All Fixed Up

by Linda Grimes

  The door opened again. “Got them! Four different kinds, to be—”

  Crap. He didn’t get the text! No fucking way did I want to explain what James had.

  “James!” I hollered. “Look who’s here! It’s Billy. He wants your gun, but don’t worry, he has a new one for you.”

  Please, please, please don’t let Billy see those test kits …

  “Ah, Billy,” James said, casually dropping the thankfully generic bag on the small cabinet next to Herbert’s habitat. He reached into his coat pocket. “Got it right here.”

  “Oh, how adorable!” I said, taking it before Billy could, hoping to draw his attention away from the bag. “What kind is it again? I know I’ve used one like it on the range before, but I never can remember what they’re called.”

  Yeah, not exactly true. I knew exactly what it was, but shifting Billy’s focus was for once more important than proving myself smarter than him.

  Billy looked at me oddly. “Smith & Wesson featherweight thirty-eight special. Highly concealable, no cocking. Point, and pull the trigger.” His eyes drifted back to the cabinet.

  “Oh! Right. Now I remember. What did you bring for James?” I said brightly, feigning an interest I didn’t really feel. For me, guns were a sometimes necessary tool, one I sincerely hoped I’d never have to use myself. But in my line of work, every skill set was an asset, so I’d trained on the range until I was proficient. (Okay, it hadn’t hurt that Mark was the one who’d trained me. Back then, I would have done anything to spend time with him.)

  James and Devon gathered closer (conveniently blocking the view of the cabinet) as Billy pulled a slightly larger handgun out of his leather jacket. “Kahr P380. Not quite five inches long, and only three-quarters of an inch wide. Should fit your hand well. Oh, and here’s a concealed carry permit for each of you.”

  James pulled out his wallet and placed his permit in an open slot. I stuffed mine in my back pocket. Neither of us questioned how Billy came by the permits. They would without a doubt hold up under the closest scrutiny; Billy was good at that sort of thing.

  “Needless to say, emergency use only. But if you have to use it, then use it. No screwing around with any shoot-to-disable nonsense. Because you know what a disabled attacker can still do? Kill you.”

  James nodded thoughtfully. “What about Devon?”

  “I wasn’t sure what he could handle. You want me to get you something, Dev?” Billy said.

  Devon shuddered. “A gun? God, no. I wouldn’t know what to do with one.”

  “Pepper spray? Taser? Brass knuckles?” Billy winked at him.

  “Billy club?” Devon winked back. “Or how about a switchblade? I’ve always thought those were sexy, the way they … pop up.”

  I gave James a sidelong glance to see what he thought of our boyfriends’ banter. He was studiously trying to suppress a smirk. Guys.

  “As long as you make sure it only pops up in an appropriate situation”—Billy pulled me to him with a grin—“I can get you one, but you’re on your own if you get caught with it. No permits for those—they’re flat-out illegal here.”

  “Never mind. I don’t think I’d cope well with jail,” Devon said. “Besides, I already have pepper spray, so I’m good.”

  “Welp … James, Dev, it’s been all kinds of fun. Thanks for today.” I shoved Billy toward the door. “Come on, I’m starving.”

  “Don’t you want to stay and feed Herbert his new bugs?” James said, glancing at the bag.

  Nice, bro. Subtle. I telegraphed my gratitude with my eyes. “Next time,” I said. “I’ll be over soon.”

  * * *

  The trouble with claiming to be ravenous is that you have to eat, even if you’re so tied up in knots you couldn’t squeeze a single strand of spaghetti through your esophagus if you lubricated it with a gallon of olive oil.

  Billy waved an aromatic piece of garlic bread under my nose. I did my best not to turn green. “Go ahead, cuz. Dig in. You know you want to.”

  We were at my favorite Italian restaurant. It was situated, conveniently enough, close to James’s place, near NYU. Billy knew how much I loved their meatballs, so boyfriend points to him for bringing me here. Still … ugh. Not what I wanted right now. Especially since there were no fewer than five women at various stages of pregnancy seated throughout the homey dining room. Made me want to crawl under the red-checkered tablecloth and quietly drain a carafe of Chianti.

