Weird Girl (34 page)

42

When she woke, there was a muscular arm draped possessively
over her chest and she was in a strange bed. It took a minute for her brain to
catch up. In that time, Jackson pulled her closer. She smiled to herself and
went back to sleep.

When Cleo woke the second time, she was alone in the bed.
Stretching like a cat, she detoured to the bathroom, where she borrowed
Jackson’s toothbrush. Then she went to the closet to get dressed.

***

Still enjoying the silent tactical boots, she moved like a
ninja down the curved staircase and went in search of the kitchen. It, like the
rest of the house, seemed to be deserted. She opened drawers and cabinets until
she found what she needed, and soon the smell of fresh ground coffee beans
filled her nostrils. Luckily, Jackson appreciated quality in all aspects of his
life.

Going from the recipe that she had found online the previous
afternoon, she dug in the pantry for a container of cocoa and pulled the
necessary dairy from the giant Viking refrigerator. Just as she poured the
mochaccino into a heavy white mug, she caught sight of Jackson leaning in the
doorway, a strange expression on his face.

“Making yourself at home?” he asked.

“I was invited,” she said imperiously as she pulled down a
second mug. “Sort of.” She offered another latte to him, and he cautiously
accepted it.

They sat at a steel table in the middle of the kitchen.
“Interesting outfit,” he said. It wasn’t every day that a guy walked into his
kitchen to find a beautiful woman making coffee in a black leather catsuit. As he
took a small sip of coffee, surprise lit his face. “Since when do you know how
to make mochaccino?” he asked.

“I looked up the recipe yesterday after you left,” she said,
emphasizing the last word.

Jackson drank more coffee. “Cleo, this is really good,” he
said.

She smiled. “Santo once told me that good coffee was an
important skill. I took him at his word.”

He drank some more, knowing that he shouldn’t be surprised
that she could surprise him. “You didn’t have coffee in your apartment.”

She grinned. “You just didn’t plunder hard enough. I keep it
in the gold ice bucket.”

His eyes met hers above the rim of his mug. “You’re right. I
didn’t think to look there. For some reason, I figured you probably used it for
ice.”

Cleo rolled her eyes. “Right, because I do sooo much
entertaining.” She took another sip of coffee. “If I want ice, I get it from
the freezer.”

They were both quiet, each of them trying to continue
ignoring the giant elephant in the room—what Cleo had done last night. “So,
Santo taught you how to make coffee?” said Jackson in an attempt to fill the
silence. Also, he was curious.

Cleo laughed. “Kind of. He could only afford the powdered
stuff in a jar, so that’s what he taught me to make. I branched out after
that.”

The light in her eyes was irresistible, though Jackson still
struggled to suppress the jealousy. She seemed to think a lot of that Santo
guy. He reached for her hand across the table and started making circles on her
palm with his thumb. “What prison is he in?”

She slammed the mug down so hard that coffee droplets arced
across the table. Her eyes were now dark. “You promised not to hurt him,
Jackson,” she said.

He grabbed her hand to stop her from moving away. “I know. I
thought maybe we could visit,” he said.

Her face brightened. “Visit Santo?” she asked, excitement in
her voice. Then she grew suspicious. “Why?” she asked with a frown.

Jackson held her hand and took a slow sip of coffee, his
eyes locked on hers. “Because he’s important to you,” he said. And because
Jackson wanted to meet him.

Cleo was so excited that she chugged the remnants of her
coffee and jumped up from her chair. “I just need to swing by my apartment to
change clothes,” she said. Jackson quickly stood and blocked her progress as
she tried to run out of the kitchen. “What?” she said impatiently, her hands on
her hips.

With an enigmatic smile, Jackson slid his hands around her
waist. “You can change clothes here,” he said.

She shoved against his chest in an attempt to move him out
of her way. “Jackson, I don’t have any clothes here.”

