Be Strong & Curvaceous (23 page)

And then the entire left side of the house exploded.

Fire and plumes of smoke arced into the air, and the cop on the stairs tumbled all the way down, his arms and legs cartwheeling like those of a rag doll tossed aside by a child.

Wood and shingles and bits of plumbing rained down on the police cars. Fire roared up out of the hole in the roof and, seconds later, the two cops reappeared, staggering with shock, carrying an old man between them who was wearing nothing but a red-splattered robe and a pair of boxers. I wondered, stunned, if that had been who had opened the door while I was climbing up the deck post.

“Brett!” Mac pounded on his shoulder, her fist smacking him so hard I could hear it even through the noise. “The ambulance is coming. We’re going to be trapped here if you don’t get moving!”

“But they’ll think you’re—”

“Move!
”

He dropped the Camaro into reverse and shot backward, all the way to the corner. Mac rocked forward, then back, and finally found her seatbelt. Just in time, too. He took off like a bat out of you-know-where and headed for the fastest route back to Spencer.

I didn’t dare look at the speedometer. Instead, I pulled out my cell phone.

PEOPLE V. DAVID BRANDON NELSON

EMERGENCY SERVICES TRANSCRIPT

MASTER 27, SIDE 2

23:27:04 2009-MAY-02

Chapter 20

I
N OUR ABSENCE, Spencer Academy had been evacuated.

Not that this was as complicated as it could have been, since it was Saturday night. The day students were at home, tucked in their beds (okay, so that’s a little optimistic), and the usual crowd of boarding students had taken off to go surfing at Santa Cruz or rock-climbing at Yosemite for the weekend.

The rest of the student body, which numbered nearly two hundred, had been sent downtown in limos to rough it at the Four Seasons. All, that is, except Shani, Lissa, Gillian, Mac, Brett, and me, who had been loaded into three police cruisers and taken to Brett’s parents’ place, presumably for safekeeping.

This
must
be the apocalypse.

That’s the only explanation I had for a night that, aside from the kidnapping and explosions, had included The Kiss, three rides in the Camaro, and a sleep under the same roof as Brett. Frankly, if the world was really coming to an end, I was good with it. It just wasn’t gonna get any better than this.

Brett’s parents waited for us at the door of their three-story renovated Edwardian with its bazillion-dollar view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, lit up even at this time of night. The cop who seemed to be in charge flashed his ID and made sure we were safely inside before he spoke.

“Sergeant Mason. We’ll need to interview the kids in the morning, Mrs. Loyola. We’ll be back around ten. Is that all right?”

She took one look at our wan but totally wired expressions and said, “Better make it noon. I’ll make pancakes and frittata for everyone, including you and your officers, Sergeant.”

“That’s very kind of you, ma’am, but it isn’t necessary.”

“I’m feeding everyone anyway, so you’re most welcome. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

She shepherded us inside and gave us very momlike hugs as she divided us up into the various bedrooms on the top two floors. There were a lot of them. There were also silk draperies imported from Italy, terra-cotta pots filled with orchids and trailing vines, cool tiles underfoot, and—ohmigosh, was that a real Monet hanging there in the drawing room?

Suffering from a combination of sensory overload and adrenaline high, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep. The room Brett’s mother showed me into was somewhere on the second floor, but I couldn’t see anything through its windows. Maybe it faced into the hillside. Fine with me. I’d had enough of feeling exposed to last me the rest of my life.

I got into my tank and pajama bottoms, which I’d stuffed into a tote during the ten minutes they’d given us to get up to our dorm rooms and pack an overnight bag. I was just climbing into bed when there was a tap at the door.

“You’re not seriously going to bed,” Shani whispered when I opened it. “Come on. You and Mac gotta give us the scoop.”

I followed her down the corridor and up a flight of stairs to a big bedroom with two double beds in it, done up in a pretty English chintz. Draped all over the beds were my friends—minus Brett, of course. I wondered which room was his—and if I’d see him in the morning.

“She was in
bed
,” Shani reported, making herself comfortable in the matching easy chair and tucking her feet up under her. “With all of us up here dying to know what happened.”

“All right, spill,” Gillian told me, lounging on the other bed next to Lissa. I sat at the bottom of Mac’s, where she was leaning on pillows piled against the wrought-iron headboard, the covers pulled right up to her chin. “Start from the moment Lissa and I left to go get Security.”

Thinking back past The Kiss and the explosion—what had happened to that old guy in the robe?—seemed like going back into ancient history. Like I’d passed some kind of major milestone and now there was Before and After.

I looked at Mac. “Sure you don’t want to do this? You’re the one it actually happened to.”

“You do the first bit,” she said. “And Shani can tell us how she got Ms. Curzon back here. Maybe by then I’ll have my head round it all.”

So. Before.

“Well, once you guys left, Mac felt it was too risky to not go meet David. We had no idea whether he’d really stand by what he said and blow something up if she didn’t show. And of course I wouldn’t let her go by herself, so she took a cab to town and I, well, I missed the bus.”

Moments too late, I realized I should have glossed over this part. But then, everyone knew how we’d gotten back to school. There was no keeping Brett out of the story.

“Did you?” Mac said. “Then how did—”

“Brett saw me and gave me a ride.”

