Wired (26 page)

“Kitty, one more question.”

“Sure. I've told you the worst, and there's nothing I've left out.”

“Why have you stayed here with me through all this crap? I must have been an unbelievable pain in the ass.”

“You're still an unbelievable pain in the ass.” She smiled.

“No, seriously.”

“Well, Roxy, we've always been like sisters. Since college. And you didn't have anybody else. I mean, when your family didn't even try to call you after I told them you'd been shot . . .”

I was pathetic. No family, no friends except for Kitty, who'd basically done everything for me the last four years. No life.

“You've just humored me for all these years? Don't you ever get the urge to just . . . move out?”

She smiled wide. “Nope. This is my home. Besides, you just don't turn your back on your sister when the going gets rough.”

I almost burst into tears.

“Oh, shit. Don't cry, Roxanne. This isn't the time for the weepies.”

“I'm not going to cry,” I said, doing my best. “But . . . thanks. I know it's completely insufficient, but thanks.”

“You're welcome. If you have any other questions, I'll be in the living room. I've got to go look up some kind of spell or chant or something to try to deal with this weird déjà vu I've been having.” She went into the hall and turned at the banister. “I hope this doesn't come back. If I were the kind of person who didn't believe in the impossible, I'd say that an instant recovery like this was . . . impossible. So, don't succumb to that self-fulfilling-prophecy stuff, Rox. Pretend you never had agoraphobia and you never will.”

I watched her disappear down the stairs and looked around my office at the evidence of my former illness. It explained Naveed's weirdness that night. He was probably surprised to see me wandering around the store with no problem, since I'd only ever been in the store with Kitty before and she'd probably told him all about my struggle with mental illness so he wouldn't ask me about anything or panic me.

I got up, walked out into the hallway, and peered down at the front door. Funny how I'd fainted in the same spot where I'd fallen after being shot, as if the present were literally a layer right on top of the past. If reality had spliced in the car . . .

I went back into the office. First I checked for the restraining order, but of course it was gone. Thank God. Thank
God
. I turned back to my desk and started going through the papers piled high on every surface until I found the folder I was looking for. My agency project folders. At the very back, where the oldest stuff was, there was an info sheet for one Kaysar Corporation. The company I had scheduled an interview with on graduation day four years ago.

The phone rang. After a moment, Kitty yelled up, “Rox, you're not going to believe this. It's Mason on the phone. Mason Merrick! How's
that
for a coincidence?”

I grabbed the landline. A weird forgiveness came over me. “I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I ever thought you'd really do that. Hurt me. Leo must have—”

“Stop. It's okay. Listen to me. You got us pretty tangled up. I've been running in circles here, trying to block Leonardo, and I'm still not even sure if he's going to try and use more wire now to see this thing out. But I'm headed your direction, maybe ten minutes away. If Leo gets there first, for God's sake don't open the door. Just hold tight.” He hung up. I slowly set down the phone and went downstairs to the kitchen, where Kitty was putting some weird brewer's yeast concoction together in a canning jar.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

My mind reeled. I tried to separate all the wires, all my feelings, but things were impossibly fuzzy. “Um . . . don't open the door. You seen my bag?”

Kitty stared at me, the jar lid clutched in her hand, which was frozen in midair. “It's on the sofa.”

In a daze, I walked to the living room and pulled
out the punch and the reader. The wood beneath me trembled as Leo and Mason came pounding up the stairs. I held the punch up to my neck like a suicide gun, watched as dark and light flashed through the crack under the door when Mason and Leo both hit the landing.

Flinching as one of them hit the door, I soon could tell they were scrapping again. But I felt better this time. While it seemed to me that Leo was right to boast—he was a more talented wire crosser—he sure couldn't beat Mason mano a mano.

“What's that ruckus?” Kitty asked, appearing in the foyer. She froze when she saw me with the punch against my neck. Her eyes suddenly narrowed, her arms folding across her chest. “L. Roxanne,” she said crossly. “What is that? A staple gun? You take that thing away from your neck right now.”