  I gulped some ice water. “I’m saving it for the pasta. Mmm-mmm, nothing tastes better than Jo-Jo’s”—Jo-Jo was the cook; imagine a female Robert De Niro, only not as pretty—“garlic bread with her spaghetti.” Why the heck hadn’t I ordered something easy to swallow, like soup?

  “It’s not like you can’t have more with your meatballs—there’s plenty.” Billy bit into a piece, closing his eyes briefly in bliss at the flavor.

  “I, uh, read somewhere that delaying gratification can enhance a pleasurable experience,” I said, assuming a virtuous expression I hoped didn’t look as phony as it felt.

  He leaned close and said, softly, wickedly, “I’m going to make you regret those words when we’re in my tub later.”

  A tingle traveled the length of my spine, ending in a great big exclamation point at my … never mind. Billy had a huge bathtub, and was extremely adept at maneuvering in it.

  I snatched the bread from his hand. It did smell good. Maybe I could push it past my gullet if I chewed it really well first. I bit into it carefully. Started grinding my jaws. Kept at it while Billy took another slice and finished it.

  “Better keep up, cuz. Eat fast or eat less.”

  I gave up. “Look, Billy, I wasn’t exactly honest back at James’s.” And I wasn’t about to be entirely honest—in spirit, anyway—now either, so I crossed my fingers in the folds of the napkin on my lap. “I’m not really starving. Or even hungry. I needed an excuse to get out of there.”

  A look of sympathetic understanding came over his face. I had to fight an overwhelming urge to confess all my fears to him. If we’d still only been best friends, and I’d found myself in this situation with some other guy, I would have run to Billy in an instant. He’d always been my go-to fix-it guy, the superhero of finding the best way out of any tight spot. But this tight spot might prove too constrictive for him, given his views on having children. And if I had to admit the possibility of Mark being in the picture … no. We’d weathered that storm once, and I did not relish the thought of heading back into the cyclone again, especially if it proved not to be necessary.

  “Shopping with the guys a bit much for you?” Billy said.

  “It was a nightmare. Devon was so afraid we’d miss a bargain—we must have hit every freaking store at the outlet mall. Honestly, we didn’t leave until I was in tears.” Absolutely true, as far as it went, though I may have made it sound like I was exaggerating the crying thing for effect. Little did he know … and I hoped he never would.

  Billy signaled the waiter and asked him to box up our dinner. “We can eat it later,” he said once the waiter was out of earshot, “after I’ve relaxed you enough to enjoy your meatballs.”

  Which sounded wonderful, on the face of it, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enjoy letting Billy “relax” me any more than I could enjoy the meatballs now. Not before I knew.

  Damn it. What I needed was a private moment to pee on a fucking stick.

  * * *

  Billy hugged me to his chest in the cab, rubbing my arms against the chill. Either the heater was broken, or the cabbie was part polar bear.

  I wanted to relax and enjoy snuggling with my boyfriend, but instead found myself desperately trying to come up with a good reason for refusing the drink he was sure to offer me as soon as we got to his place. It was a simple matter to adapt my boobs down to normal (honestly, they weren’t that much bigger than usual—probably wouldn’t even be noticeable if I weren’t so meagerly endowed to begin with), but me refusing to share a drink with him? It could easily make
him suspect something wasn’t right, and might lead him right down the rabbit hole to where I was trying to bury my Big Fear.

  And there was absolutely no good reason to worry Billy at this point. Why put him through the angst when it might not turn out to be an issue? It would be cruel, in fact, to do so.

  The thing was, Billy’s possible reaction terrified me more than anything. If he drew back, if he pulled away from me, it would break something inside me. Even if it turned out I wasn’t (please, oh please, oh please) pregnant, could a reaction like that ever be fixed?

  I didn’t want to find out.

  Coward, a piercing voice from my inner mob of insecurities rang out.

  Yeah, so what? Screw you, I silently shouted back at it.

  So I had to have a justifiable excuse for refusing a drink. I could always strongly imply it was part of my new training regimen. Would he buy it? Probably, I decided. Back in middle school I’d once given up chocolate for a whole month when someone told me it caused pimples, so abstinence on my part wasn’t unheard of. Since adaptors don’t typically acquire their ability until puberty, back then I couldn’t be sure I’d be able to adapt the prospective zits away, so I’d decided it was best to be proactive against the dreaded acne monster.

