two servers had things under control, so I asked Shayla to sit with me a minute.
Tomorrow was a big day. I wanted to give Shayla as much of a fighting chance as Lewis, the busboy, was giving Francie. If all went as planned, Lewis’s cousin was going to fake-rob us. Lewis was going to knock him out, and Francie was going to fall in love. But I had a feeling Shayla deserved his love way more than Francie did. Shayla saw Lewis when Francie didn’t. I felt it every time she looked at him.
“I can sit for a sec,” she said, scooting into the booth opposite me.
“So, what do you think about Lewis?”
I’d caught her off guard. She lifted her fingertips to her mouth to chew on a nail. “I think he’s pretty great,” she said from behind an index finger.
“I do, too.”
One corner of her mouth tipped up as she thought about the man she’d been in love with for probably quite a while. “He was so nice to me in school.”
“You guys went to school together?”
She nodded, her enthusiasm infectious. “Oh, yeah. He was so smart. And he was a geek, but not, like, a total nerd.”
“Yeah, the Star Trek shirt he wears says it all.”
“Right? It’s red. Get it?”
When I frowned, she said, “It’s like he’s tempting fate. You know? Like he’s saying, ‘I’m going to wear the red shirt. Show me what you got, universe.’”
“The red shirt says all that? Impressive.”
She nodded, the barest hint of a dimple appearing on her right cheek. “Most people don’t get him, but in school, he was the smart kid who didn’t act smart. He was nice to everyone.”
I could see that about Lewis. What I couldn’t see was why Shayla didn’t say anything. She never even attempted to flirt with him. “Why don’t you tell him how you feel?”
Her eyes became saucers. “I couldn’t do that. I mean… He doesn’t… He’s not —”
“How about this?” I said, stopping her before she had a panic attack. “How about you say hi. You know, maybe strike up a conversation about his band.”
She melted a little at the mention of Lewis’s band, Something Like a Dude.
“All guys like to talk about themselves. It’ll be great.”
I was doing this because I had a feeling even a heroic stunt like saving Francie’s life was not going to turn her focus off Reyes. Not for long, anyway. Shayla could be there to pick up the pieces of his broken heart.
“At least think about it.” She acquiesced with a nod.
I finished my quesadilla and decided I’d waited long enough. I needed to surveil, to find where Mr. Vandenberg’s family was being held, and to somehow get them help. My strides were brisk as I walked home, but that didn’t keep a car from following me. It was slick black and fancy. I pretended not to notice and kept walking. Eventually the car turned off, and I practically ran the rest of the way home.
Since I had the keys to Mable’s 1990 Ford Fiesta, I ran straight to her backyard and started it up. It was ugly as all get out, but it got me from point A to point B. And, thankfully, the heater worked really well.
I’d looked up Mr. V’s address on the Internet and drove out to Philipse Manor. He lived in a ritzier part of town than I did. Pretty much any part of town was ritzier than mine, but his was super ritzy. He definitely had money. I wondered why the men didn’t just take his money and go. Maybe it wasn’t that simple. Maybe he had all his income tied up in hedge funds and shrubbery funds and biennial cabbage funds.
I was so bad at giving investment advice.
I drove past the Vandenbergs’ house, parked about half a mile away, started to walk to the house, got back in the car, drove until I was about a quarter of a mile away, then got out again. The icy wind whipped around me and slipped into any opening in my clothing it could find. Where was a supernatural furnace when I needed one?
After risking my life by scaling an iron fence with pokey things on top, I scurried to the dark house. All the curtains were closed, but it didn’t look like a single light was on inside. I closed my eyes and concentrated. Reached out. But I felt no emotion of any kind. My pulse sped up. If they weren’t at this