one, when Nana pasted her car with a scowl.
“ I’d know that car anywhere. You were the ones who ran down that couple last night on Sierra.”
“ We did that,” Alicia said, “but don’t blame Amy. I was driving. We were afraid, because you, or rather an older version of you, was screaming out that someone was trying to kill her. I know I should’ve stopped, but I saw someone on the sidewalk and I knew they’d call 911. There wasn’t anything we could do, except stop and maybe get Amy killed.”
“ And where did you get that car, young lady?” If Amy would have had any doubts that this was her grandmother, that tone of voice would have taken them away.
“ Tucker bought it for me.” Amy winced when she said his name.
“ Tucker!”
“ Don’t worry, Dr. Eisenhower.” Alicia said. “They’re not seeing each other any more.”
“ I’ve got a lot more on my mind right now than Tucker Wayne,” Nana said.
“ Wow,” Alicia said. “I was a little clairvoyant with that Dylan quote, wasn’t I, Amy?”
“ Yeah, I guess you were,” Amy said.
“ You’re really finished with Tucker?” Nana said.
“ She really is,” Alicia said.
“ I thought he was going to let me go,” Amy said. “We had it worked out.”
“ That was before his hit woman Lila Booth saw a tape of you copying files from his computer.”
“ There was a camera?”
“ How could you be so stupid?”
“ I wanted to leave him and I thought I needed insurance. It turned out I didn’t.” She was scared now. In the last few months she’d heard stories about what could happen to you if you crossed Tucker Wayne. “I’ll call him up. I’ll give it back.”
“ He already has it. Lila broke into your apartment.”
“ That bastard,” Amy said.
“ He is a bastard,” Nana said, “but he’s the one who warned me that Lila was coming after you last night. If it wasn’t for him, you’d be dead now. Anyway, I’m glad you’re through with him. Now we have to go.”
“ Where?” Amy said.
“ Far away.”
“ Because that Lila Booth person is trying to kill Amy?” Alicia said.
“ I can probably fix that, eventually,” Nana said. “Mostly we’ve got to disappear because of what’s happened to me. Once it gets out, you can imagine what they’d do to me.”
“ Well yeah, the government alone, they’d be pretty interested,” Alicia said.
“ So we’ve got to get on the road,” Nana said. “The sooner we’re away from here, the better.”
“ Excuse me,” Alicia said, “but wouldn’t you be better off hiding, you know, someplace close by, where whoever might come after you would never look. Someplace safe, rather than drive away to who knows where, with spooks and spies and Lila Booth hot on your trail. I’ve seen that movie and somebody always gets killed.”
“ Who is this person?” Nana said. It was odd thinking of her as her grandmother, but despite the way she looked now, it was Nana, of that Amy was sure.
“ She’s my friend Alicia,” Amy said.
“ So, Alicia,” Nana said, “do you have anywhere specific in mind?”
“ Yeah, my place. You can hang till this Lila Booth person and whoever else is looking for you are convinced you’ve disappeared, then you can leave. Like, when it’s safe.”
“ It could be a long time.”
“ No worries. I’ve got lots of room, plus I make tons of money, so you all won’t be a problem.”
“ She does have a big house,” Amy said. “I think it’s a good idea.
Izzy followed Alicia out of the parking lot with the dog riding shotgun. When they’d decided that she and Amy would follow Alicia and Hunter to Alicia’s, the dog seemed to object. He went to Izzy’s car, parked himself by the passenger door and wouldn’t budge. He was her dog now. She knew it. The dog knew it.
So Amy got in the yellow VW with her friend, Hunter jumped into Izzy’s passenger seat when she opened the door, sat straight up, like it had been his place forever.
“ There is something very strange going on here, big guy.”
“ Woof,” the dog answered.
“ And I suspect you might know more than you’re letting on.”
Five minutes later, Izzy parked alongside the girls, who had pulled into a driveway of a two story yellow house three blocks from the university. She was about to shut the engine off when Alicia got out of the VW.
“ You should park in the garage.” Alicia pointed to the garage doors, a double and a single. She had a three car garage and Izzy wondered how many cars she had in it. “I’ll just be a minute.” Alicia pulled a set of keys from her pocket, went to the front door, keyed the lock, entered the house.
Seconds later the double door went up and Izzy’s unasked question was answered. One car, a flashy red BMW sports car. And a lot of stuff. Amy pulled her VW in, parked next to the Beemer as the single door went up. Izzy pulled in, parked next to a mound of cardboard boxes. She was barely able to squeeze her little Raider in.
“ What’s in the boxes?” Izzy said.
“ Everything, including the kitchen sink,” Alicia said. “I’m an eBay junkie.” She laughed. “Sadly, I’m a neat freak, too, so there’s no room for most of this crap in the house.”
“ Then why do you buy it?”
“ I don’t know,” Alicia said. “I can’t seem to help myself.” Alicia wasn’t poor, didn’t appear to be watching her money. She lowered the door and Izzy and the dog followed her into the house.
“ Nice,” Izzy said once inside. The furniture was expensive, from the love seat and sofa in the living room to the designer lamps and the paintings on the wall, which all looked like original art.
“ You’ll be safe here,” Alicia said as Amy came in the front door.
“ I don’t know if I’ll ever be safe again,” Izzy said.
Mansfield Wayne paced his living room, with a wooden ruler in his right hand and with every third or fourth step he smacked the open palm of his left. He needed to feel the pain, needed to feel alive. He was seventy-seven years old, the same age as Isadora Eisenhower and, like her, he had terminal cancer. Cigarettes were the cause of his, Eisenhower, it seemed, was the victim of bad luck. He probably deserved his fate. She probably didn’t deserve hers.
Still, if one of them were to be spared, it should’ve been him. He ran an empire which employed thousands. Who was she? A woman concerned only for herself, that was plain to see, because if she had an ounce of concern for others in her condition, she’d’ve shared her secret. Nobody should be allowed to keep something like that all for themselves. It wasn’t right.
“ Stop it, stop it, stop it!” He flung the ruler across the room. He was Mansfield Wayne. He didn’t have to justify his actions. Yet, here he was trying to justify what he was about to do. He didn’t do that. He was a man who took what he wanted and who fought like hell when somebody tried to take what was his. Eisenhower had something he wanted. No, something he needed, needed desperately. He was going to find her, learn her secret and take it.
He thought back on what Peeps Friday had told him. It was a fantastic story, an unbelievable story. Mansfield didn’t believe in the supernatural. Didn’t believe in ghosts. Didn’t believe in God either. If he couldn’t see it and touch it, it didn’t exist for him. But this did.
He could spot a liar at fifty paces. Peeps Friday was a lot of things, but he was no liar. Peeps may not believe in what he’d seen on that DVD, but he was telling the truth about how he got it. And from what he’d said, those doctors believed what they’d seen. Still, he wanted to make absolutely sure. He had to know if Lila had shot Isadora Eisenhower. He had to hear it from her own mouth.
The doorbell rang.
“ Finally.” He went to answer it.
“ I came as fast as I could,” Lila Booth said.
“ Not fast enough!”
