Fearless Fourteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel Read online

  “This isn’t so bad,” I said to Ranger. “It’s not like someone is shooting at her. And so far, she hasn’t totally exposed herself. You got groped in the elevator, but you’re probably used to that.”

  “Yeah,” Ranger said. “It happens a lot.”

  A forty-something woman approached Brenda.

  “What is this?” the woman asked, pointing to Brenda’s jacket.

  “A jacket?”

  “What kind of jacket?”

  “What kind do you think it is?”

  “I think it’s mink.”

  “Bingo,” Brenda said.

  “You have a lot of nerve,” the woman said. “Was this done as a deliberate insult?”

  “Sweetheart,” Brenda said, “when I insult someone they know they’ve been insulted.”

  Nancy’s eyes went to the size of goose eggs, and she frantically thumbed through her event schedule. “Oh crap!” she said. “Oh shit.”

  I looked over her shoulder and read down the clipboard. THURSDAY’S EVENT WILL BENEFIT THE HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS.

  The woman narrowed her eyes at Brenda. “Take that offensive jacket off immediately.”

  “Bite me,” Brenda said. “And what’s your problem, anyway?”

  “Do you have any idea how many little minks it took to make that jacket?”

  “Oh puhleeze,” Brenda said. “Don’t give me that tree-hugger crap. Look, if it’s an issue for you, just think of it as Russian weasel.”

  The woman snatched a glass of red wine from a waiter, dumped it on Brenda’s jacket, and Brenda tossed her champagne in the woman’s face. Ranger reached for Brenda, but Brenda already had her hands around the woman’s throat. There was a lot of kicking and shrieking of obscenities, and by the time Ranger got the women separated, Brenda’s boobs had popped out of her dress and the skirt had ridden up to her waist. Ranger dispassionately yanked the dress up over Brenda’s breasts and pulled the skirt down over her ass, apologized to the other woman, and dragged Brenda out of the room and into the lobby. Nancy and I rushed after Ranger and Brenda, and we all jumped into the elevator.

  Nancy crossed meet and greet off her schedule. “One down,” she said. “We have ten minutes before the dinner.”

  RANGER AND I elected not to sit at the head table with Brenda. We took a position on the wall toward the front of the room, so we could better see if anyone was rushing at Brenda with a glass of red wine.

  Brenda had changed into a black satin bustier, tight jeans studded with rhinestones, and she had an animal-friendly black cashmere wrap draped over her shoulders.

  My cell phone vibrated, and I looked at the screen. It was Morelli calling. “I need to take this,” I said to Ranger. “I’m going to step outside for a moment.”

  I found a quiet corridor and dialed Morelli.

  “How’s it going?” I asked Morelli.

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t stopped playing since I got home. He can play and eat at the same time. I think he took the computer into the bathroom with him. It’s kind of creepy. You’re coming back here tonight, right?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Let me rephrase that. What time are you coming back here?”

  “Hard to say. I’m running security for Brenda.”

  “The Brenda?”

  “Yeah. I’m working with Ranger.”

  There was a full sixty seconds of silence where I suspected Morelli was staring down at his shoe, getting a grip. Morelli thought Ranger was a dangerous guy from multiple points of view. And Morelli was right.

  “Don’t you want to hear about Brenda?” I asked him.

  “No. I don’t care about Brenda. I care about you. I don’t like you working with Ranger.”

  “It’s just for a couple days.”

  “I’m out of the house at six tomorrow morning. You need to be here to make sure Picasso doesn’t spray paint the dog again.”

  “Zook painted Bob?”

  “He did it before I got home. He said he had to protect Bob from the griefer. He pulls anything like that again, and I’m going to make the griefer look like the Tooth Fairy.”

  RANGER WAS LEANING against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, calmly watching the room when I returned.

  “Did I miss anything fun?” I asked him.

  He made a small side-to-side movement with his head. “No.”

  “Brenda is waving her glass around.”

  “I told the wait staff not to give her a refill, and she’s feeling neglected.”

