Somebody up there likes me.
Those are words you should never say. To be on the safe side you should never even think them. It’s straight up tempting fate. You’re asking to get your butt kicked. Don’t do it.
If I’d known that, I’d have stopped him. I’d have clamped a hand over his mouth or screamed. But I didn’t know and the rest is history.
“Don’t worry,” said Chuck as he hunched over the steering wheel, glaring out into the blinding snow. “Somebody up there likes me.”
I had one hand on the dash of our rental car and the other on the ‘Oh Shit’ handle of my door. It made me feel better even though bracing for impact wasn’t going to help when plunging to your death over a guard rail in the Swiss Alps.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “What about me?”
“What about you?”
“I’m in here. What if somebody up there likes you, but they don’t like me?”
My boyfriend hazarded a grin in my direction. He was enjoying the drive from Paris to a Swiss hotel buried in the Alps, and I do mean buried, in the worst winter storm in decades. I was not. He promised a getaway. A relaxing getaway and I needed one. I’d been on the go since Anton Thooft kidnapped me three weeks earlier. I figured out why he did it and who made him do it. I was down to the occasional headache from my concussion and the rash from the insecticide he knocked me out with was finally gone. I was ready to kick back and relax.
So was Chuck, or so he claimed, but we clearly had different ideas of what relaxing actually meant. I would’ve loved it if we’d stayed in Paris, eating at swanky restaurants, and walking along cobblestoned lanes soaking in the atmosphere and enjoying Christmas markets. Instead, we were risking our lives, driving in white-out conditions along mountain passes that would scare the crap out of billy goats.
“Everybody likes you.”
“That is demonstrably not true,” I said, holding up my arm that recently been broken and healed.
“Even if you’re right, somebody up there does like me,” said Chuck.
“We’ve established that, although I don’t know why you think that.”
“Because it’s true. And if they like me, they’re not going to want to kill me to get to you. We’ll be fine. We haven’t died yet.”
“I’d like to kill you right now.”
“Your grandmother wasn’t worried. She thought this was a great idea.”
“Grandma J has adventure on her mind. She wasn’t thinking about the weather.”
My grandmother had recently surprised my entire family by heading off to Germany to help me with the Thooft case during which she’d bonded with my geriatric bodyguard Moe Licata. We ran into Isolda Bled and as soon as my case was resolved the three of them decided that they’d go off exploring Europe. Grandma J would be missing Christmas with the family for the first time ever and she didn’t give the smallest crap. My grandad, never the most observant of husbands, hadn’t noticed yet, but when he and the rest of the family realized she wasn’t coming back, it would be my fault. I think they might be right, but I’m not sure how. No one could’ve predicted that my prim grandmother would have so much in common with a hoodlum from the Fibonacci crime family. I sure didn’t.
“Hold on,” yelled Chuck and he did a controlled braking maneuver that kept us from ramming into the back of a Ukrainian tractor trailer. We did do a three-sixty and then shot past the truck on the wrong side of the two-lane road to somehow get in front of the truck intact.
“You can stop screaming now,” said Chuck.
I wasn’t aware that I was screaming. Pure terror was like that.
“Pull over,” I said, gasping.
“I’m not pulling over. Where would I pull over to?”
“There was a sign. I saw it right before I thought we were going to die. It was for a hotel. There’s an exit coming up.”
“We’re not stopping at some random hotel,” said Chuck. “We should be clearing the storm any minute. Check the weather tracker. It’s beautiful on the other side of this.”
“Exit. Hotel.”
“For crying out loud, Mercy. It’s fine. You’ve been risking your life on a regular basis since birth. This is just weather.”
“Not since birth,” I said still trying to catch my breath.
We fishtailed past the exit sign, and I watched my last chance fade into whiteness.
“Okay. When? When was the first time you nearly got killed or whatever? I know Tommy has had you tailing suspects since you could drive.”
“Since before that,” I said.
A deep frown creased Chuck’s high forehead. “How long before?” Chuck idolized my father, the great Tommy Watts. Dad was a legend on the St. Louis Police Force and then in his so-called retirement as a private investigator. Since Chuck and I got together, I’d begun to see some cracks in the hero worship. Tommy Watts could do wrong. Who knew?
“I remember hunting for some guy in Babler State Park when I was eight.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Dad promised Mom he’d spend some time with me, and we were supposed to be horseback riding,” I said.
“Whose idea was that?” he asked.
“Dad’s.”
“You never got near the stables, did you?”
“Nope. We did find a mini meth lab and Dad arrested the guy. I think his name was Cooter. He smelled terrible and looked worse. If I had ever had an inclination toward drug use, that guy cured it. He had one tooth and that is not an exaggeration.”
“He is never babysitting,” muttered Chuck.
“Babysitting?”
“Nothing.”
“You know the stuff that’s happened wasn’t always my fault,” I said.
“Someone else had you set fire to the Bled’s garage?”
“I’ll cop to that one.”
He cast a blue eye on me and seemed to consider something.
“What?” I asked.
“You were basically a good kid, right?” Chuck asked like it was important. Really important.
No.
“Basically,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?”
I spotted some blue up ahead. There was a break in the storm. I relaxed and shifted in my seat to face him. I had settled down, but he was more tense than ever, despite the snow getting considerably lighter.
“I got good grades,” I said. “I didn’t rob liquor stores or anything.”
A muscle twitched in Chuck’s cheek. “What about when you were little?”
“Why are you asking?”
“You told me about Tommy. I mean, what your grandmother said,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. Dad was a nightmare.”
“You weren’t like that, right?”
Well…
“I was adorable,” I said.
“What did you do?” he asked in a rush. “You didn’t escape and run into traffic or anything, right? You were so tiny. I’ve seen the pictures.”
It was still snowing pretty hard, and I didn’t want the man freaking out and he was already kind of freaking out. About my childhood, for some reason.
“I was pretty good. I cried a lot, but you know that.”
“Crying’s not so bad.” He glanced over. “Nothing like Tommy or your uncles. That’s good.”
I nodded, but it was a big fat lie. My earliest memory was being at Grandma J’s house. She was babysitting me on a Saturday during her book club meeting. I must’ve been driving them nuts because she insisted I take a nap. I tried crying and yelling, but Grandma could not be moved. I had to stay in the rickety crib that had once belonged to my father and uncles.
Grandma J clearly didn’t know who she was dealing with because she didn’t lock the wheels on the crib. I used my bodyweight to rock the crib along the wall until I got to the window that was left open. I pulled the shade down and then worked on the screen until I got it loose. It’s not as impressive as it sounds. The house was built in the sixties and the windows were the original cheap metal things. Then I stood on the bedding, shade, and screen and proceeded to boot my two-year-old self through the window.
Lucky for me, Grandma J’s favorite son, who wasn’t her son at all but a neighbor, happened to be walking his prize Pekinese at the time. He saw my blonde head come out of the window and rushed over to catch me as I shot out, headfirst over an eight-foot drop to concrete. No wonder Kevin is Grandma’s favorite.
“Maybe someone up there does like me,” I said.
“Yeah?” Chuck asked.
“I keep not dying.”
“You worry me.”
“Join the club.”