she said. "I'll wait here."
I cursed under my breath, opened the door, popped the trunk, and unloaded the jack, spare tire, and other various roadside disaster tools. I was evidently no stranger to mechanical work, but I wasn't in the mood, dammit. I had the lug nuts loosened in record time, but as I was jacking up the car with vicious jerks of the handle, I saw a sparkle of glass behind us, and the white van glided over the hill...slowing down.
Shit.
"Hey, Venna?" I said. She looked out of the window at me. "Little help?"
She rolled up the window.
"Perfect." I sighed. "Just perfect." I went back to cranking the jack, grimly focused on the job at hand but keeping at least half of my attention-the paranoid half-on the van as it crawled and crunched its way slowly toward me. The brakes squealed slightly as it stopped.
I couldn't see a damn thing through the tinted windows, and I was suddenly very glad of the tire iron in my hand.
And then the doors on both sides of the van opened at once, and people got out. The woman was young, toned, and well coiffed. She had a microphone. Behind her, in a flying wedge, came a fat guy with a camera and a skinny guy with a boom microphone.
"You've got to be kidding me," I said, and stared, paralyzed, while they moved purposefully in my direction. "Holy crap."
"Joanne Baldwin?" The reporter got out in front, framed the two-shot, and made sure her best side was to the camera. "My name is Sylvia Simons, and I'm an investigative reporter for-"
My paralysis snapped, replaced by a quivering all-over tremor. She knew my name.
"I don't care who you're with," I interrupted, and started pumping the jack again. The tire crept upward, cleared the asphalt, and I repurposed the jack to start removing the lugs. "Get lost."
"Ma'am, do you have any comment about what happened back there on the beach?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "And I don't know any Joanne Baldwin. You've got the wrong-"
"I interviewed your sister a few weeks ago. She gave us a photo," Sylvia Simons interrupted, and held out a picture of me and Sarah, which had been removed from its frame. We looked happy and stupid. I still felt stupid, but I certainly wasn't very happy. "She told us that you're a member of an organization called the Wardens. Can you tell me something about that?"
"No," I said. Four lug nuts off. I kept moving, careless of the grease and grime on my hands or what was getting on my clothes.
"My understanding is that you have some kind of responsibility for protecting the general public from natural disasters," Simons continued. Lug nut five came off, then six, and I slid the tire free with a screech of metal and let it thump down on the road between us. I wiped sweat from my forehead and ignored her as she leaned closer. "She claimed it was magic. Care to tell us exactly what that means? We'll get the information some other way if you don't, but this is your chance to tell your side of the story..."
Crap. I put the other tire on and began replacing lug nuts. "I don't have a side," I said, "and there isn't any story. Leave me alone."
I could tell they weren't going to. They'd been digging, and struck gold. Sarah had dropped the dime and taken the money after ensuring that the white van and the reporters knew to keep on my trail. And maybe she'd called somebody else, too. Somebody who'd dispatched a killer to silence me before I could talk. That way she'd have the money from the reporters free and clear, and no Wardens after her.
"Tell you what," I said, spinning lug nuts down with both hands. I didn't look at the reporter directly, wary of being even more on-camera. "If you turn around and leave now, nothing's going to happen to your nice digital equipment."
Simons made a surprised face, and looked at the camera as if she wanted to be sure it caught her amazement. "Are you threatening us, Ms. Baldwin?"
"Nope." I finished finger-tightening the nuts, and released the jack to let the car settle back on four tires. I began applying the tire iron to finish the job of making the wheel road ready. "But things do happen."
And right then, things did happen. The camera guy said, "What the...?" and a whisper of smoke suddenly oozed out