Malicious Mischief (A Rylie Keyes Mystery) (Entangled Select) (10 page)

I closed my eyes, trying not to panic. No way did I want anything to do with a shoe stealing, foot-chopping maniac. Talon had to be behind the Bintliff note.
Had to be.
Though the truth is, I found that almost as upsetting. Talon terrified me. He reeked of heartbreak, yet each time he looked at me, I got a little wet. But that was just hormones. And the fact that I could not actually remember the last time I had had sex. Still, Talon had the most beautiful eyes—Omigod, what was wrong with me? Not even in a crazy alternate universe, one where Zach didn’t exist, would I be interested in Thad Talon.

“Not interested,” I repeated aloud then grinned sheepishly when Solo raised a quizzical brow. “I mean, no worries, I think Talon is behind the Bintliff note.”

“Would you still feel that way if you knew both Bintliff Pier and Great Scott Café were owned by Shoeless Joe Bintliff?”

“I dunno—what’s wrong?” I asked as his expression went from pained to grim.

“You’ll never guess who lives in a houseboat on the next pier.”

I admit it took me a minute for the worse possible name to surface. “Not Lipschitz. Nooooo, not him!”

“Yep,” he said. “My uncle said Lipschitz is always coming into the café. He never makes any trouble, or even says he’s a cop, but everyone knows he is. They mind their P’s and Q’s while he is there, though no gambling goes on. Rylie, this connects Lipschitz to Shoeless Joe Bintliff.”

Crap, crap, crap. I was torn between hyperventilating and peeing my pants. Hyperventilating won. It would be horrible to ruin this lovely marble floor.

“Uh-oh.” Solo grabbed my arm. “You don’t look so good.”

“Yeah, protected by a shoe-stealing murderer never gets old.”

“A karma boost.” He pulled me across the room to the mandala. “That’s what you need.”

A stiff drink sounded better.

The mandala was a striking five-foot circle of vibrant sand, roughly ten distinct shades. The outside circle, geometric inside lines, and assorted figures were around an inch high. As though positioning a toy soldier, Solo placed me alongside the outer edge. Once he settled in beside me, he dropped his chin to stare down at the drawing.

I mimicked him. “Okay, now what?” I said, shooting him a sidelong glance.

His only reaction was when his eyes grew wide like a cat about to pounce.

“Hello. Tap, tap, tap,” I said into a make-believe microphone. “Is this thing on?”

Still no response. Instead, he took my hand into his. We circled the drawing. When he let loose a big dopey grin, I suspected his karma was on the road to recovery. People like Solo believed in miracles. I wanted to believe in them, too.

Truth is, I wasn’t sure what to believe about the giant unknown. Maybe there is something out there, in the cosmos. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a total disbeliever. If I were one, I wouldn’t hope and pray to find my runaway parents someday. Then again, I feared I’d entered the dark side of disillusionment. Honestly, I didn’t go there willingly. However, I wasn’t screaming at the door to come back, either.

“I need to find Zach.” I started to step away.

He squeezed my hand. “Stay here.”

I opened my mouth to say no, but Solo had a firm grip on me, tugging me along the outer edge for another time, chanting something soft as we circled.

“Do you feel it?” he asked. “That’s the purifying power of wisdom.”

Hard to say nope to such a hopeful face. “Maybe,” I said, and then he asked me for details. “Is there going to be a test afterwards? I’m just curious.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you making fun?”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “I’m kind of an ass.”

“You need a more open mind.” He wheeled me around some more, only stopping to reverse directions.

I had to admit Solo was in his element. He looked calmer, had lost his furrowed brow. So I closed my eyes, trying to absorb this energy.

“Help me help Leland,” I said under my breath. “Show me what to do, where to go. And should I ever bump into my parents, send up a flare or something. But, please,
please
, don’t let me walk on by.”

“Uh-oh,” Solo said. “Your shoe just took out that deity’s head.”

I frowned at the colorful smear at my feet. “Oh, crud.”

“This is bad.” Solo bellied down on the floor. “I gotta fix this.”

He had his index finger out and was doing a motion somewhere between a sweep and a push. The deity’s head did look better after a few minutes. Well, sort of, if you squinted a bit. But then each time Solo got one line back into place, his massive forearm would wipe out another. Then two thirds of the way through the circle, he sneezed and blew the big white central yang away from its big black yin.

“I give up.” He climbed to his feet. “Do you think the monks will notice?”

“Maybe only a little,” I said.

