by Jamie Quaid
“Clancy, I need to talk with you,” he thundered. He wasn’t a tall man, but he wielded enough stomach to give him an air of authority.
“Of course, sir. Do you want a report on Senator Vanderventer’s call, or should I just leave a message on your desk? It appears his grandmother hasn’t left a will, and there’s some consternation among the family.”
He frowned, diverted from his tirade. “Gloria refused to leave a copy in the office or let me file one. You mean to say she didn’t give a copy to anyone else, either?”
“Appears so, Your Honor. As I’m sure you’re aware, she’s not been entirely rational these past years.” It wouldn’t hurt to butter up Andre’s case while I was at it. “The family needs to know who is legally responsible for the upkeep of the estate and various enterprises.”
“Basic law, Clancy. Without a will, it’s her direct descendants, Padraig and Dane. I don’t remember her ever specifying anyone else. I’ll give them a call.” He went out shaking his head and muttering about giving millions of dollars to a crackpot who couldn’t comb his hair. I assumed that reference was to Paddy. Dane’s hair was never out of place.
My duty was done for the day. With my nose stuck higher than Reggie’s, I sailed out of the office and hit the Harley. I really needed to see that my home was still safe. Somewhere along the way, the world outside the Zone had become alien to me. I needed the Zone’s eccentricities to keep me grounded and provide the security I’d lacked most of my life.
And yeah, that was pretty pathetic.
18
I didn’t take time to eat after I got home from work but grabbed a handful of Nutribars and munched while shucking off my office clothes and changing into more functional jeans. I didn’t own an elaborate wardrobe and had opted for skirts for professional dress for years, but now that my leg was straight, jeans fit better than they used to.
I checked my tablet to see if any new rules had appeared, but Fat Chick’s message still scrolled across the screen.
Themis had said, Visualizing is an unusual gift. Use it for harm, and justice will be served. Use it for profit, and you will pay. Was this how Fat Chick had paid? Was that how she’d known about Rule #1? I hoped whatever she’d visualized for gain had been worth the wheelchair.
Milo opted for action and followed me over to Andre’s place. My former boss didn’t keep regular hours, so I never knew where he’d be or when, even on a workday like today. I just wanted to know that he was back to normal.
As usual, no one answered my knock. I let myself in and decided to check on our patients first. I figured if Andre was around, he’d know I’d arrived.
I fretted over Bill, but to be honest, the thought of another assault on the dungeon scared the crap out of me. There was no way I could blow my way out of a subbasement without bringing the entire plant crashing down on our heads.
But I could hope that, with Gloria gone and Paddy moving in, Acme would do the right thing. Maybe. Eventually. So I wouldn’t have to face the dragons in the dungeon.
Two of the baby docs were consulting over our homeless guys in the theater. One of them was the red-haired former soldier from yesterday. They’d set up a battery of equipment they’d probably borrowed from Johns Hopkins’ supply closets. Someone had trimmed the patients’ beards and hair and found clean hospital gowns for them.
I suspected most of these old guys were vets who would come up roaring in outrage if we discovered how to flip their switches. But they were polite pussycats for now.
“No news?” I asked when the docs glanced up. “I have a taker for a patient if anyone wants to make a run to Massachusetts.”
“Andre said it was okay to use this place if we can keep it staffed,” the red-haired doc replied. “The study results are so phenomenal that we’re using our off-duty hours to rotate. We can sleep here.”
He indicated a couple of empty cots they’d set up. “It’s working out. So thanks, but no thanks.”
I shrugged. “No skin off my nose. Are you sure they’re alive and functioning?”
“We can’t do MRIs, but we’ve run EEGs.” He nodded at the equipment. “Full electrical neuron activity detected. Their health is improving and stabilizing. We can’t find any reason for the vegetative state.”
“Side effect worse than the cure,” I muttered enigmatically, thinking of the gas. “Shame. Anyone tried to come over the tunnel wall lately?”
