Minders

CHAPTER 28

They slept until the cock-a-doodle-do! of an alarm woke him. He groped for it, knocking things off the night table, turned it off, and opened his eyes.

He was only partially alert, and Sadie sensed deep disorientation, not just because it was pitch black in an unfamiliar room but because he’d expected something entirely different. Bunk beds? she thought she registered. Brown plaid comforters? The old room he shared with James, she realized. But the air was wrong, and aside from the familiar alarm, the sounds were wrong too—

The next instant he was completely awake, aware that he was in Plum’s apartment, his mind vibrating with the thought It’s too quiet.

There, in the dark, it hit them both simultaneously. It was too quiet. Not here, now, but in the message James left for Ford right before he was killed.

There were no trains, no buses, no horns on the message. Cali hadn’t been able to hear a word of the message Ford left for her from the same place at nearly the same time, but Ford could hear every word of James’s message perfectly. Because there was no background noise at all.

Which meant James didn’t leave the message from the playground at Happy Alley, Ford thought. And that he wasn’t killed there.

Then where? Sadie asked before remembering she should stay quiet. Why had he ended up at the playground? On the merry-go-round?

Ford was too distracted to notice her voice among the different sounds in his mind, too busy rooting around the destruction of the day before, trying to make sense of the confusion. He remembered the events of the previous night and saw he was alone in bed but shouldn’t be. He glanced at the clock and saw it was seven. Hadn’t they gone to bed at ten? How was that—

Ford scrambled to his feet, pulling aside one of the blinds and getting a face full of daylight. It was seven in the morning. Crap. Lulu was going to be terrified, his mother—he couldn’t even imagine. He crossed to the wall and pushed buttons until the blinds went up, thinking, Crap crap crap.

The bedroom door opened with a click, and Plum peeked in, wearing nothing but a transparent robe and a smile. “What are you doing up, puppy?” she asked, grabbing the end of the black boxer briefs he was about to put on. “Go back to bed. I just ordered breakfast, it should be here in ten.” She sighed. “God, your body is great.”

Ford, naked, towered over her, shaking with rage. “What the hell is wrong with you? I told you to set the alarm for an hour.”

She looked at him innocently. “But you didn’t say which hour, so I picked one. I hate having breakfast alone.”

He stared at her. “Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?”

Plum let go of his briefs and took a step back. “You’re joking, right?

“How would I be joking?” He stepped into his underwear. “I asked you to do one simple thing—”

“I don’t understand what’s so important.” Plum retreated around the bed and bent to pick up the book and bear wind-up toy he’d knocked off the nightstand.

Ford yanked his pants from under the bed. “I was such an idiot. I knew you’d toyed with James. Why should I think you’d take anything seriously, even a simple request to set an alarm?”

“You don’t know anything about my feelings for your brother,” Plum said, her voice tight with emotion.

Ford was too busy looking for his socks—by the wall, Sadie whispered—to notice the intensity in Plum’s tone, but Sadie heard it.

“I think you should go,” Plum said. She was clutching the toy, almost desperately, and with her mass of hair she looked small, like a young girl.

“We’re in complete agreement there.” He turned around, looking for his shirt.

Kitchen, Sadie whispered, wanting to get him out of there.

He stormed into the kitchen and threw on his shirt, not bothering to button it.

Plum followed him and got busy straightening things, opening and closing drawers. “If it was so important, you could have set your own alarm. All phones have them.”

“Everything is so simple for you,” Ford said and headed to the front door. “How nice that must—”

He stopped. His mind settled. A beautiful, crisp image in glittering dots of brown, gray, and orange flashed together, his room with James, bunk beds, plaid comforters, early morning, his own voice saying, “Man, there’s a reason we don’t have real roosters—”

“Cock-a-doodle-do” had been the alarm on James’s phone, Sadie realized. It could have just been a coincidence, she heard him think, but the next moment he’d whipped out his own phone and started dialing. The song “Frosty the Snowman” started to play from the bedroom.

It was James’s alarm that woke him. James’s phone was here.

“That’s my brother’s phone,” Ford said, holding his up, now getting James’s voice mail message, “James. Message. Bye.” Sadie felt a stab of grief and caught a flash image of Ford dialing James’s phone over and over after his brother’s death just to hear the voice. Sadie hated the raw pain inside of him, hated being powerless to ease any part of its sting.

Plum’s chest was heaving. “I’m calling security.”

Information and connections began flooding Ford’s mind, making Sadie dizzy. Image after image layered one on top of another like a huge glittering machine.

“It was here,” Ford said, tugging together the silence from the message and the presence of the phone. “He must have been killed here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Plum told him, and Ford’s vision didn’t dim. It wasn’t a lie, but she did look nervous. “Besides, I told you, I was in Paris.”

“He called me from that phone right before he was killed.” Ford’s eyes bored into hers.

“So?”

“That means either James was killed here or someone brought you his phone after he was dead. You must know something.”

