Double Cross [2] (24 page)

She’s going to fight me on my decision to quit, but I’m ready.

As usual, the door to the building is propped open. I head in and run up the scuffed staircase and knock. No answer. I’d thought she was going to be home tonight; she seemed rather intense about it, that she was doing nothing tonight. She stressed it.
Nothing
.

Another knock. No answer. When I call her, I hear the ring inside, which alarms me, but then she flings open the door, looking flustered. “Justine!”

“Were you asleep or something?” I ask.

“Sort of.”

I breeze in past her. “You shouldn’t nap this close to bedtime.” I look around and fix on a heating pipe that goes from her floor to her ceiling. “Mmmm.” I test it for stability. “This should hold.” I pull my handcuffs out of my bag and turn to her.

She widens her eyes.

I smile. “That’s right, Ez has deepened her hold, and this is what things have come to. I’m like fifty percent sure I’m going to be a sleepwalking zombie tonight unless you lock me up. And no way am I going to Packard on this.” My gaze slides over her cluttered apartment—pillows, soda bottles, chunky black work boots. It’ll be nice to spend some girl time with her. “I’m thinking you can slide your pullout over here, and maybe if I had one hand cuffed to the pole. It’s gonna suck, but …”

She’s looking at me strangely.

“I have this weird feeling sometimes that I want to help Ez. Nothing conscious, but deep down, almost preverbal, and I no longer trust myself in sleep. Are you hungry? Maybe we can order a pizza.” I flop down on her couch. Pizza, wine, and then I’ll tell her my decision. “Christ, I was just in my car almost dozing off, and I could almost feel her.”

She lowers her voice. “She has deepened her hold?”

“I don’t know if she’s deepened it or if I just feel super-vulnerable in general, like how things are with Otto. I might be obsessing. I know that’s possible, being that this is sort of a brain thing. And what if her invasion activity exerts some sort of pull on the vascular structure of my brain? Like a kind of tidal pull? Shit, I wasn’t thinking about that …” For the first time since I’ve arrived, I actually focus on her. “Is this okay? Is something wrong?”

“You cannot sleep over.”

“What?”

She shrugs suddenly, seeming resigned to something. “You cannot.”

“Why?” I look at her coffee table. Two bottles of soda. Chunky black work boots on the floor underneath.
Chunky black work boots.
My jaw drops. I scan the room. “Where is he?”

She blinks prettily at me. Then, “Fire escape.”

I look at the window. Closed. He can’t hear us, at least. “This is so out of bounds. Oh my God.” I don’t know whether to laugh or scold. In my frazzled state, it would probably be a little bit of both. I take a deep breath. “What are you doing?”

“Getting rid of you so that he can come back in.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I am not hurting our Dorks investigation.”

“Jesus!”

“I am not hurting it. I give you my word.”

“I can’t believe you have him here.”

“I kissed him.”

I bite back my smile. I know this is not jubilation time.

She sees it anyway and says, “I will kiss him again when you leave.”

“Oh my God.”

She narrows her eyes. “I know. I do not know what is into me.”

“How about you getting the customer list? Any chance of that getting into you?”

“No, I could not.”

“Why? If he falls asleep? It would be nothing to pull that little flash drive off his key chain and copy it. Little eensy beensy flash.”

“No, I could not.”

“He’d never know.”

“I am not the kind to—” Abruptly she stops; then, “I would
not
.” As if that’s all she’d meant.

“You’re not the kind to fuck a target to complete a mission? Like your friend Justine did? You’re not the kind to lie to a man you’ve come to trust and adore? Or manage and manipulate him? Make him sorry he ever knew you?”
Like I did with Otto.

She looks at the fire escape.

“I don’t want you to, Shelby.”

“You don’t?”

“No. You know what? If it doesn’t feel right to you, then you can’t do it. Screw it all.”

She puts her hand over my forehead as if to check my temperature.

“Stop it,” I laugh. “We’ll get the stuff without you. Just don’t hurt us tonight.”

“I will not hurt you. I will not hurt investigation, Justine. But what about …” She motions at my handcuffs.

“Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to go home and handcuff myself to my bed, and I’m going to throw the key across the room. Okay?”

“Oh, Justine, this seems quite dangerous.”

“No, it can work, but you have to come over at six-thirty to unlock me. Can you do that?”

“Of course.”

“Or, if I call in the middle of the night, like there’s a fire or I have to pee, you’ll come over and release me?”

“No, this is quite dangerous.”

“It’s fine. Six-thirty, got it? Unless I call.”

She purses her lips.

“But if I call you, like, in my sleep, you’ll know, right?” I say. “You have to make sure I’m fully awake before releasing me.”

She nods. “I understand.”

“Consider me gotten rid of.”

I
WALK INTO
Mongolian Delites so confused, so lost, and he’s there. He looks at me with that softness in his eyes, and he sighs. I can feel the sigh inside me.

I go to him.

He takes my hand and pulls me into his arms with this steady force that’s intensely satisfying, and we kiss—hard and long. I melt into him, lost and found all at the same time. A warm glow flows through me—relief, heat. I want to kiss him and taste him everywhere.

Don’t be mad. Just for a little while, just for this moment
, Packard pleads, pulling me closer.
I’m going to make things work out
, he whispers.

Warm lips on my neck, my ear. He whispers my name. I grab his hair, pull him to me.

Frenzied breaths, harder now, shoulder blades thunk against the wall. I love him and I love his happiness—I feel it as strong as I feel my own heartbeat, and I let his happiness overwhelm me, along with his kisses. I push my hands in under his clothes. I have to find his skin, his warmth, touch him everywhere. He’s pulling off my shirt, kissing my little bra strap bulge, an area of fatness I hate, but he kisses it and loves it. He loves me. I want to be with him, but I’m so far away from him—I can’t get to him. I pull and pull, but I can’t get free.

