Nine Inches of Snow and the Ebony Princess (18 page)

"You should give him a call, Nove."

"And get his hopes up?"

"What hopes up? You're still friends, aren't you?"

"The connotation doesn't translate as well for him as it does for you. Besides, he doesn't want 'just friends'; he made that perfectly clear the last time we spoke."

"What he says and what he feels are two different things."

Nova sighed, but almost immediately brightened when she heard the coffee cart coming down the hall with young Josh at its helm. Her mouth watered, anticipating a soothing jolt of java and an excuse to get off the phone—besides the other thousand-and-one things she had to do today, not the least of which was tracking down that police station in her vision.

She needed to cut Kaylee short. She knew what was coming.

Nova had settled down in New York for the long haul, had purchased a house upstate, and was firmly entrenched and advancing in a new brokerage firm on Wall Street. But Kaylee had never failed to bring Matt up, not in all the time Nova had been out east. She’d also never failed to remind her of everything she’d left behind and that it was still waiting for her whenever she was ready to end her wild goose chase.

It was the only aspect of her life idling in neutral, that ”wild goose chase." Kaylee would never know how close Nova had come in the past year to ending her “wild goose chase” as all her loved ones in L.A. wanted her to. She’d had no luck with the personals, want ads or the police, having gone so far as doing a rough sketch from her visions and posting it where and when she could.

All she had was a place and a face, each general at that. With so many people going missing and murdered around the city—

around the
country
—it was easy enough for her guy to get lost in the shuffle. As small as the world was getting, New York was still a big piece of real estate and pretty ambiguous territory for one person to canvass, especially when searching for the face of a stranger in the crowd.

Not just a face. So much more. It had to be, to make you come
all this way with nothing but a hunch.

Before her episode minutes ago, she’d begun to think her trip to the east coast a year too late, that her stranger had already met an untimely end, was perhaps even one of the thousands of World Trade Center bombing victims. But her visions had increased, not decreased, since she’d been in New York, and now Nova
knew
he was close, could almost taste him.

How could she explain all this to Kaylee Dakota, a Texas farm girl more practical and down-to-earth than Nova's own disciplined father?

Josh, bearer of liquid heaven, parked his cart outside her door and pantomimed a question—did she want him to come in? Nova frantically motioned him forward.

"K, I have to go. The coffee cart's here."

"Haven't I taught you anything about putting that poison in your body?"

"I'll control my coffee addiction when you stop your Godiva addiction, guru."

"Okay, touché"

"Besides, I'm down to one-and-a-half cups a day. I'm being good."

"All right then," Kaylee said. "But I'll remember exactly where we left off. Count on it."

"Don't you have to be down at the Groove opening up?"

"I'll think of you while I'm ascending the granite, smartass."

"Rub it in." What she wouldn't do to be right there beside Kaylee, scaling boulders, swinging from crack to crack, feeling the adrenaline rush of weightlessness. Next to her morning runs and hot sex, it was the only other time she ever really felt free and at peace.

Nova thought twice about asking Kaylee to tell Matt hello, but in the end, she simply signed off with an "I love you." She hung up to Kaylee's "Ditto" and chuckles.

Rolling her chair from behind the desk, Nova stood to meet her savior. She smiled as Josh made his way across the thick wine-toned carpeting of her office. His obvious nervousness and crush were endearing. She couldn't count the times since she’d been at Bornstein and Connor that she had gotten a lap full of half-and-half, milk, or cream cheese. She could tell the kid she didn't bite, tell him to calm down and think of her as one of the guys, but that would probably cause more trouble than it would cure.

"How ya doin', Ms. Foxx?"

"Hey, Josh." She watched with bated breath as he moved steadily towards her, careful of each step. Nova met him halfway hoping to avoid one of his famous calamities, but it wasn’t to be.

He gave her her coffee—black no sugar—and she gave him his money. But then he mentioned the great weather and Nova responded with a crack about going to the beach or taking a long walk and having an ice cream cone.

The combination of imagining her in a bikini or licking the sweet cold confection must have short-circuited his muscles because Josh expectedly overturned several cups of coffee as he reached for his cart. When Nova automatically bent to help him retrieve and sop up the mess, they bumped heads.

