Chapter Eight
Cynthia, the same woman that drove me to Dromere the day before, was waiting outside when I emerged from the boarding house. We drove in silence except for my single, thwarted attempt to change the station on the radio. In a deceptively sweet voice, she told me she’d melt my organs if I tried it again. Considering where I was living, I took the threat seriously and resigned myself to listening to some dude whine about his tractor and runaway dog. Or he could have been complaining that his dog ran away with his tractor. Either way, it sucked a big one.
When I arrived at Dromere, I signed in at the front reception area and made my way deeper into the building. I passed Donna’s desk where she and Devin were bent over a stack of papers, talking quietly. Devin looked up as I got to the end of the hall, catching my eye for a moment before I turned the corner and ducked out of sight. I had been curious about her before, but last night had made it impossible to think of anything else. Now, more than ever, I needed to know what she was doing with Denazen. My mind raged that this was a distraction I didn’t need, but I couldn’t help it. She didn’t fit the normal profile.
I arrived at Wentz’s temporary main floor office to find it empty. He’d left me a note, though.
Doug—
Meet me in the lab when you get in. Bring Mt Dew. It’s in the fridge in the office (the one that exploded).
Good luck with Nader.
Wentz
It took some convincing, but eventually Nader let me into the office provided he came with me. I raided the mini fridge—which was remarkably unharmed—under Nader’s watchful eye, pulled out a six-pack of soda, and found my way down to the lab.
“Name?” the Jim on the left said without blinking.
I almost pointed out that he’d seen me yesterday, but didn’t bother. “Doug Cain. I’m Mr. Wentz’s new—”
He turned away and punched in the code. The door opened with a swoosh and he went back to staring down the hall. I shuffled past them and into the room, biting back a very Cain-like comment about the stick wedged up his ass. Wentz wanted to get them to show some emotion? Cain would gladly volunteer to kick them in the nuts. Like to see them keep a straight face then…
The place was no less hectic than yesterday. No one spoke to me as I walked the center aisle straight to the two large, closed doors at the end. No one even looked. Not that I liked being the center of attention—that was Dez’s thing—but it was almost as if they were going out of their way to not look. That was a little weird. It made me wonder about the comment Nader made the day before pertaining to the short life spans of Wentz’s previous assistants.
I knocked twice, then pushed through the doors when I got no answer. Wentz was seated at the desk, head down, with a pair of Twizzlers hanging from under his top lip. Despite the candy-fangs, I noticed a difference right away. It wasn’t just his clothes. Work jeans and a simple black collared shirt as opposed to yesterday’s odd business/casual mash up. It wasn’t the tight set of his shoulders and jaw. It was his expression. Yesterday he’d been laid back, almost childlike, and never losing his grin. Today that was gone. This was a man focused. Obsessed.
I held up the cans and gave them a slight shake. “Brought the soda.”
“Set it down,” he mumbled. One of the Twizzlers fell from his mouth, and he ignored it. Without looking up from his work, he slid a small yellow paper across the desk and tapped it twice. “Here. Do them in order and be back here by four.”
I took the paper and skimmed it. It was a list of twenty things. Errands, filing, etc. Number four said to pick up dry cleaning. The only dry cleaners I knew of was at least twelve miles from here and I didn’t have a car. “How—”
He waved me off. “Go. Busy Bumble Bee today.”
…
I checked off the items one by one. The first had me running files from the upstairs office to Donna. Nader wasn’t happy to see me again after the morning soda run and informed me I had exactly one hour and then the office was officially closed for the foreseeable future.
The second thing on the list was to pull all the boxes labeled April 2007 from storage in the basement. That one sucked. Storage turned out to be a room the size of the old public library back home with almost no organization. There were thousands of boxes, all with random dates, seemingly scattered everywhere. Some with just month and year, others with month, date, year, and even a time.
After working my way from the front of the room to the middle, I figured out the ones for 2007 had the date underlined twice and were a slightly different shade of gray than the rest. Still, that only made finding them slightly quicker. It still took five hours. Granted I’d rifled through each box as I went, trying to find something on the formula. After twelve boxes of random notes and unrelated files, I gave up.
The third thing was to bring the boxes to Donna.
