by Meg Cabot
“Don’t,” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. I’d apparently missed the putting back on of the jeans. Too bad.
“I have to,” he said, laughingly prying my arms off him. “What if your parents wake up? Is that really how you want them finding out about us?”
Flopping disgruntledly back against the pillows, I said, “I guess not. Still. What are you doing later?”
“Seeing you,” Rob said as he sat down on my window seat to tug on his motorcycle boots. It was extremely odd to see Rob Wilkins in my bedroom at all.
But it was especially weird to see him sitting on the lace-covered pillows with which my mom had decorated the built-in window seat beneath my bay windows. It was sort of like seeing Batman shopping for shampoo at the drugstore, or something. Just completely out of place.
“I have to go to the garage for a while,” Rob said after he’d gotten both shoes on, and stood up. “Want to come over and grab some lunch around noon?”
“I could bring you lunch,” I said. “I could make some sandwiches and cupcakes or something.”
Rob looked at me. “Did you just say you’d make cupcakes?”
“Yeah,” I said apologetically. “I don’t know what came over me. Since that would so never happen.”
“I’m sure if you did make cupcakes someday,” Rob said chivalrously, “they’d be delicious.”
“No, they wouldn’t.”
“Well, no, you’re probably right. Still. It was a nice thought.”
“I’ll just see you at noon,” I said. And rolled out of bed. “Here, let me walk you out.”
Rob tried to argue with me, that he could find his own way downstairs. But I didn’t want to run the risk of him running into one of my parents alone. I didn’t want him calling off the engagement after only six hours.
But I managed to get him out of the house safely. The only person in the house besides us who was up was Chigger, and he just checked us for food. Not finding any, he went back to the couch.
I stood on the porch in the cool morning air. Even though it was so early, I wasn’t a bit tired. That’s because I’d slept like a log for a change.
“Where’s your truck?” I asked when I’d looked around and seen only a nondescript sedan and—hilariously—a Trans Am parked on the street.
“I parked around the corner,” Rob admitted with a sheepish smile, before kissing me good-bye. “I didn’t want to arouse the suspicions of your neighbors.”
“You’re such a gentleman,” I said. He’d started down the porch steps, but I held on to one of his hands. “Hey, Rob?”
“What?”
“Did my dad buy my bike from you? Blue Beauty, I mean?”
Rob’s grin was crooked. “Yeah. He asked me what kind of bike I thought you’d like, and…well, I had that one picked out for you a long time before he asked. Let’s put it that way.”
“I knew it,” I said, my heart feeling as if it were about to bubble over with joy. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
He seemed to be having trouble containing the bubbling over of his own heart—at least if the way he smiled at me was any indication. I had never seen him look so happy.
Then he left, hurrying down the street to get his truck. I stood and watched him disappear around the corner. In fact, that’s why I didn’t notice the driver’s door to the Trans Am parked across the street had opened. Because I was too busy watching Rob disappear around the corner.
Which is why I didn’t realize Randy Whitehead Junior was coming towards me until he was halfway across the yard.
“Randy,” I said when I finally noticed him. “When’d you make bail?”
Seriously it didn’t even occur to me to be scared. That’s how giddy I still was from everything that had happened during the night.
Even when Randy didn’t say anything—just kept coming towards me with a very intent expression on that weaselly looking face, hovering beneath his hundred-dollar haircut—it didn’t seem weird. I just assumed he hadn’t heard me.
“What are you doing here, Randy?” I asked him. “You come to apologize?”
But when he climbed the steps up to where I was standing in two long strides, then seized me by the throat with one hand, throwing me back against the screen door, I realized he hadn’t actually come over to apologize.
“You,” he pressed his cheek against mine to whisper into my ear, “have ruined my life.”
I tried to scream. I really did. But his hand was crushing my larynx. I couldn’t even breathe, let alone utter a sound.
I would like to add that Randy? He smelled extremely ripe, a combination of body odor, Calvin For Men, and what I was pretty sure was tequila. My eyes started to water, and not just from lack of oxygen, either.
“I wasn’t hurting anybody,” he hissed raggedly in my ear. “Those girls wanted it. They wanted it. And now my mom says I’m a disgrace, and my dad says—you know what my dad says?”
I was clawing at his hands, trying to get them off my neck. I’d tried kicking him, but being barefoot, I didn’t seem to be doing much damage. I tried kneeing him in the groin, but he kept moving out of the way. It was hard to get much leverage, anyway, considering the fact that he was holding me a couple of inches off the ground.
“My dad says if I kill you, to keep you from telling my mom about Eric, he might even forgive me for being such a screwup someday.” Randy’s breath was as ripe as the rest of him. It had been a while since he’d hit the mints. “So that’s why I’m here. I was hoping you’d come out of the house and get on that bike of yours, and I could just wait till no one else was around, and knock you off it and into a ditch or something. But you know what? I like this better. Because take a look. No one else is around. Just you. And me.”
It was hard to tell, over the roaring in my ears. But I thought I could hear Chigger barking. Yes. Chigger was definitely barking. And hurling himself angrily against the screen door, right behind. I could feel his claws. That ought to wake Mom and Dad up. Good boy, Chigger. Good boy.