He took her hand and kissed it. “I’ll take care of it,” he
said, turning to loop his arm around her shoulders as he led her from the
kitchen. “But in the meantime, we need to go upstairs and talk about that
catsuit.”
Among other things.
He gave her a nudge at the bottom of the
staircase and then stepped into a nearby room to give instructions to one of
his people regarding the matter of Cleo’s wardrobe. After the fury that he had
rained down upon them earlier this morning, no one was making eye contact. They
were good staff. They just weren’t prepared for Cleo. Jackson’s mouth twitched.
Not many people were.

When he got upstairs, Cleo was standing in the center of his
bedroom looking thoughtful. He closed the door, and she looked up at him and
smiled. “Is something wrong?” he asked as he crossed the floor to meet her.

She glanced briefly at the fireplace and then looked into
his eyes. “Marilyn and I have been talking,” she said, causing him to look up
at the painting on the wall. Cleo looked slightly nervous, but continued.
“Anyway, we’ve sort of decided that we’re the only women allowed in your
bedroom.” Instead of answering, Jackson merely smiled. And then he kissed her.

Kissing Jackson was like falling down a well, Cleo decided—a
rush of air, a feeling of weightlessness, and then BOOM. Before she knew what
was happening, the leather suit was unzipped with the top half hanging from her
hips. He touched the gold skull and dagger that had been hidden by the leather.
Abruptly, he released her and walked away.

Outraged, she put her hands on her hips and yelled, “Where
the fuck do you think you’re going?”

He turned to wink at her and then loosened his tie. “I need
to take off a few things first.” Then he walked into his closet. Cleo followed,
the catsuit sleeves swishing against her legs when she walked.

Jackson slid his necktie from his collar and carefully hung
it over the back of a chair. Then, he took off his jacket, revealing a leather
shoulder holster with a gun. “I don’t want you to shoot me accidentally,” he
said with a grin as he unbuckled the leather.

Cleo laughed. “What makes you think it would be an
accident?” she asked. Fascinated, she came closer. “What kind of gun is that?”
she asked, reaching for it. He picked it up and moved it out of her reach. “The
kind I don’t want you holding while I’m trying to get naked,” he said. He took
off his shoes and socks, emptied his pockets (keys, peppermint, switchblade—not
hers), and then came back to kiss her.

Maintaining lip contact, he walked her backward into the
bedroom and then let her undress him. Once her boots and catsuit were gone, all
she wore was underwear and the gold skull and dagger necklace. Soon, it was
just the necklace.

***

Cleo lay on Jackson’s chest, absently rubbing the top of his
head while he made lazy circles on her shoulder blade with his fingertip. “So,
about last night,” he said finally. Her ears turned pink.

“I wanted to show you I could do it,” she said. “By the way,
your security staff is lame. They were too lazy to notice that the gate
circuits were cut.”

He stopped drawing circles. “No, they noticed. They actually
launched a pretty heavy search of the grounds. When I got the call, I was both
hopeful and worried that it might be your fault. I tried calling you, and when
you didn’t answer, I hopped on the plane and came back to save you.”

She snorted. “Save me? From what—the hulking retard that
monitors the gate feed?”

“His name is Turk, and he’s eliminated more than one threat
to my safety,” said Jackson. “Which is the only reason he’s still employed
today, considering the fact that our intruder made it to the one place on the
estate that I pay people to keep secure—this room.” He grew quiet. “Seriously,
you could have been shot.”

Cleo’s heart was pounding, and not from fear. “That is so
cool,” she said, raising her head to kiss him.

He closed his eyes in exasperation. “Of course, it was kind
of nice to come home and find Goldilocks sleeping in my bed.” He twirled her
hair with two fingers. “We are going to have a talk later about you and my
security team, though.”

Cleo rolled her eyes and scrambled off of the bed.
“Whatever. Let’s go see Santo.”