The doc who had wielded weapons the other day made a note in his tablet and shook his head. “It’s been quiet. Maybe now that Old Lady Vanderventer is gone, Acme will back off. If Andre really killed her, he did the world a favor.”
“He didn’t kill her. The gas did, one way or another. Is anyone feeding you?”
Both docs appeared interested. Red answered. “We’ve been foraging from our apartments but haven’t had time for grocery shopping.”
“Let me see what Julius has. I’m in the mood for tacos. That work?”
They didn’t seem thrilled but nodded acceptance. They’d never eaten my tacos. They’d not go back to pizzas again.
I jogged upstairs and to the floor where Julius and Tim resided. Tim’s apartment was small and similar to mine, but Julius lived in spacious elegance, with a well-stocked kitchen. He never left the house, but Andre provided everything he could need and more.
Julius’s face had gained a few more lines since I’d seen him last.
“Andre?” I asked first.
“Down at Chesty’s. We still haven’t found a lawyer willing to take his case.” He led me back to the kitchen.
I tried not to breathe too deeply in relief that Andre had overcome his near-comatose state. Maybe I’d been mistaken and he’d just stressed out and needed sleep.
Julius and I bonded over food. He couldn’t cook. I hated to eat alone. It worked. I talked while examining the contents of his freezer. “The courthouse is buzzing. I bet if you’d just go over there and schmooze a little, you could persuade them that the state doesn’t have a case.”
“I can’t leave Katerina,” he said sadly. “I’m too out of touch to schmooze anyway. We’ll keep trying. Maybe the witnesses will change their stories.”
“One of them slugged Gloria. One of their guns caused her to flip over. Nope, they won’t be talking truth anytime soon.” I nuked some chicken breasts to defrost them and started chopping veggies.
I wondered if there was any way I could do a Marley’s ghost routine and terrify the goons into telling the truth, but I just couldn’t see how it would work. That’s the problem with visualization—I have to be able to imagine it. Besides, I didn’t want to end up in any wheelchair for misusing my power. I needed to spend more time on that website. And see if Fat Chick answered questions better than Themis or Sarah.
We were stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was too inexperienced to know the right lawyer. Julius was too out of touch.
We set that topic aside and wandered to the next. “What about the gas cloud can? Did you get Tim to cough it up?” I whacked chicken and flung pieces in a frying pan.
“He swears he doesn’t have it. Could it have fallen out of your bag on the ride back here?”
Saturn preserve us, I hoped not. “If Milo didn’t fall out, I don’t see how the can could have,” I said with a little more assurance than I felt. “Maybe it rolled under some furniture? I’ll take a look later.” I frowned, trying to remember my progress yesterday. I was pretty certain I’d come straight to Andre’s back door before setting down the tote.
I was filling taco shells for Julius when Paddy arrived. The windows were open and the air was redolent of chicken and jalapeños, so I figured his nose had led him here. I already had another batch cooking for the docs, so I dished up a third plate. Tacos are easy and can be anything you want them to be when you have a stocked larder. I preferred veggies to beans and rice, but the men took everything. With extra cheese and a jar of guacamole.
“We need to search the mansion,” Paddy said without preamble.
He’d spent so many years outside society, his manners could use some polish. Of course, if he’d been an engineer of some sort, maybe he’d always been socially inept.
“Right.” I savored the first decent meal I’d had in days and slipped Milo a bit of chicken under the table. “Snodgrass says you and Dane get to fight over your mother’s assets if no will is found, so the two of you have at it.”
No way was I trying to explain to Paddy that his son had grown a conscience thanks to Max. I had enough headaches to juggle. I’d let the two of them work it out. First, they’d have to try talking to each other.
“The judge says I need an estate lawyer to file a probate claim,” Paddy said gloomily. “I don’t want that family gate to hell, but if I don’t inherit the entire controlling share, Dane’s trust executor will sell to MacNeill, and I’ll be booted out. MacNeill is dangerous.”
“Probate is easy. Even I can do that.” I took another mouthful of taco before I realized both men were staring at me. “What?” I asked through my cheese.
