Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,117

dinosaur rampage? Not really. The temperature dropped about fifty degrees and you said ‘Basingstoke’ and collapsed.” He pointed at his eyes. “Serious REM going on, though.”

“Great. Phin will want to hook me up to brain electrodes next time.”

Jeez, I hoped there wasn’t a next time.

Taylor ducked his head to catch my gaze, studying my face and heaven only knew what was written there. “Are you okay?” he asked gently, and he wasn’t talking about three days’ worth of psychic backlash headache that I could feel looming like a pain tsunami.

Blushing made me feel disloyal to Carson. Which was stupid, because wanting to go over to Carson made me feel disloyal to Taylor, who had never lied to me, even by omission … and who had killed his first person today.

For me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” he said.

I allowed myself a smile. “You keep saying that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

He couldn’t—quite—let himself laugh. Instead, he looked over my shoulder. “You’d better slide in there and say what you’ve got to say while you’ve got the chance.”

That sounded very dire, but I realized he didn’t necessarily mean life or death. Police swarmed the place, and I saw Gerard waiting like a middle-aged vulture, and any minute now my family was going to storm the barricade and drag me home to Texas tied to their broomsticks.

Taylor got to his feet and gave me a hand up. I was shakier than I liked to admit, and he squeezed my hand before letting go and flashing his badge so the crowd around Carson would let me through.

He looked awful. The blood loss had made his old bruises appear even more livid, and his new ones were watercolor blotches over just about every inch of him. And that was only the inches that were showing.

When he saw me, he winced. And I hadn’t even said anything yet.

“So …,” I started. What do you say to a guy who unwittingly uses you to get a magical artifact ahead of a secret organization that he lies about not knowing, and maybe breaks a little bit of your heart, even though you’ve only known each other a couple of really intense days, right before he jumps in front of a bullet for you.

I mean, what do you say?

You say nothing. Because just then, Agent Gerard arrived, and wouldn’t be put off. “Christopher Carson Maguire, you are under arrest—”

“Christopher Carson?” I interrupted. “Your name is Kit Carson?”

“You,” said Gerard, aiming his laser stare at me. “I’ll get to you in a minute, Peanut.”

“No you won’t,” Carson said, in his most steely voice ever. “She didn’t do anything. And if you want all the information I have on Maguire Enterprises, all their holdings and financial dealings, you’d better remember that.”

Maybe “I’m not a nice guy” really was the biggest lie he ever told me.

38

THE JUDGE’S GAVEL fell, and Carson was off the hook for everything but the motorcycle theft, since two FBI agents had actually seen him do it. Some of that might have been luck, or extenuating circumstance, or even a lot of payoffs—like two car owners and some museum boards—or the fact that when it came right down to it, no one could really explain what happened at the Field Museum that day.

And of course, Carson had all the dirt on his father’s criminal activities. Not just a whale, but a whale of a whale with a really big headline takedown. The making of a DA’s career. I wasn’t in on the details, but I bet they were happy to work with Carson and his high-priced lawyer.

At the verdict, the courtroom erupted in camera flashes and reporters calling out questions. From a few rows back, I watched Carson stand and shake his lawyer’s hand. He was looking a lot better than the last time I’d seen him. Which, really, was not a stretch. It had been two months, and I’d only seen his picture on news websites until I returned to Chicago with Agent Taylor to testify at the hearing.

My cousin Amy, who’d come from Texas for moral support, asked, “Ready to get out of here? Or do you want to say hi?”

“He knows I’m here. Trust me. If he wants to talk to me, he’ll find me.”

She gazed at me for a long moment, ignoring all the people trying to get past us in the busy courtroom gallery. “You know, guys are weird. Sometimes, when they think they’ve offended you—because