Her hand came out from behind her, and it had a kitchen knife in it. Apparently she hadn’t just been opening and closing drawers. “I know I want you to leave. Now. Or I’m going to call security.”

Ford laughed. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it until the knife fell into his other hand. “Tell me what happened to my brother.” He held the knife by the side of his leg, not outright threatening, but there.

“I don’t know,” Plum said, her eyes going from the knife to his face. “The day after I got back from my trip I heard something ringing in the couch and found the phone. It was you calling, actually.”

Raw pain struck Ford, and hazy images formed of him alone on a street corner, in the shadows of the living room, in the morning at work, by the lake, dialing James’s phone just to hear his voice. “James. Message. Bye,” playing an endless loop in his mind.

“That’s how you got my number,” he said, shaking off the memory. So it had been the right wrong question, Sadie thought.

Plum nodded.

“Why did you keep the phone? And keep it charged? I stopped calling because I figured it would be disconnected.”

Plum’s eyes went behind him. “Sometimes I like to make calls I don’t want anyone to know about.”

Ford nodded sagely. “Must be hard having to sneak around. Your sugar daddy is a resourceful guy. His thugs found me in the middle of—”

“I told you, there is no daddy about it,” Plum interrupted him, but Ford wasn’t listening. He was thinking about his question when he regained consciousness, how the thugs who told him to stay away from Plum had found him at the tree house.

The chip, Sadie breathed, her thoughts keeping time with his. Of course. Just like the gunmen at the theater. The Pharmacist’s men. Which meant—

“Your patron is the Pharmacist,” Ford said.

Plum twisted her hair to one side. “You’re boring me. I’d like you to leave now.”

Ford toyed with the handle of the knife in his hand. “Can I meet him?”

“I’m going to call security.”

We should go, Sadie urged silently.

“He murdered James,” Ford said.

Plum picked up her phone and dialed. “Please send a security officer up to my apartment. I have an unwanted guest.”

“Don’t you care? Even a little?” Ford demanded.

“He has a knife,” Plum said into the phone. “Yes, right away.” She hung up and her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “You think you’re the only one who cared about James? You didn’t even know him. He loved me more than he loved you.”

“Right,” Ford grunted.

Plum’s eyes flashed triumphantly. “He was going to run away with me to Paris. Did you know that?”

“Sure he was,” Ford said. Thinking, Not likely since James didn’t even have a passport.

“That’s why I was in Paris when he died. James was supposed to meet me there two days later.” Plum bit her lip. “He was going to set me free. And we were going to have breakfast together every morning for the rest of our lives.”

Sadie heard Ford thinking that the setting-free part sounded like Lulu’s story about James slaying the monster. Only her version didn’t end with James leaving them and moving to France with the monster’s mistress.

Security is on the way up. You should go, Sadie thought.

Plum held Ford’s eyes as if daring him to look away or disbelieve her. Ford stared back at her levelly, but his mind was churning. Could it be true? Had James been ready to abandon them?

Ford said, “If you loved James so much, why are you protecting his murderer?”

Plum’s eyes hardened, becoming two glittering dark stones. “You don’t know anything about love.”

There was a heavy knock on the door. “This is Security Officer Milan. We had a call from this apartment. Are you all right, ma’am?”

Go, Sadie urged.

Ford ignored the knocking. “I’m going to get him,” he told Plum. “I’ll make sure he pays for what he did.”

Plum gave a high, brittle laugh. “Not if he gets you first.” Beneath the hardness in her eyes, Sadie saw a glimmer of something else: fear.

Another knock. “Ma’am? I’m coming in.” They heard the sound of a keycard sliding into the front door lock, and Sadie yelled, What are you waiting for?

Ford growled at the sound of her voice, but he listened. He crossed to the back door, ran down four flights, and called the elevator from the fifty-ninth floor. He rode all the way to the garage and was already on the street when the two security guys with their walkie-talkies burst out of the stairwell.

He had no idea how he was going to get home, but he started walking, and Sadie heard him thinking he wanted to get as far as possible from that nutcase.

You mean the one you had sex with, she thought, but did not say out loud. A white van passed him and he stiffened, like muscle memory, until it drove by.

“Ice!” a voice shouted from behind him.

Ford’s head swung around, suspicion and anger flaring to life. It dispersed when he saw that it was Willy calling him from the driver’s seat of an old yellow Camaro.

“Get in, man,” Willy said, throwing open the door. “You’re in trouble. Big trouble. They’ve been looking for you all night.”

“Who?” Sadie felt Ford’s mind scanning Willy for signs of deception. Out of the corner of his eye Sadie saw another white van turn onto the street. “Why?”

“Get in the car. If you’re with me they won’t be able to track you and you’ll be safe, at least for a little while. It’s the only chance you have.” Willy looked over his shoulder. Another white van went by. “They ordered a large with anchovies for you.”

“A what?”

“Large means the recipient is an adult male. Anchovies means he should swim with the fishes. Which means—”

“I know what that means,” Ford said, getting into the car.