  “Hey!” Brenda called to a passing waiter. “Hell-O!”

  The waiter scurried away, and Brenda waved the glass at another guy. Brenda lapped at the empty glass and waggled her tongue at the waiter. A red scald rose from his collar to the roots of his hair, and he ran for the kitchen.

  A waiter carrying plates of food passed behind Brenda, and in the blink of an eye, Brenda had the guy by his nuts. The waiter stopped in mid-stride, tray aloft, mouth open. I couldn’t hear Brenda from where I stood, but I could read her lips.

  “I need a drinky-poo,” Brenda said to the waiter. “Nod your head if you understand.”

  The waiter nodded his head, and Brenda released him.

  “I have to give her credit,” I said to Ranger. “She knows how to get a man’s attention.”

  An hour later, we escorted Brenda to her room.

  “I want to party,” Brenda said in the elevator. “Isn’t there a party somewhere?”

  Ranger stayed stoic, saying nothing, and I followed his lead. If Brenda had been sober, she would have been hard to control. As it was, her eyes were unfocused, and her attention span was short. The elevator doors opened, Brenda lurched out, walked into a potted plant, and got knocked on her ass.

  “Whoops,” Brenda said. “Where’d that come from?”

  Ranger scooped her up and pointed her in the right direction. She tried to grab him, and he jumped away.

  “You need to take point on this,” Ranger said to me. “If she grabs me one more time, I’m going to have to shoot her.”

  I linked arms with Brenda and walked her down the hall to her suite. I opened the door and maneuvered her inside. I herded her into the bedroom, and she crawled into bed fully clothed.

  I turned the light off in the bedroom and joined Ranger in the living room. He locked the liquor cabinet, pocketed the key, and we left the suite.

  “Tank has the night off, and Hal doesn’t come on until midnight,” Ranger said. “I’ll stand guard until then.”

  “I’ll stand with you,” I said. “Just in case Brenda comes out and attacks you and you’re tempted to shoot her.”

  THREE

  HAL WAS ONE of the younger guys on Ranger’s team. He was big and blond and blushed when embarrassed. He was over-muscled and looked a little prehistoric. He showed up ten minutes early.

  “Call me if there’s a problem,” Ranger said, giving Hal the room key. “Don’t go into the suite alone. If you need to enter and can’t wait for me, get hotel security to go in with you.”

  Hal nodded. “Yessir.”

  Ranger walked me to the parking garage, gave me a friendly kiss goodnight that sent a flutter of emotion through me that I’d rather not name, and watched me drive away.

  I got back to Morelli’s house a little after midnight. Morelli’s porch light was on and a nightlight was burning in the hall leading to the stairs. The rest of the house was dark. I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The house was quiet. Everyone was asleep, including Bob Dog. I didn’t need light to find my way around Morelli’s house. I spent a decent amount of time there, and it was almost identical to the house where I grew up. I made my way into the kitchen and checked the fridge for leftovers, hitting the jackpot with pepperoni pizza.

  I put the pizza box on the counter, and the cellar door crashed open next to me. A stocky guy jumped out, ran for the back door, and instantly was gone into the dark night. I was too startled to scream, too freaked to move. After a second or two, my heart r
esumed beating and brain function kicked in.

  “What the—” I said to the empty kitchen.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Morelli sauntered into the kitchen. He was wearing a T-shirt and boxers, and his hair was tousled.

  “I thought I heard you come in,” he said. “How was Brenda? And why is the back door open?”

  I was breathless. “Some guy . . . some guy charged out of your basement and ran out the back door.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I had my hand over my heart in an effort to keep it from jumping out of my chest. “I’m serious!”

  Morelli went to the door and looked outside. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “He ran away!”

  Morelli closed and locked the door. “Someone actually was in my cellar?”

  “He scared the bejeezus out of me.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  “It was dark. He was chunky. Dressed in dark clothes. I didn’t see his face. It happened so fast, I didn’t get a good look.”

  “Hair?”

  “He was wearing a knit hat. I couldn’t see his hair.”

