Crazy for You (29 page)

“You sound like my sisters. I had to listen to them yammer about that stuff at the supper table until I lost my appetite.”

I was just about to launch into my lecture about how guys needed to get over their stupid hang-ups about menstruation, when something large lumbered into the shed. If it was the bad guys, we were cooked, because we’d been caught with our pants down, in all senses of the word.

The thing mooed.

“Just a cow,” I said shakily.

“I think it wants to be milked,” Labeck said. “You’re a farm kid—you know how to do it. Get us some fresh milk. I could use a midnight snack.”

“That’s a beef cow,” I said. “No milk spigots.”

The maxi pads seemed to be soaking up the blood. I took off my Mom muffler and wound it tightly around Ben’s thigh, securing it with a square knot. Fortunately, he was still wearing the horrible, baggy jeans, and I was able to shimmy the pants legs up over the muffler bandage. I dug back into my purse. I’m never sure what’s going to turn up inside it. My purse is a black hole that swallows things, but unlike a black hole, it occasionally regurgitates them. This time it produced treasure: the water bottle from Pig’s trunk and a couple of bottles of pills. I shook out four pills and handed them to Labeck.

“This better not be Midol,” the ungrateful idiot said, sniffing the pills like a dog who suspects he’s being fed cat food.

“Oh for Pete’s sake—they’re Tylenol. Or possibly Motrin.” While Labeck gulped the pills with water, I mined my purse again and found something, smushed way down at the bottom, wrapped in crackly cellophane. I handed the package to Labeck, who needed to start rebuilding his blood cells. He ripped off the paper and bit off a starving man’s chunk.

“Good,” he said. “Tastes like brownies. What is it?”

I shone the light at the wrapping. “Snoozy-Doozies.” Uh-oh.

“Is that like Ding Dongs?”

How could I be experiencing such overwhelming feelings of love and tenderness for this guy, yet at the same time have the urge to smack him on the head? “No, they’re not like Ding Dongs. It’s a health-food snack—it has melatonin, valerian, that kind of thing. It’s supposed to be a natural relaxant.”

“Sounds like weed.”

“Well, it’s not.” Although the health-food store clerk had told me that some people claimed to get high on Snoozies.

“Not bad,” he said, around a mouthful.

“The wrapper says it has mood-altering properties. Maybe you ought to go easy on it.”

He broke off in the middle of stuffing the second brownie in his mouth. “Sorry, I’m a pig. Here, take the rest.”

“No, go ahead. I’ll just lick the wrapper.”

“You sound like my mother. Hey, how many moms does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“I give up.”

“None. Don’t mind me, dear—I’ll just sit here in the dark.”

I lay down next to Labeck and pulled Pig’s blanket down over both of us. It smelled like spare tire and long-ago picnics. We were lying atop a mattress of loose hay from busted bales, surprisingly comfortable if you didn’t mind creatures rustling around beneath you. Something hard jutted against my right hip. I reached into my coat pocket
and pulled out the Cobra’s glow stick. Eddie had stuffed it in my pocket during the victory celebrations, the paintball equivalent of being awarded the game ball.

Instantly our space was transformed. The glow stick cast a faint blue radiance over our faces and lent an unearthly glow to our small kingdom. The bales formed a protective wall around us dense enough to prevent the light from shining out through cracks in the shed wall. I snuggled my body against Labeck’s, who turned so we were face-to-face. “I’m only doing this so we can conserve our body heat, so don’t get the wrong idea,” I said.

“No problem. This isn’t a boy-girl thing. I’m not even getting hard.”

That was an extremely obvious fib. Lying next to him, wrapping my arms around him, I smiled.

“Mmm … this is really nice.” Labeck pressed his lips to my neck. He ran his hands up and down my arms. “It could be even nicer.”

I reared back. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“I’m always thinking of that.”

“You’re wounded, soldier. No fun and games for you.”

“It would be good therapy. Take my mind off my pain and suffering.”

I shook my head, hoping it wouldn’t treacherously nod instead.

He was quiet for a moment. His hands slid down to my breasts and he said in a hopeful voice, “Maybe if you got on top?”

Chapter Thirty-four

A maiden must slay her own dragons.

—Maguire’s Maxims

I pushed his hands away, “Consider yourself on injured reserve, sport.”

