Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (40 page)

I screamed and braced against the dash, eyes locked on the rush of cars headed straight for us.

“Watch out! PETA rescue in progress!” Dempsey yelled, compressing the horn and not letting up. Oncoming drivers stood on their brakes, and the squeal of tires pierced through the truck’s endless horn. Dempsey swerved, missing the passing bumper of a sedan by inches; then she gunned it through the next two lanes. I stared into the shocked faces of the round-eyed drivers we cut off, my own terrified expression mirroring theirs.

“Where’d they go?” Dempsey asked.

“There.” Hudson pointed to the back side of the buildings, his finger shaking as much as his voice.

The truck sputtered, and I released my death grip on the dash to pat it. The full-size shark swimming through the cab was proof I didn’t need; Dempsey’s stunt had guaranteed this truck wouldn’t survive more than a few minutes, if that.

Dempsey slowed to an idle as we passed the end of the building, and we all turned to stare down the delivery lane running the length of the shopping center. The van had reversed into an empty loading bay, and an Asian lady with blond-streaked dark brown hair styled in an A-line bounced from the van. She was no more than five-two and thin enough to make a Hollywood actress jealous, and I recognized her from Sofie’s sketch. Had Hudson and I really been taken out by that wafer? Should I be embarrassed?

The heavy horn of a semi trumpeted behind us. The ninja glanced our direction. Dempsey whipped the truck’s wheel around and floored it, and we peeled out.

“I don’t think she saw us,” Dempsey said, barely slowing as she rounded the front side of the shopping center and barreled through the half-empty parking lot.

I thought it was unlikely the woman missed the truck leaving burn marks on the pavement.

“Should I circle around?”

“No. Let’s figure out what building they were behind,” I said.

That proved easy: Most of the center was taken up by a giant, out-of-business former bookstore. A taqueria sat to the right and a Great Clips to the left, but neither location required a loading ramp.

Dempsey parked and we jogged to Great Clips, then peeked into the bookstore from the relative cover where the two businesses shared a glass-front wall. Scattered panels of light illuminated a lawn of dead carpet and rows of empty freestanding bookcase tombstones symbolizing a more prosperous past. Bold lettering adorned shadowy walls:
Fiction
,
Music
,
Children’s Nook
. Nothing moved inside; no shadows shifted.

“There’s a door on the right,” I whispered. “It must lead to the warehouse.”

It was silly to whisper. The only people close enough to hear were two teenage boys loitering outside Great Clips.

By mutual silent agreement, we walked back to the truck.

“What now?” Dempsey asked. “Why are they here?”

“Best guess, because people aren’t watching this bookstore as closely as they would an occupied business,” Hudson said. “A place like this center would have security, but patrols probably run at predictable times.”

“They have video surveillance,” I said, pointing to a lamppost with a camera attached to it.

“Yep. Probably some watching the back, too. I doubt it’s enough to stop these women. They’ve eluded police in at least two countries; they aren’t dumb. They probably know how to disengage a camera or loop a video feed.”

“So why are we standing here talking?” Dempsey demanded. “Let’s go get ’em.”

I hugged my stomach. My earlier acceptance of this plan had faded somewhere between Starbucks and Dempsey’s illegal and near-suicidal dive through oncoming traffic. I didn’t want to face the ninjas without trained backup.

“What are you proposing?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

“We get Kyoko out,” Dempsey said.

“And Jenny,” Hudson added.

“Sure. And Jenny. Then call the feds.”

“We just waltz in there and, what, ask the violent ninja ladies to kindly hand over the elephantini they stole and release Jenny, then walk out?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll let Attila do the talking.”

I glanced at Hudson. He shrugged. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“We could wait for them to leave, then sneak in the back.”

“What if they take Kyoko with them?” Dempsey asked, quickly adding, “Or Jenny? We could lose them forever. This could be our one chance at a rescue.”

