull out the diary. “Here it is.”
Zeke stared at the thin book. “I can’t do anything with it tonight. Put it back in its hiding space. I have to make a call.” He marched out the cellar storm doors, phone in hand.
“Did you get your head shrunk, sugar?” Piss asked the moment he was gone.
“Shrunk?” DeeDee repeated, alarmed.
“It’s just a figure of speech, halfwit,” God interjected.
“Hush,” I warned him.
“Just tell us what happened. We’ve been waiting on pins and needles,” Piss hissed.
“She scared the therapist,” God announced.
“I didn’t scare him,” I corrected. “The man is terrified of lizards.”
“Too me,” DeeDee whined softly.
“Don’t be afraid,” Piss told her. “If he scares you, I’ll eat him.”
“No one’s eating anyone,” I declared, flopping down on the sofa, my fatigue catching up with me.
Zeke eventually joined me on the couch where we both dozed off into an exhausted slumber.
A sharp knocking on the door that led to the kitchen woke me.
“What?” I yelled as the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Door banging in the middle of the night only meant trouble.
“She’s on the news,” Angel whisper shouted.
I reached for the television remote control.
Angel opened the door and ran down the stairs. “Channel five.”
He froze at the bottom of the flight when he spotted Zeke. “I didn’t mean to intrude.” He began to back up the stairs.
“Zeke. Angel. Angel. Zeke,” I said distractedly as I turned on the TV.
“Nice to meet you.” Zeke stood up and walked over toward Angel, his hand extended. “Have they found your cousin?”
“Shut up!” I said, as my mother’s face came into view.
It was a live shot. In the background a fire raged, engulfing a large building. She was watching it burn, totally enraptured. Delveccio was right, her beauty really was breathtakingly fragile.
“Crap!” I jumped up. “They’ve progressed to arson.”
“You don’t know that,” Zeke and Angel said simultaneously.
“Where is it? Where’s the fire? If I can get there before it’s under control, maybe I can catch her.”
“Maybe we can catch her,” Angel corrected.
“We!” DeeDee agreed with a loud bark.
“Oh this should be an adventure,” God drawled drolly from his terrarium.
The address of the building flashed on the screen.
“That’s in the warehouse district,” Angel said. “I know how to get there. Let’s go.”
I grabbed my keys. “I’m driving.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Zeke asked, no doubt remembering how close I’d come to running him over not too long before.
“What about me?” God yelled as I headed for the storm door.
Turning around so fast, I tripped over DeeDee, I went sprawling on my hands and knees.
“You really shouldn’t drive,” Zeke suggested again.
“We’re bringing the animals.” I scrambled to my feet and snatched up the lizard.
“Why?” Angel asked.
“We need all the help we can get!” I declared. “DeeDee, Piss, let’s go.”
The three of us ran up the steps, out into the cold.
“On Donner, on Blitzen,” I heard Zeke saying from behind us.
“Shotgun!” Angel yelled.
I ducked. “Where?”
“I call shotgun,” Angel declared, racing toward the front passenger seat of my car. Only DeeDee reached the vehicle before him.
Zeke grabbed my arm and ran alongside me. “Ummm, on a scale of one to ten, just how nuts is this manny of yours?”
“I think we might find out.”
Three humans and three animals, all talking at once, piled into my car and took off across town to try to catch the mental institute escapee. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Chapter Thirty
The police had the neighborhood cordoned off so we had to park a few blocks away.
“We should split up,” Zeke suggested as we climbed out of the car.
“Catch the dog, sugar,” Piss suggested.
I grabbed DeeDee’s leash before she could race away.
“You guys go that way and I’ll go this,” Zeke said, pointing in opposite directions.
“Why are you going alone?” I asked suspiciously.
“Because I know Mary and she knows me. Unless she knows Angel?” Zeke looked to the other man.
Angel shook his head.
“You still shouldn’t go alone. Take DeeDee.” I thrust her leash into his hand.
“I’ll go along with them and make sure he doesn’t do anything underhanded,” Piss assured me.
“Come on, Angel.” I started jogging in the direction of the fire.
“Walk!” he commanded.
Ignoring him, I kept up my pace.
He caught up to me easily and stepped in front of me, causing me to barrel into him.
Steadying me so I wouldn’t fall, he leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Walk, Maggie. Otherwise we’re going to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
That’s when I realized a couple of uniformed cops were watching us with curiosity.
I nodded my understanding.
Catching my chin with his fingers, he gently tilted my face up so that he could look in my eyes. “Sell it,” he said and then he lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me.
Or at least he pretended to kiss me. He never separated his lips or involved any tongue. He just caressed my face with one hand while cupping the back of my head with the other.
To anyone watching it probably looked like a lover’s kiss, but it was, unfortunately, totally sexless.
Pulling away, he winked at me. “Now they think we’re lovers who were quarreling and just made up.”
Lacing his fingers through mine, he tugged me along behind him, walking toward the fire. I noticed the cops were no longer watching us.
“So, you and Zeke?”
“Just old friends.”
“Old friends with benefits?”
“More like old friends with baggage.”
“How well does he know your mother?”
We jumped up on the sidewalk to get out of the way of an approaching fire truck.
Rather than yelling over the roar of its engine, I waited until it had passed to answer Angel’s question. “Zeke lived at the B&B for a while when he was in high school so he knows her pretty well.”
“So he’s practically family?” Angel asked.
“I guess you could say that.”
“You haven’t asked about Angelina. She’s missing too you know.”
“Oh,” I lied. “I forgot with everything else going on.”
Angel gave me a sidelong glance. “Yeah, that or you know where she is.”
“You were the one who mentioned your uncle wanted her out of that place,” I reminded him.
“Maggie!” a familiar voice called. “Magg
ie over here.”
