We walk up to a simple apartment building. Mark pushes the buzzer just as an enormous redheaded guy walks up the stairs and stands directly behind us. I turn around and can’t stop staring.
Because he’s covered in oil and is wearing no shirt, a Scottish kilt, and some weird boots with thick socks.
Nothing else.
Mark follows my line of vision and does a doubletake.
The guy is counting a thick stack of money, a mixture of ones, fives, tens, and a few twenties. As he separates and rotates the bills, he mutters a tally under his breath.
When he hits “three hundred” I see Mark scowl.
I clear my throat.
The guy looks up.
“Hey,” he says in that not-quite-rude, not-quite-friendly way guys have when they need to say something.
“You a drug dealer?” I ask, joking.
“You meet a lot of highlanders dealing meth in Los Angeles?” he jokes back.
Mark’s scowl deepens until I think his face is about to crack in half.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the guys says as he pockets the stack of money and realizes Mark’s glaring at him. “And yes, the outfit’s authentic.”
“Authentic?” Mark asks, his eyebrow arching.
Uh oh. Mark’s hands are in fists and what was it Allie said a while ago about overprotective men running in the family?
The oiled-up highlander grins at me, his eyes twinkling. He ignores Mark. “Yeah. Authentic. You know. What’s under the kilt and all that? Chicks love asking that question.”
Mark’s face turns murderous just as the door clicks open and Chase appears.
“I see you’ve met your new roommate,” he says. Chase is no dummy. He takes one look at Mark, then at me, and mouths, What’s up?
“And yes,” the redheaded Highlander stage whispers. “There’s nothing under the kilt.”
Chase rolls his eyes. “Shut the fuck up about your cock and balls, Morty. We get it. You’re commando under the fucking kilt.”
“Roommate?” Mark’s still stuck on that little detail.
Chase’s lips twitch with a smile. “Yeah. Roommate. Mark and Carrie, meet Morty. Morty, meet Mark and Carrie.”
Morty’s face turns beet red. “Oh, shit. Sorry, man,” he says to Mark as he offers an oily hand. “I didn’t mean—”
Mark pushes past Chase, dragging me behind him.
“Dude. Morty. That was gross,” Chase chides him from the doorway. “Joking about your junk with some other guy’s woman?”
“What? It was a joke. I was just—”
Their argument becomes unintelligible over the squeals Allie’s making as she sees us in the hallway.
“Carrie! OMIGOD, you are a sight for sore eyes!” she squees as she hugs me carefully. She is brimming with excitement, her hair pulled back in a ponytail that flops all over the place.
“The sight of me causes sore eyes,” I joke. I can tell I’m sensitive about my appearance. As Mark wraps his arm around my waist, he assures me it’s okay.
Chase and Morty come up the hallway, bickering like an old married couple.
Morty stops in front of us.
“I’m very, truly sorry for being inappropriate with you, Carrie, and I hope you’ll accept my apologies,” he says formally.
Just then, a tall woman a little older than me appears behind Allie.
“What did you do now, Morty?” she says with a sigh. Her eyes take him in. She turns to me, laughing. “He made a kilt joke, didn’t he?”
“This is my sister, Marissa,” Allie says. We shake hands, though I have no grip these days. Mark does the same, finally moving his face muscles from anger to politeness with a small smile.
“I was just trying to—”
Marissa reaches past us and grabs the giant redhead’s arm. She has to try three times because her hand slips on the oil. “Get in the shower,” she orders, “and make yourself decent. Then come out here and have some coffee.”
“Coffee?” he groans. “What time is it?”
“Nine a.m.”
“I was out that long?” Morty grouses as he disappears into the apartment. “And I’m claiming the bathroom for a shower!” Within seconds, the sound of running water fills the hallway. Then the bathroom door closes.
Allie looks at me and Mark. “He went to some stripper convention thing. This is his second shift. He’s making a pile of money this weekend.”
“Literally,” Mark growls. “We saw it. I figured he was dealing drugs.”
“Shirtless and in a kilt?” Marissa asks skeptically.
“I’ve seen weirder,” Mark shoots back.
“Bet you have, bro,” Chase says, ushering us all into the apartment. This is a big place but not huge. Furnished in thrift shop cast offs. It’s the kind of place most people my age have.
Best of all, it’s in Los Angeles, relatively close to the ocean, and it’s not anywhere near the media frenzy.
It’s perfect.
Marissa and Allie busy themselves with getting coffee for everyone. As they bustle around, Mark gets me settled on a low couch, propping my arm in a sling up on some throw pillows. I feel uncomfortable being fussed over like this. It feels too domestic. Too patient-like. I’m sick of that. I want to go back to just being a real person.
Then again, it’s been three years since I could just be. Maybe I have some re-learning to do.
Allie hands me a nice mug of coffee the perfect shade of beige that I like. It has cinnamon sprinkled on top.
“You remembered,” I whisper.
And promptly burst into tears.
“Oh, honey,” she says, scrambling to put the coffee down. Mark jumps up, having just started to sit across from me. I’m in Allie’s arms before he can get to me.
“Our coffee’s not that bad,” Morty says, reappearing in sweat pants, a tank top, and with wet ringlet framing a wide face. The guy is like a giant, red bear.
“Shut up, Morty,” say a bunch of voices in unison, including Allie’s.
“Sorry,” he says. I hear him running the kitchen faucet as I sniffle.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Quit saying that,” Mark argues. He’s patting my knee. It’s the only part of me not enveloped by Allie.
“I don’t know what else to say!” I protest.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Allie croons. “Just know you’re safe and at home here.”
Home.
A coffee machine gurgles in the distance. Now I know what Morty was doing. I sniffle and nod. Allie lets go of me. Mark moves next to me on the couch and replaces her warmth.
