Joey snapped the ends of his staff back inside the smooth gun-metal gray wand, and it looked like a tool again. “Coming from the opposite direction Cang’s minions raced away in.”
“Cang?” Jen said. “Who is that?”
“A thief,” Mikhail spoke up from behind.
“What’s he after?” Jen asked, glancing dubiously at the digging machine.
“Ancient artifacts,” Joey said. “Rumor has gone around that there might be something of that sort down in the collapsed cave.”
Jen remembered the one guy shouting We know where you live . . . Why would they care where Joey Hu lived? Joey was a college teacher, living in a plain old ranch house with students coming and going at all hours. Not exactly Indiana Jones. She said, “If there was that kind of treasure down there, the kids who used to go into those caves to party would have found it ages ago.”
“All it takes is one bozo making idiot claims on the Internet, and next day, ‘everybody knows’ it’s true, because they read it online,” Ann said, peering over the glasses she’d just put on. “Sounds like the patrol car is a block away.” She’d tapped her tablet to life, but dropped it into her purse, then she turned to Jen. “Unless you want to be part of answering questions, why don’t you take off before they get here? And thanks very much for your help.”
Joey patted Nikos on the back. “You, too. Unless you have your ID on you.”
Nikos’s brows rose. “I do not.” He turned his head, surveying the quiet street beyond the half-ruined parking lot. “Which way?”
When Nikos turned that smile onto Jen, she smiled back, still heady with adrenaline, and the words just came out: “Are you hungry? I could make you a sandwich.”
Nikos bowed slightly. “Thank you. I’d like that very much.”
The wailing was getting louder. Jen realized she and Nikos were way inside the yellow police tape still marking off the unstable palisade. Joey, with his university credentials, clearly didn’t regard that as a problem any more than his professor friend did. But Jen had no real reason to be there.
“This way,” she said, indicating the low fence to their left. She broke into a jog, wincing slightly as her feet struck the cracked pavement. She hadn’t been in a real fight for years, and was starting to stiffen up as the adrenaline began dissipating at last.
Well, running would help a little. Nikos fell in step beside her, his breathing easy. They passed behind the closed-down parking lot attendant’s box and crossed to the hedge side, then into the alley between two big garages belonging to apartment buildings.
He kept pace with her as they passed a residential street, crossed a park full of dog walkers and people pushing baby strollers, then—their feet hitting the pavement in easy rhythm—they ran the six blocks to her tiny beach house.
Her house of nearly twenty years. Suddenly intensely self-conscious, she felt her steps falter as she eyed the place as a stranger might.
As Nikos might.
It was built in the fifties, the same model Doris had had before she moved in Joey’s much nicer ranch house. It was pretty much a box—kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom—inconvenient in a lot of ways. The windows and closets were tiny. The electricity had been cheapo in the fifties. But Robert had felt that five hundred square feet was plenty for two people who mostly lived out of backpacks, and subpar fifties wiring encouraged them to keep their carbon footprint small. They’d kept the same shabby but functional furnishings left behind by the previous owner.
About all you could say in its favor was that it was shelter, and it was clean.
“Come on in,” she said, torn between a wish that she’d kept her mouth shut back at the landslide, and a weird desire for him to not find the house as bad as she was afraid it really looked.
He followed her inside. She was glad he couldn’t see her face. The sixty-year-old beige carpet had never looked uglier, the institutional white walls cheerless. The only touch of color was the little orchid planter in the kitchen window, a gift from last summer’s self-defense class.
She turned, and saw Nikos’s dark eyes taking in the kitchen. “I keep meaning to transfer the orchid outside, but I kind of like the shiny green leaves with their slow-curling tendrils, and the occasional flowers—”
She was babbling again. Deep breath! “So what kind of sandwiches do you like? I have some sliced turkey in here, and I still have a chunk of ham that Bird gave me as leftovers a few days ago. I can slice that up. There’s, um, an end of a rye loaf here, and in the freezer, I still have some whole wheat.”
She reached for the fridge, wincing as a muscle twanged that she hadn’t realized she’d pulled during the fight.
“You got hurt,” Nikos said.
“I’m fine.” She turned to find him closer than she’d thought. Close, but not crowding. The opposite, really—she found herself taking a step toward him as she breathed in his scent, a heady mix of the sea salt and clean masculinity.
She stepped hastily back. “Just a little tweak behind my shoulder blade. It’s been years since I was in a real fight, and that was outside a bar in London—ah, never mind. People who go on about their personal history are boring.”
“I don’t think any experience you’ve had could be boring, but I won’t press,” he said as he eyed her shoulder. “Judging by the way you’re holding yourself, I can tell you’re in some pain. I believe I could work out that knot. I am regarded as very good with such things. Before I came into, that is, before I assumed my present duties, I studied Eastern Medicine. It’s very useful when my young students sustain injuries.”
Jen took another step back, startled by the sudden rush of hunger sheeting through her body at the idea of his hands on her. Acutely conscious of her own sweaty state, she forced a laugh that sounded to her ears more like a gulp, and said, “It’s okay. I’m fine. Used to twinges from the studio.” She turned away, reaching for the freezer door in order to root around for the frozen bread, but as she did, the twinge sent a sharp spasm straight up her neck.
She winced, straightening up.