“I’ll tell you what, though,” Randy said. “I’ll let you go if you tell me who Eric is. Because I really, really want to know.”
And he loosened his hold on my throat—just a little—so that I could tell him. I choked down a lungful of air. And croaked, “Bite me.”
Wham! The hands went right back around my neck.
“That’s not very polite,” Randy commented. “Jesus, why won’t that dog shut the hell up?”
On the word up, something happened to Randy’s head. It disappeared.
Or at least, that’s how it seemed from my angle. It wasn’t until his hands suddenly left my throat again—and I was falling to the porch floor, gasping for breath—that I realized Randy’s head was still very much attached to Randy’s body. It had just seemed to disappear, due to the force of the blow Rob had delivered to his jaw.
Collapsed against the screen door, I was in the perfect position to watch Rob pummel the life out of Randy Whitehead Junior. I got to see some bloody bits of capped tooth fly by—very gratifying—and was able to explain to my startled parents, who’d finally been roused from bed, that the reason Rob was killing Randy Whitehead was that Randy had been trying to kill me.
Still, it wasn’t my dad who broke up the fight—though, to his credit, he tried, which was an almost comical sight, this middle-aged man in boxers and an undershirt, trying to pull Rob off the drunk pornographer who’d taken advantage of his sister, and then tried to kill his fiancée.
No, it was the man who strode into my yard right after that, gun drawn, and shouted, “All of you! Freeze, or I’ll shoot! FBI!”
“Oh,” my mother said from where she’d been helping me up from the porch floor. “Good morning, Dr. Krantz.”
Keeping his pistol trained on Randy—who really didn’t look as if he was too eager to go anywhere, anyway—Cyrus Krantz said, “Good morning, Toni. I was hoping I wasn’t too early to stop by for coffee. I can see now that I came just in time. Up
to your old tricks again, eh, Jessica?”
By that time, my dad had managed to pry Rob off Randy. Now Rob reached up to dab at his bloody lower lip with the back of a hand, before glancing at me and saying with a grin, “I told you it was time you let someone rescue you for a change.”
“Good one,” I croaked. It hurt to talk. “What brought you back here?”
He held up a bare wrist. “I forgot my watch.”
“Aw,” I said. “Of course. It’s on my nightstand.”
“What,” my mom wanted to know, “is going on here? Jessica, why was this man trying to kill you? And why is Rob here? And what’s his watch doing on your nightstand?”
“Oh,” I said, holding up my left hand to show her Rob’s grandmother’s ring. “It’s all right. We’re engaged.”
“Mazel tov,” said Dr. Krantz. He hadn’t stopped pointing his gun at Randy Whitehead Junior, who was still moaning on the porch floor.
“You’re what?” Mom yelled. Then, to my dad, she shrieked, “Will you shut that dog of yours up?”
“Chigger! Down,” Dad yelled. And the dog stopped barking. “Toni. I think you should go inside and call the police.”
“Already done,” Dr. Krantz said, hanging up his cell phone. “I asked for an ambulance, too. That young man’s nose appears to be broken.”
My mom stayed where she was. “You’re engaged?” she asked me, looking astonished.
“Oh, yeah,” Rob said, running a hand through his dark hair and making it stand up even more wildly on end. “This probably isn’t a good time to ask, but Mr. and Mrs. Mastriani, I’d like to marry your daughter, if that’s all right with you. Well, I’m going to even if it isn’t all right. But I’d prefer to have your blessing.”
“She has to finish college first,” my dad said with a grunt, from where he was examining the bloodstains on the porch floor. “I’m gonna need to hit those with the hose before they dry or they’ll never come out.”
“Joe!” My mother’s eyes were filled with tears. “Is that all you have to say about this?”
“Well, whadduya want me to say?” Dad asked. “He’s a good guy. Look what he just did. He saved our daughter’s life.”
“Yeah,” I said to her hoarsely. “Skip never did that.”
“I need coffee,” Mom whimpered, just as the wail of a police siren filled the air.
“Mom.” It was hard to talk, since my throat still hurt pretty badly. But I put my arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “Don’t think of it as losing a daughter. Think of it as finally getting her back.”
My mom looked down at me. She tried to smile, though the result was a bit watery.
“I don’t understand a single thing that’s happening right now,” she said. “But…” She looked over at Rob, who was carefully watching her. “Welcome to the family, Rob.”
A relieved grin broke out over Rob’s face. “Thanks, Mrs. Mastriani,” he said.
“Oh, what the heck,” Mom said, as the first of the police cruisers came screaming up in front of the house. “Call me Ma.”
Twenty-one
It wasn’t until the ambulance had taken Randy away—in police custody, for the second time in twenty-four hours—and I’d given my statement (this time they let me write it in my own dining room. I didn’t have to go down to the station house, for a change), and Rob and my dad had gone off to work, and my mom had retired to her bedroom with a migraine, that I finally got to shower and dress, then sit down with the man who had, after all, come all the way from Washington, DC, to see me.
