Chapter 18

In the safe house living room, Julie finished wrapping a bandage around Lucas’s rather. . . muscular. . . bicep. “You probably should take some acetaminophen. This isn’t likely to feel better soon.”

“I’ve jabbed nails into my foot and had concussions worse than this. I’m good.” He shifted on the black leather chair and leaned into the cushion. “Thank you.”

Nicholas was studying his phone, but he looked up once she started putting away the first aid supplies. “The cops may have the shooters. Let’s have some answers so maybe we can keep them in custody.”

Maryam sat huddled on the matching leather sofa, her hands curled around a cup of tea Zander had made for her. Since we’d not had time to fetch their clothes, she was still wearing the pretty white Punjabi gown she’d worn when they’d fled. “We really know nothing,” she protested. “We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Why were you out at that hour anyway?” Julie asked in exasperation.

“You weren’t home to talk to. I was lonely. I went out to look at the stars and think of home. I don’t think I belong here.” She said this last defiantly, glaring at her.

Julie thought she understood. Maryam had been quiet since that humiliating episode at the concert hall. She sat beside her and squeezed her hand. “I think there are bad things happening at the park that have nothing to do with the reasons why we are here or with us personally.”

“If there are bad things happening, then we should try to stop them.” Zander paced behind the couch. “Tell us what you saw.”

“I saw Lucas,” Maryam said. “He was walking toward the back of the park. We are working on a project together, and I thought we could talk a little until Julie came home.”

“I’d just walked Julie home,” Lucas explained when Nick raised a questioning eyebrow. “Reverend Arden had asked me to do so. I’ve talked to him a few times about security concerns, and he’d asked me to start a student security committee. I knew he often walked the park after hours, and after I left Julie, I followed his usual path hoping to catch up with him.”

Julie sipped her own tea to fight a sudden chill. Lucas and Maryam describing a perfectly normal evening seemed out of synch with the aftermath. She sent up a prayer for the reverend’s health as Maryam took up the tale.

“I was on that big hill by the Ferris wheel, where there are no trees, looking up at the sky when I heard Reverend Arden coming down the gravel path. His head was bowed, as if in prayer. I didn’t disturb his peace. But then I saw Lucas and he saw me.”

Lucas rubbed the shoulder above his bandage. “She looked like a ghost in that white wispy thing she has on. It was too cold to be out there like that.”

“I wore a shawl,” Maryam protested.

“And she wears long underwear under those wispy gowns,” Julie added with a smirk. “She’s too vain to mar her pretty gowns with ugly overcoats.”

Maryam glared at her.

Nick and Lucas looked amused. Zander colored and stared at his hands. Domkop. He’d spent all of university studying and not enough time partying if a discussion of underwear embarrassed him.

“Continue the tale, please,” Nick ordered.

“I told Maryam I would walk her home,” Lucas explained. “She said she didn’t want to go. So I gave her my jacket, and we followed Arden. He always heads for the maintenance shed to pick up one of those big construction flashlights so he can examine what’s been done during the day. I thought we’d catch up with him when he returned to the main path, and then I’d take Maryam back to the trailer.”

“Only if I was ready to go,” Maryam said mutinously. “You are not the boss of me.”

“He is that kind of man, Maryam,” Julie pointed out. “He can’t help himself. Let it go.” She rather liked the way Lucas narrowed his eyes at her when she sized him up as a bossy, over-protective leader, but she didn’t like what had brought them here. She needed to be out of this cold place and back where she felt safe so she could puzzle all this out. The world was much simpler through the lens of a camera. “What did you see?”

Maryam’s shoulders slumped, and she didn’t respond.

Lucas ran his hand over his shaggy brown curls. “Arden had gone past the bushes around the shed where we couldn’t see him from the road. We heard shots. Maryam screamed, and I pushed her down to the ground. I watched as two men ran out of the bushes in our direction. There was a lot of noise, so there may have been others, but I only saw this pair.”

“Lucas knocked me down and rolled me under the bushes!” Maryam said indignantly, shaking the silver-threaded fabric to show the dirt smears.

It said something about Julie’s state of mind that she hadn’t even noticed the mud stains on Maryam’s delicate skirt. Appalled at how close they had come to being shot, she merely hugged her friend.

Lucas ignored them and completed his report. “They were cursing each other. One wanted to run back to be certain the ‘job got finished right.’ The other was intent on looking for witnesses—they must have heard Maryam. But they didn’t look hard. One of the motion detector security lights kicked on, and they ran in the direction of the rear construction gate. I heard a car engine not long after.”

Julie thought he might have made a good policeman. She wondered why he hadn’t finished the college course.

“Did you see their faces when the light came on?” Nick asked. “Can you describe them?”

Lucas rubbed his hair harder. “That’s the problem. They both had shaved heads, but I’m pretty sure one of them was a bodyguard for Mr. Jeffrey, one of the park’s sponsors.”

Nicholas uttered a profane expletive, and Julie hugged Maryam tighter.

They would have to call the police.

“I needed that,” I murmured into the musky scent of Graham’s bare shoulder. I’d opened his shirt at some point. I licked his sweaty skin, and he tightened his grip.

