Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) (26 page)

“I think she’s hiding. Best to steer clear of her
anyway. I’ll find you a nice pole dancer. Or a cook. Wouldn’t you prefer a cook?” I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was saying. I was too dazed to be coherent. I held up the thumb drive and gazed at it blankly.

Oh, right, bank transactions. My hit-and-run creep. Another lifetime. I was still reeling from recognizing the power of my suggestions—and that corporate spooks had decided to take me out. I don’t know which had me most off-balance.

“Nah, that’s okay.” Boris intelligently waved off my offer to find him a girlfriend. “Tell Andre he’ll have to come up my way from now on.” He staggered up, clinging to his glasses and looking for escape as the police started taking notes. I had a feeling he liked to fly low, under the radar of officialdom.

I nodded toward the kitchen hall where the cooks were coming and going with mops and pails. “Try that way. I won’t mention you.”

He nodded in gratitude and slinked off.

“Clancy, get your ass in this office now!”

I looked at Detective Schwartz, who looked back at me, face blank. I shrugged, donned my reading glasses again, and moseyed in the direction of Ernesto’s and
my
office, burying my face in Milo’s tufted neck. He purred. He actually purred.

I’d been attacked—shot at—had my deposit bag swiped, watched a chimp kill a man, and visualized a flood into existence. Really, what could make my day worse?

The instant I walked into the office, Andre took
one look at me and flung Ernesto’s coat in my direction. I let it hit the floor before I worked out what he wanted.

My halter was soaked. Anticipating my waitress costume, I was wearing one of my sexiest bras under it, and it was soaked, too. I was pretty visible. My hair dripped down my face and neck. I wouldn’t be dry soon. Murmuring sweet nothings in a kitty ear, I set Milo on the floor, slipped the coat on, and wrapped it around me. I finally realized I couldn’t stop shivering.

“Nice machine gun, Legrande,” I said, trying to sound like my usual smart-mouthed self.

But I wasn’t myself. I didn’t know who I was.

Andre obviously didn’t either. The Brits have a term for it—gobsmacked. He looked gobsmacked as well as unusually insubstantial, but my brain wasn’t fully functioning, so I could have been imagining his looking gray around the edges.

He shoved a hand through his wet hair and apparently fought an internal struggle. Wet silk clung to muscled pecs and plastered to six-pack abs. Andre liked to stay in shape. The image of him wielding an assault rifle like Robert Conrad in
Wild, Wild West
filled my head like a movie poster. Steampunk television kind of fit the day’s events.

“The invisible thief stole the deposit again,” I said conversationally.

“So do what you do and make him visible,” he said crossly. “What in heck
do
you do?”

I shrugged and slumped into a hard plastic, retro-round chair Ernesto apparently thought looked cool.
Or maybe he just didn’t want people to get comfortable. “Want me to experiment and find out?”

That set him back a bit. Damned good thing he had the smarts to work out just how dangerous that could be. Who knew what would happen if I visualized invisible thieves turning visible? Ink pots could rain from the heavens. My bet was that this Saturn business relied on items at hand and wasn’t too literal, especially since I didn’t think too logically when juiced. Which led to me wondering how mad I had to be before I could do anything.

“You’ll have to press charges against those jackasses out there,” he said conversationally. “I can file trespassing and maybe even hit them with theft of the deposit. The staff can probably have them charged with terrorizing. But you’re the one they threatened with false arrest and shot at.”

“I need a lawyer,” I decided. “I have to face an ethics committee before I can get my license. I already have enough black marks against me that I’ll be lucky to survive the interview. Publicizing what looks like a drug deal gone bad or a mob hit won’t help me.”

“Working at Chesty’s probably won’t win you any favors, either,” he said with casual cruelty. “We need to remove you from sight until we figure out who’s at the bottom of this.”

Remembering the thumb drive clutched in my fist, I must have developed a stony expression as I pondered revenge. Andre leaned his palms on the desk and glared.