  Morelli opened a kitchen drawer, removed a gun, and stepped to the cellar door.

  “Wait,” I said, “maybe we should call the police.”

  “Cupcake, I am the police.”

  “Yes, but you’re my police, and I don’t want you to get shot.”

  “I’m not going to get shot. Stay here in the kitchen.”

  No problem with that. I had no desire to follow Morelli into his spooky basement.

  Morelli flipped the light switch and padded barefoot down the stairs. He stood for a moment, looking around, and returned to the kitchen.

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would be in my basement,” he said. “There’s nothing down there. Just the furnace and the water heater.”

  “Sometimes people have offices or playrooms down there,” I said. “Maybe he was looking for something to steal.”

  “My laptop is on the table. He didn’t take it. He left the Xbox and television in the living room.”

  I took a piece of pizza from the box and tried to get it to my mouth, but my hand was still shaking. “Maybe he didn’t get to it. Maybe he started downstairs, and I scared him off.”

  Morelli dialed dispatch and reported the break-in. “Ask someone to do a couple drive-bys and keep their eyes open,” he said.

  Bob trotted into the kitchen and stood looking at the pizza box. He couldn’t hear a burglar break into the house, but wave a piece of pizza around and he was there. Pink and green fluorescent paint glowed in the dark on Bob’s back.

  “The label on the spray paint said it would wash off with water. I’ll hose him down tomorrow,” Morelli said.

  I fed Bob my crust, and Bob smiled and wagged his tail.

  Morelli draped an arm across my shoulders. “There’s a way you could make me look that happy.”

  “Someone just broke into your house. How can you think about sex?”

  “I always think about sex.”

  “Mario is in the guest room!”

  “Yeah, you’d have to try to control yourself and not make a lot of noise.”

  “He’s just a kid. You need to set a good example.”

  “Which means what?”

  “The couch. Zook’s in the guest room, and you wanted me to spend the night, so I assumed you’d sleep on the couch.”

  “You assumed wrong.”

  “We’re not married.”

  “No, but we’re old. There are different rules when you get old,” Morelli said.

  “I’m not old.”

  “Not to me, but to Zook anyone over twenty is old.”

  “Okay, that does it. I’m going home. I’ll be back tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn.”

  “Oh for crissake,” Morelli said. “I’ll sleep on the friggin’ couch. There’s a sleeping bag in my office. Throw it down with a pillow.”

  I OPENED MY eyes and squinted at the clock. The room was dark, but the glowing blue digital readout told me it was five in the morning. And the sound of a drawer being opened and closed told me I wasn’t alone. I reached for the bedside lamp, switched it on, and stared at Morelli. His hair was damp from the shower, he was freshly shaved, and he was naked.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him.

  “I need clothes.”

  No kidding. “I would have gotten them for you. What if Mario sees you walking around naked in my room?”

  “First, it’s not your room. It’s my room. Second, I doubt he’d be shocked. You have to stop worrying about Zook. Third, he’s asleep.”

  “Did you sleep okay?”

  “No. The couch sucks.”

  Morelli was dressing in his usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt while he was talking. If the occasion dictated, Morelli sometimes wore slacks and a dress shirt, but Morelli avoided suits. He looked like an Atlantic City pit boss in a suit. And no one could keep a straight face at Morelli in khakis. Morelli was as far from preppy as a guy could get.

  He sat on the bed, laced his shoes, leaned over me and nuzzled my neck. “I like when you’re all warm and soft from sleep.” He looked down at the shoes he’d just laced and thought for a moment. “These could come off.”

  “Tempting.” Really tempting. “Will you be late for work if you take your shoes off?”

  “Yeah. Don’t care. If the choice was a promotion and raise or doing you and getting fired, there’d be no contest.”

  “The power of testosterone.”

  “I thought it was love, but you could be right . . . it could be testosterone,” Morelli said. “Not that it matters, because bottom line is . . . I want you bad.”

  I had the T-shirt halfway over his head. “Take your shoes off . . . fast,” I told him.