“Hey,” I asked as we unloaded the last batch. “Is everything okay with Wentz today? He seems…”
“Serious?” she said, smiling. “It’s a Busy Bee day. I’ve been here about six months and I’ve only seen him do it like twelve times.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Wentz is an odd one. He can go for weeks, say and do the weirdest things, and then boom. Out of nowhere, the next day, he’s all business.” Donna patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t last more than a day or so. That’s all he needs. The man is brilliant.”
Brilliant? Someone had a mad crush. I remembered her reaction to him after the office blew up. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. “You have a thing for him, don’t you?”
Donna blushed and turned away. “Frank is amazing, but he’s far too busy for someone like me. Plus, we have rules about that kind of thing here.”
Obviously Donna didn’t see herself clearly. Long brown hair and a bright smile bordered by generous lips, she had a sort of exotic quality. Her eyes, light grey at the center, had a darker rim around the edge—almost blue, but not quite. I’d caught Wentz looking at her a few times, and was pretty sure the attraction was mutual. “I think you’d be surprised.”
Devin cleared her throat and took the last box from my hands. “Was that all you needed?”
I pulled the list from my pocket and waved it back and forth. “He wants me to pick up dry cleaning, but I don’t have my license on me… Or a car.”
She’d started sifting through the first box, pulling out folders and setting them on the desk in three different piles. “Devin, could you take Douglass to the cleaners?”
“No!” we said in unison.
Donna eyed me, then turned to Devin, fingers drumming against the desk. “Am I missing something? You are both aware that intercompany dating is off limits, correct? So if there’s something going on here Nader will have a cow.”
“There’s nothing,” Devin replied quickly. “My car’s a mess, that’s all.”
Donna raised both eyebrows as if to say, really, then nodded to her keys on the desk. “Then take my car, but hurry back. There’s a half day’s worth of filing to do and we still need to go over last week’s payroll. There’s no overtime.”
Devin hesitated, but only for a minute. Snatching the keys, she started for the doorway, making it a point to stay far ahead. Twice she looked back, eyes narrow. “You better not be staring at my ass.”
What was the fastest way to get a guy to do something? Tell him he shouldn’t be doing it. Seriously. When would girls learn?
I waited until she started the engine and pulled onto the road before I attempted conversation. Silence wasn’t usually an issue for me, but with so much hanging between us, I felt uncomfortable. Like there was a twenty-five pound pink elephant in the car. “I need to talk to you about last night.”
There was a screeching sound, and then stars exploded behind my eyes as my forehead kissed the dashboard in what I would have considered an epic crash—had it happened to someone else. The cars behind us leaned on their horn, and with a whir of the engine, we lurched forward.
“Don’t,” she seethed.
She jerked the wheel to the right, taking the turn a little faster than needed. Either she had a lead foot, or she was an angry driver. Either way, the convenience store breakfast burrito I’d scarfed on the way out the door at Zendean was threatening to reappear—and those things did not taste better the second time around.
“Don’t even try feeding me some crap about how sorry you are, or how you didn’t mean for it to happen.” Her voice cut like a knife, but underneath the rage, I could hear it. The smallest whisper of fear. She was still afraid of me. The tirade in the rec room on that first night made total sense now that I’d been inside her head. She was terrified that I’d do what he’d done. Take away her choice.
My name is Brandt Cross, and I’m a good guy…really. I am.
An apology seemed weak, and more than that, almost insulting, but saying nothing wasn’t an option. Not after what I’d done. “I wanted to kiss you,” I said quietly. “I had no right to, but I still wanted it. It was wrong, but I’m not sorry.”
She swerved the car into a parking spot outside the Main Street Cleaners, slammed the brakes, and turned to stare at me. “You’re not sorry?”
I took a deep breath and twisted in the seat so I was facing her. “For wanting to kiss you? Nope. For actually kissing you? Nope again. What I’m—what I regret is that I got so caught up in the moment, that apparently I forced you to do something you didn’t want to. You may not want to hear it, and you probably don’t believe it, but it was an accident.” I thought about Cain’s memories of his father, and some of the things the sick bastard made him do. “No one should be forced to do something they don’t want to. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t wait for her to respond, but I could feel her eyes on me as I pulled open the door and slipped out to grab Wentz’s dry cleaning.