How bad would it be for the FBI to learn of Kyoko? Unbidden, I remembered Jenny’s writhing pyramid of naked babies. If the FBI found Kyoko, it was only a matter of time before the government learned of the life-lengthening formula. A few more months or years before they began testing it. First on rats and bunnies, then on humans. In a generation, we could have children who outlived their parents by one hundred years. Every social problem would be amplified by time: politicians would stay in office for a century, prisons would overflow with convicts serving two-hundred-year life sentences, health care costs would skyrocket, and overtaxed resources would be exploited by generations with mutated life spans. The population would bloat, and the economy would veer toward total collapse.

Or, maybe nothing would happen. Maybe the FBI would find Kyoko, never be able to reverse-engineer the genetic mutation that had lengthened her life, and all my fears would be for naught. The last five days had warped my perspective. It was entirely conceivable that I was blowing everything out of proportion, getting swept up in Jenny’s paranoia.

“We need to act fast,” Dempsey said. She swung open the truck’s door and half crawled into the cab to retrieve Attila.

“Hang on. I need to think.”

“There’s nothing to think about. I’m going to rescue that elephantini.” Dempsey tucked Attila close to her body and marched toward the empty bookstore.

“Wait!” I ran in front of her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t try your regular-sizer tactics on me. I know how to break your kneecaps.” Dempsey angled the butt of the gun toward my knee.

“No. Just, just . . . let me think.” I backed out of her range.

I didn’t need to think; all my doubt crumbled beneath one simple fact: Jenny had sacrificed herself to save my aunt. What I needed to do was make sure we didn’t get caught. I paced to the pole holding the camera and loosed my emotions—my disbelief that I was going to go through with this, my fear of the ninjas, my fear of being arrested, my fear of being killed—I had a lot of fear. Why had disabling the FBI van and Miriam’s car seemed like such a good idea earlier? I’d cut us off from everyone who could rescue us from our own impulsive stupidity. It’d been reckless of me and out of character. I blamed my curse, and like always, my censure changed nothing.

Dempsey waited, hand on her hip. Hudson watched me with narrowed eyes. His divinations flashed between the sombrero, the silver terrier, and a yawning black abyss. He was suspicious and afraid, but the sombrero meant he wasn’t going to back away from our plan. Dempsey’s divinations were rock solid, the bead breastplate and the crest of flaming red hair never wavering.

“Let’s go,” I said. If I hadn’t killed the camera with my escalating fear, nothing would. Tension knotting my stomach, I marched past Dempsey and Hudson, straight for the bookstore’s doors.

“What was that all about?” Dempsey asked.

“Contemplating my priorities.”

“Now?”

“Seemed important.”

“Huh.” She tucked Attila tighter against her side and jogged to keep up. Hudson let out a pent-up breath and stepped in stride with me.

“You guys will have to shield me while I get the lock,” he said.

“Me? Shield you? I know it’s PC to pretend we’re all the same, but that’s just stupid. I’m half your height. It’s like you trying to hide an elephant behind your body—a regular elephant.”

“You got a better idea?”

“I’ll pick the lock. You giants shield me.”

“You can pick locks, too?” I asked.

“You can’t?” Dempsey looked to Hudson for confirmation. “Where’d you find this girl?”

“An art gallery.”

“Oh, hoity-toity.”

“I’m not hoity-toity. I’m normal.” Mostly.

“What world do you live in?” Dempsey asked.

The real world. Or I used to.

“Hold this.” Dempsey stopped in front of the double doors and thrust Attila into my hands. I grasped the shotgun between my thumb and forefinger, resting the butt on my toe. Dempsey snorted. “She doesn’t bite.”

“She—
it—
is a
gun
. It does worse than bite.”

Dempsey pulled several slender metal tools from one of the pouches on her vest and bent her knees slightly to align her eye with the lock. Hudson shuffled closer to me, and we both made a miserable performance of looking nonchalant, an impossible task while holding a shotgun and shielding a burglar. It was even harder while trying to keep an eye on the parking lot and the interior of the store at the same time.