Crash. Glass shattering. My arm is trapped—it hurts. Something’s got my arm!

I jerk awake, heart racing, screaming pain shooting through my wrist. Cuffed to the bed. A yell from the street. Was there a car crash down there?

The red numbers on my clock say 4:07 a.m.

I lay back, ragged and bone-weary, feeling like my mind has been trashed, emotions flung from drawers. It was just a dream memory, I tell myself. Ez pulling out bits and pieces of my life. I take a deep breath, shoving everything back. It’s winter, and I’m here in my apartment, cuffed to my bed frame.

I sit up, shoulder burning. I contort far enough over to flip on my light, and grab my book about a Victorian lady sleuth. Just as I’m getting into it, I hear the
bleep bleep bleep
of a siren on quiet mode. Red flashes illuminate the trees outside my window. Something’s happening.

I pull as far forward as I can, but I can’t see down to the street. Is it the police? Could there be a fire? I wait, listening. If there was a fire, somebody would’ve put on the alarm. I don’t hear doors slamming, either. An accident out there, I decide. That would make sense, given the crashing sound.

I’m too apprehensive to fall back asleep, but sounds and sirens outside don’t constitute enough danger to wake Shelby up and make her drive over and release me.

Sitting up, I settle my book into my lap and position my hand so that the bracelet part of the handcuff puts the least pressure on my wrist, which is rubbed pink in places. I read, trying not to think about Packard being privy to all my feelings during that whole episode last summer. Especially after the way he exploited my feelings in the office store. I’m also trying not to think of the vascular implications of Ez mucking around in my head, and I’m definitely trying to not focus on the tingles on
the upper left side of my skull. If Otto were here, he would have calming things to say about the tingles, and the sirens, too. I miss him.

At 6:28, my front door lock clicks and creaks, and Shelby sweeps into my bedroom with a cup of coffee and a sheaf of papers, which she slaps onto the bed. “The list—three hundred twenty-two pairs sold.”

“What?”

“Is shipping list for glasses. All customer names. All addresses.”

I just stare at it.

“And coffee,” she adds. “Now where is key? To release you?”

“Avery’s customer list?”

“Yes.” She looks around. “Where is key?”

I point to the corner where I threw it, a glinting jewel by the baseboards. She grabs it and comes over. The springs squeak as she sits.

“Oh, Justine!” she says when she sees my wrist. “Did you try to escape? Has her hold deepened?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, overcome with such sadness for my friend. She won’t even meet my eyes as she fits the key into the cuff. She doesn’t want to talk about how she got the list. Obviously she screwed him over somehow. She must feel like a monster.

She gets my hand free and I touch it gingerly, tears clouding my vision. I barely know what I’m crying about. Shelby ruining things with Avery? Me? Ez’s plight? Packard?

“Drink.” She hands me the coffee. I drink.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. No way will I say something like,
You shouldn’t have done that.
Saying something like that would just discount her sacrifice.

She peers at me strangely. “Sorry for what? What is wrong? Does it hurt?”

“I’m sorry you had to do … whatever you did.”

“Yes.” She bites her lip. “Perhaps I should not have unlocked you. Until I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“For one, we do not have to go to office today,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

She rises from the bed and goes to my dresser, pulling up a pink scarf. “He knows we are not auditors.”

“Avery? He knows?”

“Yes.” She winds the scarf around her neck. “He knows because I told him.”

I sit up. “You
told
him?”

“Do not worry. I did not tell him about Otto and so forth. But he knows our mission concerning the Dorks, and he printed list of his free will.”

“Just like that? What about his brand promise?”

“He made exception to catch killers.” She adjusts the scarf. “We had several philosophical discussions before I determined he would be with me on this matter. And he is grateful to Packard also for saving my life.”

I stand. “You told him about the
disillusionists
?”

“Yes. Avery does not approve, Justine. However, he makes this exception.”

“I don’t get it. Does he know what we’re doing? Like with Otto’s prisoners?”

“No, nothing of that. I told him only what is my story. And about our work to catch Dorks. I knew he would be with us. I knew his mind.”

“You knew his heart.”

“Pfft. Heart is a pump.”

I smile. “I’m sure he agrees.” I look at the sheaf of papers, recalling suddenly what Simon said. “Oh no.”

“What?”

I tell her about Simon’s speculations: that Avery’s as
good as dead once we have his list of people who bought the glasses. That highcaps can’t allow the glasses to be made ever again.

Her expression changes from alarm to disdain. “No.” She shakes her head. “No, that was only if we took list, stole list. Avery acts as friend now. He
provided
list.”

“Simon is no fool.”

She waves this off. “Who would kill Avery if he acts as friend to highcaps? Also, only handful of highcaps would know.”

I regard her incredulously. Is Shelby thinking the best of human nature? “Those glasses are dangerous to highcaps,” I remind her.

“Is too late, genie of glasses is out of bottle. Avery is ally to highcaps. You will tell them?”

“Yeah, but you should warn Avery to be extra careful.”

Shelby smiles. Positively glows. “Justine, Avery’s whole life is for fighting and protection against things. Everything. He has several protective devices upon his person at all times.”

I suggest Shelby drop off the list at Packard’s herself. “You’re the one who got it,” I say.

She shakes her head. Avery’s waiting in the car; they’re heading out for pecan pancakes.

“Go,” I say. “I’ll run the list over.”

After she’s gone, I call Simon and tell him we’re not going in.