I stared at her. “No offense, but this is a really bad time. Could you maybe go upstairs?”

The thumping and yelling on the other side of the front door continued. Instead of going upstairs, Kitty flounced past me and threw it open. The men let go of each other, breathing heavily. They looked disoriented by her presence.

“Hi, Kitty,” Mason finally managed to say.

“Mason? Wow . . . nice to see you.” Kitty looked back at me in confusion. She looked blankly at Leo, then back at Mason. Then she looked down at the gun Leonardo had drawn and let out the most bloodcurdling scream I'd ever heard in my life. I'm sure it scared the crap out of everyone present.

We all stood frozen in the silent aftermath, my arm beginning to flag with the weight of the punch I was
holding up to my neck. Kitty collected herself with a dramatic breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped forward with her hand out. “Empty the gun or you will rue the day you were born.”

Both men looked over Kitty's shoulder at me, and I readjusted the punch to place it against my temple, going for a fearless look to mask my mounting hysteria. “Kitty, I swear to you, they are not going to pull the trigger. I swear it.” I raised my chin and glared defiantly at the men. “Now,
I
might pull
this
trigger, but they are not going to shoot. They can't. I guarantee it.”

Of course, I
couldn't
guarantee it, but I had what I needed to trip a wire, and Mason had already told me there wasn't much wire left. They simply couldn't afford to run out now.

“You
swear it
, swear it?” Kitty asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, then.”

I thought she'd step away; I should have known better.

“The bullets,” she said, jutting her hands forward. I watched in disbelief as Leo emptied his gun and spilled the bullets into Kitty's open palm. She curled her fingers around them and jammed them in her pockets. It was working. I couldn't believe it. She was clearly a reality variable they were unable to take a chance on. “Put the gun on the floor and take one step back.”

Leo cursed in his typical English fashion and laid his gun on the threshold of my apartment. Both men stepped back, and Kitty picked it up. The minute she had it in her hand, she lunged forward and slammed
the door in Leo's and Mason's faces, immediately locking and bolting and chaining it.

The boys started pounding and yelling, and Kitty turned around, spread-eagling her body across the door. Her face was white, her earlier bravado evaporated as if she'd just registered the seriousness of the situation. “For God's sake, put that thing down and call the police. I am not letting this happen to you again.”

An incongruous bubble of laughter formed in my throat. Kitty somehow thought one or both of the guys was the stalker from long ago, back, ready to finish what they started? That was ludicrous. No more ludicrous than anything else I'd been experiencing lately, but still. Even better was the fact that they'd done what she told them.

“Mason's here to help me, Kitty. I swear it.”

We both jumped back as the door almost buckled. We looked at each other for a moment; then a polite knock followed in the subsequent silence. “It's Mason. Let me in. Leo's out cold. You've gotta let me in.”

Kitty shook her head, but I ignored her and swiftly unlocked and opened the door. Mason leaped over the threshold and locked up again behind him.

“We're running low on wire. There's still some left because the reset didn't go through, but time is running out.”

“What happened to stalemate?” I mumbled.

He gave me a funny little smile, a perplexed laugh. “You took care of that. Didn't count on the Major crossing the wires. Now, listen to me.” He shook me, begging me to focus on his words. “You don't have to be anything you don't want to be. You got that?”

I stared at him. Mason stared back. “Whatever happens, you know . . .”

I swallowed hard. “I know what?”
I know
what,
Mason? If you really care about me, just say it, won't you?

I could interpret that crooked grin however I wanted, I guess, but I wished he'd have said the words out loud. Love is the kind of thing that gets left open to a whole lot of misunderstanding.

I saw a flash of silver in one hand and I knew what it was all about, but I felt his other arm pull me toward him, crushing me into his body, and I knew what that was all about too. He was preparing me to wire cross, but he also wanted to kiss me.