  Billy had teased me mercilessly at the time, telling me zits wouldn’t show through my freckles anyway. I stuck to my guns … right up until the first indication I’d inherited the adaptor capability. Once I knew I’d be able to hide any complexion woes the easy way, I ate a whole pan of triple dark chocolate chip brownies in one sitting, and threw up for the rest of the afternoon. (It was totally worth it.)

  So, yeah, he’d maybe swallow the training implication, if I fed it to him the right way.

  My phone buzzed, breaking me out of my frantic planning with a start. Must be Mom, wondering when I’d be back home.

  I dug it out of my pocket before it could start ringing, switching excuse gears to quickly formulate a reason to give Mom for not staying overnight again. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d rather have sex with my boyfriend than string popcorn and sing Christmas carols with the parents-to-be, though if I handled it right it was exactly what she’d think. Which might not be classy, precisely, but was better than the truth. Plus, if I sounded strained, she’d chalk it up to me not wanting to admit I was sleeping with Billy instead of not wanting to be around Tom and Laura. You had to be subtle with Mom.

  Only the call wasn’t from Mom. I felt a perverse twinge that she obviously didn’t care about me as much now that she had her precious grandchild on the way, but it was immediately overshadowed by a great big thud when I saw it was Mark. I sat up so fast my elbow almost knocked the breath out of Billy.

  “Um, hi, Mark,” I said, and mouthed a “sorry” to Billy. “What’s up?”

  “Hey, Howdy. James said you went to dinner with Billy. Everything okay? No more sightings?”

  “Nope. Haven’t seen a sign of Loughlin, or anyone else suspicious, since I last saw you.”

  Of course, I hadn’t exactly been paying close attention either, what with my mind being otherwise occupied noticing every freaking pregnant woman in the city. There went two … no, three … more on the sidewalk next to our taxi. Didn’t women have anything better to do than repopulate the planet?

  I looked at Billy, relaying the question to him via raised eyebrows. (Mark’s question about the sightings, not my inner rhetorical one about pregnant women.) He shook his head. “Billy hasn’t seen anything weird either.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Billy said. “This is New York. We’re surrounded by weird. But nothing suspicious.”

  “Did you hear that, Mark? No, nothing important, only Billy being amusing. Do you want to talk to him yourself?”

  “Yeah, but first I need to ask you a favor,” Mark said.

  “Shoot,” I said. Anything to get my mind off of babies.

  “Would you be up for filling in for Dr. Carson again for a few days? I can guarantee you no more reduced gravity flights.”

  “Not another kidney stone, I hope,” I said, my brain shifting into high gear, rearranging plans. If I went back to Houston for a while, I wouldn’t have to make any excuses to anyone. I could do my job. Maybe grab a pregnancy test with no one watching, and put this whole stupid thing behind me.

  “No, she’s fine physically. It’s her husband who’s the problem.”

  “He doesn’t want her to go on the mission? Did he change his mind about the baby?” I said. If he wasn’t behind her on this, I didn’t see how it could possibly work out for her.

  “No, he’s on board with the experiment. What he’s got a problem with is Alec Loughlin. Rudy—Phil’s brother, the one who approached me about the job to begin with—told Misha about him trying to grab you at NASA, and now Misha doesn’t want Phil anywhere near the place until we’ve questioned the guy.”

  “I’m in,” I said at once. “When do you need me?”

  “Yesterday,” he said.

  Even better. “I’ll be there.”

  “One other thing. Better put the phone where Billy can hear this, too.”

  I leaned close to Billy and held the phone between our ears. “Go ahead.”

  “There’s been another murder. An adaptor.”

  Billy and I looked at each other. The concern in his eyes mirrored what I felt. “Who?” I asked hoarsely, afraid to hear the answer.

  “Jenny Harrison.”

  Oh, God. Jenny was a friend of Mom’s and Auntie Mo’s. She was several years younger, and they had kind of adopted her because she had no immediate family of her own. Unless you counted … “Her cats,” I said inanely. “Who’s taking care of her cats?”

