Cora and Frank were intelligently wearing rubber gloves so no trace of them would be found later. Leo and I had been here before, so there was no sense in disguising our fingerprints. I hoped Andre hadn’t touched anything besides his gun. Both of us had fingerprints in the database if anyone cared enough to search.
“You mean you just walked in through the gate?” I asked suspiciously as we stepped into the night and I recognized Leo’s Ford SUV in the drive. “I could have walked in instead of crawling through ducts?”
Holding his bandage in place, Paddy glared at me. “I have keys. You could have asked.”
And gotten gassed for my efforts? I bit my already sore tongue and eyed him with more suspicion. He seemed to be recovering in the night air. “When I know I can rely on you, I will,” I retorted. “How did Bergdorff get the canister?”
He locked Acme’s front door and smudged the lock with the back of his sleeve. “Bergdorff is in charge of the magic machine.”
Even Frank rolled his eyes at this. “Magic machine?”
“Figure of speech. Bergdorff is mad as a hatter. I wanted to use the cloud on him and see if it would make him better.” Paddy studied the darkened windows of the plant. “I left the canister in my office. Maybe I’d better go back and get it.”
“Man, you lie better than I do, Padraig,” I said nastily. If he’d brought the canister here, he was as much to blame for Bergdorff’s death as I was. Although ultimately, as inventor of the gas, Bergdorff had killed himself in more ways than one. “Einstein’s deader than a doornail, so you don’t need to worry about him anymore. You’d better just hope Andre hasn’t sacrificed his life for us, or I’ll bring the whole place down around your ears.”
It didn’t sound threatening from a skinny shrimp like me, but he ought to have known by now that I was a loose cannon and dangerous when roused.
Instead of appearing properly terrified, Paddy looked sad, and not in the least guilty. “Bergdorff’s dead?”
“Trust me, he won’t be firing up the machine again.”
“He used the canister on Andre? I’d better go back and get it,” Paddy said worriedly, studying the plant. The first rays of dawn were lightening the sky over the harbor. “Did you leave it in the office?”
“Einstein took it out the window with him,” I lied. I wasn’t trusting that can in anyone else’s hands ever again. “I don’t advise you to go near the body, or I’ll have two murder cases to fight.”
“They know I’m there at night. The window in his office?” he asked worriedly, tensing as if he was about to take off in search of the canister. Or Bergdorff.
I grabbed his arm and shoved my phone in his hand. “Learn to use one of these, will you? Call the cops when we’re safely out of here. Pretend sanity.”
If glares could kill, he would have downed me then. Without another word, he departed at a lope.
Frank and Cora didn’t attempt to stop him. Cursing under my breath, I climbed into the back with Bill and Andre and held their hands.
We might not think alike, but Andre was my anchor to the Zone. I didn’t want to live here without him.
Which was just plain nuts, but I’d been gassed. That was my excuse and I was sticking to it.
• • •
The next afternoon, I watched the world go by outside Andre’s front window while sitting on his fancy leather couch with Milo in my lap. Andre’s apartment is on the first floor, so his porch blocked most of the view. But it would have been silly to ask Leo and Frank to cart him up to my barren apartment when Andre’s was more comfortable and accessible. And his father had so much more experience at caring for comatose patients.
Leaving Andre unprotected wasn’t on my radar, however. I didn’t know when I had appointed myself Andre’s guardian. If I gave it any thought, I’d realize he had an entire community to watch over him. Sarah had already been by, asking questions that I’d shrugged off. She considered Andre boyfriend material. I’d rather not set off a jealous rage in her murderous breast, but it didn’t matter. I was here, and I wasn’t leaving. I was probably still waiting for Saint Saturn to fix things. My world was just that confused.
My phone rang and I checked caller ID to make certain it wasn’t a hamburger joint in Alaska, but Cora’s number showed up. “Anything new?” I asked.
“Cops still crawling all over Acme and we’ve got newshounds cruising the streets. We got Bill to the hospital, but not the others. So far they’re only questioning Paddy about Bergdorff.”
“Bill still comatose?” I asked. I hadn’t even managed to rescue all the patients, dammit. I was feeling like a complete and utter failure.
“Bill’s still out. Frank’s at the hospital with him and the other patients they took from Andre’s. As far as we know, Paddy hasn’t led the cops to the secret lab, and the research scientists are lying low. Paddy’s over there now, pretending to be sane. He says we can go in and get Leibowitz and the others as soon as the mundanes are gone. He’d probably get arrested if the cops found them. Bad for business. How’s Andre?”
I’d known that was why she was calling. Julius had wanted us to take Andre to the attic infirmary with Katerina, but I’d balked and insisted he be returned to his own room. I was convinced Andre would pull out of his coma, like Sarah. No one ever said I was
Sarah hadn’t been sick. She’d just been shifting.
Andre took regular time-outs. Maybe he shifted in his brain. Bergdorff wouldn’t have known about those possibilities.
“Sleeping,” I insisted. “There’s a reporter outside taking pics of the warehouse,” I warned, watching out the window. Fortunately, I hadn’t had time to hang a shingle in front of my new office. I was thinking maybe I wouldn’t. I didn’t have a lot of friends in the media.
“We have people working overtime on faking them out,” Cora assured me. “Apparently gas explosions happen all the time on chemically enhanced ground. The road cracks are settling back to potholes.”
“Might work for reporters, but what is Paddy telling the police?”
“Leo and Paddy have them convinced Bergdorff committed suicide when the sprinkler systems malfunctioned and ruined his big, bad machine. The police think Ferguson may have sabotaged it. They haven’t found him yet.”
Even Cora didn’t know I’d turned Ferguson and the nasty security guards into frogs. I doubted that anyone cared. I occasionally gave the frogs a worried thought, but it wasn’t as if I’d figured out how to reverse my curses. I sure as hell wasn’t kissing any goon-frogs.
I was feeling a little lonely and depressed, with no one to talk to about my fears and no means of alleviating them. Andre was the only one who had any real clue about me. Maybe I should call Sarah. At least she understood, even if her reactions weren’t necessarily rational. She might try killing frogs to see if she was rewarded with longer legs.
“I’ll let you know if anything changes,” I assured Cora, knowing it was Andre she fretted over. “He has a court appointment next week. I’ll have to get a postponement. We can’t wheel him in like this.”
I’d slept all morning on Andre’s couch and prayed a miracle would have taken place by the time I woke up. Hadn’t happened. Of course, it had been after midnight when I’d damned Bergdorff to Hades, so maybe I had another twenty-four hours to wait.
Outside, a physically fit man with poker-straight posture pushed a twin baby stroller past the warehouse. If that was one of the soldiers I’d condemned to nursery duty, did I have to lift the punishment or did it eventually wear off? Didn’t I give them a week? Their time wasn’t up yet.
I’d lose track of all the asshats I’d visualized out of my way if I did it too often. I needed to remember to give them term limits when I cursed them. For now, I was hoping that once they learned their lessons, they’d work themselves out of whatever I’d thrown them into. Or maybe they’d make radical changes in their lifestyles and the world would be a better place. Not sure the frogs had minds enough to do that, though. That had been fun at the time, but a major big boo-boo on my part now that reality had set in. Maybe I ought to gather the frogs and take care of them until I figured out how to fix things.
Tim jogged down the stairs, saw me in the front parlor, and came in jiggling my car keys. “Thanks, Tina,” he said diffidently, handing them back. “Pearl wouldn’t get in the car with an invisible driver, but we did okay.”
Milo leapt down to say hi to Tim, and I dropped the keys in my bag. “You’ll learn to control it eventually,” I
