Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) (27 page)

I rubbed my aching temples. “But no reason why they’re following me? This is crazy.”

Tech Head shrugged. “Got to be related to Max since that’s when it started. Did he give you anything or say anything about Acme?”

I just barely kept from saying that Max would have told me if Acme had anything to do with the spies. Not only would I have had a hard time explaining dead Max talking, but Max
had
warned me—about his family. If I traced Acme’s ownership, I knew it would lead back to the MacNeills, probably the Vanderventers as well. None of this told me anything.

“Take me to Max’s papers,” I said wearily. “And to a burger.”

• • •

The gloom of a cloudy evening was settling in, but I could see well enough to judge that the rusted-out, leaning tin shed behind the bar, where they’d stored Max’s boxes, was no place for sleeping. No wonder Lance had been confused when I’d asked to be stored with the papers. I’d obviously been living too long in civilization to think they would actually store papers somewhere safe, or dry. It started to rain, and the shed leaked. Crap.

I trudged back into the bar, ate my burger, fed Milo tidbits, and contemplated my next step.

I was still hoping, optimistically, that my hijab disguise and missing Miata had confused my followers about my whereabouts, so I didn’t want to call Jane’s movers if Acme was onto them. Of course, now that they were a few goons short, they might have given up, but I couldn’t count on it. Maybe I should have gone with the suits just to see what in heck they wanted, but they hadn’t appeared to be reasonable people.

I debated calling Schwartz, but he was a nice
guy with two jobs. Plus he was a cop, and not to be trusted. He didn’t need to know about the shady side of town, and I could have gotten high just breathing in here. And we’d best not get into where the Escalade had gone. Apparently, my moral sensibility wasn’t offended by car theft or drugs, but Schwartz was nicer than me.

Cora couldn’t fit all those boxes in a Mini Cooper. That left me one choice. I glared at my phone awhile before I punched in Andre’s number.

• • •

An anonymous white utility van pulled up at the bar an hour later. I was standing under the overhang, waiting out of the drizzle, Max’s boxes lined up along the wall, and Milo in my bag. The boys hadn’t thought it a wise idea to let strangers into their shed, which contained other cartons and crates besides Max’s. If these were the boxes the rapist had wanted, they might be hotter than stolen parts.

Andre climbed out of the driver’s seat, looking cool and substantial again. He gave me a once-over to make certain I wasn’t freaking out or holding a gun on him and silently began lugging boxes to the back of the van. I grabbed what I could, and those of the guys still capable of walking straight helped. In a matter of minutes, Max’s life was inside Andre’s van. I was pretty certain Max would not be pleased.

Really, though, it’s just not right for your boyfriend to be dead and still inside your head. It’s hard to move on like that, so we could both have been displeased, I supposed.

There was just enough room in the van to roll the Harley into the back with the help of my guys. Andre watched silently. I had no idea if he was ready to blow up or just had nothing to say. At that point, I really didn’t care. My alternatives were shrinking with each passing hour. I was still thoroughly frustrated that I was wasting study time.

I had goons gunning for me, a van load of potentially explosive material for which a man had died, a boyfriend in hell, and a life that was falling apart. I needed someone to talk with. Woo-woo Themis and Max weren’t helpful, and Max’s biker friends were limited in their understanding.

Andre probably wouldn’t believe me, but he was the only other person who knew about the boxes. Who else could I turn to?

I climbed into the passenger seat while he got behind the wheel. I checked on Milo, and he’d fallen asleep, looking all cute and kitteny and not in the least bobcat-like. Even my pet was weird.

“Where to?” Andre asked without inflection.

“Know an empty warehouse?” I slumped in the seat, as much from exhaustion as for concealment.

He turned the ignition and backed out without answering.

I got it. If I wouldn’t talk to him, he wouldn’t talk to me.