  “I don’t know, Howdy. A neighbor, maybe?”

  Billy’s questions were more relevant. “Knife? Taser?” He spoke quietly, shielding his mouth with one hand so the cabbie wouldn’t hear.

  Somehow, I didn’t want to know the answer. “She wasn’t really friendly with her neighbors,” I mumbled.

  “Throat slit. Taser marks were plain. The coroner found them on Pickering, too, hidden beneath his hair.”

  I shut my eyes, but I couldn’t get rid of the image. “She mostly kept to herself. Mom and Auntie Mo were trying to get her to go out more…” I told myself to stop babbling, but myself didn’t seem to want to listen. In fact, Mom had suggested fixing her up with Mark. I’d shot down the idea at the time. Now I couldn’t help wondering if I’d let Mom play matchmaker, and it had worked out, if Mark would have kept Jenny safe and she wouldn’t be dead. (Yeah, I knew it was stupid even as I was thinking it, but the guilt fairies couldn’t seem to resist the opportunity to lob more guilt balls at me.)

  Billy swore softly, presumably about the Taser marks, and hugged me closer to him. “What do you need me to do, Mark?”

  “Make sure Ciel gets to the company plane I have waiting for her at the airport. And then I guess you better check on the cats.”

  Chapter 11

  “Here you go, Dr. Carson. I’ll leave you to get reacquainted with everyone’s favorite facility. Remember, practice makes perfect!” said the man with a clipboard, cheap pen, and fabulous facial hair. Seriously. Elvis sideburns and a handlebar mustache. I’d say it worked for him, only … it didn’t. On the other hand, it probably kept most people from noticing he had ears the size of a Ferengi’s.

  It was my second day in Houston place-holding for Dr. Phil while she and Misha waited out the manhunt at my tropical island hideaway. Billy hadn’t been thrilled—at first—to take me to the airport instead of his bed, but he understood how jobs worked. He was called away unexpectedly often enough himself; he could hardly complain when I was. Besides, he was going to be busy enough helping Mark. And they both seemed happy enough to get me out of the city where all three murders had occurred.

  Mom and Auntie Mo had divvied up Jenny’s cats between the two households for the meantime. Molly had wanted to take them all, but Auntie Mo had put her foot down at three
, leaving Mom to herd the other four. After the funeral, which was put on hold pending the murder investigation, they would work on finding them all good homes. (Ha! Good luck to Auntie Mo on ever getting their three away from Molly.)

  I chuckled at my scheduler (he seem to expect it) and said, “Thanks. I know the drill.”

  Except I really didn’t. Dr. Phil may be space-potty trained, but I definitely wasn’t. So when I closed the door behind him—and dead-bolted it—I started examining the equipment, and fast, because I had to pee. Urgently. (There was a regular toilet available, but if someone heard me flush it, they’d think Dr. Phil wasn’t doing her duty. Er, so to speak. I had her reputation to maintain.) What was it James had said about “frequent urination”? That it was a symptom of—

  No! Ciel Halligan, do not go there. You are wearing Dr. Phil’s aura, and if you have to pee, it’s because of her, not you. Think about your personal problems on your own time.

  From the research I’d done before I’d taken the job to begin with, I knew there was a functional training toilet, and a “positional” one. I peeked at the one on the right. Inside the four-inch hole in the seat there was a video camera. It was hooked to a monitor in front of the toilet, so you could make sure the pertinent part of your anatomy was centered over the relatively small target before you released your figurative bombs. The idea was to get the feel of the right position before you practiced on the functional throne.

  This kind of repetitive toilet training was essential, because once you’re in space, using the real thing, accidents can get not only messy (imagine human waste floating around), but dangerous. You do not want to accidentally inhale or (ew) ingest any stray poop or pee floating around because you didn’t hit your target.

  I took a deep breath. Dropped Dr. Phil’s drawers and took a seat. It was amazingly awkward to situate myself properly, but not nearly as embarrassing as turning on the monitor to the view of Dr. Phil’s nether region. There are parts of this job I am never going to get used to. Snapping my eyes shut after the briefest peek possible, I memorized the feel of my position so I could duplicate it on the working trainer.