Spook Squad (22 page)

I wanted Lisa to be happy, I truly did. If Dreyfuss could survive the sí-no’s scrutiny, more power to him. Still, I needed to be clear. “It’s really none of my business who you date,” I said, “but please…don’t discuss me with him, okay? You might trust him, but that doesn’t mean I do.”

She shook her head sadly. “This isn’t about you.”

“Sure. And the idea that I claimed he had a ghost on his head randomly popped into your mind.”

“But he was really freaked out and…all right. I get it. No talking about Vic.” She picked up a piece of grayish jigsaw and snapped it into the background just as Jacob’s key turned in the deadbolt. “I hope Jacob takes the news about me and Con as well as you did…but he won’t.”

I felt bad for her. It must be rough to enter into a conversation knowing it was gonna tank. But I also felt elated for me. Not only had Jacob been in the dark about the Dreyfuss affair, which meant he wasn’t hiding anything from me—but I’d also figured it out first. I’d have to do my best not to look smug.

“Maybe you should tell him,” Lisa murmured.

In the cannery, sometimes sounds bounce off the floorboards or brick in ways you don’t expect, usually sounds you’d been hoping to keep to yourself. This particular utterance was one of those sounds. “Tell me what?” Jacob called from the vestibule.

He found me sitting in my overcoat beside Lisa, who was puffy-eyed and red. Gravely, he repeated, “Tell me what?”

“I’m involved with Con Dreyfuss.” Stunned silence. “Dating him,” Lisa added, just in case he’d taken her “involvement” in some platonic way.

Jacob’s response was low—but thanks to the cannery, it carried. “What are you thinking?”

Clearly the wheels were turning. Lisa was looking hard at the table, and she wasn’t working on the puzzle. I scrambled for something to cut the tension and came up empty-handed. Finally Lisa said, “You know what? There’s nothing I can say that won’t make it worse.”

“I maneuver around that guy all day long, he’s listening to my phone calls and recording my movements, and now I find out that in the only place I thought I was safe from his psychic
whatever
—my house, my own house—”

“Jacob,” I said. “Take a breath.”

“I’m not spying on you.” Lisa’s voice shook.

Jacob said, “Out of every other guy on the planet…you pick Con Dreyfuss?”

“What difference does it make? I would never spy on you. How could you think I—oh. Right. Might as well come right out and say it. Because at PsyTrain I was with Bert. Is that it? I made one bad choice, and now everybody thinks I’m the weak link.”

Jacob said, “What I think is that Dreyfuss is manipulative, and you were vulnerable.”

Uh oh. Bad choice of words on Jacob’s part. Lisa brought out the big ammo. “I’m vulnerable? Who brought home a demon-thing that exploded in his bed? Not me.”

“Okay,” I interjected. Life was so much easier when we skirted all the ugly topics. “What’s done is done. Lisa’s personal life is her personal life. Jacob, you work with the guy. At first I was worried about that, but so far it’s fine. If Lisa says she’s not discussing us with Dreyfuss, I believe her.”

Whatever I’d said, it must’ve been the right thing. The mood lifted tangibly. Lisa took a deep, cleansing breath, then let it out. Jacob’s shoulders relaxed. “I’ll start dinner,” he said, and headed toward the kitchen.

“Good,” I said, “we’re all good.” What a relief. If I was worried about Lisa moving out before, I was twice as leery now, considering where she would end up going if she left anytime in the near future. True, she wouldn’t be able to spy on me if she were living with the enemy. But that still meant I’d lose her. The first few weeks of a new boyfriend were always the heady days. Hormones were raging and everyone was on their best behavior. As soon as the initial fervor died down, no doubt Dreyfuss’ cockiness would wear thin, and their relationship would shift from the torrid and clandestine affair it currently was to that awkward thing they’d both just as soon forget. Best not to be stuck living in the guy’s apartment when that happened.
 

I glanced over at her to reassure myself that we were all good, and light glinted off the tiny decorative key she’d taken to wearing around her neck. If at any point I spotted a matching lock somewhere on Dreyfuss, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from hurling. “As long as you don’t rush into anything.”

“Rush into what?”

“Just…anything.”

She frowned. “Like what?”

Uh oh. “Take it slow. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You moved in with Jacob like a week after you hooked up. So it’s okay for you, but not me?”

