Текст книги "Windfall"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Chapter Eight

No surprise: I woke up feeling like I’d had the hell beaten out of me by the Jolly Green Giant. Definitely not one of my better mornings. I tried to get out of bed, ended up more or less leaning on the wall, staring down at my naked body. I’d washed away the dump stains, but the bruises were pretty spectacular.

Couldn’t see the really painful one, which was in the small of my back; I shuffled into the bathroom, dragged messy hair out of my eyes, and used an awkwardly angled hand mirror to take an appraisal of the damage. It didn’t look as bad as it felt, but then, it felt awful. The bruise was black and blue, the size of a fist. Swollen, too. Ow.

I took another shower, because what the hell… massaging showerhead… and dried my hair into a more or less glorious shower of curls that didn’t frizz too much, and put on makeup. Why? Hell if I know, except that the worse I feel, the better I want to look. After applying all the disguise, I put on a light bra and a kickin’ peau de soie blouse, and contemplated my choices for things that wouldn’t press agonizingly against the bruise on my back. The low-rise panties and blue jeans seemed the only possible choice, other than walking around half-naked…

I flipped on the sleek little flat-screen TV that had come with my new bedroom suite, a luxury I’d never even considered before, and tuned to WXTV. Just to see.

They were finishing up the news portion of the morning show and moving to the weather. They had a new Weather Girl, I saw immediately, and hey, I felt just a little bit bitter about it for a second, because she was stunningly pretty and had a lovely smile and was well dressed in a blue jacket and silk blouse and tailored slacks, and what the hell?

The anchors were laughing. She was forecasting a storm for later today.

The camera pulled back, and back…

… and there was Marvin. Squeezed into a foam rubber cloud suit, with little silver drops hanging off of him, sweating like a pig and glaring like a pit bull. Red with fury.

“Sorry,” the new Weather Girl said, “but you out there know that Marvin always puts his integrity first, and today, he’s paying off a bet to Joanne, our former meteorological assistant. Love the outfit, Marv. So what’s today going to be like out there?”

“Cloudy,” he snapped. “Severe storms. And—”

Water. Lots of it. Dumped from way up high. He gasped, jumped, and they cut his mike before he got more than the first syllable of the curse out, but the camera itself was shaking from the force of the laughter on the set.

Son of a bitch.

It was probably evil of me to feel so good about watching him dance around dripping and cursing, but, well… I was at peace with it.

I was feeling almost happy when I walked out into the living room, heading for the kitchen. It was still dark outside—cloudy, with muttering and lightning continuing over the ocean—so I didn’t immediately see my sister’s new boyfriend until he flicked on the light next to the couch.

He was sitting on one end, sprawled gracefully, head leaning back against the thick leather tufted back. Sarah was curled on her side with her head resting on his thigh. She was wrapped in a thick terrycloth robe that gaped at the top, showing the inside slopes of her breasts. She looked exhausted and vulnerable, and he looked down at her with a careful expression, and touched her very gently. Fingertips tracing her cheek.

I knew that touch. That was the way David touched me.

That was regret, and love.

She didn’t move, even with the light blazing down, and continued to breathe deeply and steadily. Deeply asleep. Eamon’s long, elegant fingers threaded through her frosted hair and stroked the curve of her head in long, soothing motions, as if he couldn’t bear to stop touching her.

I wondered for a second if he even knew I was there, and then he said, “Good morning.” He looked up. “Did you enjoy the new bed?”

“Yeah.” I paused, watching him, trying to figure out how they’d ended up on the couch like this when Sarah should have gone straight to her room, tired as she was. Also, when and how Eamon had found his way into the apartment. Sarah had probably given him a key already. She was like that. “Did you guys sleep out here?”

“I haven’t slept at all,” he said, and it struck me that he was speaking in a normal tone of voice, not keeping his voice down. That was odd.

Then he shifted a little, and Sarah’s head rolled off his leg, limp as a rag doll.

Too limp. Her eyelids didn’t even flutter.

“Sarah?” I asked. No reaction. “Oh my God, what’s wrong with her?”

Eamon didn’t answer. He readjusted her to put her head back in his lap, stroking her hair, the curve of her face. A lover’s slow, steady touch.

I could not understand what I was seeing in his expression. “Eamon? Is there something wrong with her?”

“No,” he said. “Nothing that won’t wear off in a few hours. She may have a few side effects; most likely some mild nausea and a dull headache.” His eyes remained fixed on me.