At least it was a good excuse to hurry him out of her office so that she could plan her escape for an early and long lunch. She needed a break now more than ever, if not to clear her aching head, then to start making sense of her earlier vision and re-energize her search.

* * * *

"It'll be a cinch. Just snatch and run."

Ransom could barely hear the dare over his pounding heart, the prospect of doing something inherently antisocial, not to mention illegal, pumping him full of adrenaline.

He was really going to do it this time. Had to, no way not to and still save face. He thought the snatch part should be easy, the running part even easier. He was one of the fastest kids in his ninth grade fitness class; the track coach wanted him to try out for the team.

"You up for it, Ran? Do this and you're officially in," Eddie said.

He liked the sounds of that. He wanted to be in.

Eddie was one of the cool kids, part of the "in" crew at school.

Ran still couldn’t believe they’d been willing to take him, the new and really young kid from the suburbs, under their wing. They weren't a gang—Uncle Zane would never have gone for that—but the kids in the clique were all at least two or three years older than he was, not much better in his uncle's book.

Not that Uncle Zane was happy about any of the kids he hung out with anyway. He was never too happy about much of anything that Ran did. Like now. This stunt would severely piss the guy off, which was probably part of the reason he was doing it. He kinda liked the idea of pissing off his uncle, except for the wrath-of-Zane part. He didn't know any kid who wanted to stand around and listen to an hour-long lecture about his choice of friends, or his taste in gear, or the messiness of his room, or how irresponsible he was, going through a generous allowance every week like water.

But all that stuff was small potatoes compared to some of the other stuff he’d been doing lately, to what they wanted him to do now. He had to do it though, no two ways. A dare was a dare, and he’d chickened out too many times before. Pretty soon, his friends would be thinking he was soft and wouldn't let him hang around with them anymore. Ransom couldn't have that.

His reputation was on the line.

"He won't do it. He's gonna punk out, just like last time."

Darryl always had something negative to say. He didn't think Ransom was worth the time or energy to even hang around with.

"No, he won't," Eddie said.

Ransom stopped himself short of hugging his homeboy. Eddie was cool like that, always standing up for him. He wasn't such a bad guy, once you got past the hard rock, Mr. Cool exterior to know him. Out of all the crew—Darryl, Hector, and Jamie—Eddie was the one who could have been Ransom's friend in another place and time, the most like Kevin, his best friend since kindergarten.

He didn't even want to think about Kevin how. After his mom had died, Ran had had to leave his friend behind when he moved from Newburgh to the city to live with his uncle.

"'Sides, we got your back, Ran. No worries."

"Bet." Ran rubbed his hands together, searching the streets for a mark.

Broad daylight, lots of people out enjoying the warm weather.

This wasn't going to be easy, but then that was the point.

He spotted her. Hot-looking shorty, all business in an above-the-knee charcoal skirt and matching jacket. Silky nude stockings encased shapely legs that curved up to round hips and a slim waist before finally exploding into nice, palm-size breasts.

Ran got hard—scary, and it had been happening a lot lately, and for no particular reason—but he didn't know if it was because the honey looked so hot or because of what he was planning to do to her.

He got to her eyes and thought wow, she looked like Tia Carrere in anime!

Darryl elbowed him in the ribs. "Yo, I see you scoping the business suit. Go for it. That's a nice bag. Should be a good payoff."

He guessed it was nice, didn’t really know as much about these things as Darryl seemed to, just that the bag reminded him of one his mom had saved up for a really long time to treat herself one Christmas.

He needed to do this before he thought too much more on it.

He really shouldn't have looked into her eyes—the windows of the soul, his mother always used to tell him—because they showed him things, even at a brief glance, he was sure he didn't want to know.

"Get ready man, she's comin' closer," Darryl said. "We'll back you up."

Ransom drifted towards the honey on automatic pilot.

She had pep to her step, walking with a purpose as she talked into the mouthpiece of her headset. She slashed the air with her handheld, excitement and animation punctuating every gesture.

Someone on the other end was getting an earful.

