Ace Is Wild (18 page)

He went through it and found himself in a small room containing a table and two chairs. And nothing else. Daniel had expected some sort of stage production, colored lights, spooky music, maybe a fan to waft ghostly breath across the back of the subject’s neck. A deck of oversized cards sat on the table, and it was dark and cool, but otherwise the place was completely devoid of ornamentation.

“Kind of a disappointment,” he said when he heard Vivi come up behind him. “You’re giving psychics everywhere a black eye.”

“You were expecting smoke and mirrors?”

“At least a levitating table. Give the tourists a show.”

“I don’t get many tourists in here,” Vivi said. “My customers are mostly regulars, and they don’t need a floor show to believe in what I do.”

She turned away before Daniel could identify what he heard in her voice. Probably she was ticked off at him again. She was always ticked off for some reason.

It didn’t stop him from following her back into the shop and through another doorway. This one opened onto a staircase, which led to Vivi’s living space upstairs. Where the shop was fairly well ordered, the place Vivi called home was organized chaos. The furniture was well worn, each piece upholstered in a different pattern, as were the drapes. The walls were crowded with stuff, pictures in garish frames, mementos of vacations, the flotsam and jetsam of not just her life, but probably her grandmother’s as well, judging by the cracked black-and-white photos and the Russian-looking knickknacks.

Daniel got the impression Vivi loved each piece, but the place made his head hurt. She’d gone through one of the doorways; he followed and found her in a bedroom, the walls a pale green, the furniture simple. She was tossing things into a leather backpack: clothing, frippery, lotions from the bathroom next door. And a deck of tarot cards.

She went back downstairs and circled the shop, plucking polished stones out of the bins along one wall. “Jade and black onyx,” she said, tossing a chunk of each into her backpack as she named them, “amethyst, turquoise, carnelian, and clear quartz.”

“What are those for?” Daniel asked.

“Most of them have protective qualities, some are for wisdom, good luck . . . And why am I bothering with the explanation? You don’t believe in this anyway.”

“True.” But he read the label on the bin of the quartz. “Why do you need your psychic abilities enhanced?”

“A little extra boost never hurts . . .” She cocked her head and said, “Damn,” her eyes meeting Daniel’s.

“They’re coming,” he said.

“They’re here.”

She raced for the stairs just as the front and back doors opened. Daniel stayed in the shadows at the base of the staircase, wanting to get a look at the men who’d been trying to kill him. The guy at the front eased the door open, closing it behind him and limping into the shop.

The guy at the back tiptoed in, wearing a flowered neck brace. “I think they’re gone, Hatch,” he said to the limper. The lisp in his voice explained the flowers.

“They didn’t come out,” Hatch said. “Must be upstairs.”

“My neck hurts,” the other guy said. “My doctor doesn’t want me doing anything strenuous.”

“We don’t get this done and we won’t have to worry about strenuous ever again. We won’t have to worry about breathing, either.”

“They’re not going anywhere. Just give me a minute to take one of my little blue happy pills.”

“Shit, Flip, you take one of those and you’ll be outside coming on to everything in a wifebeater.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Unless you pick the wrong guy again and he beats the crap out of you.”

Daniel felt hands at his back and nearly jumped out of his skin before he realized it was Vivi, and then he got antsy for an entirely different reason.

“What’s the holdup?” she whispered, her lips all but pressed to his ear.

Daniel leaned back a bit and whispered, “Descriptions, names,” except he must have said it too loud because Hatch swore and limped for the stairway. Flip rolled his eyes but he followed along.

Daniel wrapped an arm around Vivi’s waist and hauled her up the staircase, pulling his gun as they went. He fired a shot down the stairs and was rewarded with some shouting, some swearing, and a couple of satisfying thuds.

“It won’t hold them for long,” he said to Vivi. “How do we get out of here?”

“There are windows, but the best bet is the door to the roof.”

She took off, Daniel hot on her heels as she led him into the other bedroom. He caught a quick glimpse of garish fabrics before she tore open the door that led to the closet and pointed up. “That’s the ladder to the roof, but I can’t reach it.”

Daniel shoved his way into the closet and pulled the door shut behind them, trying to ignore the feel of her small, curvaceous body pressed against his. It helped to remember there were two guys trying to kill them.

He pulled a cord and down came a narrow folding ladder. He boosted Vivi up and followed, blinking in the sudden bright sunlight.

“Now what?”

“Hush,” Vivi said. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing evenly, or trying to.

“We don’t have time for this.”

“We’d better, because there’s no way off this roof unless inspiration strikes, and inspiration requires calm.” And she went back to the closed eyes, head cocked, deep breathing routine.

Daniel looked around, trying to assess the situation. Deep shit seemed the best way to describe it. The buildings to either side were at least one-story higher, and the fire escapes were too far down, at the level of the second-story windows.

“We’re going to have to go back inside,” he said. “Stay behind me and I’ll—”

“Too late,” she said, just as Daniel saw Hatch’s head clear the top of the ladder. He fired off another shot, knowing it was only a matter of time before he ran out of bullets.

Then Vivi took his hand and said, “Run,” and like a fool he sprinted headlong with her, straight toward the edge of the roof. And when she said, “Jump,” he jumped.