“What?” he demanded.

“I need to hole up in my room to study. I’ll just
leave the house for finals. When that’s done, I’ll find your thief. We can renegotiate job terms after that.”

“Dammit, Clancy! Your rooms aren’t a safe house! You’ll endanger everyone in the place if these morons can’t get at you on the street.”

“I can move into the law school’s library,” I said with a touch of sarcasm. “Think corporate thugs will dare the hallowed halls of the Baltimore judges’ alma mater?”

Except for that gray around the edges bit, Andre looked good when furious. I thought he might start pulling his hair or mine, but Schwartz rapped on the partially open door and let himself in.

“I need to ask questions for the report,” he said tonelessly, circumspectly not engaging in eye contact with either of us.

“The guy with bruised balls shot the sprinkler system when I kicked him,” I told him, feeding him lines as he had me earlier. “The ones who got away stole the weekend deposit.”

“How many thugs are needed to steal a bar deposit?” he asked skeptically.

“The weekend deposit for the entire street. The tally is probably a soggy mess on the bar somewhere. Substantial sums are involved.” Well, they were substantial to me, but probably weren’t worth the price of a cadre of mercenaries.

I must have really ticked off someone with lots of pocket change.

“What about the dead guy?” Schwartz deadpanned. He was digging this alternate history.

“Big dude went apeshit and throttled him for trying to run with the money,” I said solemnly.

“Apeshit?” He was having a hard time keeping a straight face with Andre snickering.

He asked a few more cursory questions and departed. Raising a mocking eyebrow at Andre, I grabbed my backpack from my cubicle and followed Schwartz out. Let the honcho steam in his own juices for a while. Fury obviously didn’t suit Andre. He needed to get his cool back.

I grabbed Milo and told Ernesto I’d be back next week if he needed me. I had one of the busboys run the Miata keys over to Cora’s office with a message asking her to drive it to my old apartment.

By next week I probably wouldn’t have any job at all, but I knew my priorities. I wasn’t going to blow years of hard work by failing finals.

• • •

Instead of going into my apartment after walking there, I simply jumped on the Harley and went to school. Maybe I could find a cubicle to sleep in for the night.

By the time I noticed the strange looks I was attracting as I marched through the library’s marbled halls, I realized I was still wearing a man’s ugly suit coat over my soaked halter and capris. The ride had partially dried them, but I undoubtedly looked like a homeless hooker.

Shock has strange effects on the mind. Mercenaries had tried to kill me. I had good reason to be half out of my mind with fear.

I found an open computer and inserted the thumb
drive in the slot. The information Boris had collected opened in Excel with each bank teller neatly labeled across the top, the name of the depositor down the side, and the amount deposited filled in at the appropriate cross section. Very neat job. Boris had earned his pay.

I scanned the list of bank account names down the side. No Vanderventer jumped out at me, of course. The Acme Chemical Company had made a very large deposit. I went back to the thumb drive and looked for a file on the times of deposit. I had to trace the depositor to the teller to the time of deposit. The chemical company had been there nearly an hour before the hit-and-run. Nothing was ever easy.

I started working from the times of deposit. I couldn’t tell which teller number belonged to the outside drive-through, so I had to look at them all. With a little more study, I had the names of five possibilities, companies that had made deposits in and around five o’clock, just before the bus arrived. One deposit was to Ace Associates. Boris hadn’t provided detail, but my bet was that a jerkwad like Vanderventer, driving a government limo after taking his grandmother to a society promo op—as per the invisible intruder’s newspaper clipping—had stopped to make a payoff to his goons at Ace.

Swearing, I debated how much my life was worth if I was shot, compared to what it was worth if I failed the exams. I printed out the information, stuck it into my contract law book, and then hid the thumb drive in the stacks under Bank Law.

Okay, I was now officially paranoid.

I went to the restroom to attempt to make myself look less crazy. Milo leaped out and availed himself of the facilities. My cat knew how to use a toilet. Maybe I should have thought twice about bringing him into a ladies’ lounge.