I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t honestly fathomit. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I injected your sister with a drug—nothing too addictive, don’t worry—and I put her to sleep for a while.” His tone was changing, moving away from the kind, slow, gentle cadence I was used to and toward something more clipped and cold. Not the eyes, though. Or the caresses of Sarah’s skin. Those stayed gentle. “Don’t fuss, Joanne, it’s not the first time. I like my women a little less talkative and more compliant, in general. Sarah thought it was a bit strange, too, when I asked, but she’s willing to try new things. I find that truly sexy, don’t you? She’s exceptional, your sister.”

I took a step toward him, bruises forgotten. I was going to killthis son of a bitch.

His hand instantly slid from stroking her hair to fasten around the pale white column of her throat. “I wouldn’t,” he said. Now there was a feverish hint of cruelty in his face. “It only takes about one second to crush a trachea. I’d rather not do it. I honestly do like her. So relax. Let’s be friends. We’ve been friends up till now; there’s no reason we can’t go on being civil to one another.”

I knew nothing about crushing tracheas, except that it would kill her and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I froze where I was. His hands, although long and soft and elegant, also looked strong and very capable.

And the expression in his eyes was deadly serious now.

“Go on,” he invited. “I know you want to ask questions. I’ll oblige.”

“Fine. What do you want, Eamon? If that’s even your name.”

“It is, actually.” He didn’t move his hand from her throat, but he let it relax a little. His fingertips trailed over her skin in a random, soothing pattern. I wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it. “I didn’t lie about that, although of course the last name isn’t the one on my passport. Then again, the one on my passport may not be right, either. You follow?”

“You’re a criminal.”

“Good girl. I’m a criminal. I’m a bad, evil man, and I came here for one reason. Not your sister, although I have to say that I’d never have imagined meeting someone so… lovely. It’s quite a benefit.” Those fingers strayed, curving over the skin revealed by the parted terrycloth robe. I shivered all over with the urge to kill him really, really dead, but those eyes were constantly focused on me, assessing. Too careful. “I came here for you, Joanne.”

“Get your hands off her.”

“I don’t think I can.” His smile was gentle and sad, a little-boy smile begging to be understood and forgiven, no matter what he did. Women probably forgave him anything. Gave him everything. Even now, sitting there staring at me, I couldn’t wrap my head around the unmistakable fact that he was a very, very bad man, because very, very bad men don’t have such a soothing, gentle touch, do they?

Sarah loved him. Oh, God, Sarah loved him. That turned my stomach.

I must have let my revulsion show, because he lost the smile, and his eyes turned colder. “Are you afraid I’ll molest her in front of you?”

“You are molesting her in front of me, asshole!”

“No.” There was now no trace at all of warmth in his tone, and even his hands had gone still. “Not yet. Why, do you want me to? You’ll have to ask nicely, in that case.”

“Keep your fucking hands off my sister!”

He lost that last tinge of humor, and without it, Eamon was something very different indeed. Very cold and focused and scary. “Don’t tell me what to do, petal. I don’t care for it. And every time you do it, I’m going to leave a mark on Sarah, to remind you.”

He pinched her inner thigh in a sudden, vicious movement. She didn’t move, didn’t react, but it was shocking enough that I flinched and involuntarily took another step toward him. His hand moved back to her throat and squeezed in unmistakable warning.

I stopped. Neither one of us made a sound.

The place he’d pinched her flushed a bright, angry red. He’d really hurt her; that hadn’t been just show. Son of a bitch…

“Do we understand each other?” he asked. “I’m only using my hands. I do have other methods.”

I was a Warden, dammit. I could command storms and call lightning. I shouldn’t have been helpless.

I rubbed my fingertips together and concentrated. Got a crackle of power, maybe enough to administer a good sharp shock… but not enough to knock him out from a distance. I didn’t have enough power to manipulate the air, either. What I had might be good enough for one shot, but I had to make it count, and Eamon’s hand was one motion away from killing my sister.

“I’m listening,” I said. “Just tell me what you want.”

He nodded and relaxed a bit again. “My business associate—I think you’re acquainted with him, Thomas Quinn, sometimes known as Orry—was in the midst of a transaction when he—disappeared. He’d acquired several dozen bottles of a unique nature, which disappeared along with him. I understand that you might have been there to see what happened to them.”

“Who told you that?”