It was weird to find him sitting on my porch swing. Weird, and yet strangely not weird, too. There’d been a time when the sight of him had terrified me, because he’d represented everything I didn’t want—the glare of the media spotlight that had, once upon a time, so upset Douglas; working for a government I didn’t trust, with an agency I wasn’t sure I believed in.
Then I’d gotten to know him—Cyrus—better and realized he actually really did mean well. And that the truth is, he’s just a huge nerd with a secret liking for peanut M&M’s. He was even dressed in the height of nerd summer chic, in a short-sleeved dress shirt with a clip-on tie, khakis, and pocket protector, which is what he’d worn almost daily in Afghanistan, as well. The only difference was that here in the U.S., he preferred an ankle holster for his service piece. Over there, it had been a shoulder holster.
It was nice to know some things, anyway, never changed.
“So what are you doing here?” I asked him—not in an unfriendly way. “Oh, no, wait. Let me guess: You heard I got my powers back.”
“Kind of hard to keep something like that a secret,” Cyrus said, reaching for the cup of coffee my mom had poured for him—and all the officers—before retiring. “Especially when you’re using it to bust up interstate amateur porn rings.”
I just looked at him. “You tapped my cell phone, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” he said. “When you called all of those girls yesterday morning to tell them what Randy had done and how you intended to punish him…that was inspired. And you called their parents, as well, to see if they’d welcome their daughters home, but carefully didn’t reveal to them just where, exactly, their child was…that was brilliant, as well. Some of your best work, I would have to say.”
“I wish,” I said, “that you guys would cut it out. The phone tapping stuff, I mean. Because I’m not coming back, you know.”
“To work for us,” Cyrus asked, “or New York?”
“Neither,” I said. “I mean…both.”
“Jessica,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t dream of asking.”
I blinked at him. “Really? That’s not why you’re here?”
“Certainly not. You know, we’ve all been so worried about you. It’s good to hear you’re feeling better. And I’m especially pleased to hear about you and Rob. That’s some excellent news. And I understand your brother’s asked you to come teach at this alternative school he’s opening. Are you going to do that?”
“Yes,” I said guardedly. I couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t going to ask me to come back? Really? “I’m going to transfer to Indiana and get my teaching certificate.”
“Very good. You were always excellent with children. What I really came here to say, Jessica, since you ask, is that…well, I know we’ve had our differences in the past. But I think all we’ve both ever wanted is to help make this world a better place. God knows, you’ve done more than your share in this capacity. We pushed you…well, we pushed you more than we should have, and the result was that eventually, you had nothing left to give. Now that you’ve got your powers back, what you do with them is entirely your own choice. No one would fault you if you decided never to use them again. You have many other strengths, and I fully expect that you’ll have just as much success bettering the planet using them as you did using your psychic abilities. But, in the off chance you should like to come back—”
“Aha!” I cried. Then wished I hadn’t because the word really strained my already swollen throat.
Still, I’d known this was coming. And not because I have ESP, either.
“—I wanted to let you know there will always be a place for you on my team.”
Wait. What?
I stared at him some more. “That’s it? No begging?”
“No begging.”
“No guilt trips?”
“None of those, either. You’ve done your duty, Jessica. No one—least of all me—could ask you to do anymore. If you wanted to, that’s another story. But since you don’t…” He shrugged, as if to say, So be it.
“You’re serious?” I still couldn’t quite believe it. “I’m off the hook?”
“Completely.”
“No more tapping my phone?”
“None.”
“No more following me?”
“None.”
“You’re not going to call a press conference to announce my return to the world of psychic people-finding?”
/> “Not unless you wish me to.”
“Or tell me about some kid missing in Des Moines whose Mommy wants him back so dearly?”
“Jessica.” Cyrus Krantz climbed to his feet. “I already told you. You have done more than your fair share of good for others in this world. I think it’s time you concentrated on doing some good for yourself for a change. And that’s what I came here to tell you.”
I had to crane my neck to see his face, since he was towering so far above me.
“It is not,” I said. “You came here to see if I wanted to come back.”
“Well,” he admitted, looking sheepish. “Of course. But since you don’t want to, well, that’s another story. So instead I’ll just wish you luck. Call me if you ever need anything. And tell your mother I hope she’ll be feeling better soon. I’m sure she will. The thing with you and Rob…well, it will just take some getting used to for her. But she’s a sensible woman. She’ll come around.”
“I know she will,” I said.
He hesitated on the top step. “Of course, if something came along that we really needed your help on…”
Now this was more like the Cyrus I knew.
“You can call me,” I said with a laugh.
He looked visibly relieved.
“Good,” he said. “Well, that’s all I wanted to know. Good-bye for now. And remember…it’s time to do some good for you, Jessica.”
With that proclamation, he strolled back to the waiting four-door sedan with the tinted windows—not the same one that had been parked in front of my house yesterday morning—that I hadn’t noticed until just then, the one that had been parked just a little down the street from Randy’s Trans Am.
No sooner had he driven away than my cell phone chirped. I pulled it from my back pocket and said, “Hello?”
All I could hear on the other end was shrieking.
“Yes, Ruth,” I said calmly. “How’d you find out?”
“Mike just got off the phone with your dad,” Ruth said. “Can I be a bridesmaid?”
