Caroline held up her hand, palm out, stopping the smooth flow of words. "What brand? Who made that pistol?"
Jane blinked. That question seemed straight off the wall . . . "Granados. Spanish, .25 caliber."
The girl nodded. "Trash. Look, throw that thing in the river and get a real gun. Aunt Kate warned us that most of those .25s are pot-metal junk. Zinc castings or recycled aluminum beer cans. Once you get some wear on the bastards, the safety starts to lift the hammer from the firing pin and then slips. Might fire, might not. Besides, if you had hit him, you'd just have made him mad. Never buy any pistol between a .22 and a .38 Special. Bigger is better, just like with a man."
Surreal girl. Here they were talking about shooting at her brother, and she wanted stopping power? "But it fired twice . . ."
"Bad secondary sear. That's the internal thingie that catches the hammer after one shot if you're still holding the trigger back. Keeps the 'semi' in semi-auto. You're lucky it didn't dump the whole magazine in one burst. Like I said, toss that piece of shit in the river. Trust me, Aunt Kate knows guns."
"I've already done that." Caroline took this whole thing so calmly, talked off at an angle to the subject, talked about gun quality rather than danger to Gary, offered advice, it was easy to trust her. Good psychology, defused the bomb. If she'd poked at it straight on, it could have looked like starting a fight. Dana had taken Jane to a shrink who worked like that. He'd nibbled at her problems from the edge.
Caroline lifted an eyebrow, as if those thoughts had been scrolling across Jane's forehead. "Fair warning — Morgans and Haskells, both families, we make it easy for people to trust us. It's like we broadcast some kind of drug. Gary's a nice guy, he likes you a lot, so go ahead and trust him. Just, be careful with the rest of us. Morgans have been living off misplaced trust for centuries."
She could say that right out loud, and Jane still felt the calm and trust. Witch. How long did the drug last? What was the hangover going to be like?
Caroline drained the last of her espresso, pushed back her chair, and stood up. "Hey, let's go find that boyfriend of yours."
"You can find him?"
"We can find him. You're coming along, girl."
"But I shot at him!"
That strange half-smile twitched Caroline's face again. "Hey, one thing you want to keep in mind with Gary, with all of us — we've got twenty generations of pirates in our blood. Real pirates, cutlasses and cannons and gore foaming crimson from the scuppers and throw the losers to the sharks. Danger junkies. Hell, the Morgans still have four bronze cannons mounted on their roof. And they keep 'em loaded. So he's likely to think popping a couple of rounds past his ear was just sex play."
Then she heaved her backpack across her shoulders, picked up her other bag, turned and headed across the food court, dragging Jane along in her wake. It felt weird. Tina had been big, strong, pushy, tried to take command in any situation. This girl just did it. And something in Jane let her do it. Because it didn't feel at all like Tina, not mean and cheap and selfish. This girl was helping.
Dangerous. Trust was dangerous — Jane had learned that lesson well. The Sweeneys.
Thinking about them brought the shakes back, and she walked faster to try and stay within the eye of Caroline's hurricane. Memories of pain . . .
Some dipshit walked past, smoking, even though the whole Union was a smoke-free zone. Jane felt her shoulders tense up, her chin duck into her sweatshirt collar like a threatened turtle pulling into his shell.
"Does anyone in Gary's family smoke?"
Caroline stopped short and turned, studying Jane's face. Again she seemed to see too much there, because her lips thinned and she shook her head. "Just Aunt Kate. She's my family, sort of, not his. You won't have to meet her if you don't want to. But she's polite about it. She won't shove a cigarette in your face."
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. How the hell did she read that? Gary figured it out, but he saw the scars. The hallway went blank for an instant, and she saw . . .
And then the memory vanished. She felt hands warm on her cheeks.
"Oh, Christ!" Caroline's face hung close in front of hers, almost kissing range, eyes wide. "I didn't mean that literally. I'm sorry."
Calm flowed through those palms. If this was witchcraft, Jane wanted more of it. Just as addictive as crack cocaine. She felt the shakes fade down and leave.
Caroline seemed to read that, too. "Look, you need to meet Aunt Alice. Her house, it's old, it shelters, it protects. It's a woman's house. Women are safe there, have been for hundreds of years. Nobody asks questions. But if you want to talk, she listens. She listens a lot better than I do. I'm just learning. But mainly, you'd be safe there. Guaranteed."
She stepped back, taking those warm and calming hands with her. "I just told you to be careful about trusting me. Trust Aunt Alice. Trust Aunt Alice. Trust Aunt Alice. 'What I tell you three times is true.' That's programmer language, isn't it, as well as Lewis Carroll?"
Jane nodded, her tongue frozen. Then arguments trampled across her thoughts, like they always did, arguments that needed someone as strong and giving as Dana to fight them, the self-doubt and fear that had ruled