“Come on, baby. Don’t resist. Show me how you like your buttons pushed,” Dempsey whispered.

Hudson caught my eye, and absurdly, I had to fight off a smile. When he waggled his eyebrows at me, I giggled. Hysteria tinged the sound. I could feel it, just beneath the surface of my projected calm, and I anchored myself in Hudson’s bright blue eyes. His lips quirked in a sexy half smile that I returned. His eyes dropped down my body, sliding a shiver of heat along my skin.

“Geez, down, girl. Now is
so
not the time.” Dempsey snatched Attila from my hand and eased the front door open.

“Shows what you know,” I whispered, and kissed Hudson hard before squeezing myself through the narrow opening. Hudson followed, but his grin disappeared the moment he crossed the threshold.

The sounds of traffic and people cut off with the closing of the door. Heavy silence and still, stale air enveloped us. I padded across the tiled entrance to the industrial carpet that ran through the rest of the store, feeling like I’d been pinned with a spotlight and everyone in the parking lot was watching, pointing, and calling the cops. When I glanced outside, the only people in the lot were a pair of hassled parents loading four young children into a minivan, and no one looked in the direction of the vacant bookstore.

I scurried through the pyramid shelves toward the taller stands at the back of the store.
Health and Medicine
the shelf placard read. We crouched there, as far from the front door as we could get and as close to the back door as we dared go. Beyond Health and Medicine, we ran out of cover.

We all jumped when someone spoke.

The voice was muffled through the back door, which I could see now was a galley door, made to swing both directions. It had a square window about five feet up. I couldn’t see anything through it but empty warehouse shelving. The door was loose-fitting, with a slender gap around the top and bottom, but what the voices filtering through those tiny openings were saying was a complete mystery since they were speaking Japanese.

“What now?” I whispered.

Jenny’s voice rose above the others, also speaking Japanese. We shared wide-eyed glances. We’d found Jenny, too. The only thing that could make this better would be if—

Kyoko bugled.

Yep, the whole gang was here.

“Now we let Attila do her thing,” Dempsey said.

If only we could send Attila in alone.

Hudson mimed sneaking up to the side and looking through the window. Pac-Man chomped up his jean-clad leg, then down the other, an electronic block of cheese on a mission. Dempsey pointed two fingers at her eyes, then at Hudson’s eyes, then scanned the room beyond the door with them, then pointed back at her eyes. Hudson nodded. What was this, the Navy SEALs? Hudson pointed at me, then at the opposite side of the door. I nodded.

My heart thundered in my ears. Even so, the distinctive click of a gun being cocked behind us was unmistakable. We froze in unison. The hairs on the back of my neck tingled. With infinite deliberation, I lifted my hands toward my ears and twisted on a heel.

There would be no escaping criminal charges this time. We were trespassing. They could add breaking and entering to the charges, and I was pretty sure having Attila loaded and with us would make everything worse.

I was expecting the FBI. If not them, the police, and if not them, the strip mall’s security officer. It took three jerky breaths for me to drag my gaze from the gun’s muzzle to see the man holding it. Surprise jolted me.

It was a plainclothes stranger.

My brain hiccupped and spit out the logical answer: I was staring at the retrievalist.

* * *

He was Hudson’s height, with similar lean muscles, but where Hudson looked like the boy next door, the skip tracer looked like a scrappy fighter, only one with no tattoos or scars, no distinguishing marks at all—the quintessential average-looking man, if you didn’t count his cold, flat brown eyes. Those eyes didn’t stop moving between the three of us, evaluating but not expressing anything. Dead eyes. The eyes of a murderer.

My gaze went back to the gun in his left hand. Then to the gun in his right hand. They were short, square guns, matte black, not a lot bigger than his hands. They should have looked unthreatening compared to Attila. But I didn’t need to know a lot about guns to know that two small guns pointed at me were more threatening than one large gun pointed at the ground.