Jackson got dressed and called downstairs. A minute later,
there was a polite knock at the door, and he came back with a garment bag
hooked over his fingers. Cleo was ecstatic when she saw what he had brought: a
1940s-style black wool suit with a peplum jacket and a pencil skirt. A metallic
gold shopping bag held black suede pumps with beadwork, and a black velvet
fascinator with netting. When she was dressed, she looked like a bombshell
straight from
The Maltese Falcon
. For a prison-visiting ensemble, it was
perfect.

43

Santo wore a drab gray shirt with matching pants. His hair
had gotten long, and he wore it in a low ponytail. He was delighted to see
Cleo. Jackson…not so much.

“So tell me, do blondes really have more fun?” asked Santo
with a wink.

Cleo glanced at Jackson. “Well, it’s worked out to be a
pretty nice time so far.”

His expression flat, Santo looked Jackson up and down. “So,
who’s this asshole?” he asked, making Jackson long for the pistol that he had
left at home.

“This is Jackson,” she said with a bright smile.

Santo narrowed his eyes. “This is the jerk that used to make
you so miserable?” he asked.

“Said the man who kidnapped her and left her unconscious in
the woods,” said Jackson, starting to rise from his chair with murder in his
eyes. Cleo yanked him back down.

“Hey!” she yelled, and the security guard frowned at her
from his post near the door. She lowered her voice. “You leave Santo alone,”
she hissed at Jackson, slapping his arm. Jackson frowned, but his smirk
returned when Cleo yelled at Santo. “And you be nice to Jackson. He’s good
people. Plus, he promised not to kill you.”

The two men considered one another in stony silence. Cleo
broke the tension by whispering, “Santo, I brought you a present.” She very
slowly slid a box of chocolates across the table. (They had been thoroughly
inspected and passed through the security check.) The guard saw Santo take the
chocolates, but not what Cleo passed to him during the millisecond of contact
between their hands. Jackson only saw it because he was watching for it. He was
impressed at how subtly Santo hid the small package in his clothing, although
he was still not sure why Cleo had insisted on buying a tiny bottle of perfume
and bright red lipstick on their way to the jail.

Jackson relaxed and watched Santo and Cleo banter with one
another. They had been exchanging letters for years, but this was their first
face to face encounter since Santo had been upgraded to maximum security for
stabbing his cellmate in the eye. “How’s Henry?” she asked.

Santo briefly looked sad. “Dead,” he said. “He ate a French
fry off of Big Al’s lunch tray.” Then, his face brightened. “It’s okay, though.
Now Big Al’s my bitch, and he listens so much better than Henry ever did.”
Jackson bit his cheek to keep from laughing.

They talked about Santo’s five-day-a-week dance seminars.
“Al tries, but his hips will never be loose enough for rumba,” said Santo with
a shake of the head. Cleo told a couple of Colombia stories, and Santo beamed
like a proud papa. “Of course you would win! You learned at the feet of the
best.” He tossed his head and pursed his lips. Then he was serious. “But what
about that psychiatrist you were seeing?”

Cleo cast a sideways glance at Jackson and lowered her
voice. “I no longer require his services,” she said, and Jackson was surprised
that she didn’t elaborate. It’s not like she had a filter for anything else.

Santo was due for a parole hearing soon. If he behaved, he
might be out in six months. “We’ll go shopping!” gushed Cleo. She planned to
wait until his release to break the news about his trust fund.

When it was time to leave, Cleo sent the guard into apoplexy
by throwing herself at Santo for a bear hug. While she was busy cussing out the
guard, Jackson held out his hand to shake with Santo. He had palmed a plain white
card with a phone number on it, and as Santo’s eyebrows raised in surprise,
Jackson quietly said, “If you need anything.” When he saw Santo’s expression,
Jackson shrugged almost imperceptibly and added, “She gets what she wants.”
Then he went to talk Cleo down from whatever it was that would soon get her arrested.