“I’m okay,” I protest.
“Quit saying that.”
“I didn’t say I’m fine. I said I’m okay.”
He chuckles and hands me my coffee. I take a sip. It tastes so good.
“So our roommate’s gone, and your giant crazy mess couldn’t have happened at a better time,” Morty announces as he stomps into the living room, a kitchen chair in hand. He turns it backwards and straddles it, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand.
Marissa gives him a WTF? glare. “Did you seriously just say that Carrie’s near death experience is a good thing?”
“What? No! I just mean that we have a spare room, and if they want to move in and share the rent, the timing’s great,” Morty sputters. He gives me a really sympathetic look. “You know. If you have to be kidnapped by a sex slave trafficker who has a thing for cutting off arms and then need a place to stay, your timing was impeccable. Our roommate bailed on us and the room’s free. That’s all.”
Marissa throws a pillow at Morty.
Mark looks like he’s trying to figure out how to kill him with a paper clip.
Chase walks up behind him and crosses his arms over his chest. “That ranks in the top three of the stupidest things you’ve ever said. And I’ve been living here for long enough to hear plenty.”
Chase and Allie moved in with her sister and Morty after we all learned Galt wasn’t really trying to kill Chase. I know from text messages with Allie that they’re all happy. Morty’s not really a jerk. He just has a size fourteen foot and shoves it in his own mouth a lot.
Anyone Allie likes can’t be that bad.
I yawn, suddenly exhausted. Mark’s assured me that the way we got here means the media has no idea where we are. Allie and Chase aren’t even on the lease, and the government officials at various agencies covered up the truth about what really happened in that storage space. Everyone thinks I killed El Brujo. Not Allie.
And Mark gets credit for killing Frenchie.
I still have so many questions swirling in my mind. Who does Galt work for? How could he lie to his kids for their entire lives? When Chase’s mom was murdered in front of him, why didn’t Galt get out then? What drove Mark to go deep undercover like his dad?
My phone buzzes. Reaching into my back pocket these days requires about as much effort as doing a backflip, so I just let it buzz.
“Your ass is calling,” Mark says into my ear. “Need a hand?”
I laugh, then yawn. “That only worked the first time.” I can’t really move easily, though, so I wait. It’s not a call. Just a text.
“We need to get you some shirts with a front pocket for your phone,” Allie says with a smile.
“At least until this heals.” I start to shrug, forgetting my arm is immobilized. You’d think my body would have acclimated by now, but not.
I stand, carefully. Mark reaches into my back pocket, pulling out the phone but also taking a chance to cup my ass. I sigh.
“Is it always going to be like this?” I ask him with a smile.
He just smiles back.
My phone has a text. Effie Cummings.
Please let Carrie know I am so sorry for everything she has been through. When she is ready, I have coffee and gin and chocolate, the three best forms of medicine to cure nearly everything.
“Effie,” I tell Mark, who frowns.
“Why’s Effie texting you?”
“She likes me.”
“She doesn’t like anyone,” he grumbles.
“Except for me. She gave me all those documents and the blueprints,” I correct him.
“True,” he concedes. “And without those, Drew and I couldn’t have found that extra pipe, and without Brian I couldn’t have accessed the pipe, and couldn’t have stabbed Frenchie in time.”
Morty’s eyes get bigger than they already are.
“You guys have all seen some serious shit,” he says. “The worst thing I’ve lived through is a cougar with five-inch fingernails treating my nut sac like it’s an Etch-a-Sketch and her finger’s the dial.”
Mark and Chase shudder.
“Effie’s a good egg,” I say. “And you told me the chief has nothing to do with El Brujo after all?” I ask Mark.
He nods, turning away from Morty and back to me. “Right. El Brujo had plenty of townies in his network, and plenty of people at the university, but Chief Cummings wasn’t one of them.”
“What about that professor they found dead in your house, Mark?” Allie asks. Her face is troubled. “The news people kind of just dropped that part of the whole story.”
Mark sighs. I tuck my phone between the couch arm and my thigh. “Eric Horner?”
At the mention of his name my skin does a little tingly. And not in a romantic way.
Allie nods.
“He was part of El Brujo’s network,” Mark says reluctantly. I know this because he explained it to me a while ago. I still can’t quite believe it. “We don’t think he was heavily involved, but he certainly did something at the university to help with the drug shipments.”
“I thought he was a sex slave trafficker. El Brujo, I mean,” Morty asks.
“Both. Drugs and women. The guy was a multitasking evil piece of work,” I explain.
“So El Brujo meant to set you up. Eric Horner was just a pawn in a bad game of bloody chess,” Chase says, his face twisted with concentration.
“Right. Like the dog he pretended to want from the animal shelter when Carrie was volunteering. That was a ruse to set her up as some deranged employee with a vendetta,” Mark offers.
“Jesus,” Marissa says softly. I’ve forgotten she’s even there. She’s quiet, and listening intently. She turns to Allie. “And you willingly crawled into an underground pipe and went into this fucker’s nest where he hid women?” Her face turns red with frustration.
Allie juts her chin up in defiance. “I would do it again, too. And you’d do the same.”
Marissa’s eyes fill with uncertainty. “I don’t know, Allie. That takes a special kind of courage.”
Chase lets out a long, emotion-filled sigh. “And a certain stubbornness. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. And trust me, if anyone knows how to say no to Allie being in danger, it’s me.”
Allie’s throat works double time. I can see she’s fighting tears. She looks at me, then Mark. “I couldn’t face the idea that I would have to tell Mark that Carrie died at the hands of El Brujo because the pipe was too small for Chase or Drew to fit. No way I was letting El Brujo win.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Mark gives Allie a meaningful look.
Tap tap tap.
Chase jumps to the door and opens it.
To find Galt Halloway standing there.