Bond, Stephanie - Body Movers 05 (10 page)

“Are you okay?” Jack asked. Maria looked less concerned.

“Fine,” Carlotta said, marching ahead. “But I have to get to

work.”

“Do you need a ride?”

“No, I’ll cal a cab.” After she smoked a cigarette.

He grabbed her arm, then leaned in close. “Chocolate cake

and blow jobs?”

She smiled and murmured, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“What about that polygraph?” Maria asked loudly.

Carlotta turned around. “Set it up for first thing

tomorrow.” Then she looked at Jack. “Thanks for coming

this morning when the alarm went off.”

He gave her a flat smile. “Just doing my job. Be careful out

there.”

She turned and headed for the door, her mind spinning. It

was obvious the GBI thought The Charmed Kil er was

someone connected to her. Forget the cigarette—she

could use a stiff martini.

“Please let this day get better,” she whispered.

She walked through the lobby, then out into a hallway and

pushed open a door to the outside. It was already hot and

humid, the summer air as thick and moist as cake. She was

rummaging in her purse for a cigarette when she heard a

man’s voice, a little too close to her.

“Carlotta Wren?”

She froze and curled her fingers around the stun baton

Jack had given her. She looked up to see a stout,

unfamiliar dark-haired man standing in front of her. Her

fight-or-flight instincts flared. He had thick, bushy

eyebrows and big hands with grease under his fingernails.

When he took a menacing step toward her, she whipped

out the baton and zapped him in the shoulder. For two

seconds, the air was rent with the buzz of a giant

mosquito, then the perp dropped to the ground, his eyes

rol ed back in his head.

She turned and fled back into the precinct lobby, shouting

at Brooklyn to get Jack. The woman picked up a phone and

a few seconds later, he came barreling out with his

weapon drawn. In between gasping breaths, she explained

what happened as she retraced her steps outside. The big

man was stil lying there, his feet twitching.

“Stand back,” Jack warned, then bent over the guy and

began to pat him down.

Carlotta’s heart pounded like a bongo, half in fright, half in

anticipation. If this man was The Charmed Kil er, it would

be sweet to apprehend him while the GBI agents sat inside

taking notes.

From inside her purse, her phone rang. She looked to see

it was Peter calling. She answered, her hand at her throat.

“Peter, can I call you back?”

“I couldn’t wait,” he said. “I had to see how you liked the

gift.”

She frowned. “What gift?”

“I had a guy deliver a Vespa scooter to the police-station

parking lot. I thought I’d surprise you. Do you like it?”

“A Vespa?” she said, then looked up to see a pink scooter

with a huge bow on it sitting a few feet away. “For me?”

Jack fol owed her gaze, then gave her a wry smile and held

up a Vespa key ring and key that he apparently found on

the incapacitated man.

Carlotta winced. Minus ten.

8

Wesley removed his watch and dropped it in a bowl along

with all the change from his pockets. Because he had to

walk through a metal detector every day to clock in to his

community service job at Atlanta Systems Services, he’d

stopped wearing a belt. The strict security measures

seemed to have taken its tol on everyone who worked in

the government building on Pryor Street. Along with

saggy, beltless pants, soft-soled shoes and minuscule

purses were now the norm.

After an unexpected day off the previous day due to

construction that had shut down the building, everyone

seemed restless this morning, and short-tempered. But

Wes had chomped an Oxy when he’d rol ed out of bed and

swallowed another after locking up his bicycle in the

parking lot, so he was feeling nice and relaxed. The first

chewed capsule had flooded his system with the drug, and

the subsequent swallowed one would keep the buzz going

as the time-release coating broke down.

The drug made the light streaming into the atrium-style

lobby luminous, the scent of the live potted trees and

plants crisp, the humming of the woman behind him

harmonious. The Oxy amplified his senses and made all

things rosy, a welcome reprieve from the nightmares of

toothless heads that had plagued his sleep. He couldn’t

stop thinking about the poor schmuck, wondering if the

guy had a kid thinking it was his fault that his father hadn’t

come home…

In front of him, someone set off the metal detector,

eliciting groans all around. Like everyone else, he craned

for a look, his pulse quickening when he saw it was his

coworker Meg Vincent who had stopped the line. A female

security guard waved her aside to be wanded. Wesley

watched with amusement as the slim blonde stood with

arms raised and legs wide as the guard ran a handheld

metal detector over her eclectic outfit of flowered pants,

striped T-shirt and short jacket. When the baton went off

near her breasts, he smiled and nodded—she was wearing

an underwire bra today. Nice.

Meg caught him staring and rol ed her eyes. The line

started moving again, and he shuffled through in time to

catch up with her just as the elevator doors were closing.

“We’re full,” she said.

He stuck his foot in the gap to make the doors bounce

open. “It’l hold one more skinny dude,” he said, then

slipped in next to her.

Meg stared straight ahead, ignoring him.

“Maybe you should stop wearing a bra,” he whispered.

Her mouth tightened.

He smiled, enjoying her discomfort. If anyone had the right

to be irritated with anyone, it was him—with her. Meg had

done nothing but torture him since he’d started working at

ASS, looking hot and being smart as hel to boot. He’d

been so mesmerized by her that he’d agreed to join her

and two coworkers at a damn chick flick in Piedmont Park.

Aside from the fact that he’d had to leave early for a body-

moving job, he’d thought things had gone pretty wel .

Then she’d accused him of being an addict—which he’d

flatly denied—and announced that he could only be her

boyfriend if he’d “straighten up.”

Like a damn school kid.

