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“I want to know what that janitor in Garnett has to say,” she said.
“You’ll have to wait to find out,” Connor said. “You’re going to Hawaii to meet your mom. I’ll make some calls and arrange for twenty-four-hour bodyguard coverage for both of you while you’re there.”
Cindy’s mouth flapped. “But band camp hasn’t finished and I’ve got a wedding to play this weekend with the Rumors, and—”
“Forget band camp. Forget the Rumors. Forget anything written in your datebook. You canceled it all out when you provided an assassin with your mother’s home address. Miles, get onto the computer. Now.”
“Just a sec. I was going to go have Mina tell Mindmeld to—”
“Forget Mindmeld,” Con snarled. “We’re working full time on this, all of us. I am sick of having assassins breathing down my family members’ necks. It makes me fuckingtense.”
The savagery in Connor’s voice made Cindy cringe even further down into her chair. She felt small and stupid. “Sorry,” she whispered.
It was a mistake to have spoken. Con rounded on her.
“You have two things to be grateful for. One, that your mom is in Hawaii. Otherwise she would be dead. And two, that you stayed with us last night. Or you’d be dead, too. Or else begging for death.”
He flung open the door that led down to his basement workroom and stomped down the stairs. Miles stood there, probably trying to come up with his own parting slap, but he couldn’t top Connor’s, so he just dove down the stairs himself, leaving her alone with Erin.
She couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes. She wanted to disintegrate, on the spot. Erin never got into trouble like this. Or at least, when she did, it was never her own fault. She was smart, brave, sensible. All the stuff that her clueless little fluff-bunny sister wasn’t.
Cindy’s the beauty, Erin’s the brain,her mom said, but Cindy had seen through that crap from the start. Erin was pretty in her own right, which meant Mom’s statement was just a trick to make Cindy feel better about being, well, less brainy. At least she was cute, right?
Small comfort now. She buried her face in her hands.
Erin cleared her throat delicately. “Cin? Um—”
“Please. Don’t. You don’t need to scold me, too. I got the point.”
Erin’s chair scraped as she got up from the table. She walked out of the kitchen, leaving Cindy to dissolve alone.
She’d put Mom in danger? God, was it possible, that just going to bat her eyelashes at old Porky could have unleashed all this mayhem?
It would be a relief to everyone if she just disappeared.
She got up, with a vague notion of going up to the bathroom, to make that French toast sloshing around in her stomach go away.
She stumbled past the studio, saw the rumpled daybed where Miles had slept. She drifted in the door, staring at it. She’d come to his room last night. Not a plan, just a random slutty impulse, to slide into that narrow bed, just to see what those hard-muscled, hairy legs would feel like, twined through hers. Just to see what he said. What he did.
But he hadn’t been there. Just his laptop, glowing in the dark.
She sank down in front of the desk, wishing she were a better person. Smarter, less self-absorbed. She wished she hadn’t hurt Miles’s feelings so badly. That she was the kind of person that Con could respect. Maybe even like.
She blinked at the computer screen. Letters typed themselves across the page. She got a ghostly shudder `til she realized the screen was open to a chat room. Someone thought they were talking to Miles.
Mindmeld666: Hey Mina u still there? Want 2 meet me and C the Haven?
She ran her eyes up the screen, scrolled up, read the previous conversation. The Haven. That mythical place she’d heard of, like the school for mutants in the X-Men movies. It was real. How totally wild.
It occurred to her. Here was a place she could go where the assassin she’d unleashed upon her luckless family would never find her. No one would. She had no idea where it was, and Mindmeld had no idea who she was. Double blind anonymity. It sounded great right now.
She could lift the dead weight from her long suffering brother-in-law. Get away from all those scowls and scolds and disapproving glares.
And just maybe even make herself slightly useful in the process.
Her mind raced, excited. She could meet this guy, check out the place, suss out the vibe. If they were up to no good, she would send an SOS to Miles, cross her fingers and take her chances, like other grown-ups who did risky things. Dad had risked his life all the time to catch bad guys, before he’d gotten wound up with that scumbag Lazar. He’d done some good along with the bad. That didn’t cancel out the bad, of course, but maybe, in the end, it tilted the scales in his favor a tiny bit.
She wanted to do good mixed in with her bad, too. At least, she could try. They would worry, and be furious, but so what else was new?