44

Jackson drove Cleo back to San Francisco in relative
silence. She sat in the back seat and occasionally made eye contact with him in
the rear view mirror while jazz played softly through the speakers. When they
reached the edge of the city, Jackson asked, “Where to?” His place? Or hers?

“I’m not finished plundering through your house, Jackson,”
she said. “Drive.” He touched his finger to the brim of his hat in salute and
headed toward the Great Highway.

When they arrived, a mini scuffle occurred because Turk
insisted on patting Cleo down in search of weapons. He confiscated her
switchblade, and she punched him in the nose. Cleo and Turk were pulled into a
mini-counseling session, where Jackson made them promise not to maim each
other.

Afterwards, Cleo took herself on a tour of the house and
grounds. (Jackson could have taken her, but he knew that she would enjoy it
more if she was allowed to feel sneaky.) His furniture was a mix of dark wood,
leather, and chrome. The artwork ranged from abstract mid-century paintings to
pop art, and the hallways were lined with framed black and white photographs
(which turned out to be vintage gangster mug shots from the 1920s and 30s).
Almost every room of the house held a dish of peppermint candy.

He didn’t look for her. Cleo started to miss his company
after four or five hours, so she finally went in search of him. She found him
napping in a hammock outside, wearing jeans (gasp!) and a plain gray t-shirt
with a black cardigan. As soon as her shadow fell across his face, he opened
his eyes and smiled. “Find anything interesting?” he asked, and at that moment,
she was pretty sure she loved him.

“I’m gonna wait ‘til you’re sleeping to start picking
locks,” she said with a grin, knowing he would let her, and knowing that she
wouldn’t actually do it for that very reason. Well, not tonight at least.

They ate grilled seafood and chocolate cake (Jackson’s
favorite, apparently) and started planning the raid on Harper Valley.
Mysteriously, more clothing (in Cleo’s size) had appeared at Jackson’s house
while they were at the prison. When he wordlessly handed her the shopping bags,
Cleo decided it might be interesting to stay over for a few more days. You
know—for practical reasons.

***

They spent the weekend planning, discussing the logistics of
Cleo’s transportation, the equipment she would require, how she should handle
Lisa, and most importantly, the necessity of the black catsuit.  Jackson
approved highly of this last item. It brought back good memories.

It went down on Valentine’s Day—Cleo desperately wanted to
call it the Valentine’s Day Massacre, but Jackson said no. In reality, they
chose that night because there was a high likelihood that Virginia would be out
on a date (she had recently gotten her claws into a politician whose wife was
vacationing in Europe). Also, what do a bunch of jaded, lonely women do in No
Man’s Land on Valentine’s Day? Eat ice cream and go to bed early. The place was
silent as a graveyard at 9 o’clock.

Virginia Adams had beefed up security in the years since
Cleo’s graduation. There was a brick wall around the perimeter now, and motion
sensors and cameras scattered around. Cleo quickly bypassed the sensors along
one portion of the south wall. Then, she pulled out her BB pistol and took aim
at the nearest camera.

“Fucking fuckety son of a bitch!” she hissed after the
fourteenth pellet went wide. Jackson sighed and took the gun from her. With one
shot, in the dark, with the wind now blowing, he hit the camera dead center,
cracking the glass and knocking it slightly askew. He handed the air gun back
to her and waited. She looked at the camera, and then at Jackson. “You are
definitely getting lucky later,” she said. “Now, hoist me up.”

He crouched down slightly and made a cup with his hands.
Cleo put her tactical boot in his palm and let him take her weight. He lifted
her until she could attach a rolled-up fire escape ladder to the top of the
wall so that it hung down the other side, but before giving her the extra boost
she needed, he gripped her ankle firmly with one hand. She looked down
questioningly. He was worried, but knew better than to tell her that. “Hurry
back,” he said, and then she was up and over the wall.

