“Key rights?” What the hell did she mean by key rights, and how had he lost them?
She marched into the kitchen, went to the sink, and filled Muffin’s water bowl. Ben followed, wondering how saving Mazie from sexual assault had somehow turned out to be the wrong thing to do. She whipped around to face him, scowling. “Saturday night, you—you came on to me, seduced me, made me think … I thought you … and then you just—just pulled one of your disappearing acts!”
“I was at Y sports camp—”
“Oh, so that makes it okay? Just drop out of my life whenever you feel like it, and when you drop back in, beat up my dates. You don’t want me, but you can’t stand the thought of another man having me, is that it? Well, for your information, I don’t need you jumping in, playing the big macho superhero!”
“I’m supposed to just stand by while some troglodyte mauls you—”
“You’re the troglodyte, Ben! You want to yank me by the hair into a cave and use me whenever you please, then go off and catch fish or whack a stupid ball around or chase skirts—oh wait—I forgot! Now that you’re the Sexiest Man Alive, women chase you.”
“That is so completely—wrongheaded, crazy, illogical—” Mazie’s attack left him reeling and confused. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but it was as though they belonged to two warring nations and couldn’t speak each other’s language.
“You need to leave. I have to work on my course.” Mazie turned her back to him and flipped open the laptop on her counter, then whirled around and fixed Ben with an accusing stare. “I left this open. You’re always going around closing things that don’t need closing. You snooped in my stuff!”
“If you don’t want people seeing what’s on your screen, you shouldn’t leave it open.”
“Oh, right. Blame the victim.”
Everything Ben had rehearsed saying on the drive back from Illinois, the tenderness he’d been feeling toward Mazie, the idea of a heart-to-heart talk and a new start to their relationship—it all vanished, replaced by anger. She’d stung him and he wanted to sting back. “Typical Mazie Maguire. You don’t close your laptop, you never put lids back on jars, you don’t keep your phone charged—and you sure as hell don’t check the guys you go out with to find out whether they’re psychopathic rapists.”
“What a busy life you must lead, keeping track of other people’s faults.”
“At least I don’t waste my time smashing dwarfs—or is that Beethoven with the red cap and blue beard?”
“They’re not dwarfs, they’re gnomes. I’m gnashing gnomes and I’m damn good at it.”
“No, you’re not. You’re only at level fifteen. My four-year-old nephew is already at twenty-nine.”
“Lucky for him he didn’t get his brains from his uncle.”
This was going nowhere. Ben turned and stalked away. As he reached the door, something whizzed past his head, barely missed his ear, banged against the wall, and dropped to the floor. It was the ergonomic, cordless mouse he’d bought Mazie for her birthday.
Pretending he hadn’t noticed, he walked out, slamming the door.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Level twenty-nine. Hah! It was impossible to get past level fifteen, anyone could tell you that. Still steaming, Mazie went to pick up the mouse, already regretting the impulse that had led her to fling it at Labeck. The mouse’s delicate mechanisms might have been damaged by his hard skull. She picked the mouse up and examined it. It seemed to be okay. Just to be sure, she ought to get in one game of Gnome Gnash.
She played for a while, gnashing gnomes while keeping one eye on Milwaukee Tonite!, the program that had started the whole, horrible downward spiral her life had recently taken. If only it were possible to zap real-life problems as easily as zapping gnomes, Mazie thought. Why couldn’t you dial back real life to beginner level and start over again? She would scroll back three weeks, back to when her life had been normal, back to the day before that evil woman on Milwaukee’s most popular local show had proclaimed Bonaparte Labeck the Sexiest Man Alive.
There was a knock on the door. Muffin rushed over to investigate, barking. Probably Labeck, Mazie thought, returning to inform her that she also sucked at checkers and tic-tac-toe. Or maybe it was that idiot Chad, trying to weasel his way back in. Snatching a can of furniture spray off her hall table—the chemicals in aerosol sprays burned like Mace; she knew because one of her cell mates had once disarmed a guard with Pledge—she flung open the door and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Go away!”
A girl stood there, wide-eyed. She gave a yip of panic and darted away. Muffin dashed out after her, barking.