I didn’t know why I was resisting Andre. He’d offered me a job, given me the Miata as a reward, come to my rescue with an AK-47 or the equivalent. He’d even mentioned the apartments and would have
taken me to see one if I had asked. And he was here now, the only semi-sane person I could count on.

Instinct continued to rebel against offering this man with so much power any part of me, but I just wasn’t seeing any choices here.

“Max’s family owns part of Acme Chemical,” I said conversationally. “He was investigating his family business when he died. Those boxes contain his papers.”

“Says who?” Andre demanded gruffly. “A bunch of stoned bikers?”

Well, there was another reason I’d been stalling. I rolled my eyes and considered opening my compact, but having Max and Andre yelling at each other wasn’t conducive to my limited sanity.

“Max trusted his friends,” I said calmly enough, trying to keep my weirdness to a minimum for the sake of rational communication. “Acme apparently hired corporate spies to record everything I’ve done since the funeral.”

He snorted. “Hope you didn’t do anything too personal.”

“My boyfriend is
dead,
” I reminded him. “Let’s not get too perverted. I’m trying to be careful here. If Acme was spying on me, then they were also spying on the Zone.”

“Yeah, I gathered that. What I want to know is
why
.”

Finally, he sounded as if he might be coming to life.

“Because we’re weird?” I suggested. “Maybe we’re their own personal zoo or monkey experiment.”

“Not until you blasted Max,” he reminded me.

“I didn’t blast him!” I said, summoning righteous indignation. “His brakes were cut and his steering mechanism tampered with.”

“Like tires go flat and sprinkler systems flood when you’re around?”

Not going there. I’d been mad that day. Had my powers somehow cut Max’s brakes? I hadn’t asked for him to die, but if my powers were metaphorical and not literal, then damning him to hell pretty well included death. It was my turn to sit in silence, refusing to talk. Andre didn’t need to know that, did he?

“All right, I apologize,” he finally said. “Sarah might intentionally kill someone, but you wouldn’t.”

I sneaked a peek at his profile, but we were driving down dark roads and all I could see were his wide shoulders and his too-perfect nose. I wondered if Saturn had sons and if so, who Andre had killed to get that profile.

“Sarah intentionally killed that guy today, and probably her husband and her mother, not that any of them were a great loss to the world,” I informed him. I hadn’t spent a lot of time philosophizing over vigilantism but I
was
a wannabe lawyer. I was pretty much on the side of judges and jury. Reluctantly, I concluded that Andre needed to know I was a loose cannon, for his own safety. “I just damned Max to hell, and he stupidly went.”

Andre hit the brakes, but whether it was because he was nearing a stop sign or because of me, I couldn’t
tell. I just waited stoically for his response. I had to feel my way through this one inch at a time.

“You know for certain he went to
hell
?” he asked with interest.

“I know he’s dead and his ghost is talking to me in mirrors. Don’t know if that qualifies as hell. I never sent anyone there before.”

He pondered that for a moment. “You think you’re talking to Max in mirrors?”

“Yeah.”

Or going insane, but Andre was pretty astute. He’d have caught that, too.

“Is he saying anything useful?”

“He said to stay away from you and the Zone. That’s probably useful but not practical, especially since the asshole was using me to spy on the Zone before he died.”

He glanced in my direction before asking, “You were mad at Max before his car crashed? That’s why you damned him?”

“I thought he was going to kill me! You’d have done the same.”

“And after you found out his brakes were cut, did you grieve?”

I stared at him, trying to figure out where this was going. “Of course. I’m not made of stone. We had six good months together.”

“So now you think he’s still alive and in a mirror?”

I looked at him suspiciously. “I don’t know about alive.”

“Denial,” he said flatly. “This is the stage of grief called denial. You’ll start bargaining with the mirror before long, promising to do better if he’ll just come back. And when he doesn’t, you’re going to really sink low.”

“Not buying it,” I said firmly, although I knew I was skirting the truth. Was promising to track the guy who had almost killed the kids my way of bargaining with God? My way of promising to do better if only God would send Max back to me?