“Look, that’s not what I…you don’t need to move.”

“I’m not talking about moving anywhere. But I don’t need to ‘take it slow’ either. Con says he loves me.”

A startling crash made us both jump. Jacob muttered something, then squatted down to begin picking up broken shards of ceramic. My heart was pounding…and I told myself it was just the dropped plate I was reacting to. With Lisa watching me very closely, I kept my face cop-blank.
 

She didn’t need to read my expression to know how I felt about her announcement, though. Not when she had the sí-no. She squared her shoulders, looked me in the eye, and told me, “And I love him too.”

Although sound carries unbelievably well in the cannery, at that moment, you could’ve heard a pin drop. I grasped for some remark that would make it all better—a well-timed quip like the folks on sitcoms always seem to make. A wry comment to smooth everything out and return everything to the status quo, so anyone who’d missed an episode wouldn’t feel lost when they tuned in next week. Unfortunately, our lives kept getting messier, and no one-liner, no matter how witty, would sweep that mess under the carpet.

Jacob flung half a broken plate into the trash. It hit with a thunk that made me flinch. “I’m gonna grab some takeout,” he announced.

“Wait.” Lisa stood. “Stay. I’m going out. This is your place, you shouldn’t have to leave. You two want to talk. And I have things I need to do.”

I said we should all just calm down and order some pizzas, but that suggestion was about as effective as it’d been the last time I’d floated it. Lisa grabbed her purse and her coat, and was out the door in less than a minute. Jacob didn’t come out from behind the kitchen bouquet until she was gone. Although he was still wearing his distinctly-unhappy face, having the space to talk to me in private took some of the edge off him. “You never even got a chance to take off your coat,” he said, offering me a hand up from the dining room table. I took it, since it seemed preferable to heaving myself back onto my feet of my own volition. But then I saw his expression shift when he touched my hand. “It’s freezing.”

I sighed.

He didn’t let go, and I didn’t make any effort to hide it. Not from him.

He took my frigid hand in both of his, tenderly, and cupped it to his face. The five o’clock shadow on his warm cheek felt rough and familiar. He held my hand there, saying nothing. I stayed quiet too. Maybe I didn’t know exactly what we were communicating, and maybe I couldn’t quite name this mood, but I knew that the last thing I wanted to do was kill it.

Holding my hand still, he turned his face so his lips grazed my palm, and he blew. His hot breath tickled my palm, but despite the fact that it sent shivers down my spine, I didn’t pull away. My fingertips nestled in his goatee. He blew again…or maybe it was the ghost of a kiss. For the first time that day, I allowed the thick barrier of white light I’d been lugging around to drop.

“It’s not warming up.” His lips caressed my palm as he spoke, and his goatee tickled.

At least it wasn’t leaking.

*
 
*
 
*

Since I’d spent my day sweating through my shirt, which left me feeling generally clammy and rank, I attempted to warm up with a shower. Jacob followed me into the bathroom, though he sensed that I wanted the whole spray to myself and waited while I hosed off. It wasn’t unheard of for us to talk around the sound of running water, either. Though we needed to speak loudly enough to be heard through the frosted glass, it provided some illusion of camouflage.

“I’m not mad at Lisa,” Jacob said. Could’ve fooled me. “It’s just that she’s so damn young, and I don’t want her to make the same mistakes I did. I think back about how I was at that age. Thought I knew everything.”

“And you’ve changed how, exactly?”

He lobbed a bar of soap over the shower door. It bounced off my shoulder. “You couldn’t tell me a damn thing. I knew better. Even when I started sleeping with my Criminal Psych professor.”

“Undergrad?”

“Grad.”

That was marginally less creepy. I’ve seen pictures of Jacob in grad school. Once he’d shaved off his eighties mustache, he had a smooth baby face that was all smoldering eyes and lush lips. Biggish hair, too, but that was par for the course. I can’t say I blamed the naughty professor for wanting to hit that. “So how old was he?”

“He said he was thirty-eight—but I’m guessing he lied.”
 

“I can’t imagine what the two of you had to talk about when you weren’t bonking. And don’t tell me Criminal Justice.”

“That’s exactly it. We didn’t actually have much in common. At the time, though, I didn’t see it.”

