“She looks like Caitlin,” Lana told me.
Oh man.
Oh shit.
Oh man.
That was it.
No matter what Mace said, I needed the Rock Chicks.
No way in hell I was going to be able to pul this off without the Rock Chicks.
“You’re gonna be good,” I promised. “Mace, I mean Kai, has a lot of friends. Good friends. Good people. We’l take care of you and we’l take care of him.”
“If you say so.”
Last night, during my planning, I realized that I had to keep Lana (and now Chloe) protected. Not only did we have Sidney Carter to worry about, we had Preston Mason and maybe that jerky George guy too.
“Don’t book a hotel. You have to stay with friends,” I told Lana.
“Oh, we couldn’t impose.”
“You have to,” I said quickly. “Kai would never forgive me if I didn’t take steps to keep you safe.” Silence, then, “Oh.”
“That’s okay too. Safe is these people’s middle name.” I was thinking about the Hot Bunch. They had other middle names like “Bossy” and “Scary” and “Badass” and “Hot” but I decided not to share those middle names with Lana. She was already freaking out.
“Okay,” Lana said.
“Let me know your flight numbers. I’l send someone out to get you at DIA. Okay?”
She gave me the flight numbers and I wrote them down on Mace’s tablet. Then I ripped the top sheet off, folded it up and put it in the back pocket of my cutoffs.
While I was doing this, Lana cal ed, “Stel a?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
I did another happy shiver, a different kind that didn’t involve Mace, his voice, eyes, hands or mouth. But it was happy al the same.
“No, Lana, thank you,” I said back.
* * * * *
I programmed Lana’s number into the phone under “Bogey One” just in case Mace saw it. I wanted a warning if she phoned again.
Then I sat on the couch and thought about my options.
Then, because I couldn’t decide, I cal ed Fortnum’s. I’d talk to whoever answered the phone.
“Hel o, Fortnum’s Used Books,” a woman said and I knew it was Jane, the super-thin, kind of weird, pathological y shy woman of indeterminate age that had worked there since before Indy inherited the store from her grandmother.
“Jane?” I asked anyway, just to be sure.
“Who’s this?” she sounded guarded.
“It’s Stel a.”