Minders (14 page)

Was that a trick that worked on everyone, or was Ford just an easy mark?
Sadie was asking herself when she realized the horns in his mind had abruptly stopped playing. In their place was the single thought:
Dangerous. Be careful.

You surprise me, Mr. Winter
, she told him, impressed.

Plum motioned Ford into the seat next to her, leaning in to kiss him on both cheeks before giving him her hand and saying, “I’m Plum.”

“Ford,” he answered, shaking her hand.

“You could have kissed it,” Plum said.

His voice low, he said, “I don’t kiss until the second date.” Despite his caution, Sadie felt the warm wave of his pleasure when Plum laughed.
And presenting… Mr. Irresistible
, Sadie thought.

Plum sat back against gold satin pillows to study him, although what she was really doing, Sadie was certain, was giving Ford a chance to study her.

Ford looked from her face to her ankles to her hands to her breasts. His mind was noisy as he took Plum in, but Sadie had trouble gleaning the specifics of his thoughts, partially because the club was so loud and partially because much of it was happening in registers she still hadn’t completely deciphered.

She was intrigued to find that the rhythm of his thoughts had begun to mirror the rhythm of the music playing. Maybe that’s why people like going to clubs. Because when their thoughts are aligned by the music, they get a sense of intense connection, of thinking alike.

That seemed potentially hazardous to Sadie, especially when she noticed that the new rhythm made the voice in his head that labeled Plum “dangerous” hard to hear.

Plum leaned over to pour Ford a cocktail from a silver pitcher on the table beside her. She gave him his glass, took her own, and clicked them. “To long Winter nights,” she said.

Sadie heard the words forming in his mind a second before he said them.
Seriously? You are better than
—

“And warm juicy Plums,” Ford answered.

Sadie groaned. Plum froze, not looking completely nauseated by the terrible line the way she should have, but surprised. As though she’d seen a ghost. “James said the same thing,” she told Ford. “The second time we met.”

“I guess I rubbed off on him.” Ford downed his entire cocktail in two gulps. Sadie couldn’t taste it, but she felt its warmth crawling through his body, dulling the ache that the mention of James’s name had evoked.

Plum refilled his glass, leaned toward him, and rested her hand on his knee. “Are you like him in other ways?”

“What do you mean?” Ford asked in his deep, Mr. Irresistible voice. His eyes strayed back to her ankles, and Sadie heard him thinking appreciatively that she was curvy in all the right places.

And dangerous
, Sadie reminded Ford.
Curvy but dangerous.

Plum said, “Well, you sound like him. You smell like him. You smile like him. Do you screw like him?”

As I was saying.

“I don’t know. We never shared a girl.” He downed his new drink in one gulp, and Sadie was aware of the same sticky sensation she’d experienced her first day in his mind.

Plum put her hands on her cheeks in a classic expression of surprise. “Then I may be your only chance to right that wrong.”

Ford brought his glass to his mouth, apparently forgetting he’d finished his drink. Black, brown, blue, green dots whisked together into a surprisingly detailed image of Plum lying on a bed, clearly naked but half covered by a tousled blue spread with a pair of red and blue patterned shorts tangled in it. Sadie was sure it wasn’t any bed at his house. She wondered if it was what he imagined Plum’s bed would look like.

In the next image Plum’s face was replaced by Cali’s, and Ford said, “Unfortunately, I have a girlfriend.”

Sadie would have preferred it without the “unfortunately,” but it was nice that he remembered.

“The more the merrier,” Plum offered, refilling his drink.

Ford took a gulp. “She wouldn’t feel the same way.”

Plum sighed. “There goes our bold experiment.” She picked up a candy tray from the side table and held it toward him. “They make these special for me. They all have a bit of an extra kick, if you know what I mean.”

Ford had been reaching for one, but he pulled his hands back. “Thanks, I’m—I don’t use drugs.” He took another gulp of his third drink, and Sadie could tell he was starting to get a little fuzzy.

Plum ran her tongue around the edge of a green lozenge and eyed him speculatively. “I was told I should steer clear of you, that you’re a bad boy, but I see I was misinformed. Your mother must so proud.”

The mention of his mother sent things clanging around Ford’s mind. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Plum looked at him with wide, searching eyes. “Problems with your mother? You know, I’m studying to be an early childhood psychologist.”

You are?
Sadie asked incredulously, a second before Ford said, “You are?”

“Yeah, when I have time for classes. Recently it’s been tough.”

“Because of your job?”

Plum laughed. “No, puppy, I don’t have a job. I’ve just been busy.”

“Oh,” he said.

“But you can tell me about your mommy problems.”

“I just feel like I always let her down,” Ford told her.

No no no
, Sadie urged.
This is a very bad idea. Someday, somehow, you are going to regret this. If you stop and laugh and pretend you were kidding, you might be able—

Plum nodded sagely. “In general, when parents make you feel that way, it’s a form of projection because they feel helpless. You should try telling her how much you value what she does. It might help turn things around.”

Sadie was flabbergasted. That actually sounded like good advice.

Ford’s thoughts said the same thing. “Thanks.”

Plum gave him a wide, radiant, and very real-looking smile. “I’m not just a pretty face.” She leaned close to him. “I also have nice jugs.”

He laughed, and Sadie heard him think that she and James must have been really compatible.

Plum moved her shoulders to the music, swaying back and forth next to Ford, and Ford swayed with her. He was picturing her and James together, making up fictitious picnics and outings for them, imagining James telling her about fights they’d had at home over the remote control, about funny things Lulu had said, about their mom. In all of them Plum looked at James with adoration bordering on worship.