“Aha,” Lissa said with satisfaction. “Now it all makes sense.”

“I’d like to know how we got from giving Carly a ride to all of us being invited to stay at his house like the best buds we are,” Shani added. Sarcastic much? “Seems to me there’s something really interesting missing out of the middle.” Eyebrows raised in two delicately plucked arches, she gave me an expectant look.

“That has nothing to do with what happened to Mac,” I said, and they started to laugh. But since I was trying to keep a straight face, too, it was the good kind of laughter. The kind that feels best when you share it.

“So we got down to the Cow Hollow Café and Brett dropped me off at Piccadilly Photo.”

“Where?” Lissa said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

I realized that, except for Mac, none of them knew. Wow. Only a day or two ago, keeping my secret had meant everything. Now it was just another footnote in the story. “That’s where I work. I told Brett I needed to pick up my check, which was a total lie, and once he left, I asked my boss for help.”

“Where you work,” Shani repeated.

“You work?” Gillian echoed. “As in, you have a job?”

“Where do you think she got those photographs?” Mac asked them. “Off the Net?”

“Something like that,” Gillian said. “And here, all this time, we thought you were having a secret, torrid affair with someone. It never crossed our minds you had a
job
.”

“Sad but true. So what happened was—”

“I think she might be now,” Shani inserted slyly. “Having a torrid affair, I mean.”

“What
happened
was, I developed the pictures myself.” She was implying a question I totally didn’t know the answer to. “That’s what triggered this whole thing. I saw the bombs and stuff, and even though I thought I was wrong or overreacting or crazy, I made an extra set of photos. So when Mac showed me the JPEG attached to the e-mail David sent, I realized her stalker and the guy with the bombs were one and the same person.” They glanced at each other, and I took the opportunity to move on. “So, anyway, Mac called my cell secretly when David showed up, so Philip and I could listen in on what they were saying. The problem is, my stupid cell lost the signal, so when they left I had no idea where they went.”

“Back to his house,” Mac said. “Thanks a lot—I thought you were following me the whole time. I’m glad I didn’t know you weren’t. I’d have been even more terrified.”

“We did, eventually,” Gillian said. “Carly had the brilliant idea for me to check the phone number on the envelope on four-one-one-dot-com.”

“Except it was registered to some guy name Clyde. We were kind of running blind there. It could have been a frat house or a fake,” I said.

Mac shook her head. “David didn’t have a phone. That poor old fossil downstairs took his messages for him.”

“Criminals can be so dumb.” Lissa shook her head. “Who takes pictures of bombs, anyway? And then takes them to a photo shop to be developed? Hasn’t he heard of digital cameras?”

“And then wouldn’t you put a fake number on your film envelope, anyway?” Gillian wanted to know.

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Mac pointed out dryly.

Shani took up the story. “By that time, I’d gotten back with Ms. Curzon, after totally interrupting her dinner with the board members and causing a
teensy
little scene in the restaurant.” She hugged her knees, smug satisfaction written all over her. I’d have bought a ticket to watch
that
. “It took about six seconds for her to fire her assistant once she got back.”

“I should hope so,” Mac said. “Idiot.”

“I’ve never seen Curzon like that,” Lissa said, her eyes going round at the memory. “She was like a human hurricane. She tore into the security guy, ripped a bunch of skin off him, and the whole department all scattered with copies of David’s map to search the grounds. Then she found out you guys were gone.” Lissa shook a hand as if she’d burned it. “Man. She was crazed. Livid.
Molten
.”

“At which point the cops arrived to take the brunt of it,” Gillian went on. “And then the FBI got involved because it was a kidnap case, and
they
called the British Embassy because
apparently
Mac is a VIP.”

“Rubbish,” Mac said with a snort, lady that she is.

“Not according to the feds. Curzon had some kind of security agreement to protect you, except that somehow you gave them the slip.”

“The rain tunnel,” I said, looking at Shani. “Thanks for that.”

“Any time,” she said. “Glad to help.”

“Meantime, after Gillian got me the address, I took a cab over there and Brett found me. Again.”

“What, have you got a stalker now, too?” Lissa wanted to know. “This is the part where we get the details, girlfriend.”

“We snuck into the backyard and hid behind some big pots and decided that Brett would make a distraction out front while I climbed up and got Mac out of the room she was in. It was obvious she couldn’t do it on her own.”

“Tied up hand and foot,” Mac added. “Took a bit of doing, getting out of it.”

“But how did he tie you up in the first place?” Lissa wanted to know. “Don’t get me wrong, but I can’t imagine you doing anything you didn’t want to.”

“Thank you.” Mac smiled at Lissa, and for the first time, the light was right and I noticed the bruise darkening the skin at her temple.

“Oh, Mac, he hit you,” I breathed. “You should have told the EMT guy.”

She shook her head. “I’ve had enough fussing, thank you. Anyway, that part came later, when David finally got that I didn’t want to be his sister, didn’t want a lovely family reunion at Strathcairn, didn’t want to see him ever again in my life. In fact, I think I told him I’d prefer it if he were dead.” She frowned. “Possibly not the smartest thing to say, because really, the poor boy was pathetic. Anyway, at that point he swung at me and I didn’t get out of the way fast enough.”