Chapter 12

DANIEL HAD MADE A CONSCIOUS DECISION TO
jump. They were only two stories up, he’d thought. Probably they wouldn’t die. Maybe break a few bones.

The world dropped out from underneath him, the rose-colored glasses fell off, and his predominant thought was
“Shit!”
His stomach gave a long, greasy roll and he was falling, legs windmilling, heart pounding, Vivi’s hand in his oddly reassuring.

His life didn’t flash before his eyes, but his sanity came into question. It was too late to unring that bell, though, and with the pavement rushing up at him, broken bones seemed like way too optimistic an outcome. They’d need a miracle to survive . . . Like a dump truck. Filled with something soft—not so soft that the landing didn’t knock the wind out of him and send pain zinging through his bad leg. There’d be lots of bruises, but nothing felt broken.

He looked over at Vivi. She was grinning. So was he, jazzed on the adrenaline shooting through him, not to mention the part about cheating death again. He caught a glimpse of the hit men, two shocked faces peering at them from Vivi’s rooftop, before the dump truck rounded a corner and the only thing above them was the wide, clear blue sky.

“Still don’t believe me?” Vivi asked, shading her eyes and looking all smug and superior.

Daniel knew what she was talking about. The back of a dump truck was big when you were inside it, but the chance they could have hit it from two stories up was pretty slim. Even if it was stationary. Jumping blind like they had . . . It had to be more than luck. But he wasn’t prepared to admit that yet.

“We can debate the existence of your psychic powers later,” he said. “Hatch and Flip are going to be looking for this truck, and it’s easy to spot.”

“Skeptics,” she muttered under her breath, sitting up.

“I’m not a skeptic . . . completely.”

“No, you’re an idiot.”

He gave her his most intimidating courtroom glare.

She rolled her eyes. “What would you call someone who’s asked for proof and been given it—multiple times— and still refuses to believe what he sees?”

“A lawyer.”

“There’s always room for doubt, right?”

“This isn’t about doubt. You’re asking me to stake my life on your ability to pluck inside information from the ether.”

“It’s not just your life anymore. Starsky and Hutch know where I live, and now they’ve gotten a good look at me.”

“Starsky and Hutch were good guys.”

“They were cops.”

Not the same as
good
, judging from her tone. But she was right about the rest of it. Hatch and Flip might be a comedy routine in the making, but that didn’t mean they weren’t paying attention. They’d tracked her to her house, and they’d staked out the place, which was why he’d objected to going there in the first place. Okay, his reluctance ran more along the lines of not knowing her affiliation and possibly being led into a trap. But she already knew he still needed convincing, and since she’d been paying attention, she should know he was doubting more than her connection to the other side.

“We have to get out of here,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face.

Daniel sat up. A pair of flies started buzzing circles around his head, and he realized it smelled in the dump truck. Really bad. Because the dump truck was filled with compost, laced with horse manure. Soft, but aromatic. “At least we have clean clothes,” he said.

“I have clean clothes,” Vivi corrected him. “Yours are still in the car.”

“Not a problem,” Daniel said. But getting out of the truck was.

He went up on his knees and flipped around, peering over the cab. A traffic light was coming up, but they motored through it on the green. The next one turned yellow as they got to it, the truck grinding to a halt with a shriek of air brakes and a lurch that nearly tossed Daniel face-first into the dirt. With no breeze to tone it down, the stench intensified to eye-watering proportions.

Daniel banged on the roof of the cab and got a “What the fuck?” out of the driver, which was good enough to reassure him the guy wouldn’t put the thing in gear while he was trying to climb out of it. He’d hate to escape four murder attempts only to wind up a grease spot on the road by accident.

“How the hell did you get in there?”

“Hold on a sec,” Daniel said to the driver.

Vivi draped a leg over the side of the truck, but since hers weren’t as long as his, she couldn’t quite reach the indent at the base of the dump truck’s well without going on faith. But she was good at faith, he thought, watching her slither out until her feet found purchase. That was as far as she was getting without help, though, so he reached up, wrapped his arms around her legs, and let her slide down his body. Slowly.

“Um . . .” she said, sounding a little breathy, “my feet are on the ground.”

And the rest of her was pressed against him, which suited Daniel just fine.

“You’re welcome, asshole,” the driver yelled as the truck took off, and Daniel and Vivi were left standing in the middle of the street.

Vivi tried to squirm away, but he kept his arm around her, just until they got safely to the curb. And then he still didn’t see any reason for distance. If the hit men found them, he wanted to be ready to move in an instant, and if he needed to pick her up, he didn’t want to have to chase her down first.

“If we act like a couple, we won’t draw any attention,” he said.

“I think it’s too late for that.” But she stopped trying to put space between them. Probably because the people around them were making faces, wrinkling up their noses, waving their hands in the air. “It’s hard to blend in when you smell like a cesspool. And you are aware that we’re walking back toward my place, right?”

“That’s where my clothes are,” Daniel said, “and it’s the last thing the bad guys will expect us to do.”

“Too bad we don’t have time for a shower.”

“That might be pressing our luck.”

“When are you going to learn, this has nothing to do with luck?”

THEY WEREN’T FAR FROM HER PLACE, WHICH SHOULD have made Vivi feel better. All she could feel was Daniel, plastered to her side. She couldn’t even smell the compost anymore. Her senses—all six of them—were too jumbled up by him.