Mazie blinked, realization belatedly hitting her. Shayla Connelly!
“Shayla!” Mazie cried. “Wait!”
The girl halted at the foot of the driveway dividing Mazie’s building from Mrs. Schirmer’s house next door, nervously eying Mazie, poised to run again.
“I’m really sorry.” Mazie walked toward Shayla slowly, as though she were a wild animal who might be spooked by any sudden movement. “I thought you were someone else.”
“The guy who just bugged out, boiling mad? Or the rock star who got his ass kicked?”
“You’ve been—”
“I was hiding in those bushes. I saw you come back here with the dreadlocks guy.”
Shayla stood perfectly still, looking terrified, as Muffin circled her, yapping in the tones he adopted with female humans, demanding to be fussed over.
“It’s okay,” Mazie said. “He won’t bite. He likes girls.”
Timidly, Shayla stooped and petted Muffin.
“You shouldn’t be standing out here,” Mazie said. “Come in.”
Hesitantly Shayla limped into Mazie’s flat. Mazie closed and locked the door as Shayla paused at the edge of her living room, a jittery bird about to take flight. “Is anyone else here?” she whispered.
“No. It’s just us.”
Shayla’s eyes were huge in her thin face. “You said—that night in the Hog—that you were willing to help me.”
Mazie nodded. “Of course, I’ll help you, Shayla. I’ll do whatever I can.”
Shayla must have been living rough, Mazie thought. Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue, her hair was tangled, her face was smudged, and her lips were chapped. She had no purse, just a plastic shopping bag slung over her shoulder and a motorcycle helmet. Despite the warm weather, she wore a man’s leather jacket, an oversize flannel shirt, jeans that were too big even for the pants-on-the-ground generation, and what appeared to be size 12 biker boots.
“I think my foot is infected,” Shayla said. “It hurts like crazy.”
“Let’s take a look.”
Shayla kicked off the boots, hoisted her pant leg, and held up her right foot. Peeling Band-Aids were slapped over a nasty gash on the bottom of her foot. The wound was seeping blood and pus, and the skin around the cut was pink and swollen.
“It’s infected, all right,” Mazie said. “You need to have a doctor look at that.”
“No doctors!” Shayla said in a panicked voice.
Mazie frowned. “I’ll do what I can. Let’s get it washed first. Feel up to taking a shower?”
“Oh, God, yes. I haven’t been clean in two weeks.”
Mazie led her to the bathroom and showed her how to work the shower. Shayla wearily stripped off her clothes, seemingly too tired to feel embarrassment.
“Won’t the water loosen the bandages?” Shayla asked.
“That’s what we want—so they’ll slide off painlessly. How’d you hurt your foot?”
“I ran out of the Hog barefoot that night.” Shayla stepped into the shower. Mazie handed her a bottle of shampoo and a washcloth. “I stepped on something in the parking lot—broken glass, I think. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t want to stop. If the Skulls caught me, I knew they’d do a lot worse than that. They torture people before they kill them.”
Shayla turned on the water and talked above the noise. “I ran out into
an alley. I could hear them back in the bar, shooting up the place. I thought they were murdering everyone. I was so scared, I wet my pants. Then I heard the choppers coming down the alley and jumped into somebody’s yard. I stepped in dog shit—maybe that’s how my foot got infected. I circled back the other way and ran until I came to this gas station. I still had my cell phone with me, in my pajama pocket, so I phoned Daryl.”
“Daryl?” Mazie asked.
“Yeah. I met him one night at the Hog. Brandi always made me stay hidden up in her room, but it was hot as blazes up there, so I’d sneak downstairs to the bar sometimes. Anyway, I was tired of Brandi bossing me around. I didn’t trust her, either. She was on Kit Kat—always looking for her next pop.”
“Kit Kat?”
“Ketamine. Special K. It’s all over these days, a cheap high. Anyways, I met Daryl at the bar, right? He says I’m cute and gives me his number, tells me to give him a call. He was really old—like in his thirties, and no way would I have gone out with him, but when the Skulls were chasing me, Daryl was the only other person I knew in the city.”
