Trust Me, I'm Trouble (26 page)

“I appreciate that, but my team has a lead or two we’re following up on. No grifter input needed.”

Fabulous. Just freaking fantastic. I’m going to have to find a way to sabotage that investigation or Sam’s going to end up with a one-way ticket to serious jail time.

“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Thanks,” he says, gulping the last of his coffee in one swallow. “So. You and Dani, huh? Can’t say I saw that one coming.”

My face heats up. “There’s no me and Dani. There’s no me and anybody.”

Mike scratches his stubbly cheek. The man shaves, I swear, but he always has stubble. It’s, like, an immutable tough-guy law. “Funny, she said the same thing when I talked to her.”

“Oh, my god, Mike, you didn’t.” For a second, I seriously consider smothering him in his sleep. “I hope you know this is a spike-your-coffee-with-Drano offense. Not a single person would blame me. Not even Angela.”

“Not even Angela what?” says a sleepy Angela as she shuffles into the kitchen.

“Your rube of a husband asked Dani what her intentions were regarding me.”

Angela gasps. “You didn’t.” She sounds almost as horrified as I feel. “The Drano’s under the sink. Do you need me to get it?” she says to me.

“Hey, I’m in charge of your emotional as well as your physical well-being,” Mike says. “Dani is, no offense, the
last
person I’d feel good about you dating. I was completely justified in my actions.”

“No, honey. I’m sorry, but no. Just no.” Angela is totally my hero. “Besides, I already talked to Dani.”

“Are you both on
drugs
?”

Angela pats my head. “It’s adorable how sincerely you believe you don’t need parents,” she says. “But you do, whether you like it or not.”

I’m not big on embarrassment. I don’t generally dwell on it. I feel it and let it go. But this is a whole new realm of mortification.

“What did she say?” I ask, not sure I want to hear the answer.

Mike and Angela share a look, but it’s Angela who answers. “She’s in denial. Not of her feelings, but of any ability to act on them.” She squeezes my shoulder. “I don’t think she’s going to budge, sweetie.”

Well, that’s not surprising. The depth to which my heart plummets is new, though.

“I think I’ll go back to bed,” I say, pouring my coffee into the sink. “If anyone needs me, tell them to get lost.”

“Julep, about New York,” Mike says, leaning back in his chair. “I’d hate to find out that you or any of your friends were involved in that robbery. I don’t want to arrest you.”

“Then don’t,” I say, and leave.

• • •

“Crap. Are you sure?” Sam says.

“Pretty damn sure, Sam,” I say into the phone. “He knows something or he wouldn’t have brought up the bit about not wanting to arrest us.”

Some muffled swearing follows. Sam’s picked up a few new phrases in military school. “I’ll handle it.”

“No. No, you will not
handle it.
No more solo missions, remember? All three of you swore blood oaths to me after the bank letter debacle.”

“Quit being melodramatic. It wasn’t a debacle. A mild catastrophe, at most.”

I roll my eyes, though only Dani can see since she’s driving me and Sam’s just on the phone.

“Listen,
I
will handle Mike.
You
keep digging at NWI. Ackley probably had an accomplice. Somebody higher up.”

“Gotta go. The other initiates are arriving for the big meeting. Are you going to get here in time?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I say, and hang up.

Dani seems extra broody this morning. I remember my conversation with the Ramirezes and my cheeks heat again.

“What’s the stony face for? Not enough barbed wire for breakfast this morning?”

It’s a measure of her mood that she ignores my playful jab. Instead, she says, “I know you think this Ackley person is harmless. But if he did kill Salinger, he is deadly. You should avoid confronting him.”

“Come on, you know me. Or you should by now. I don’t confront people directly.”

She arches an eyebrow.

“Okay, I sometimes confront people directly. But you can stop worrying. I’ve got this.”

She’s still looking at me dubiously when she drops me off at the front door. I hustle in because I’m just short of late for Dr. Raktabija’s big speech to the entire organization. It’s apparently being recorded for the website. I don’t want to be the jerk disrupting it with a squeaky door.