“You think?”

“I do. I do,” I said. “Man, I can’t help having a bad feeling about this empty lobby.”

“Think positive,” he said. “They’re probably across the street sucking down a Jamba Juice.”

Through a nearby plate glass window, I scanned the crowd again. No Zach. No Buddhist monks.

“Hey,” Solo said. “You do look better. Your hair is real shiny.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

We inspected my hair in the window’s reflection, paying little attention to anything behind us. The crack of a whip made us freeze. I realized right away that the sound had come from the wannabe’s toy.
Snap, snap, snap
. We both wheeled around.

I saw his wild eyes first. Walter was behind the counter, doing grand sweeping motions with the whip. A frenzied mind had a keyed-up look, and seeing exactly that on his face, I froze like a fish stick in the freezer. He snapped the whip a few more times.

Solo stepped forward, but pulled up at a sharp, “Stop right there,” from Walter.

“Okay, be cool. Be cool,” Solo said.

Like a sword of battle, Walter brandished the whip in one hand, while the high counter hid two thirds of his body. Nearby, the storage room door was now ajar. Somehow, in spite of myself, I didn’t shout out Zach’s name. My gut said he was inside, perhaps bound, or hurt, and because of this, there was no room for error as I pondered what to do. I took a second to skim a look over the surveillance cameras. Blacked out with spray paint.

“The voices say you are evil,” Walter said. “They say both of you are evil!”

Solo cast a rueful look at the ruined mandala. “Guilty as charged. We are a little evil.”

“Evil infests you.” Walter’s eyes were pinpoints. “Evil spews from you. Evil!”

“Now wait a minute. Wait a doggone minute,” Solo said. “At least we’re honest about it, not like those deceptive fat-free labels. Under a gram of fat is still fat, you know?”

“That’s right. Joke around. You wanna know what happens to evil? I smite it!” Walter barked comically. “I smite it with my whip.”

Solo laughed. “Well, if that isn’t a little overkill.”

I jabbed my elbow into his side to shut him up.

“Well it is, Rylie. Bleach kills everything, even evil, I’m bettin’. And the guy has a whole bottle of it under his hat. Nice hat, by the way. Is it genuine fur felt?”

“Quiet!” Walter vibrated with anger through a couple beats of silence. Muttering something that was too low to hear, he raised his concealed right hand to level at us a scary-ass gun.

Air stuck in my chest.

The gun was sleek, black, and police issue. A dead ringer to Zach’s.

I told myself not to jump to conclusions. No jumping.
No jumping!

Solo shifted sideways, shielding me from Walter. Hands up in surrender, he glanced over his shoulder and told me to stay put. His fear was obvious, but it was not the lip-trembling horror I knew was plastered on my face. I was a coward whereas Solo was anxiously brave.

“Looky here, the big guy isn’t so funny anymore,” Walter said, snickering.

His sick laugh made me brace for gunfire, but instead he just stepped to the storage room door and pushed it open. “Join us, one and all. We’ve got ourselves a comedian.”

I’d been expecting Zach, so when Walter—using the whip as a prod—forced five bald monks of various ages into the narrow space behind the counter, where they assembled shoulder-to-shoulder to face us, I eased out a relieved breath. I couldn’t help it, even though we were still in harm’s way.

Walter made a great circle in the air with the handgun. “Come on! Come on!” he said to an unseen person in the storage room. I thought—more like
hoped
—Zach would enter the lobby and say, “Just kidding, Rylie. It’s all a joke.”

Instead, I got, “Hold your horses,” from FoY resident, retired Nazi hunter, and long-established germaphobe Gilad Kupper as he sauntered into view. He never looked at me, not once, just took his place beside the last monk in line. “I gotta hand it to you,” he said to Walter. “You do crazy well.”

I couldn’t breathe, could barely stand.
Where was Zach?

Gilad looked at me—finally. His intense brown eyes were cunning darts in a deeply lined, furious face. A hunter’s face. The face he assumed when he talked of hunting down Nazis, of sometimes killing them if they resisted arrest. “Genius plan, Rylie,” he said, his voice sharp, and oddly harsh. “Asking Tita to pick up your forgotten items at the trestle is why we’re here—at the mercy of this lunatic.”

Everyone looked at me, even Walter. It was like being scolded in class. I knew my breath was coming out in pants. “I’m sorry,” I said with a whimper. “Is Tita okay? Where is Zach? Please, please tell me they’re all right.”