We’d not made it out of his chair. My skirt was hiked to my waist. His jeans were unfastened. We were hot and messy, and his powerful arms still held me in place, even though we’d just blown our minds on desperately insane sex.

Like any drug, sex wore off eventually, but the temporary high was worth it.

“Don’t make anything more of it than that,” he warned, while he caressed my buttocks. Or groped them—fine line there.

Since I was doing my best to avoid any thought at all, I nibbled his ear in retaliation, then ran my hand over his massive chest, and tweaked his nipple. “You’re such a predictable clod.” I was in too much of a blissful haze to argue in this rare moment of time out of the hectic pace of our lives.

One of his gadgets buzzed urgently. His very clever hands stopped their seductive massage. I understood his hesitation. With a reluctant sigh, I swung off his lap, pulling down my skirt. “Answer it. Maybe it’s the president offering you a medal for saving Outer Turkistan.”

“It would more likely be a warning that Outer Turkistan has just been blown to smithereens,” he muttered, reaching for one of his phones.

“You are the company you keep,” I admonished, hunting around on the floor for my panties and shoes. That he didn’t deny the president could be calling proved nothing. Graham was as tightlipped as any good robot.

“It’s your brother.” He held up the text for me to see. “The company I keep seems to be deteriorating.”

I swatted his kneecap and took the phone. Kids identified Arden’s shooters in your hotel photo. jeffrey’s bodyguard one of them.

“Jeffrey, as in CEO of GenDef?” I asked in despair. “This will not turn out well. Couldn’t I just put all these Top Asshat one-percenters in a room and blow them up?”

He took back the phone and returned the text. “Get some sleep. Jeffrey will still be around in the morning.”

I glanced up at the mugshots still on the screen. “If one of those creeps is the bodyguard, and we apply the company-you-keep rule, the CEO of GenDef has some serious social problems.”

“Go to bed, Ana,” he said in that stern voice he’d probably learned from my grandfather. It had once irritated me.

These days, his voice shivered my spine with pleasure. Yeah, I’m perverse. Defying authority is what I do best. I stood up, panties and shoes in hand, and bent over to plant a kiss right on his smackers. He responded with amazing speed, giving me what I wanted, then pushed me away.

I hit his thick head of hair with my sandal and marched off. It gave me a gut-deep thrill knowing I had my own super-human watching me. So, call me shallow.

The next morning, after a shower and a good night’s sleep, I was ready for whatever the world flung at me. I might even have floated on air a little bit. I didn’t have a romantic bone in my body, thank goodness, but Graham had done my ego, and my hormones, a lot of good.

Juliana’s and Zander’s doors were closed. They’d come home, at least.

EG was the only one at the breakfast table. I handed her Tudor’s warped hunk of plastic. “Paint this for me, will you? With red and gold stars and not black and purple?”

She squinted at the misshapen object, then up at me. “Why?”

“Because I asked you to? Because that’s my special ornament for the tree. Because it makes me happy. Take your pick.” I poured my tea and grabbed a wheat bagel.

“You want to hang this?” she asked in incredulity. “It’s ugly!”

“To me, it’s real. It’s not glimmer and flash and make-believe. Trust me.” I left her contemplating the lump and wandered toward the stairs to my office. I had work to do.

Magda intercepted me in the hall. “Keep Julie out of that dreadful park!”

“And good morning to you, too.” I sipped from my mug and admired her early morning attire of tailored black slacks and silk sweater topped by a dashing red and gold scarf. She wore her not-completely-natural blond hair in an elegant chignon. I was in my usual denim maxi and Henley. I’m short. Slacks never fit and look awful on me. “You don’t admire dinosaurs and pyramids?” I asked when she simply scowled at my greeting.

“I don’t admire dead girls. Stay out of this one, Ana, and keep Julie out as well. The Ardens and I are old friends. I’ll handle it.”

“Ummm hmmm.” I sipped my tea and ignored her curtness, as I would her orders. I didn’t do the screaming arguments of my adolescence any longer, and I was feeling mellow today. “Did you have a chance to talk to Josh yesterday or is he still in a coma? And when you stop by GenDef this morning, get photos of Jeffrey’s bodyguards, if you would. He has his own personal army.”

So, my version of mellow was to reveal I knew she was sniffing around my case. I made up that last part about an army just to annoy. It could be true, for all I knew. I’ll have to admit, honesty isn’t as much fun as making stuff up.

“Stop spying on me,” she shouted at Graham’s bugged chandelier, knowing where I’d got my information. She stormed off to the breakfast room.

Good, she and EG needed a little personal time. EG would be thrilled.

As I settled into my basement desk, the intercom interrupted. “You and Magda fight as if you were sisters.”

I finished my tea before answering. “If you think about it, the difference in age between me and Magda is about the same as between me and EG. I’m the middle child.”

Graham snorted. “Then let your older sister deal with GenDef and Jeffrey. She’s right. You need to stay out of it, Ana.”

“Let me know when you need another attitude adjustment.” I flipped off the switch. There was nothing I liked better than a little opposition. I had no intention of leaving Julie and her friends as walking targets.

I had connections to find between a weapons manufacturer CEO, his bodyguards, an embezzler, and the park. If I could throw in two skinheads and a champagne-guzzling party crowd, I’d do that too. It would be a gift to myself.