I manage to make it in just before the auditorium doors shut, sliding into a seat Aadila saved for me in the interns’ row.

“You’re late,” Aadila says, cutting her eyes over to where Ackley is sitting, quietly seething. “His panties are screwed on far too tight.”

I swallow a laugh as the lights dim and a spotlight illuminates the podium onstage. Dr. Raktabija strides purposefully up to it, her face drawn and puffy from crying, and I suddenly don’t feel like laughing anymore.

I have a weird moment of almost déjà vu seeing another woman standing on another stage about to give another eulogy. The place and circumstances may be different, but the end is the same. Someone was taken from a community that loved him with a single, well-aimed bullet. But there the similarities end. Dr. Raktabija, the future leader of NWI, is nothing like Sister Rasmussen. Where Sister Rasmussen is a pasty white woman in her sixties with gray hair, Dr. Raktabija is an Indian woman in her late thirties, with long, black-brown curls framing a heart-shaped face. The few times I’ve seen her in passing, she wore bright colors, but today, she’s swathed in deep black.

“Duke Salinger was like a father to me. He brought me out of a darkness so expansive that I could not even see it until he let in a small ray of light. The longer I followed him, the more light surrounded me, until I floated in a sea of light every day. I know many of you feel the same. That was Duke’s gift to the world, to each of us.

“But Duke did not teach us to lean on
his
light. He taught us to nurture and harness and fight for the light within ourselves. It is only by adhering to this teaching that we will regenerate the light we lost. We owe it to ourselves, to each other, and to Duke to continue perfecting the skills he taught us.

“How we react to this tragedy will define us as an organization. We can either come together and build the New World Initiative into an even stronger entity, or we can let everything Duke lived and died for crumble into dust. The choice is made here in this room, in this moment, in each of our hearts.”

There’s no applause at the end of Dr. Raktabija’s speech, but a pervasive and profound feeling of respect and resolve moves through the room. Joseph leans forward in his seat, trying to control an overflow of emotion. Even Ackley seems affected, though he could easily be putting on a front to throw me off.

After the meeting, I corner Ackley outside the men’s room. “How are you holding up?” I ask.

“At least I can use this travesty for my college essays.”

I fake-smile. “Always thinking, aren’t you? Awesome. I was wondering whether they’ll be continuing our summer internships after all this?”

“Why wouldn’t they? Joseph needs us even more now. He’s been promoted to Dr. Raktabija’s second-in-command.”

“Really? I hadn’t heard that. Interesting. That’s quite the jump from internship coordinator, isn’t it?”

Ackley shrugs. “If you’re valuable, you get promoted. That’s how it works in business.”

Okay, Ackley, are you just a naive, arrogant douche bag, or are you trying to play me into believing you’re a naive, arrogant douche bag when really you’re a conniving murderer?

Adding an undercurrent of melancholy to my voice, I say, “Did you get to see Duke? You know, that last day?”

“On Friday?” Ackley asks, barely managing to keep his voice neutral. Beads of sweat appear on his upper lip. “No,” he lies. “I meant to go up and ask him a question. He said we could. But I didn’t get around to it before we left for happy hour.”

Ah, yes. Happy hour. How did you get out of that? Make some excuse about leaving something at the office? Your gun, perhaps?

“Oh, well. It’s probably for the best,” I say, dropping my gaze. “It’s harder now without him.” That part is less a lie than I’d like it to be. I gesture in the direction of the intern pen. “I guess I’d better get back there. See you in a few.”

“Wait,” Ackley says as I move away. His eyes flick nervously around the hallway. “I heard something was taken. From Duke, I mean.”

“Really?” I say, freezing midstep. Could it really be this easy?

“Yeah.” He drops his voice a few decibels. “A blue pixie…or something? Out of curiosity, did you ever see him with it? You were in his office for that workshop development project.”