“Quinn’s detective partner. Detective Rodriguez? I believe you know him as well, as he’s spent several days down there in your parking lot spying on you. I had to go ask him some questions yesterday. He really wasn’t forthcoming, until I got out the knife. You won’t make me get out the knife, will you, love? The furniture’s new. I’d hate to bloody it.” I was watching Eamon’s personality change right before my eyes, and it was completely terrifying.

The worst part? The look in his eyes. He still, even now, looked as if he were genuinely sorry he had to do this.

But nowhere near sorry enough to stop.

I backed up and sank into a chair, unable to stand any more; my knees were shaking, and my back was on fire. Son of a bitch.There were two possibilities to what he’d just said, neither of them good: one, I’d totally misread Rodriguez and he’d been in this from the beginning with Eamon; or two, Eamon had somehow gotten the drop on him yesterday and Rodriguez was…

“Is he dead?” I asked.

Eamon put his right hand—the one he wasn’t using on my sister’s throat—palm up.

“No idea, really. By the time he decides to recover enough to talk, if he can, I’ll be long gone, so I can’t see that it really matters. Of course, you’ll be the person who was last seen having words with him. That might be a problem for you, seeing as he’s some sort of policeman. The plods do not like one of their own being maimed, in my experience. They might not ask too many questions. Might even get a bit overzealous when they come to take you in, as well.” He glanced down at the mark on Sarah’s thigh. “You fair-skinned girls bruise so easily.”

I didn’t take the bait. He raised his eyebrows and sank even lower against the leather couch. I remembered all his gentleness, his smiles, his courtesy. I wondered which Eamon was real, or if it all was… maybe he was capable of all of this, from passion and friendship to cold-blooded menace, all of it real.

Maybe the regard he felt for Sarah was real. Even now, the way he touched her was… odd. Gentle. As if he could force himself to be cruel, but it wasn’t his first choice.

My mouth was so dry. I tried to swallow and deliberately unclenched my fists.

“All right,” I said, trying to keep it calm and even. “What exactly is it you want?”

“I want the bottles,” he said. “I want them back. It’s not personal, love, it’s business. My client paid Quinn a great fucking pile of money for them, and he’s none too happy about seeing neither merchandise nor refund. And as I have no refund for him…”

“Eamon, there areno bottles. Quinn’s SUV exploded in the desert. The bottles were inside. They were destroyed.”

“So the Djinn were set free,” he said quietly. “Correct?”

I deliberately played stupid. “Gin? You’re threatening to kill my sister over bottles of martini juice?”

That got a genuine, charming smile. “I knew I liked you, love, you’re quick. Nice try, but I’m afraid I’ve known about the Djinn for a long time now. Magic, bottles, controlling the weather… does it sound familiar? Because Quinn was very informative on the subject. He was positively obsessed.”

“Quinn was insane.”

“Well, yes, I’d have thought so, too, until I met a few more of your friends. Like, for instance, your friend Ella, you remember her. You were talking with her earlier today before that messy business at the office building. I took her back to her house for a chat. Reminds me of my mum, Ella—not very bright, and likes money, though I’m not sure she’d do street trade for it, so perhaps she’s not that much like Mum at all.” He rolled his head slightly to one side and let his eyelids drop to half mast, watching me. I wasn’t fool enough to think he’d let down his guard. “Ella really can control the weather. I’ve seen it. So don’t try to give me any bollocks about it not working. She’s done a nice job of it for your weatherman boss these past couple of years, she told me. And she’s made some tidy sums off of it. I believe her on that score. She tried to give me some of it to leave her alone.”

I’d wondered what had happened to Ella during the chaos at the offices. She’d just… vanished. Eamon was the answer. Eamon had followed me. Eamon had grabbed her and hustled her off without anyone noticing, in the chaos.

“Is she still alive?” I asked.

“Repetitive question. Same answer.” His eyes were taking on an almost metallic shine. “Amusing as all this is, I’m running out of patience, love. So let’s get back to the subject.”

“I told you, I don’t have the ones Quinn stole.”

“Oh, yes, I understand that. Those are gone, never to return. I hope you understand; this gentleman Quinn took money from, this lovely gentleman in South America with whom he had a preexisting drug business, he won’t be very happy with that. But that’s really not my affair, as I was fortunately a very quiet partner, and the South American gentleman doesn’t know my name any more than you do. But if he locates me, I’m afraid I’ll have to tell him exactly what yoursis.”

“I—” I hated to admit anything to him. “I don’t understand. What the hell do you want?”