The two old friends seemed to be communicating silently. Fine, at least I’d had a chance to eat before they crucified me.
“It might work,” Julius said softly, tapping his fingers on the table. “We should probably talk to Andre.”
I waited. They didn’t let me in on the secret. Hurt but not wanting to show it, I rolled my eyes. Finishing my taco, I rose to put my plate in the sink and gather a tray of fixings for the docs.
They didn’t mind talking to me when they wanted something, but I was excess baggage otherwise. Fine. I’d been on my own most of my life. I was good with that.
No, I wasn’t. I’d hated being an outsider as a kid. It’s a lonely existence. I’d enjoyed making friends in the Zone. I thought they’d accepted me.
I used to have Max, but he was out of reach now. Maybe Schwartz would like some tacos.
I even considered entertaining the docs with my presence when they fell gratefully on the grub. But in the end, I decided Mom was right. Knowledge was power, and I needed to brush up on mine. Loneliness was irrelevant.
Milo checked out all the patients a second time, then obediently trotted after me when I returned home. I swear, he’d appointed himself my guard cat.
Which is why I felt perfectly safe unlocking my apartment door and walking in without turning on the lights. Milo didn’t warn me.
A dark figure rose out of the shadows and swung a bat at me.
19
My own baseball bat flying out of the night in my own damned home shouldn’t have been happening. I had good locks. I practiced caution. But I’d been caught by surprise once in the last dozen years, and it had nearly cost me a leg. Since then, I’d learned to duck and roll.
I ducked. I rolled. I pulled my steel-reinforced messenger bag over my vitals.
I came up kicking. I caught my assailant squarely in the groin. Or I would have, except he was faster than me. He sidestepped and leaned on his bat, waiting for me to come at him again.
Which made absolutely no sense in the world of dirty fighting. My next move should have been to go at his knees, the goal being to bring him down and get my thumbs on his jugular. But that bat could bust my knees or my spine in the process.
Besides, I could smell him now, a woodsy aroma with a hint of spice. I sat up and leaned against the wall. “What in hell was that for? I get you out of jail so you can bust my ass?”
Andre returned my bat to its hiding place and settled on my aging couch. “Just testing your reflexes. You’ll be needing them.”
“For what?” I asked suspiciously.
“Just write it off to my bad dreams.” He dismissed his weird statement with the wave of a hand.
“How did you get in?” But I knew as soon as I asked. I’d given a spare key to my landlady. Pearl would have been putty in Andre’s hands.
“Proves you haven’t learned the extra caution it takes if you’re planning on staying in the Zone against all better sense,” he said, not answering my question.
“Until you, no one has attacked me in my apartment,” I grumbled. Make a prediction vague and broad enough, and eventually some form of it would materialize. Andre was a master at fuzzy prophecies. “It’s only out in the real world that people come after me with guns and cameras.”
“Don’t believe that for a minute,” he warned, leaning against the couch cushion, crossing his hands behind his head, and sprawling his long legs across the floor. “We have the guinea pigs Acme wants, and they’ve already proved they’re willing to use force to get them. I don’t want you to be our weak link.”
I preferred having this discussion in the dark. I don’t entertain and don’t own much in the way of furniture. I wasn’t about to sit next to Andre on the couch. I pulled down a cushion and leaned against the wall. “Sarah’s the one who shifted before their wondering eyes. You’re the friggin’ moron who went after Gloria and ended up in jail. Anyone can be a weak link.”
“Okay, then you’re my weak link. I need to know I can trust you. I don’t even know what you are or if you’re here to help us or destroy us. And that annoys the hell out of me.” Über-cool Andre did not express emotion, but the man sitting here in the dark was walking a thin edge, frustration being the least cause of his testiness. “How did you wake up Sarah?”
“I didn’t do any damn thing,” I said, matching his frustration. “Even I don’t know what I am,” I added with as much scorn as I could muster, “so you get to take me at face value, just like anyone else. And if you swing one more bat at me, your ass is grass. I get enough grief elsewhere. What do you want, Andre?”