The operation went down fairly smoothly, although Cleo had
to peer in the windows of fourteen cottages before she found Lisa’s quarters. Cleo
picked the lock on the front door and tiptoed to the bedroom, where Lisa was
snoring softly in bed. Things didn’t go well at first between Cleo and Lisa. (She
definitely didn’t like that first part, when she woke up and Cleo put a hand
over her mouth and said, “Scream and die, lady!”)

The woman refused to believe Cleo until she mentioned the
rings that Marco wore on a chain around his neck. Then, Lisa collapsed in a
puddle of tears. “Damn, woman,” muttered Cleo, looking around for inquisitive
neighbors. “Save it for later. Right now, we’ve got to be elusive and shit,
which is going to be really difficult if you keep making that noise and leaving
a trail of puddles behind us. Man up, or I’ll have to get rough.”

Jackson’s team collected them in a black Humvee that drove
down a fire access road rather than the main highway. When Lisa started wailing
again, Cleo slapped her, shocking everyone in the vehicle. “What?” she asked.
“I told her to man up.”

***

Later, over a celebratory naked cocktail with Jackson
in Cleo’s oversized bathtub, she wiggled her black toenails (to match the
catsuit) above the suds and thought about how exciting it had been to sneak
around in the darkness like a panther. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. “Jackson,
I have a lot of files,” she said.

He continued massaging her shoulders and replied, “Mmm-hmm.”

“Why don’t we do it again?” she asked.

He kissed the nape of her neck. “In progress,” he said.

“No, not that,” she said, splashing him with water.
“Although, yes, that thing you’re doing right now is very okay….But, anyway, we
have all those files. Why don’t we use them? You know? Offer them the chance to
get out of that hell hole, for a fee of course, and piss off Virginia at the
same time.”

His hands slowed until they were just resting on her
shoulders. “You’re serious,” he said.

“Yes, I’m serious,” said Cleo. “I could be the point man, or
whatever it’s called, and figure out where everyone is, and deliver the
message, and then your people could get them out and keep the creeps off their
backs while they get a new face and move to Mexico. Suddenly, Virginia’s got no
prisoners in her dungeon, and no money coming in when word trickles out that
there’s a way to escape your demons without signing your soul over to that
Class A she-devil.”

He agreed to think it over, but at the moment, there were
other important matters to deal with, mostly related to the fact that he was
naked in the bathtub with Cleo. The conversation was tabled for the rest of the
night.

***

The next morning, Jackson opened his eyes to see Cleo, lying
on his chest, her nose inches from his. Her chin was propped on her hands, and
she was just…looking at him. “What?” he mumbled grumpily, rubbing his eyes with
his fingers and blinking to bring her into clearer focus.

“Jackson, what do you want?” she asked.

Lifting his head slightly to gaze down the line of her side,
to her butt, and down her legs, he grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Well….”

She pinched his nipple until he squirmed. “Not what I
meant.”

Going very still, he looked at her. “What did you mean?” he
asked cautiously.

“I mean, what do you want? Out of life? Out of me? Out of
us?” she said, forcing herself to look at him while he thought it over, when
all she really wanted to do was buy a time machine and go back to the moment
before she made a fool of herself by asking such a stupid question.

He sighed and slid her off of him, sitting up with his back
against the headboard. Cleo felt like she was going to vomit, and started to
scramble out of bed. He caught her and pulled her up beside him, positioning
her so that she was resting in the crook of his arm. They sat together for a
long time before he spoke, making her jump despite the softness of his voice.

“I want to learn something new about you every single day,
until I know everything there is to know about you, and I want to show you
something new every day, until there’s nothing else in the world for you to
learn,” he said.

It was Cleo’s turn to be very still. “That’s potentially a
lot of days, Jackson,” she said.

Tightening his arm around her ribcage, he said, “I know,”
and kissed the top of her head, tensing against the moment that she would run
away from him. Surprising them both, Cleo smiled and snuggled in a little more.
“Okay,” she said.