Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (23 page)

“Uh, thanks,” I said, taking it and folding it carefully before realizing that if I slipped it in any one of my myriad pockets it would get soaked because they were all still damp from when I fell, shuddering with electrical current, into the water. I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger and nodded at him once. “I will call you when I get a chance to, uhm … not be bodyguarding and also not dodging Redbeard’s wrath.”

“Redbeard’s Wrath sounds like a really epic pirate movie.”

“It kinda does, doesn’t it?” I nodded. “Or a really gross porno.”

He pressed his lips together in a narrow line. “Uhhhhh …”

I closed my eyes instead of slapping my forehead. “It was nice to meet you again, Steven. Thank you for saving my life. And possibly, Kat’s.” I paused. “I mean, obviously you saved Kat’s, I’m just not sure whether I should thank you for it.”

“You’re an odd one, Sienna Nealon,” he said slyly as he started to walk away. “I think I like you.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because otherwise you just gave your personal, private phone number to me for no reason.”

“Wouldn’t want to do that,” he said with a grin, walking away backward, depriving me of a hell of a view. The grin was nice, though.

We left the park at four in the afternoon, almost on the dot. Turns out the bomb squad had to give the SUV we drove in a once-over before we could leave in it. The driver, for his part, swore up and down that no one had been near the vehicle, that he’d been parked a couple streets away the entire time, waiting for the call to pick us up. I believed him, because he looked too bewildered to be lying and Redbeard didn’t strike me as the type to have a well-ordered conspiracy behind him. He was a lone gunman sort, but without the gun. Lone bombman? Lone phase-through-peoples’-chests man? Doesn’t have much of a ring to it, does it?

We got stuck in traffic, which I had more or less worked out was a feature of LA, not a bug. It was a feature I hated, like the distressed look in clothing or customer service help lines that automatically route you to a robot for a “Dial 1 to Induce Bone-Chilling Rage At My Lack of Understanding Your Very Basic, Slow-Diction Speech!” Something like twenty-seven hours after first stepping into the car, we made it back to the hotel. I think the sun had risen and set multiple times, but no one had spoken, Guy Friday and myself squeezing Kat into the middle of the backseat, Scott in the front. She squirmed like a petulant child, acting like a black hole trying to collapse in on itself to avoid touching either me or Guy Friday, which was probably wise in both cases, but for very different reasons. When I let her out of the back of the car at the hotel, she stalked off in a huff, not even daring to look at me. I didn’t complain, but it did make for an awkward elevator ride.

When we got to the room, she disappeared upstairs, stomping the whole way. Taggert emerged from his suite next to us as Scott, Guy Friday and I stood uneasily in the living room. Well, Scott and I stood uneasily. Guy Friday …

“I should go watch the blond girl,” Guy Friday said.

“You mean stand guard by the door of her room, right?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What if someone sneaks in?” Friday asked, making his way up the stairs. “We can’t take that chance.”

He disappeared up the balcony, and I started to interject, but Scott spoke first. “I need to talk to you in a bit,” he said, eyes a little downcast. “Privately.”

“Uh, okay,” I said, my eyes making their way up to where Guy Friday had just disappeared. “You mind going up and taking a look to make sure Guy … err, Yancy … doesn’t get out of line with Kat? I’d go myself, but—”

“Yeah, I heard the dustup in the park,” Scott said with a nod. He seemed uncomfortable, and he wouldn’t look at me. “Just come find me in a few, okay?” He made his way up the stairs slowly on wobbly legs, without waiting for an answer.

Whatever I might have wanted to say was drowned out first by Kat’s slamming of her door upstairs and then Taggert’s next words, which were both booming and filled with excessive amounts of TMI. (Too Much Information. It’s a slang thing.)

“Look,” Taggert was saying into his cell phone, shrugging his shoulders at us, clearly his understanding audience, “this is your problem, not mine. She was fully legal at the time—you know what? I can see we’re not going to have a productive resolution to this. Get in touch with my lawyers if you have something else to say. Don’t call me again, I have no time for a loser like you.” He hung up the phone and took a deep breath. “What a day, huh?” he asked us. Like he’d been there.

“What was that all about?” I asked. I closed my eyes at my mistake upon realizing it a second later, because unfortunately, Taggert was the sort of guy who would probably assume interest.