  There were scuffling sounds in the hall and a timid knock on the bedroom door. “Anybody home?” Zook asked.

  Morelli flopped spread-eagle onto the bed. “Crap.”

  “Uno momento,” I called to Zook.

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do,” Zook said from the other side of the door. “Should I go downstairs and look for cereal?”

  “Yeah,” Morelli said. “Just prowl through the cupboards. Stephanie will be down in a couple minutes.”

  I was already out of bed and searching for clothes. I went with one of Morelli’s T-shirts and a pair of his sweats. I stayed over from time to time, but I didn’t leave a lot of things at his house. Some underwear, socks, an extra pair of running shoes, some unmentionable personal products.

  Zook had a box of Frosted Flakes in his hand when I walked into the kitchen. “My favorite,” I said to him.

  “Do you live here?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “So you could be my, what . . . aunt-in-sin?”

  “It’s my understanding that Morelli’s some sort of distant cousin, so technically . . . I wouldn’t be an aunt of any sort.”

  I took a carton of milk from the refrigerator and set out a couple bowls. Morelli waltzed in and got coffee brewing.

  “You’re up early,” Morelli said to Zook. “When do you have to be at school?”

  “Not until eight, but I didn’t know how long it would take to walk.”

  “You’re not walking,” Morelli said. “Stephanie’s taking you to school, and she’s going to watch you go through the door.”

  “Dude, that’s so untrusting,” Zook said.

  “Yeah, deal with it.”

  Bob was sitting, tail wagging, looking at the cereal box. I knew Morelli had already walked and fed Bob, but that was meaningless in the world of Bob. Bob was the bottomless pit when it came to food. Bob was also the poster dog for canine graffiti art. I looked more closely and realized the pink and green swirls outlined in black on his back spelled out Zook.

  “Pretty cool, hunh?” Zook said.

  Morelli cut his eyes to Zook. “It’s not cool. You painted my dog.”

  “Yeah, dude. He’s awesome. And totally arcane.�
��

  “What’s arcane mean?” I asked.

  “Magical.”

  I thought I saw some steam starting to wisp out of Morelli’s ears and off the top of his head.

  “Why don’t you grab a doughnut and some coffee on the way to work,” I said to Morelli. “I’ll take care of everything here.”

  Morelli blew out a sigh and felt his pockets for Rolaids. “I have to run anyway. Early morning meeting. See you tonight.” He gave me a quick kiss and left the house.

  When I heard the door close, I turned on Zook. “What the heck were you thinking? You don’t go around painting a man’s dog without his permission. You don’t even do it with his permission. It’s rude and insensitive and . . . wrong!”

  I was yelling and waving my arms, and Zook was calmly pouring milk on his cereal.

  I leaned palms on the table and got into his face. “Are you listening?”

  Zook looked up at me. “What?”

  “I’m yelling at you.”

  “I didn’t notice. It sounded like dinner at my grandma’s house.”

  Okay, I could relate to that. “Did you paint anything other than Bob?”

  “I sort of painted the garage.”

  I went to the back door and stared out at the garage. It looked a lot like Bob. Zook in bright pink and green, outlined in black. Magical designs swirled around the name. It was glowing in the semi-dark.

  “Has Morelli seen this?”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t say anything.”

  “You need to lose the paint before he gets home.”

  “But it represents the power of Zook! It’s my portal.”

  “What do you mean it’s your portal?”

  “Okay, so it’s not a portal, but it could be someday.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “That’s the way it happens in the game.”

  “This isn’t the game.”

  “Yeah, but Zook likes to keep in the zone.”

  I squelched a major mental head slap. It could be worse, I told myself. He could be spending his day surfing porn sites.

  I was still at the back door, and it occurred to me that I wasn’t seeing any sign of forced entry from last night. I went to the front door and checked out the lock and the doorjamb. No forced entry there, either. I went window to window. All locked and intact. Hard to believe Morelli hadn’t locked the back door. That meant either someone let the intruder in, the intruder was good with locks, or he had a key.