Jennifer Rardin - [Jaz Parks 1] - Once Bitten, Twice Shy

'Yeah. Why not?' I waited to reply until he got out and opened the side door.

'Well,' I said, as Vayl and I handed him Cassandra's luggage, 'it's just so… pleasant.' I got out, grabbed a box and followed him to the front door. 'I'd always imagined you in a cave. Or, at the very least, one of those rickety old mansions with droopy shutters and more tunnels than windows.'

'I prefer a really excellent security system.' He put the bags down, lifted the lion's head doorknocker, and thumbed a switch underneath it. The lion's head slid sideways, revealing a square of metal and electronics that took detailed measurements of Bergman's left eye before deciding he passed muster. The door clicked several times and stopped.

'Wait,' said Bergman as I reached for the latch. Another couple of seconds passed and then I heard a final click. Bergman nodded, so I turned the knob. As the door swung open Vayl said, 'Just remember Bergman, sooner or later you will have to give us a way to get inside without the benefit of your eyeball.'

'No problem. As soon as all our stuff is unloaded I'll modify the system.'

I stepped into the front hall and a piercing whistle stopped me in my tracks. Knowing Bergman, if I moved any further a cannon would descend from the ceiling and blow my head off.

'What is that?' Vayl asked as Bergman came in to give me a critical look.

I held up my hands. 'I didn't do anything.'

'But you did. That's a wavelength sensor. You're sending some sort of signal.'

'Is it the watch?' I asked, snapping the band to see if that stopped the alarm. Nope.

Bergman had run out to the van. He brought back a box, dug around inside and came out with a hand-held wand that looked like a super-sized cigarette lighter. Starting at my head, he swept it down my body. As soon as it reached my navel it sent out its own warning beep.

I raised my shirt. 'It's your belly-ring,' Bergman said, adding urgently, 'Give it to me.'

I took it off and handed it to him. He jumped back into the van, started it up and raced off. In the time it took us to figure out how to turn the alarm off he returned. 'I planted it on an ice-cream truck. Whoever's following that signal will hopefully zero in on the truck and forget the signal stopped here for a couple of minutes.'

'Pete said I had to break it to activate it. That only then would our backup team get involved.'

Bergman grimaced. 'Somebody activated it remotely.'

'The same somebody who supplied it in the first place?' wondered Vayl.

'Well it's not one of mine,' said Bergman.

'That's how they found us,' I said. 'Those God's Arm fakes on the road. Liliana at the restaurant. Mr. and Mrs. Magoo in the hotel. All they had to do was follow the belly-ring signal.' I clenched my jaw, trying not to kick a hole in the wall. 'When I get hold of this senator I'm going to rip his ears off and stuff them down his throat.'

'What about the Raptor?' Vayl asked.

'I'll leave him to you, as long as you promise to make it vile. God, that pisses me off!' The anger wasn't going to help me think clearly though, so I tried to walk it off by exploring the house. Its interior lived up to the exterior's promise. Wooden floors, colorful throw rugs, overstuffed furniture and antique accessories in twisted iron and oak made the house feel like the set for one of the daytime dramas Granny May used to love to watch. She called them her 'stories,' and never failed to shake her head sadly when last season's true love became this season's big breakup.

I just about had it back under control once we unloaded Bergman's van into the living room, a light, airy place with pale blue beadboard walls and a huge fishing net hanging from the ceiling. A long, mahogany bar separated it from the kitchen/feed-a-party-of-thirty dining room. A hallway, painted pastel green, led to three bedrooms and a bathroom. Stairs just to the right of the doorway led to a large family room, a home office and a master bedroom with a view that made me wish I could sail. I thought there might be some truth to the idea that surroundings influence mood. Maybe I should paint my apartment.

Once everything was in, Cassandra and I started unpacking while Bergman and Vayl set everything up. Several of the boxes held computer components, and before long they'd transformed the dining room table into a communications center. Four PCs sat back to back, connected to each other, the Internet and a central printer through a maze of cords that lay like a big, sloppy coil basket in the middle of them all. Our laptop sat beside them and yet separate, a snooty, secretive step-sister. The table was so long that half of it still remained free for other purposes.

Bergman and Vayl began setting up a mini lab on the bar while Cassandra stored the empty boxes in a downstairs bedroom, so I got to work elsewhere.

'Jaz, why did you rearrange the furniture?' Bergman asked a few minutes later, staring curiously at me over a row of shiny glass beakers.

'What do you mean? I'm just—' I looked around the living room and realized I'd done it again. Without any conscious thought, as though an entire section of my brain had switched to blackout mode, I'd reproduced the same design I'd created at Diamond Suites. 'What the hell?' I murmured.

Cassandra came down the hallway, took a look at my little project and sent me a look of trepidation that cut straight to my heart. Vayl's forehead creased and the corners of his lips drooped. For him it was the equivalent of a thunderous frown.

'You deceived me about this, didn't you?' he demanded, waving his hand to indicate the new room arrangement. 'This is not how it once looked at your house.' I shook my head. 'What else have you lied to me about? I cannot abide liars.' His tone, straight out of the Knucklecrackers Handbook for Schoolmarms, made me grit my teeth. Before I could defend myself, or launch a vase at his head, or plan a massive spitball campaign with Jimmy and Susie that would probably get us expelled but would be well worth the trouble, Cassandra spoke up.

'I may be able to explain that better than Jasmine.'

She brought out the smallest of her four suitcases and set it on the ottoman I'd moved from its spot beside the couch not five minutes earlier. Now it sat center stage. I sank onto the couch beside her. Vayl, still looking irritated,