The trouble was I was getting stirred up myself. Despite the fact that some very bad guys might pop up any second to whack us, that we might freeze to death, and that my stomach was trying to crawl up my esophagus, I was definitely feeling sensations that were not incipient frostbite. I reminded myself that I had to be the grown-up now.

“We need to concentrate on our strategy,” I told Labeck.

“Strategy? Yeah, right. Our strategy is not getting killed. I don’t even know why those guys are after us.”

I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak. It was humiliating to admit my colossal lapse in judgment, but I owed it to Labeck to come clean. “They’re after us because I’m an idiot, Ben. I went to Kennison last night—”

“You
what
?”

“I thought I needed to warn him about Alex Petrov. I told him how I’d seen Petrov swipe Rhonda’s hard drive. I laid out my whole theory about how Petrov was behind Tippi Lennox’s disappearance and had probably killed Rhonda.”

“How did Kennison react?”

“He went ballistic. Dr. Petrov is a respected physician, a mere whisper of scandal will mean the end of my clinic, blah blah blah. Then he got himself under control and started asking me who else knew about Petrov. That’s when …”

I took a deep breath, then spilled it out. “I was so goddamn stupid and trusting, Ben. I told him that you knew, too. That’s why you’re on his hit list. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this.”

He was silent for a moment, then he stroked my hair and kissed my forehead. “Wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Look, here’s my take on it: Kennison is in this
thing up to his eyeballs and Petrov is just his flunky. I think Kennison murdered both those women.”

I mulled that over. “
Why
, though?” My exhausted body craved sleep, but I flogged my tired brain into action, trying to work out why a popular and respected surgeon like Jared Kennison would have committed murder.

It was no use. My mind just kept running down blind alleys. Eventually I concluded that the motive wasn’t important at this point. All that mattered now was keeping Ben alive.

“We can’t stay in this shed much longer,” I said. “Those guys are out there and they’re going to come after us. Gozzy might be able to track us. The snow probably wiped out our footprints, but he might be able to tail us by looking for broken branches or something. If they spot this shed, they’ll guess right away that we’re in here.”

I stopped, listening to a rustling in the hay. Mice. I hoped. Because I didn’t like the thought that rats were scuttling around here. “But Gozzy might be out of the game for now—after that plunge in the creek he’ll need to get dry clothes on. That’ll slow them down for a while. I think they’ll decide to regroup, come after us in the morning. But we can’t count on that. We have to be ready, we have to—”

Beside me, I heard a snore.

“Ben—wake up!” I prodded him, vaguely recalling a TV show where the medical staff wouldn’t let a patient fall asleep because he might lapse into a coma. Or was that just for concussions? I didn’t think we could afford to take a chance.

“I’m awake,” Labeck mumbled, forcing his lids wide, his eyes glazed-looking in the blue light.

“You’re not supposed to fall asleep. You might never wake up.”

“Like Roach Motel,” Labeck said, and giggled.

Ben Labeck, giggling! A tinkling gurgle two octaves above his normal range, the kind of giggle a teenage girl would make if she were six feet two and weighed 190 pounds. “Bugs check in, but they don’t check out!” He cackled again.

I studied him carefully, wondering whether one of those bullets had hit him in the head. But he didn’t sound hurt, he sounded
high
. “Ben?” I asked cautiously. “You haven’t popped something, have you?”

“No, baby.” He pulled me back down against him. “I get high on your love, sweetie.”

It must be the Snoozy-Doozies! Combined with the double dose of pain pills, they’d made him loopy. He sounded like he was trippin’ on the Marrakesh Express.

“Ben, stay awake, or I swear to God I’m going to slap you silly.”

“Go ’head. I love your spunkiness, Mazie. Spunk-ee. Sounds kind of kinky, doesn’t it? Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s see how long we can kiss without coming up for air.”

He made kissy noises, pursing his lips invitingly.

I laughed out loud; I couldn’t help it. Seeing Bonaparte Labeck’s inner Crunkenstein was hilarious. I bet he was a hoot at parties. He was probably the guy who ripped down the curtains to make togas and danced the funky boogaloo atop the pool table.

“Okay, no kissing, Miss Wet Blanket. We’ll play games.” His arms went around my hip; the guy was an octopus.