Now, I could do a number of things at this stage of the game. I could tell Ackley I didn’t see it, keep him at a distance, delaying the inevitable in a “did she or didn’t she?” dance. Or I could tell him I have it and see what he does. But Dani would have a conniption if I do, and besides, I’m not quite ready for the fallout from that yet. I need to know who he’s working for and why. So I go for option number three: Show him a glimpse of the lady, then make him work to find it—the three-card monte.

“I did see it,” I say. “Or at least, I think so. He had something like that on his desk when I was there. I noticed it because he kept looking at it.”

“Oh. Maybe it’s just in a drawer somewhere, then.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I say, letting my voice hang a little heavy with significance. If Ackley is crooked, he’ll hear it and make a play. “Though if I were Duke, I’d keep it on me.”
Telling the truth like it’s a lie.

He licks his lips. “Are you going to the wake tomorrow?”

“I didn’t know about it,” I say.

It’s almost too easy. I can see my suggestion taking root in his mind….
I’d keep it on me.
If he has half a brain, he’ll try to steal the blue fairy from me at the wake. Too bad for him I’ll be leaving it at the Ramirezes’. Meanwhile, he makes any kind of move on me at the wake, and I’ll have him.

“Right, you were late,” Ackley says. “Joseph told us about his promotion and the wake before we went to the auditorium for Dr. Raktabija’s speech.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll be there,” I say. “Thanks for letting me know.”

He nods an awkward thank-you and turns toward the men’s room.

“Hey, Ackley. Where is the wake going to be?”

“Bar63,” he says, and then steps through the door.

“Y
ou sure you don’t want more, Sam?” Angela says, offering him the plate of empanadas.

Sam holds up a hand, warding them off. “No, thanks. I think I had my share, plus half of Mike’s.”

“I heard that!” Mike yells from the kitchen.

We’re sitting on the Ramirezes’ back deck, enjoying the coolness of the evening. Or rather, Angela, Mike, and Sam are enjoying the coolness of the evening. I’m obsessing about the connection between NWI and Bar63.

“Julep?” Angela says, turning the plate in my direction and not quite hiding the worry in her eyes. I feel guilty, because I barely managed to choke down one empanada. And not for lack of deliciousness on the part of Angela’s cooking.

“I’m good, thanks,” I say.

“You seem sort of distracted, actually,” she says.

“I’m just struggling with something work-related. I’m okay.”

“Anything we can help with?”

I carefully avoid looking at Sam. “I don’t think so. Thanks, though.”

“All right,” she says, touching my shoulder. “I’ll just take these in before the flies carry them off.”

Sam nudges my chair leg with his foot. “What’s eating you? I haven’t heard you this quiet since that time Jimmy Kendricks bet you five dollars you couldn’t shut up for five minutes.”

I glare at him. “It was thirty minutes, jerk.”

“Okay, thirty minutes,” he says, smiling. “The question still stands.”

“I’m just so frustrated. It doesn’t make any sense. Nothing fits. I’m not a detective, Sam. And I’m missing stuff because of it. I can feel it.”

He leans forward, toward me. “So hand it over to the people who actually are detectives, who have the resources to figure it all out for you.”

“If I do that, I risk you going to prison. They can’t find out about your role in all this.”

“That’s my problem, Julep. I made the choice I did for a reason, and I’m not sorry I did.”

I shake my head. “You’re a sentimental idiot, but I won’t have you going to prison for it. No cops.” We fall silent for a few seconds before I get up the nerve to ask, “What did she say to you? What did she sound like? Why didn’t she come to me?” About fifteen other questions crowd my brain, but I force them back. I know that letting myself care is a recipe for disaster, but I can’t help it.

Sam looks down at his hands. “She sounded scared. She said she needed my help. That
you
needed my help. I couldn’t say no.”

“Probably because you have no common sense whatsoever.”

He chuckles ruefully. “Yeah, you’re right about that.”

“But why did she insist you keep it a secret from me?”

“She didn’t have to give me a reason. I would have kept you out of it anyway.”