“Have some respect.” Gilad spat. “Stop begging.”

I swallowed hard, feeling dazed and humiliated.

“Go ahead and talk.” Walter pressed the gun to Gilad’s shoulder. “Have fun with her, make her squirm.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, tough.” Gilad slapped away the gun as though it were a dreaded germ rather than a lethal weapon. “Zach, get out here. You, too, Tita.”

Zach stepped from the storage room, followed by Tita, who was still dressed in kitchen whites, her dyed blond hair sporting considerable brown roots. They took their place beside Gilad, wordlessly, sullenly.

I bit my lip. Blood streamed down Zach’s cheek, the result of an angry gash at his temple. My eyes rounded, and I forced myself to focus on his chin to keep from fainting at the sight. Zach swayed a little, his legs buckling. Tita grabbed his arm to support him.

“Hey, you, Walter the Nutcase.” Tita pressed my jacket to Zach’s head wound. “This man needs a doctor. Let us go or else.”

A shiver ran up my spine.

Walter swung around on Zach, talked low to his ear. “You won’t press charges, will you, Officer O’Neil? Not when shaking that tree will bring forth the truth. And you don’t want that, do you? Believe me, a cop who gives up his gun without a fight is bad news.”

Zach finally met my gaze, and in his eyes, I saw the truth behind Walter’s accusation. I stared at him over Solo’s shoulder. There was no fight left on his face. He looked lost.

“Let me tell you, O’Neil,” Walter went on. “Kids fight harder to keep their candy than you did your gun. Search me how you ever made it on the force.”

Tita stared at me, her eyes weighty—signaling. My mind blanked on what she was trying to tell me, so I shrugged.

She rolled her eyes, shifted to Gilad, and nodded.

Gilad fell into a diatribe of hot-blooded Yiddish, followed by the five monks releasing a volley of what sounded like soft-spoken Tibetan.

“English, please!” Tita shouted.

“Oh, that’s rich,” Gilad said. “You illegals always refuse to learn English.”

Walter watched them, fascination on his face, his eyes bouncing from one to the other.

It struck me, then. This argument was a diversion, so I could perhaps do something brave like launch over the counter and subdue Walter. However, my legs were pickets of ice.

“You must be senile,” Tita told Gilad. “I speak English. I’m a citizen.”

“Groyseh Macher,” Gilad said, his tone insulting. “So you say.”

“Don’t get me started, old man,” she said. “I’ll make mincemeat with your liver.”

Gilad bristled. “This is what happens when we don’t fence off our borders. You’re sucking dry our resources, exhausting my tax dollars.”

“I told you, I’m a citizen!” Tita said. “And I pay a lot more taxes than you do, you social security bloodsucker. And my parents paid taxes before they retired. We are good citizens. We vote. We support our church.”

“Pish posh,” Gilad said. “Try being a Nazi hunter. Now that’s a good citizen.”

Waking from a nightmare would not have surprised me more than Walter looking at Gilad with eyes full of wonder. “You’re really a Nazi hunter?”

“One of the best before retirement.”

“Cool,” Walter said. “I wanna be a Nazi hunter. Can you get me a job?”

Gilad eyed the gun in Walter’s hand. “I might be able to arrange something.”

“
You
a Nazi hunter,” Tita said with a laugh. “You gotta be kidding. You are insane. They don’t let insane people hunt Nazis.”

Walter’s nose flared.

“You wanna piece of me?” Tita egged him on. “Come on. Ditch the gun. I’ll show you how big girls smite evil.”

“For chrissake, Tita, shut up,” Zach hissed.

Walter grinned. “Looky here, paging
Seattle Times
. Frozen with fear cop finally finds his voice. Cat got your gun.” He laughed at his own joke.

“We aren’t done with this yet,” Zach said with gritted teeth.

“
Oooo
, I’m scared.” Walter leveled the gun to Zach’s temple.

My heart skipped a beat. Somehow, I broke my bond with fear and rushed forward. “Don’t be a dope, Walter. Assaulting a cop is a felony.”

He rolled his neck my way; his eyes hard as he stalked around the counter, closed in. “It was you. You!” he shrieked in a sudden blind rage.

A chilled black silence engulfed me. When he pressed the gun to my nose, my knees buckled; I hit the floor.
Thump
.

“I’m gonna blow out your brains,” he hissed.

I begged for my life, my hands up in surrender.

“Say the word dope, slower this time. Say it!” he screamed.