I was in and out in no time, and when I got back into the car, Devin didn’t say anything. She sat stony faced and stiff, staring straight ahead. After turning the key, she pulled forward and gunned the engine. We couldn’t have gotten more than five feet when she slammed the brakes again. The sudden stop sent my face to meet the dash. Again. You’d think I would have learned my lesson on the way over and fastened my seatbelt.
“Really?” I snapped, rubbing the sore spot on my forehead. It was going to be bruised. How was I going to explain it? I’d thrown down with a dash and lost? “I said I was sorry!”
But she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring out the windshield at the ass who’d stepped in front of the car.
“What the f*ck,” I said, flinging open the door. Henley stood inches from the fender of Donna’s car wearing a shit-eating grin just begging to be wiped away with the back of my fist. “What the hell are you doing?”
On the other side, Devin put the car in park and got out as well. “Not that I really would have minded, but I almost hit you.”
Henley chuckled and placed both hands on the hood of the car. “I wouldn’t worry your pretty little head over me.”
She folded her arms and stuck out her chin. “I was worried about washing your guts off Donna’s car. If you’ve got a death wish, I’d be more than happy to help you in front of oncoming traffic.”
His smile faded and he was around the side of the car and standing in front of her in an instant. “Watch your mouth.”
He grabbed her wrist, and I started to them, but Devin didn’t need me. Before I even made it to the front of the car, Henley gasped as Devin kneed him in the nuts. He doubled over, turning a pretty awesome shade of green, and I found myself fighting back a laugh. Clutching himself, he dropped to the ground with curse.
Devin glared at him. She looked nothing like the girl from her dream. This was the defiant girl I’d met the other night. A victim turned fighter. “Watch your hands.”
Henley climbed to his feet, anger blazing hot behind his eyes. For a second I thought he’d lash out and try to hit her. I readied myself to get between them, but he didn’t make a move. Instead, he straightened his shirt and did the one thing I didn’t expect.
With a smile, he said, “I’m here to check up on you two. See how things are coming along.”
Devin played with the small stuffed duck on Donna’s key ring, her tough-as-nails attitude suddenly replaced by nervousness. “It’s the second day.”
Henley’s smile didn’t waver. He tapped the side of his head. “And you’ve both already disregarded your instructions.”
“How so?” I snapped.
“You’re independent contractors—not a team. Your instructions were clear. Keep a low profile and work alone.”
Devin’s voice took on a hint of panic. “Our being out together was necessary to keep the cover.” She thrust a hand in my direction. “I didn’t acknowledge him at all!”
“And is your mission complete?”
She hesitated, looking downward with a frown. “I haven’t—no. Not yet.”
Henley turned to me. “And you?”
I folded my arms. “I already talked to Anderson. Pretty sure I don’t owe you an explanation.”
Henley’s eyes darkened and he took a menacing step forward. “You owe me whatever I say you owe me. We clear?”
I squared my shoulders, refusing to answer.
Mistaking my silence for submission, he smiled. “You had access to everything you needed the moment you walked into the building. Your job should be done by now.”
Devin fisted the duck on Donna’s keys, squeezing until her knuckles turned white. “It’s harder than I thought it would be. I told Anderson there was no guarantee I’d find—”
He put his hand out to stop her. “Not interested. And Anderson won’t be either. You have a few days to bring him the information you were sent in to get. After that, the deal you made with him is off.”
Her eyes grew wide. “No!”
Henley turned to me, hitching a thumb over his shoulder, at Devin. “I wouldn’t get too wrapped up in the packaging. I’m sure you figured out already that only one of you is walking away with the grand prize.”
“I kind of got that,” I responded dryly.
He took a step closer to Devin, sly grin plastered across his lips. “I could help you. We could team up and blow this douche out of the water. Maybe work something out in trade…”
“Go to hell,” she spat, swatting him away.
Henley knew what her response would be, he’d only pushed to get a reaction. “A shame,” he said with a knowing grin. “Guess you really are just another pretty face. One without any common sense.”
I advanced. People like Henley—people whose only purpose in life was to push others around—pissed me off. I’d never taken to bullies. Add that to the intense hatred Cain had for this guy, and the whole thing was a stick of dynamite with a dangerously short fuse.
He turned and walked away, and I started after him.
“Forget it,’ Devin said, her voice wavering just a bit. She watched him for a moment before pulling open the car door and slipping back to the driver’s seat. “Let’s get back.”