Okay, that was encouraging. What could Lisa possibly have in common with Dreyfuss? Presumably, sex—which I really didn’t want to imagine. And his whole fetish for ethnic chicks…ditto. And their similar careers. And the fact that they were both off-the-chart Psychs who no one in their right mind could handle dating for long….
 

Best not dwell on it, since all I could really do was let things run their course. Any attempt to nudge them apart would only make them cling together more stubbornly. I rinsed, turned off the taps, and opened the shower door. Jacob was waiting there with a towel. It would’ve been more efficient to dry myself, but it felt a lot better when he did it. I pressed my forehead against his shoulder while he ran the towel up and down my back, with more groping than drying. I said, “I guess I should be grateful you never ended up sharing a suburban bungalow with Teacher.”

“Turns out, he was married.”

Luckily, I was positioned so he didn’t see me biting back a laugh. Jacob is utterly sure about everything he does, and nine times out of ten, he’s right. But the look on his face when he isn’t? Priceless. “I hope you at least aced the class.”

“A-
minus
,” Jacob grumbled.

I bit the inside of my cheek to wipe the smile off my face.

Good thing, since he was scrutinizing me. “You look a lot better now than you did when I got home.” He took my hand and pressed it to his cheek. His face still felt warm against it, but the temperature difference was nowhere near what it had been before. “How do you feel?”

“I’ll live. I just need to go easy on the white light.”

Chapter 19

The hardware store isn’t exactly my first choice for a scintillating night out. But after my shower I was feeling about as normal as I ever do, and when Jacob said he had a quick errand to run, I opted to go along. We presume both our vehicles are monitored. On the way there, I filled him in on my day—the GhosTV, the repeaters and their dossiers, the white cotton gloves, Richie’s Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and even his bratty mood swing. Then Jacob parked at the far end of the lot, and as we walked toward the building at a glacial pace with the wind whistling around us, I whispered all the things I’d kept to myself. Between the fingernail demons and Santiago’s third eye, I’m sure Jacob was dying to react. He kept his cool, though. Even when I detailed my conversation with the elusive Dr. Chance.
 

Once we cleared the automatic doors, Jacob touched my arm with two fingertips to signal me to keep quiet. Surveillance cameras overlooked the doors. I’d always figured them for anti-theft devices. Now, though, it was simply easiest to assume every retail camera in the city led back to the FPMP.

As hardware stores go, it wasn’t a very big shop, just a mom-and-pop strip mall operation that had been bought by a national chain some years back. It probably wouldn’t last much longer in the face of the mega home centers so big they needed their own zip codes, but it was putting up a good fight. Silver garland was strung through the store and Christmas carols were playing, although the only people planning for December at this point were retail stores and obsessive gift-givers. At least the main display that greeted us still featured Thanksgiving gear: turkey fryers, roasting pans, pilgrim window decals, and of course, snow blowers. I paused and considered how much useful noise a snow blower could potentially generate, and filed that information away for future reference. Sure, I’d probably cut off my own foot if I cranked it up. But Jacob came of age in Wisconsin. He’d know how to work it.

 
It was a blustery weekday night. There weren’t many other customers, just a young Hispanic couple searching for the correct light bulb and a guy in navy work clothes browsing the plumbing section. The only things in the store that interested me were the distinctly non-hardware items. I wondered if the stained acoustical ceiling tiles had ever been white, or how many people actually bought beef jerky from a communal jar on the counter. Jacob paused in front of a section labeled “Door Accessories.” It never occurred to me doors might need to accessorize. Among the thresholds and mail slots and replacement screens, Jacob found what he was looking for hanging from a small cardboard tag: a peephole. But instead of heading up to the register with it, he stopped at the key cutting station and rang the service bell.

Since I’m apparently so hyperaware of the location of my keys, I don’t own a spare set, though I supposed it couldn’t hurt to have one made. However, Jacob didn’t pull out his keyring. He fished a loose key out of his pocket instead, which he handed to the pimply-faced Asian kid who’d come to wait on us. “Ten copies,” Jacob said.

The kid paled, and stammered, “Ten? I dunno if we have enough blanks.”

“Whatever you have, then.”

Although the blanks were sorted by brand, number and shape, the clerk felt his way through the spinner as if he needed to touch each key to reassure himself he wouldn’t end up cutting a handful of scrap metal. While we watched, he matched the key, compared it to two more blanks, then settled on his first pick. “I have eight.”