“Well, there was this girl,” Taggert said with that same loathsome grin. “She’s eighteen, and she and I had a little thing going on here a while back, nothing major. A fling, you know. Anyway, it’s just a daddy, mad that his little girl grew up and started making her own decisions.”

“Terrible ones, clearly,” I said, “and surely based entirely on mutual attraction and having nothing to do with any perceived favor she could receive from you in return.”

His grin grew wider and my skin crawled. “You ever heard that old Churchill quote?”

“Well, I wasn’t alive when old Winston was around and running things in Merry Old England,” I said, “but since you clearly were, why don’t you tell us what your oldest friend in the world said?”

“He’s at this party,” Taggert said, my dig at his age not slowing him down a whit, “and he’s talking with this lady. ‘Would you sleep with a man for a million dollars?’ he asks—”

“They use pounds in England, so I’m already doubting the veracity of your anecdote,” I said. “Are you sure this isn’t you talking to every woman ever?”

“And she says, ‘Of course,’” Taggert went on, grin broadening to the point where he was reaching Glasgow smile territory, and I was wondering exactly how much plastic surgery he’d had on his mug, “So Churchill, keen observer of human nature that he was, says, ‘What about for five dollars?’ and she has a shit fit. ‘What kind of woman do you think I am?’ she asks, fit to be tied—”

“Stop dragging your fantasy life into this.”

“—and he says,” Taggert paused before delivering the punchline, “‘We’ve already established what you are, madam’—’cuz he was a classy guy—”

“Yes, I always think of men who call women whores as classy, that’s the first adjective that comes to mind.”

“‘Now we’re just establishing the price!’” Taggert belted out the last bit with a sort of gusto that made me want to punch him in the face and give him a real Glasgow smile. It was entirely possible that in anyone else’s hands, told for anyone else’s purpose, this joke could have gotten at least a chuckle out of me. However, coming out of the mouth of a man who was a blatant, unrepentant sleaze, I couldn’t help but feel he’d just opened the window to his soul, and I wanted nothing more than to shut said window and brick it up like I was Montresor. For the love of God.

“Yes, that’s a keen insight you’ve got there,” I said, as dry as MacArthur Park’s Lake. “You sure know women. It’s no wonder you’re such a highly in-demand guy in the dating pool.”

He shrugged with a self-assurance that I found so disgusting that I was tempted once again to burn everything around me preemptively. “I do all right for myself.”

“Not so well for anyone else, though.”

He shrugged, uncaring. “So, I saw what you did today. Good work. I’ll say it again, though—I could make big things happen for you, just say the word.”

“The word is still ‘Ewww,’ followed by a gagging sound.”

He was undeterred. “I know they’re looking for contestants on ‘The Biggest Loser’ right now. I could get you on, no problem. I know the producer, we go way back.”

I blinked, stunned. Did he just …? Scratch that. What I really wanted to say was,
‘OH NO HE DIDN’T!’

“I know, I know,” he held up both hands to ward me off, “it wouldn’t be like the real show, more like a favor to help you drop a few pounds—”

“I could help you drop a few pounds, too,” I said coldly in order to keep from turning it into ‘hotly,’ as in burning flames of Gavrikov consuming the minimal soul and wrinkly flesh of Taggert. “How much do you figure all your limbs weigh, ballpark? Because I could rip them off one by one and it’d be instant results, no diet, no exercise needed. I mean, I know your dick is insignificant, but still, every little bit—and I do mean
little
—helps, right? You could start a new fad diet—the SoCal douchebag limb amputation plan. There could be a cookbook and everything.”

“I think Hannibal might have written that cookbook,” he said wryly. “But hey—I’m just trying to help you.”

“You know what would really help me? Like, really, really help me?” I asked. “You not being a creep and gross and making incredibly unwanted advances or non-helpful suggestions about my weight—actually, just not talking to me in general. That would be a huge help.”

“Did I hurt your feelings?” He was actually leering.

“Please. It takes a lot more than an asshole like you to hurt my feelings.” Now I was sneering. “I’m just going through an adjustment process, categorizing you as the worm you are, making peace with that and trying to work around it.”

“Women love assholes,” Taggert said, now back to placid. Everything I’d said was water off a duck’s back to him, he cared so little. “Assholes and liars, they’re your bread and butter.”