The water turned off. Mazie thrust two bath towels in through the curtains. Shayla climbed out, one towel wrapped around her body, the other turbaned around her hair. Mazie had her sit on the toilet seat and examined her foot.
“I’m going to put some antiseptic on this,” Mazie told her. “The non-stinging kind. What happened after you phoned this Daryl?”
“He came over right away,” Shayla said. “Picked me up in his car and drove me to his place. He lived in a duplex not too far away. At first he was real nice—he put Band-Aids on my foot and let me sleep on his sofa, but he turned out to be a creep. I stayed at his place all the next day, but then he started drinking and turned mean. Said if I expected free room and board, I better put out for him.”
Mazie patted Shayla’s foot dry, then gently spread salve on the wound, noting from the way the girl winced that the spot was tender. She laid a thick gauze pad over the cut and secured it with adhesive tape. “And then?”
“I pretended Daryl was getting me all hot. I told him I wanted a bath first so I’d be all nice for him. I went in the bathroom and turned on the tap. While the water was running I dug some of his stuff out of the laundry hamper—it felt creepy putting ’em on, but I couldn’t run around in my pj bottoms and cami. I climbed out his bathroom window, intending to run, but then I noticed Daryl’s bike in the driveway. The dumb ape had left the key in it, and his boots and helmet were in the seat pouch.”
“You stole his bike?” Mazie said. “Pretty smart.”
Shayla shook her head. “No, it was dumb. See, the chopper was a Triumph, and Ricky Lee always said that model was the ugliest motorcycle ever produced. It looks like it was made from tractor parts and it’s got this bump on top of the fuel tank. Plus it’s orange and black—how hideous is that?”
“I’ve got a car that could beat it,” Mazie said, then remembered she no longer had possession of the Vittles Van. She took her blow-dryer out of a drawer and handed it to Shayla. “Go ahead and dry your hair. I’ll find you some clothes.” Mazie found a bra and underpants, jeans, a red T-shirt, a navy hoodie, and thick white athletic socks that would cushion Shayla’s foot, then stood outside the bathroom door while the girl changed.
“The thing with motorcycle people is, they notice other people’s choppers,” Shayla said through the door. “And a Triumph sticks out like a tank.”
A chill skittered down Mazie’s spine. “You think the Skulls might have seen you driving Daryl’s bike?”
“I don’t know, but I bet they’re out there looking. They’re like the Mafia: if you’re on their hit list, they never stop hunting until they find you.”
Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Mazie went around closing blinds and double-locking doors. Shayla emerged from the bathroom, wearing the borrowed clothes, and Mazie tried not to mind that her jeans looked better on the eighteen-year-old body than on hers.
“Are you hungry?” Mazie asked.
“Starved.”
“Do you like fried egg sandwiches?”
Shayla grinned. “I’m so hungry, I’d eat fried grasshoppers.”
In the kitchen, Shayla watched as Mazie hauled out bread, eggs, cheese, milk, and pickles. “Help yourself to whatever you can find in the fridge,” Mazie told her. Shayla took out a can of cream soda, popped it open, and took a long, thirsty slug.
“Where’d you go after you stole Daryl’s bike?” Mazie asked, cracking eggs into her cast-iron skillet.
“I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t have any money and Daryl had my cell phone. I hung out at the beach, hid the bike in some bushes, and fished food from the trash bins. I stayed in the park that first night, slept on the ground, and pulled the jacket over me for a blanket, but whenever I started to doze off I’d dream that the Skulls had found me and I’d wake up, terrified.”
Mazie nodded, remembering her own fugitive days. A day in the park wasn’t a day in the park when there were people out there who wanted to kill you. The bread popped up from the toaster and she buttered it, then flipped the eggs onto the toast, laid cheese slices atop the eggs, and added the second layer of toast. “But you weren’t in the park all this time?” she asked.
Shayla shook her head. “I got friendly with this lesbian couple I met at the beach. They lived in this big old house near the university campus, kind of a commune for lesbians and gays. I guess they felt sorry for me because they said I could crash with them for a few days. They let me store the Triumph in their garage and I sort of worked for my keep, washing windows and scrubbing floors.”