“Not
that
kind of game.” I ought to be planning our defensive strategy; making spears out of barn boards or a catapult sling from the jumper cables—something we could use to fight Kennison’s crew. And it was up to me, because at the moment Labeck appeared to be mentally as well as physically handicapped. The trouble was, my own mind wasn’t any sharper than Labeck’s. No more thinking, whined my overtaxed brain, ready to lapse into shutdown mode.

“I got it,” Labeck said. “Let’s play Twenty Questions. I’ll go first.”

“No. No games.”

“Mazie, you need to be nice to me. Otherwise I might fall asleep and never wake up.”

“You’re shameless.” I settled back, inhaling the lovely aroma of hay. To Donald Trump it’s the smell of money. To Mazie Maguire, it’s chopped, dried sweet clover. Can’t help it; early imprinting and all that.

“Okay, question one: what do you find most irresistible about me?” asked Labeck.

I laughed. “Your modesty. This is not how you play Twenty Questions!”

“Quit kib-bib-bitzing. I get to make the rules. You have to answer.”

I stared up into the rafters, glad I couldn’t see the spiders that were undoubtedly lurking there. “Your eyelashes.”

He made a buzzer noise. “Totally corrupt answer.”

“They’re long and dark,” I said dreamily. “Completely wasted on a guy, of course. Oh—another thing—the way you switch to French when you’re feeling sexy.”

“
Est-ce que cela beurre vos pains?
Does that butter your buns?”

“Totally. With jam. And I like the way you get hiccups when you laugh too much. And umm … how you never make your bed because you say we’ll just get it messed up again, and the evil look in your eyes when you say it.”

“What about my physical fearlessness?” At least I think that’s what he meant to say. It came out like “fickle furriness.”

“Did you see how I shot Petrov with my paint gun and disarmed that asshole Gozchika?” He sounded like a twelve-year-old bragging about winning a blue ribbon on his science project.

“Ve-ry impressive,” I said, catering to him. “Are you still mad at me for tackling you?”

“That counts as one of your questions.” He yawned and shifted the position of his propped-up leg. “I’m over it. Anyway, you were right. I was a sore loser. I have problems with losing. So now you have to ask me what I find irr’sistible about you.”

“I’m not wasting my question on that.”

“Okay, freebie. It’s how you sing in the bathtub. God, I miss that. My favorite is when you sing “Henry the Eighth” in a cockney accent. Then you stop when you think I’m listening. Another thing that drives me crazy but that I somehow totally love—how you’re massively addicted to chocolate.”

“I can quit any time I want.”

“Mazie, you eat chocolate chips straight out of the bag. And if you looked at me the way you look at Dove dark chocolate I’d burst into flames.” He moved closer to me, although I hadn’t thought that was possible; if he got any closer, he’d be on the other side of me.

“My turn again,” he said.

“You have an awful lot of turns.”

“Rules of the game, you have to answer. First time you did it.”

“Did what?”

“You know.
It
.”

“The big
it
?”

Ben’s face was a blue-tinted blob, but I could just make out his eyes and mouth. He reached out a hand and stroked the hair out of my eyes. “Spill.”

“The day I got engaged. To a guy named Jonathan. We were both twenty years old, we were going to join the Peace Corps, we were going to save the world’s water supply.”

“If Jonathan was here right now I’d punch him.”

“There’s a lot of caveman in you, isn’t there?”

“Get back to losing your cherry.”

“All my friends had already given it up in the cramped backseat of a car or a dorm room with a roommate snoring in the other bunk, but I …”

Ben said nothing, but I sensed that he was listening very hard.

“I wanted the first time to be special. Poetry, roses, pretty sheets. I wanted a guy who’d appreciate that this was a big deal, not someone who’d get up a second later and go pee with the door open or switch on the ball game.”

Labeck brushed his lips against mine. “Who’d have guessed? Mazie Maguire, tough chick, hard-nosed felon, romantic at heart.”

“We broke up two weeks later.”

“Good. I never liked Jonathan.”

“Your turn.”

“Backseat of my car, sorry to be such a cliché. I was sixteen, she was seventeen.”

“Cougar bait, even then.”

“What can I say? I’m flypaper to chicks.”

“Did you ever practice kissing?”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“When you were a kid. My friend Gloria and I worried that we’d mess up our first kiss. So we practiced a lot.”