Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,50
out the window in the hallway. “We’ll wait for you out here. Think you can be ready in five minutes?”
I looked at him with great pity. “You don’t know many girls, do you?”
He cracked a smile. “Ten minutes?”
I shut the door on him. Thirty minutes later and after some insistent knocking at one point, I joined them in the hall, wearing what was probably my eight hundredth black turtleneck and jeans since coming to this place. I’d pulled my hair back in a ponytail and someone had left another coat for me in the closet, the same kind of black, heavy wool that I’d been wearing all along. I was growing a little tired of the flimsy boots they’d been giving me and made a mental note to ask Ariadne for some with a steel toe if I was going to keep fighting people bigger than I was.
“I don’t get it,” Hannegan said as we walked toward the garage. “What took you so long? It’s not like you’re wearing any makeup.”
I blushed. “Shut up.” I had actually been trying to get my hair to lay flat, but after sleeping it was a mess, which is why it ended up in a ponytail. Again. “What are we going to investigate?”
Zack frowned as he opened the door to the garage and held it for me. Hannegan darted his bulk through first, drawing a look of acrimony from me. “There was some sort of altercation earlier today, some local youths tried to get tough with a guy and he smeared them all over the pavement.” Zack looked over at me as he let the door swing shut behind us. “Literally. Two of the youths died, and the others said the guy moved so fast that it was like he was blurry.”
“Why are we doing this now? Isn’t it Saturday night?” I opened my own door to the car and got in the backseat as usual. “I thought people only worked 9 to 5 on Monday through Friday?”
“Most people do,” Zack said. “But you don’t wanna be normal, do you?” He winked at me and put the car in reverse, backing out of the parking spot.
I ignored the leering grin from Hannegan. “Perish the thought.”
When we got to the mall we circled, passing a department store with a roll of police tape staked out in a circle on the sidewalk. “That must be where it happened,” Kurt said.
“You catch on quick,” I said. “Was it the ‘POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ written in big letters that tipped you off or the fact that there’s a smear of blood on the sidewalk that looks like someone slaughtered...well...you?” He shot me an acid look that brought a big grin to my face. “What’s the matter? Am I annoying you?”
“Annoying is the Facebook statuses my twelve-year old niece posts. You are a hazard,” he said, shaking his head. “‘Like for a rate’—what does that even mean?”
I frowned. “A rate? Like an hourly rate? Like a hooker?”
“It’s for photos,” Zack said. “They ‘Like’ your status and you tell them how you think their profile picture looks.”
Kurt nodded his head as though a mystery of the universe had been revealed. I looked at the two of them and asked the dumb question. “What’s Facebook?”
“You don’t need it,” Hannegan said. “You have no friends.”
His barb hit home and I tried to ignore it, not bothering to come up with a reply. It’s not like he was wrong.
We parked and walked to an entrance after passing the police line for a quick look. “Without a chance to look over the forensics, checking out the scene won’t do us much good,” Zack said as we entered.
The mall was much more crowded than it had been the last time we were there. It felt like there were people packed from wall to wall in the place, a throng that was moving, bustling. There was a hum as we passed the food court and the smell of all sorts of goodness reached my nose. I stopped and sniffed, feeling a little bit of salivation in my mouth.
“Come on, shut-in,” Hannegan said, passing me. “We’ve got work to do.”
“I’m hungry,” I said. “I don’t know if you heard about it, but someone got into this big fight that destroyed the cafeteria and so I haven’t had anything to eat since lunch.”
Zack shook his head, stifling a laugh. “Let’s sweep the place once and we’ll grab you a burger as we come back through.”