When she was a couple of yards away, Ran veered towards her, right hand out to swipe the bag, but she had the strap diagonally across her body—the dangerous, New York City way—and it caught around her neck.

Her Palm Pilot hit the concrete as she snared his wrist. "Why you
little
…"

Ransom tried to yank away his arm and the cone she had in her other hand went flying as she struggled with him. Rainbow sprinkles and vanilla ice cream splattered, showering them both as they scuffled.

Ransom heard his friends whooping behind him, cheering him on as he tried to jerk out of her grasp, and several onlookers gasped in horror.

Damn, she was strong and she wasn't giving up the bag.

Freakin' Amazon. He jerked his arm again as hard as he could and his elbow struck her under the eye and caught in the wire of her headset. He pulled and the headset went flying off her head, crashing to the pavement like her handheld. His other hand was still wrapped tight around the purse strap.

"Just give up the bag, shorty!" His heart thundered in his ears.

He hadn't realized it would be this hard. It always looked so smooth and easy in the movies.

Honey was mumbling and ranting about no-manners-having, baggy-clothes-wearing thugs violating people in broad daylight.

Sheesh, she was lecturing him before his uncle Zane could even get to him.

Ran grabbed the strap with both hands. One mighty yank, and she ducked her head to slide out of it. He thought she was giving it up, but she caught him by an arm as he tried to make a run for it, did some funky martial arts spin on him. Before he knew it, she had his arm twisted behind his back and his palm bent towards his elbow and was steering him to the cement facedown.

A crowd of passers-by gathered around them. Ran could no longer hear his friends whooping over the cheers of support and triumphant applauding.

And that was when the cops showed up, two alighting from a squad car at the nearest curb.

"Need any help, ma'am?"

He could hear the laughter in one of the cops’ voices. He hadn't even noticed their approach, he’d been so intent on getting the hottie's bag. And obviously his friends
had
noticed, because they were all gone, scattered to the wind, nowhere to be found. They’d left him alone.

He should have been used to desertion by now.

"Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice, Mr.

Youngblood."

"No problem." Zane stood and reached across his desk, shaking the young woman's outstretched hand. "I'll see you for next week's session?"

"Be there or be square."

Zane smiled as Manuela left, amazed by the child's resilience and sunny attitude. And despite being with child, she
was
just a child, a young girl who’d made some mistakes and had a lot of other baggage to deal with. Domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse all ran rampant through her troubled history.

It had been a good session, productive, but Zane wasn't fooling himself. He still had a long way to go with Manuela. He felt positive about the outcome, however, knew deep down that he could help this girl. Maybe because she wanted so much to be helped. That was half the battle. It was a battle he wished he could wage at home half as successfully, but no matter what he said or did, it always seemed to be the wrong thing, always drove the wedge between Ransom and him deeper, pushing them apart rather than drawing them together.

He was a competent professional, clinically trained, experienced in substance and child abuse and other mental health issues, with all sorts of degrees and certificates under his belt to prove it. But when it came to dealing with his own flesh and blood, he was a complete novice. Why did he find it so easy to deal with other people's children and not his own nephew?

He didn't believe for a minute it was because he had no emotional investment at stake. Even after the years with Child and Adult Protective Services, when his recommendations routinely ripped a child from its mother's embrace or split up siblings, he still got choked up. He’d been a social worker with the New York City public school system for a couple of years now and he hadn't left behind the emotional roller coaster, or the pain of that other life. He was still bombarded daily with children in trouble—teen pregnancies, misbehavior in class, truancy, and child and substance abuse.

It unnerved him to know that his own nephew fell right into some of the same categories as Manuela and so many of the other high-risk teens he dealt with every day, and he was finding it harder and harder to communicate with the kid. Shouting, of course, didn't work; it only made things worse. No matter the decibel level of his messages, everything he said seemed to go in one ear and out the other, so he tried to stay away from that route as much as possible. Time-out didn't work, and corporal punishment wasn't an option, not for Zane. He’d decided early on he’d never raise a hand to the boy—the kid had had enough of that from his father before Sage found the courage to give the no-good bastard the boot.