“Well, I came here to recover property for my client,” he said, as if it was a normal business arrangement and he was more than a little surprised that I wasn’t following. “There’s no property to be recovered—and I do believe you about that, by the way—but I still have expenses. You can, in fact, be rid of me very cheaply. All I’m asking for is my commission.” He paused and looked down at my sister’s slack, unconscious face. Ran a contemplative thumb over her parted lips and tilted his head, considering her. Enraptured. When his voice came again, it had lost its briskness and sounded more like the old Eamon, slow and warm. “All I want is one. Even trade, one sister for one Djinn.”

I felt my breath lock up tight in my chest, but managed to loosen enough to get the words out. They sounded tight and furious. “You’re deluded. That’s one Djinn more than I have to give you, you asshole.”

For answer, he picked up the remote control from the coffee table and flicked on the big-screen plasma TV on the wall. I turned to look at it. CNNfn was playing, giving a report on falling stocks; he pressed buttons, and a recording began to play. It was at an odd angle, but the focus was sharp enough.

It was my bedroom. My oldbedroom. As I watched, the door banged open and I came backing into the room, David with me, both of us feverishly touching each other, devouring each other…

“Stop it,” I whispered.

My on-screen image fell backward onto the bed. David stood looking down at her, and he looked inhuman, beautiful and unsettling, and incredibly…

“Stop it!”

Eamon hit PAUSE. “As pornography goes, it isn’t bad,” he said. “Although personally I prefer my women a little less vocal, as you know. I’ve had your apartment bugged for weeks, love. I had to get to know you before I got to know you, if you follow me. Your sister’s arrival was a complication, but I was able to… improvise.”

I was so angry I was seeing red spots, and had to breathe hard to try to keep from leaping out of the chair and throttling the man dead. He must have known it. He clicked the power off and dropped the remote back to the coffee table.

“You’ve got a Djinn,” he said. “Obviously. And although I hate to break up a grand love affair, well, sorry, but maybe you can have him back when I’m done with him.”

“No. I can’t. I don’t have him.”

“Lying to me will cost your sister another injury, love. I know you have him. I’m not being unreasonable about this, but I’m not going to be lied to.” He put those fingers on the creamy-pale skin of the swell of Sarah’s breast that was exposed in the gap of her robe. “You know I’m not bluffing.”

“ I don’t have him!Look, Sarah and I spent last night at the dump, all right? We were looking for David’s bottle, his Djinn bottle! She threw it out during the—the—the big makeover! The one you helped her with!”I gestured compulsively around at the designer’s showroom of an apartment.

He stared at me for a second, astonished, and then laughed. Really laughed, a genuinely amused guffaw. He moved his hand away from Sarah’s throat to stroke her hair, then grabbed it and wrenched her head back to a dangerous angle.

I came up out of the chair. “Leave her alone!”

“Or?” Eamon didn’t even look at me. He no longer seemed amused, or casual. There was something dark and tense in him now, and I could see a compulsively cruel streak in him that was very unsettling. He likeddoing this to her. Almost couldn’t resist it. It’s hardly the first time…I wondered what he’d done to her at night, when she’d been lying in that bed with him, zoned out on whatever drug he’d given her. Oh dear God. I had to stop this.

“Stop it or I’ll kill you,” I said. I meant it.

He looked up then, the nightmare still in his avid eyes, the hungry set of his lips. “I live on borrowed time with a very scary set of characters as company. Threats from you are like being threatened by a sprog on the playground, love. But do go on. It’s amusing.”

I changed tacks. “Is that why you want to get a Djinn? To save your skin? Make you invincible?”

He was thinking over what I’d said, clicking it over in his brain. It was easy to see that he was brilliant. His transparency was part of what made him so damn frightening. “Invincibility,” he said. “No. Although that would be nice, wouldn’t it, invincibility? But I can take care of myself, always have. Not interested, really.”

“Why do you need a Djinn, then?”

“For someone else.”

“You don’t strike me as the type who thinks of others.”

I got a hot flash of temper, the first I’d really seen. “I haven’t struckyou at all, pet. But if you insult me, I may have to take my fit of pique out on someone more ready to hand. Here’s what I want from you, and it’s not negotiable: be a good little bitch and go out and find me a Djinn. Any Djinn. I don’t care what it looks like, because unlike you I won’t be fucking it.”

“I’m not leaving you here with Sarah!”