Mazie handed Shayla her sandwich and a glass of milk. The milk was gone in a flash and she practically inhaled the sandwich. Mazie handed over half of her own sandwich.
“Then yesterday I heard on the news about Brandi’s body being found.” Shayla picked crumbs off her plate and popped them in her mouth. “Brandi sold me out to the Skulls—probably for a few hits of K. But I don’t hold it against her—I mean, not after what they did to her. I heard about it on the news.” Tears welled up in Shayla’s eyes.
Mazie waited while Shayla struggled to get herself under control.
“After the Skulls killed Brandi, I felt like they were getting closer,” Shayla went on, fisting the tears out of her eyes. “One of the women who lived in the commune was a biker. Bikers know other bikers. They’ve got a grapevine like Twitter, and this woman had a mouth with no OFF switch. I had a funny feeling that I needed to split—know what I mean?”
Mazie did. Gut instinct had saved her life more than once.
“So I bugged out. I felt exposed being out in the open again. As long as I wore the helmet and jacket, no one could tell I was a girl, but word must have got around that I was riding the Triumph because this morning I was driving along the lake and these two guys on choppers started tailing me. I managed to lose ’em, but I knew they wouldn’t stop looking for me. Then I remembered about you, Mazie—how you said you’d help me.”
“How did you find me?” She hadn’t given Shayla her address.
“Asked around. You’re pretty famous, you know. Someone told me you lived on the East Side. I kept asking and asking, until finally I talked to this one street guy, a wino, blind in one eye—”
“Tony?”
Shayla shrugged. “I didn’t ask his name. He said sure he knew you; you always gave him a fiver or a ten when you could spare it. He said he thought you lived in this drag queen store on Brady. So I found Magenta’s store. I checked the mailbox on the side of the building and saw mail addressed to you. I’m sorry I snooped, Mazie, but I had to—”
“Don’t worry about it. All I ever get is Publishers Clearinghouse junk.”
Shayla fished the last pickle out of the jar and ate it. “I came back here after dark, left the bike in your driveway, and knocked on your door. Only you weren’t home, so I hid in that big bush and waited and—well, you know the rest. I don’t know what I would have done if you
hadn’t come back.”
“Shayla”—Mazie looked her straight in the eye—“you’re in serious danger. I’ll do my best to help you, but you’re not safe here, either. You have to turn yourself in.”
Shayla bit her lip. “I know,” she said in a small voice. “But I don’t know if I can trust the cops. Ricky Lee said most of ’em are on the take.”
“Is that why you ran away instead of going to the police?”
“I didn’t think the police could keep me safe. I thought they might put me in jail, and the jails are full of gang members.”
“Do you know Johnny Hoolihan?”
Shayla shrugged. “A little. I heard he’s one of the better cops.”
“You can trust him. I’m going to phone him right now. My phone’s down, but I’m going to go use the phone in the shop out front.”
Shayla looked terrified. “Then what’ll happen?”
“They’ll put you in protective custody, I think.”
“That sounds like jail.”
“You’re not going to jail. They’ll put you up in a decent hotel and assign a female police officer to guard you. Listen—don’t even think of leaving while I’m out. Promise?”
Shayla nodded. She looked so exhausted Mazie wasn’t sure she was even capable of running. “Hold Muffin if it makes you feel calmer,” Mazie said. “Just don’t let him get up on the counter because he’s a slut for butter.”
“Okay.”
Mazie grabbed her keys and let herself out of her flat. The air had cooled, and she shivered in her light top and skirt. The panty hose that she’d been sweltering in earlier now felt pleasantly warm on her legs. There, half-hidden behind a row of trash cans, was Shayla’s motorcycle. Anyone who was seriously searching for it could easily spot it. Talk about a dead giveaway! She’d wheel it into the backyard, Mazie decided, but when she attempted to move the bike, she discovered that it wouldn’t budge. Were its brakes on? Motorcycles were foreign territory to her; she’d have to ask Shayla how to maneuver it.
As Mazie turned to go back inside, an arm came up around her throat.
The Sexiest Man Alive: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 18