I couldn’t even stop myself from making a face. “That is … the dumbest, most revolting, insulting thing—”

“It’s true,” he said, “or they wouldn’t go for them ten times out of ten.”

“How has no one snatched you up yet?” I asked, feeling strangely euphoric, like my efforts at restraining myself from murdering Taggert had resulted in a psychotic break from reality. It was a heady feeling, like I was floating away from my body. But since I hadn’t absorbed Redbeard’s ability to go insubstantial and since even Taggert had just remarked that I was far from weightless (the prick), I had to chalk it up to fatigue and dealing with this a-hole.

“Well,” he said, and I braced myself for what was surely going to be crass and horrific, “I think I’ve snatched—”

“Hey,” Guy Friday called from above, interrupting, “Brunette Girl. You’ve got a call.”

I blinked, staring up at him on the balcony. “What are you, my secretary? Because, if so, you should at least know my name.” I adjusted myself and glared at Taggert. “Everyone else does.”

Taggert arched his eyebrows. “You’ve got good brand recognition. It’s just that your image is shit—”

“Girl, call,” Guy Friday said, annoyed, and tossed something at me. I caught it with one hand as he disappeared back over the balcony and closed the door to Kat’s room. I wondered if I should worry about what was going on in there, but since he was still wearing a mask and Kat was apparently sleeping with Taggert at least some, I tried to put the whole thing out of my head.

I looked down at the object Friday had thrown at me. It was a phone, but an old one, like from the mid 2000s, an old Nokia of the sort that had a grey screen about a half-inch wide and tall. “What the hell is this?”

“Hello?” came a muted voice out of the earpiece, blaring out at me, barely audible save for my powers. “Sienna, are you there?”

“Crap,” I muttered and looked up at Taggert. “I have to take this, and not just because I’d rather talk to anyone than talk to you.”

“Brand image,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “This is part of the problem, your interactions. You need to always play to the camera, like I always tell Kitten—”

“Fuck off, Taggert,” I said, more resigned than angry at this point. He shrugged broadly and headed back to his room, no doubt leaving a slime trail across the floor like the slug he was. I sighed as he closed the door then pulled the phone up to my ear, bracing myself for something that would probably be horrific, but was at least destined to be less crass than anything Taggert had to say. “Director Phillips? I’m here.”

I was all prepared for Andrew Phillips to lambast me, for an eighteen-minute epic rant about how evil I was as a person to let civilian casualties go down the way they had, for a speech on the virtues of public property and how we ought to make sure that it’s not destroyed. I was ready for all of that, for a general screaming of the speaker in the cell phone.

What I got was none of that, and I’ll tell you, it shocked me. “Are you all right?” Phillips asked. He didn’t sound concerned, because he didn’t really have many emotions to display, but he didn’t sound angry, either, and he didn’t open with, “What the hell were you doing/thinking/up to?” which was his normal go-to when he spoke to me.

“Well, I died,” I said, taken aback enough that I answered honestly, “but other than that … yes?” Phillips asking me if I was all right had me wondering if I was still dead, passed on to Valhalla or something.

“… Died?” Phillips actually sounded shocked.

“I got better,” I said. “CPR and whatnot.”

“That’s not on the news,” Phillips said, and for him, it sounded like panic. “Don’t let that leak. It’d be bad.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, frowning, “it wasn’t exactly a picnic when it happened to me, either. I had broken ribs and—”

“Are you okay?” he asked again, and now I could tell I was straining at his patience a little.

“Fine,” I said, letting it go. “What do you want?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Phillips said.

I thought about it before answering. “Well, I’d like to beat Kat about the face and neck like an actual cat playing with a ball of yarn—”

“Seriously.”

“I am serious,” I said, “but failing that, I could use an In-and-Out burger.”

I could hear Phillips take a breath on the other end of the line. “How do we get this guy?” he asked, clearly shifting to another conversational track in order to not lose his shit with me.

I was still scrambling to understand how he’d come out of the gate of this conversation without being an a-hole for once. “Uhmm … that’s a good question,” I said, “unfortunately, I’m a little busy bodyguarding to run an investigation at the moment. Kat keeps exposing herself to stupid situations that give this bastard opportune shots at her.”