I flipped open my compact. Max wasn’t coming in clearly, but I thought he looked wary. “I have your boxes in a truck. Where would you like me to take them?”

“
Dangerous,
” he said inside my head. “
Burn them
.”

“Nope, not burning them. Saturn’s daughter demands justice, remember? I’ll probably join you in purgatory if I don’t do my job.”

“
Justy, you’re a pain in the butt,
” he said wearily. “
Find the file on Vanderventer
.”

“And do what with it?” I asked, but he was gone again.

Merely acknowledging my one-sided argument with a piece of glass with his usual snarky look of disbelief, Andre steered the van into an industrial storage area surrounded by chain-link fences. He punched a code into the gate, and it swung open to let him in. The man had more resources at his disposal than I wanted to consider.

“Saturn’s daughter?” he finally asked as he drove between corrugated tin buildings.

“Long story. Max says there’s a file called Vanderventer in the boxes. Is that useful information?”

“You already knew Vanderventer owns part of the chemical plant, didn’t you? No, that’s not proving anything except your overactive imagination.”

“Then there’s not a lot more I can say. I don’t have time for investigating Vanderventer, Acme, or the Zone. My goal is to stay alive long enough to take finals. Everything else is optional.”

“All right, I’ll accept that. Want me to go through those papers? Or put Frank on them?”

I was torn. I really wanted to do it myself. But lives could be at stake if we didn’t know what was going down. I’d just wasted an entire evening hiding when I needed to be studying.

“I’ll look at the Vanderventer file first,” I decided. “We’ll know better how to proceed after we find that.”

I
was still wearing Ernesto’s jacket against the chill of a spring night. At least the cheap polyester had finally dried. Sitting on the floor, grateful for my healthy legs, I leaned against the wall and flipped through the files in my lap while Milo fell asleep on top of my bag. If I really believed my legs had grown because I’d sent a rapist to hell, I’d have squirmed in discomfort, so I refused to believe it.

I’d had no idea Max had been hiding all this crap. Why the hell hadn’t he kept computer files? Or at least
a sane organizing system? All this time, I’d just assumed he didn’t use computers because he liked doing cash business to avoid taxes. Instead, he’d been spying on me and his whole family and, with a true paranoid flair, kept his files off the radar with
paper
. Paper that he could burn without leaving a trace. Paper that couldn’t be sorted without knowing his system.

Andre was still unloading boxes, working up a sweat. I was feeling guilty about pressing my boss into hard labor. Now I would owe Andre, big-time, and I hated being obligated to anyone, especially to anyone in authority. I’d spent too many years as a loner to fully comprehend how payback worked, but I was pretty certain Andre wasn’t helping out of the goodness of his heart—although hard work looked good on him. I liked his sweaty, dusty forehead better than the smirk.

The storage unit had fluorescents overhead, not exactly great for my weak vision. Finished with the first stack of files, I put my new legs to work and crawled among the boxes. I was wearing my geeky glasses and an overlarge coat—not exactly a sexy look. But Andre’s gaze was on my ass when he dropped a box nearby. I was still ticked that he didn’t believe I talked to Max.

“Finals,” I said conversationally, distracting his attention while pawing through another box. “I have another exam at noon tomorrow. I’m reserving energy for that.”

“No, you’re not. You’re releasing it by frying tires and drenching my damned club.” He flung down the last box and kicked it next to the wall.

“You’d rather I’d gone quietly with the spooks?” I asked in incredulity, looking up from the box I’d just opened. Max’s handwriting and bad spelling were giving me a headache.

“No, I’d rather you waited until Schwartz and I had time to gather forces before you started attacking them! They had guns. You didn’t!” Pretty Boy wasn’t looking so pretty in the green glare of overheads. He looked Hulk furious. Was it my imagination, or was he starting to fade around the edges again? Definitely my imagination. I preferred his Jim Garner cool to the irrational Hulk.