The flare of temper I’d spotted was nothing compared to the full-throated roar that erupted out of him. “I’m not giving you a bloody choice!” He took Sarah’s limp left arm, skimmed the sleeve back, and held her forearm in both hands.

Prepared to snap it.

His eyes dared me to test him.

I swallowed hard and said, “If you hurt her, you have no idea how much I’ll make you suffer before you die.”

“You’re repeating yourself, and as there’s only one of the three of us who’s sustained any injury at all, you might think hard about the trend.” He tightened his hold on her fragile, limp arm. “You have exactly two hours before I start breaking things, working up from the bottom. If I go slowly enough, she’ll wake up before I’m finished. Oh, and love, just in case you have any brilliant ideas about calling the police, I’m taking her with me. I’ll call and tell you where to meet me with the Djinn. One life for another. I’m not unreasonable, but I am very, very determined.”

I stood, tense and agonized, as he rose and effortlessly lifted Sarah’s limp body in his arms. It was a parody of a romantic picture, her hair tousled, her head cradled against his chest. Arm draped loosely around his neck. I remembered seeing them asleep in bed together, curled into each others’ warmth.

It made me sick.

“If you try to stop me leaving, I’ll toss her down the stairs,” he said, and walked to the door. “I can assure you she’ll break her neck at the very least. Maybe if you’re lucky she’ll only be paralyzed and you can be changing her bedpans and apologizing to her the rest of your life.”

I swallowed and somehow managed to get myself to stand still. He looked back on his way out, warning clear in his eyes.

“Two hours, Joanne. No excuses.”

I let him go. Partly, I just didn’t see a way to stop him without risking Sarah’s life; partly, I was just too stunned to cope. It was too much. Just … too much.

I slid back the patio door and walked out into the cool predawn breeze.

Cotton-thick clouds formed a black shield and blotted out every evidence of approaching morning. It was as dark as midnight out here.

The security lights in the parking lot showed Eamon walking calmly to his car.

Sarah looked fragile and small and vulnerable in his arms. He put her in the passenger seat, strapped her in with no evidence of anything but gentleness, and shut the door. He even hesitated to be sure her robe was inside the car first.

He looked up at me for a moment, with no expression that I could read, and then got in and drove away.

I wanted a Djinn, all right.

And when I got my hands on one, Eamon was going to understand just how dangerous screwing with me could be.

I wouldn’t have followed him even if I’d had the skills, mainly because there was no way he wouldn’t notice the great white whale of the minivan trailing him through early-morning traffic. And Eamon, I already knew, had a criminal’s perception about danger. No point in giving him a reason to carry through on threats I was pretty sure he meant.

I needed serious help. With John Foster gone, there was no Warden in town I could turn to for help, and I didn’t have time to apply for any outside assistance. Two hours wouldn’t get anything from Paul. Even if Marion had been inclined to lend a hand, she was out of the picture, recovering in some hospital from what must have been a near-death experience with one of Ashan’s militant Djinn.

My allies—never plentiful—were MIA. I tried making calls, but Lewis wasn’t answering his cell, Rahel didn’t seem inclined to show up at my beck and call, and I knew better than to count on anything but the back of Jonathan’s hand at this point.

David… no. I couldn’t rely on David at all.

It was just me, and time wasn’t on my side. Neither was power. I had enough power to get by, not enough to stage a major confrontation. It would take more than vitamins and protein shakes to bring me back from the kind of energy devastation I’d been through recently… it was going to take time, and rest.

Neither of which I’d had, or was likely to get.

I stood on the balcony, watching the horizon. There was something out there, something big and badass and coming this way, and I could feel it like a storm of needles over my skin. It wasn’t supposed to be there, hadn’t been forecast by any of the normal weather models. It was purely, aetherically magical.

Everything was out of balance, wobbling like a bent wheel, and I didn’t know if it could ever be fixed again… or if it could, what that price would be.

I closed my eyes and went up to the higher plane.

The world dissolved into a map of shadows and lights and fog. My apartment building turned featureless; nobody spent enough time in it to give it character. I soared up, arms outstretched, and watched the city grow smaller under me, consolidating itself into a flickering pattern of energy.

I went higher, until the Earth curved away from me. As high as Wardens could safely go. I felt the drag warning me to stop, and hovered there, staring down at the world’s giant, swirling mass. In Oversight, it wasn’t blue and green and peaceful; it was a mass of shifting colors, bands of energy that moved and twisted, fought and shattered and reformed. That wasn’t just human potential at work. Part of it was Djinn. Part of it came from deeper, stronger places.