I closed my eyes as he kissed me like he owned me. The intensity, the rawness of his tongue pressing into my mouth, his teeth biting at my lower lip felt like nothing else. He kissed me like he meant it, like he'd been born to it, and not just to get my heart rate up. But the other thing was, he kissed me like it was good-bye.

At last, too soon, Mason pulled away. He took me even tighter into an embrace, his faltering sigh burning hot against my cheek. I felt his punch go in; I heard Kitty shriek in horror. A tear slipped down my face as I waited for the words Mason would say seconds later:

“Open the door, Rox.”

Phone. Door. Fish. My graduation gown still wrapped and folded in its plastic square.

Slip a second in, pluck one out
 . . . I knew Mason couldn't possibly shoot me this time; he'd crossed the wire himself. So, then, the phone first.

The goldfish bag swinging from my hand, I bolted for it, grabbed it, and shouted, “I'll be right there, Kitty!” like a complete dork, then ran for the door. Sweat prickled along my spine as I curled my fingers around the doorknob, pressed the phone against my chest to block out the sound.

And then I opened the door.

Leonardo stood on the other side.
Mason, what are you
doing? Juggling the goldfish and the phone, I tried to slam the door shut again, but Leo's forearm rammed against it. His face frozen like a mask, he brought up a gun with his free hand and pointed it at me. I stood there, paralyzed.

“Hello? Rox?” Kitty's muffled voice leaked from the phone. “Is anybody there?”

Roxanne, don't be weak. Do something
. Do
something
.
But I just stood there like a coward, clutching the phone and the fish, and let Leonardo shoot me.

I fell backward, a sharp pain permeating my breastbone, and the phone flew out of my hand. The goldfish bag burst open on the ground. Crashing spread-eagle to my apartment floor, I lay there as water soaked into my hair.

The fish was still in the bag, flopping around in the small amount of water that was left.
You can't breathe either
.

It was as if I'd taken a sledgehammer to the gut. Each breath was painful, barely squeaking enough oxygen into my body to count. Tears spilled down my cheeks as I rolled over and slowly clambered to my hands and knees. Leonardo was gone. The fish wasn't flopping anymore. I could see his tiny little body still fighting for air inside the bag. The water had all but seeped out.

Get up. Just get the fuck up
.

Sobbing and gasping, I stood, grabbed the bag off the ground, and lunged for the counter in one contiguous motion. I grabbed the flowers out of a vase, threw them aside, and dumped in the fish.

Please, please, please
, was all I could mouth, watching the cloudy water.

And after a moment, Existential Angst wiggled his tail and decided to make it. “I'll change the water in a second,” I whispered.

My hands were shaking so badly I couldn't have done any business at the moment anyway.

I turned back to the mess on the ground and the open door, tried to put all the pieces together in my mind. Where had Leo gone? My chest hurt badly. I
looked down; a tiny streak of blood stained my shirt. I pulled the fabric up and gasped. A huge bruise was developing on the left side of my chest, a small bleeding welt in the center, just over the heart.

So minor. How so minor?

A tinny voice cut through the silence: “If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. . . .”

I looked at the phone on the ground, a bullet buried in the handset.

“Roxanne, I called nine-one-one.” One of my neighbors stood in the doorway. “You're not okay, are you?”

I think he caught me as I fell. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my couch in the living room and listening to the accompanying sounds of someone emptying a dishwasher in the kitchen.

It took me a second to process before I sat bolt upright, completely freaked out. I clutched at my chest and got up to look at the vase of flowers on the table. Different flowers. Different vase. There was no fish. No fishbowl. On the edge of panic, I called out, “Kitty?”

“Yeah?”

Thank God
. “Where's the fish?”

She appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, blond again, with a scrub brush and an empty fishbowl in her hand. I was back in the . . . present. “In the kitchen with me.”

“Existential Angst? He's still alive?”

She looked over her shoulder, then turned back to me and said with one of those deadpan looks, “He's insulted by your question—I'm just cleaning his bowl. Of course he's still alive.”