I glared into the mirror at my curly locks as I combed them into their newfound perfection. Having great hair was not worth my soul. I just didn’t have that much vanity.

And then I realized what I was doing—looking for Max in the mirror. He wasn’t there. I wanted to weep. Of course he wasn’t there. I rummaged in my bag until I found my compact.

Max appeared wavering and faint in front of my reflection. “
Vanderventer,
” he confirmed in my head. “
Use me
.”

Apparently without the Zone, he didn’t have the strength to linger, and he faded away. He’d said he couldn’t see what I was doing unless I stood in front of my mirror. Did the bar mirror at Chesty’s count? Did he know what had just happened? If not, what had he meant by
use
him? How?

I’d heard of students who suffered nervous breakdowns under the stress of finals. Maybe that was me. In any event, I didn’t want to run into those goons again.

Use Max
. I shrugged. I could use Max’s buddies.

It was well past happy hour. I knew where to find them. Carrying my hope for a future in the books on my back, I hopped on the Harley and headed out to a real biker bar where the guys weren’t too fond of suits and Escalades.

E
ven though this was only Monday and not a weekend party night, the boys at the bar greeted me with upraised beer bottles. I was too mentally and emotionally wiped to celebrate. I located Lance and strode straight back to his booth.

“Babe.” He raised his glass in salute. “That was some awesome prize you brought us. Gonzo cleaned out the mechanicals, and we’ve got Tech Head drooling in cyber heaven over the gear. Max would be proud.”

“Doubt it.” I threw my backpack on the bench and slid into the booth. Milo hopped out as soon as I sat down. I watched him worriedly as he set out to explore, but he’d tackled gangsters. My guys shouldn’t hurt him. “They came gunning for me at the club. I need a hideaway until I can finish finals. Know anyplace I can squirrel away?”

“Max’s place is paid through the end of the month, but his family cleaned out the personal stuff. It’s still furnished. We could find you an air mattress,” he suggested.

I didn’t know how I felt about that, but it did belatedly trigger a question that had been at the back of my mind. “What happened to all Max’s books and papers? Did the family take them, too?”

Now even I was referring to them as “the family.” I had to keep visions of mafia mobs out of my head.

Lance grinned smugly through his three-day-old beard. “We got there first. Knew he wouldn’t want his papers pawed through by that family of his. Haven’t burned them yet. You want a look-see?”

I really needed to study, but the guys loved bonfires and would take any excuse to start one. Those papers weren’t long for this world, and I had a feeling I’d regret not looking into them. “Yeah, can you just store me with the papers for a while?”

He looked a little confused until the skinny guy in camouflage they called Tech Head wandered over and threw down a disc.

“They heard everything you ever said after Max died,” he said without preamble. “The equipment is
registered to Ace Associates. Their network is picked up by a feed at Acme Chemical. No imagination. These punks think we’re stupid.”

He took a seat beside Lance and stretched his boots under the table. “Acme was Max’s hot button, so I played with the equipment and picked up recordings to and from the Escalade. It’s all on there.” He nodded at the disc. “They’re so paranoid, they’re recording each other and anyone who blinks in their vicinity.”

My stomach rumbled, and I wasn’t certain if it was because I hadn’t eaten in hours or because I wanted to vomit. “Any clue who they are or what they want?” I asked with trepidation.

“The snoops don’t know nothing,” Tech Head asserted. “They kept calling Acme, asking what they should do next. They had guys tailing you every which way but not a one knows why. They filmed the funeral home and got you walking to your car but not any of the fighting. Some bigwig screamed at them about that. They photoed your movers and they were following their truck all over town. If anyone is putting two and two together, it ain’t the snoops. I particularly liked the frame of your little bug driving by with the top down and the dark-haired guy at the wheel. They cursed up a storm over that one. They were running out of ideas, sounded like.”