The world was fighting. Struggling with itself.

The storm off the coast of Florida was a black hole, a photonegative of a hurricane. Still tightly wound up, clouds just starting to spiral out from that hard center. It felt… old. Ancient.And powerful.

I tore my attention away from it and concentrated on what else I could see.

Djinn were hard to spot; they registered as flickers in the corners of my eyes, if they were bound to service, and as nothing at all if they were Free Djinn and trying to keep out of sight, which most of them would be. Wardens flared here and there like fireworks. Lots of activity throughout North and South America.

The intensity of the flares meant that substantial power was getting expended. I couldn’t help but imagine what that meant. Wardens were being killed, or fighting for their lives at the very least. And there was nothing I could do about that, either. A lot of them would be friends, people I’d met or worked with. Lots of names going up on the memorial wall, if there was a world at the end of this to remember them at all.

I couldn’t see anything that would help me. The closest Warden to me was in the Florida panhandle, and he or she was hard-pressed with some kind of tornadic activity. Besides, from the intensity of the flares, no Djinn were involved.

Somebody has you, I whispered into the fog. Where are you, David? Who found you? Who took you?

Something stirred, creating eddies of power that whispered warm on my skin. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. David was still alive. Still barely qualifying as Djinn, hoarding the power he’d taken from me at the dump.

Just tell me, I begged him. Tell me and I’ll come get you.

I wasn’t prepared for something to hit me, but something did, hard, knocking me in a stunned loop on the aetheric. My insubstantial body wavered, and I started to fall back toward reality in an uncontrolled spin. The world spun into a blur, and wham, I hit flesh again with enough of a shock to cause my body to stagger and make painful acquaintance with the stucco wall.

Whoever had David didn’t want me finding him.

I remembered, with a hard shock, that I’d actually seen someone with a Djinn just two nights before. On the beach. One of Shirl’s wolfpack going toe-to-toe with Lewis had been packing a Djinn. The last I’d seen of them, they’d been taking to the hills, but if they were really serious about taking out Lewis …

… then, if I found Lewis, I’d find Shirl. And a Djinn. Right now, any Djinn would do. I wasn’t about to be picky, and somehow, taking a Djinn away from that particular crowd didn’t bother me nearly as much as it probably should have, but then, when it came to people trying to kill the people I loved, my ethics got a little bendy.

I went up on the aetheric level again, this time searching specifically for Lewis. A bright flare of power to the west, maybe an hour down the coast. Where other Wardens showed up in Roman candle spurts, Lewis was a steady, bright torch. He had the ability to disguise himself nearly as well as a Djinn, but he wasn’t currently bothering.

I kept half of my attention in Oversight, grabbed minivan keys and purse, and banged out of the apartment. I didn’t have a lot of time, and God knew the mommy-mobile was hardly power transportation…

When I got to it, I realized that the land yacht was canting sideways, like a ship heeled over on a reef. Eamon had taken the trouble to slash two of my tires before he’d absconded with my sister. Probably had done it while I’d been sleeping. Son of a bitch… !

I grabbed my cell phone and hit speed dial, pacing the parking lot nervously while it rang, and rang, and rang…

Cherise’s sleepy voice finally said, “Oh, you’d betterbe cute, male, and horny.”

“Shut up. I need you,” I said flatly. “Skip the gloss and get your ass over here.”

A rustle of sheets. Cherise’s voice sharpened into focus. “Jo? What’s wrong?”

“I need a ride and a driver who’s not afraid of the gas pedal. Are you up for it?”

“Um… okay…” She sounded cautious. I didn’t blame her. She’d never heard me in full-on action mode before. “Give me thirty min—”

“I don’t have thirty minutes. I don’t care if you show up in a sheet and fuzzy slippers; for Christ’s sake just get here. Five minutes, Cherise. I’m serious.”

I chewed my lip and finally added, “My sister could die if you don’t.”

I heard her intake of breath and had a bad moment, wondering if she’d just quietly hang up and leave me stranded. But Cherise, when it came down to it, was made of sterner stuff than that.

“Five minutes,” she promised, and I heard the phone clatter to the nightstand before it shut off.

It was six minutes, but I was impressed with her commitment; when Cherise’s car screeched to a stop in front of me, she was wearing a pink crop top, tight sweat pants, and flip-flops. No makeup. Her hair was yanked back into a ponytail, still frizzy from the bed.