And the cherry on top of that shit sundae was when he’d

run into Meg later with a guy…on a date. And the preppie

guy had looked as if he moved in the same circle as her

parents—Meg’s dad was some hotshot geneticist. If he’d

needed proof that Meg had been toying with him, he had

it.

When the elevator door opened on subsequent floors, she

moved aside woodenly to let people pass. After the fifth

floor, they were alone. She turned her back to him and

jabbed the Close Door button. “You’re stoned.”

“No, I’m not.”

Meg arched an eyebrow. “Lie much?”

“I might wonder how you’d know so much about it.”

Her expression changed in an instant—from cynical to

something else. The elevator doors opened onto the

seventh floor and she walked off, her back rigid.

“Hey.” He went after her, feeling contrite. “Don’t say

anything to McCormick. I need this gig.”

She turned around. “It’s just a community service gig to

you, but some of us are here because we want to be. I

won’t say anything to McCormick, but I’m not covering for

you, either. You’ve been dragging your ass on this

encryption project because you think it’s beneath you. But

I actually like doing a good job, even if the assignment isn’t

a career builder. I’d appreciate it if you’d get yourself

sober and kick it up a notch.”

So she’d noticed that he was trying to stretch out the

database-encryption project, hoping that McCormick

would switch Meg to another assignment before she

realized he was trying to pul information about his

father’s case from the courthouse databases under the

guise of encrypting the data.

Meg leaned in and lowered her voice. “I’m not going to let

someone like you pul me down.”

Right between the eyes—someone like him. “Yeah, I saw

your type the other night.”

She straightened and crossed her arms, inadvertently

pushing up her cleavage. “What’s my type, Wesley?”

“From the looks of the guy I saw you with? Gay.”

She shook her head and turned to walk toward the

fourplex workstation they shared with Ravi Chopra and

Jeff Spooner, geeks of the highest order who also

happened to be decent guys. Like Meg, they were

employed by the city IT department through a work-study

program for Georgia Tech students.

And like him, they were both, um, enamored with Meg.

“Morning, boys,” she sang.

When they lit up like little pets, Wesley wanted to heave.

The woman was a hypnotist.

But with her lecture ringing in his ears, he pried his

attention away from her breasts and got down to business

on the encryption project. He’d been holding off on pul ing

test data that would include his father’s information

because he was afraid Meg would see it and realize what

he was up to. He’d also procrastinated because access to

the databases was strictly monitored and his user ID would

be forever attached to the data he pul ed if someone

checked. One more infraction would probably land him in

jail. His attorney, Liz Fischer, was good, but she’d warned

him—in the aftermath of a screw—that she was running

out of tricks to pull out of her hat.

Just the thought of Liz made his balls tingle. But not as

much as knowing that Meg was wearing an underwire bra.

Maybe it was the plaid one that he sometimes got a

glimpse of when she bent over…

Then a thought hit Wes like a slow-moving locomotive. His

brain worked in a lower gear under the influence of Oxy,

but when the ideas made it through the goo, they made

him so happy: Maybe having Meg on the project was a

blessing in disguise.

All morning he kept his head down and his smile to himself

while he put together the procedure that would pul

enough data on either side of his father’s records to

hopeful y render it invisible. At fifteen minutes before

noon, when he was supposed to leave, he waved to get

Meg’s attention.

She looked annoyed, then removed the earbuds of her

iPod. “Yeah?”

“I have to go in a few minutes, but I have the job ready to

pul the test data we need from the databases I’m working

on. McCormick said he’d have to grant me onetime access

to the data before I can run the job. But since you have

access, I was thinking it would save him a lot of time and

trouble if you ran the job when you get a chance.”

She considered him for a few seconds, then shrugged. “I

guess it’s all the same. Send me the Job Control

Language.”

“Done,” he said, then jerked his thumb. “I’m taking off.”

“Knock yourself out,” she said, then put her earbuds back

in.

An alien feeling of frustration crowded his chest. Why he

felt so compel ed to impress this girl, he didn’t know. It

also made him a little nuts that she totally saw through

him. The dismay sent little shards of pain to his temple as

he made his way out of the building and to his bike. He

really wanted another Oxy pil , but he had an appointment

with his probation officer, and he thought it best to be as

sober as possible.

During the ride across town, he thought he noticed a black

SUV with tinted windows about a block behind him. He

blinked to clear his vision and wil ed the pounding in his

head to go away as he strained for a better look. He

couldn’t tel if it was the same vehicle that had been

dogging him, so he whipped left to go down a side street.

When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the black SUV

slow, then go past. He exhaled in relief, but stil …this was

getting creepy.

He didn’t see the vehicle again, but his nerves jumped as

he locked up his bike and walked into the building that

housed the offices of Fulton County Probation Control. He

signed in with the sourpuss at the front window, then

eased into a chair in the waiting room. His head was really

throbbing now, and his left eye twitched.

Wednesdays were the worst because he had to plan his

Oxy hits around his meeting with E. Jones. He consoled

himself with the knowledge that after he left, he had

plenty of Oxy waiting for him. He’d used some of his poker

earnings to buy a bag before Michael Lane had stolen the

bulk of his cash. And living with Chance, he had easy

access to the pil s. Chance had even promised him more if

he could talk Carlotta’s friend Hannah into going out with

him. Wes was stil working on that deal.

“Wren, you’re up!” the woman at the window shouted,

then cut her eyes to a door leading to a hallway of offices.

He knew the way wel .

Outside E.’s office, Wes glanced in al directions. During his

last visit, he’d run into E.’s boyfriend, Leonard, a thug