“Besides you?”
His voice was low and sexy and there was a certain appeal to sitting here in the dark, my cat curling in my lap and a hunk of glorious male relaxing on my furniture. My gonads hummed in expectation. Some casual sex would do us both good. But I’d learned the hard way that there’s no such thing as casual sex with someone you see every damned day. Or with someone who’s mental enough to come after you with a bat.
“Swinging a bat at me is not how to get on my good side, dipstick. Try another.” I squashed hormonal hope, his and mine.
“I need a lawyer.” It cost him to say that, I could tell.
I was still ticked by the bat and didn’t intend to make this easy. “Yeah, I gathered that. Julius is in a better position than I am to find you one. Oddly, people regard you with suspicion. How many lawyers have you swung a bat at lately?”
He ignored my sarcasm. “My father went to school with half those old farts at the courthouse, and the younger ones learned at his knee. They watched me grow up. You really don’t think I want a lawyer who used to dandle me on his lap?”
I snorted at the image. “You took bats to them, didn’t you?” I asked. “They tried to butter up your father by playing ball with you. What did you do, beat ’em all out of the park?”
“Sometimes,” he agreed, without concern. “I wasn’t a polite child. But I freaked most of them out when I came home and decided Acme was to blame for my mother’s coma. When no one would take the case, I pulled an assault rifle on them. They have reason to believe I’m psycho.”
Well, yeah, he probably had been. Might still be now. But he also had a point. “Not helping your case, macho man,” I said anyway, wanting more info than Andre is ever willing to give. “Someone give you Prozac? That’s why you’re so cool now?”
It was his turn to snort. “Hell, no. Gloria gave me a job at the plant to shut me up. Told me to snoop around all I wanted, see if I could prove Acme had anything to do with my mother’s condition. I shut up, learned to play Joe Cool, and almost got fried in the chemical flood a few months later.”
“Intentionally?” I had to ask.
“That’s a question only the devil can answer.”
Typically, he cut off the communication just as it was getting interesting by dropping to the floor next to me. Without warning, he swung one leg over mine and trapped me betw
een his knees. I scrambled to escape; my cushion slipped, and I toppled backward. Milo had the sense to leap for safety before he was squashed by Andre’s weight. Andre had me flat on the floor with his big arms propped on either side of me before I could manage a protest.
Okay, maybe the humming gonads were in control after all. I really liked his crotch pressed into mine.
He planted kisses behind my ear and along my throat, and I shivered in anticipation. So much for my much-touted determination. The man was dynamite. I ached for more. As a diversion from a touchy topic, his move worked much too well.
Not according to plan, Andre propped his weight on his hands and bulging biceps and continued talking, depriving me of more intimate contact. “Paddy pulled me out of the flood. It was a Saturday night. I don’t know what he was even doing at the plant on a weekend. I didn’t know about the Magic lab then, but I suspected it.”
I didn’t scramble away. Torn between wanting sex and his story, I waited.
He bent over and kissed my lips this time, frying my brain before I could absorb the implications of Andre caught in a chemical flood. I wrapped my arms around his neck and drank in magic sex. Damn, but he was too good. I was hot and ready and so not doing this.
I grabbed his ears and yanked him out of my face. “Why are you telling me now?” I demanded.
Andre shifted upward, removing his ears from the imminent danger of my fingernails. He straddled my waist and cupped my breasts. I nearly creamed my pants until I summoned my damned rebellious self-control and tried to scramble out from under him. When he found the opening to my shirt, I located the pulse point on his arm and applied enough pressure to cut off circulation. Rather than lose use of an arm, he swung off me and leaned against the wall as I’d been doing earlier.
I hurried to sit up again. The battle of the sexes held new meaning when Andre and I went at it.
“We have to get Bill and the others out of Acme’s lab before the place blows again,” Andre announced, as if he’d just said, Thanks for the quick lay.