They were like his regular memories, suspended dots of color dancing into others, except the colors of these manufactured images were a little brighter, the edges a little more perfect. Ideals.
Fantasy untarnished by reality
, Sadie thought.

He imagined Plum asking James when she’d get to meet his family and James saying later, soon, next month. James wanting to keep her to himself because—

Why?
How had it all gone so wrong,
Sadie heard Ford ask himself. Talking loud, to be heard over the music, he said to Plum, “Why did you give my brother drugs?”

Sadie inhaled sharply.
I don’t think not calling attention to yourself means what you think it means.

Plum kept swaying next to him. “I didn’t. He didn’t want them. He wouldn’t even try them.”

It was like someone played every note of a pipe organ at once in Ford’s mind.
James didn’t do drugs
, he repeated to himself. James didn’t do drugs, and he had proof! Plum said it as though there were no question, no dispute. “Why didn’t you go to the police and tell them that?” he said loudly over the music.

Plum tilted her head to look at him. “What happened to your brother had nothing to do with me.”

“But—”

She put a finger on his lips. “This is my club. I make the rules. And I say we’ve talked about James enough. No more. Okay?”

Nothing was making sense to Ford now. Sadie felt his mind reeling around, grasping at random snippets as he tried to find something substantial he could count on for support. “If you don’t have a job, how do you have a club?” he asked.

Plum laughed with real amusement, wafting it over the sound of the music. “I have rich friends.”

“Like a sugar daddy?” Ford’s mind got even more noisy, the technicalities of James dating a girl who was kept by another man boomeranging around.

Plum stopped him with a flick of her wrist. “I do not have a sugar daddy. I have a
patron
.” She gave him a coquettish look over a one-shoulder shrug. “A very generous patron.”

“What do you have to do for his
patronage
?” Ford asked.

She tapped him on the nose. “Nothing that would affect you, puppy.”

Ford said, “He really doesn’t care what you do?”

“There’s a vast difference between caring about
me
and caring what I do.” She walked her fingers up Ford’s chest on the last three words playfully, but something hard had come into her eyes, and Sadie had the impression Ford had struck a nerve.

Be careful
, Sadie warned.
Don’t provoke her.

“Why doesn’t he want you all to himself? Doesn’t he love you?”

Or you could provoke her.

Plum’s gaze became steely. “You really are just like your brother. You don’t do drugs, you get drunk on three drinks, and you think that the ultimate compliment for any girl is that a guy wants her to belong to him.” Plum shifted, moving away from Ford. “Your brother was going to rescue me from this,” she sneered, her hand making a wide gesture that took in the club, the chandelier, the beautifully groomed crowd, ending with the thick gold bangle on her wrist. “He was going to
let
me be his full-time girlfriend, pick me for his one and only, free me. As though he was doing me a favor.”

Ford’s mind was a windstorm of confused thoughts. He said, “When was the last time you saw James?”

“Before he died.” Plum snapped her fingers, and two women in leather pants, tank tops, and shoulder holsters took up stations behind her. “Mr. Winter isn’t feeling up to par tonight,” she said. “Please show him out the back.”

“I’m not done,” Ford protested.

Plum patted his face. “But I am, puppy.”

She slid down the couch toward her other guests and the two women flanked Ford. As they walked him down the stairs he stopped and turned back.

“Did you love him? At all?” he called, but Plum, busy nuzzling the neck of a girl with a purple pixie cut, didn’t seem to hear.

The question was so raw, so sincere, it caught at Sadie and made her heart ache a little.
How do you keep doing that, Ford Winter?
she wanted to ask.
Have me swallowing back a lump in my throat one minute…

CHAPTER 10

A
nd rolling my eyes the next.
“I don’t have a sugar daddy, I have a
patron
,” Ford repeated in a terrible approximation of Plum’s voice as he relieved himself on the wall next to the “rear VIP entrance” of the Candy Factory.

There were no VIPs there that night, so Ford had the whole alley to himself, and he was running through all the things he wished he’d said to Plum, an alarming number of which seemed to begin with “Oh yeah, well,” when Sadie felt his senses go on alert and his ears prick.

There were shuffling footsteps and whispers coming from the darkness farther down the alley. A voice rang out sharply, “Careful with that!”

A voice Ford recognized. Linc’s voice.

He stood stock-still, listening.

“Put some pep in that step pronto, we don’t have all night,” another familiar voice said.
Willy
. “Hate to have to tell the Pharmacist we got us a bunch of slackers.”

Willy’s voice was good-natured, but there was definitely a threat beneath it.
You should go
, Sadie told him.
Whatever is going on down there is none of your business.

As though he’d heard her, Ford buttoned his pants—

Excellent.

—and started down the alley thinking,
Good, it’s time we all had a little chat
.

No
, Sadie admonished. His motor skills seemed dulled by the drinks, and he wasn’t entirely steady on his feet.
Not good. No chats. Chats in dark alleys fall squarely into the “don’t do anything stupid” category your mother was talking about. You should go in the other—

Something crashed. Linc’s voice boomed, “Idiot,” and the sound of a kick connecting with hard bone echoed off the walls.

Ford’s mind flashed with images from childhood, a cookout with James and Linc and Willy, building a raft at the lake, playing cowboys and outlaws, telling ghost stories. Over it she heard his thoughts slurring,
Got to talk to them, find out what happened to James.

“What are all of you looking at? Get back to work. Wouldn’t want my friend to have to do any more damage,” Willy said, still lighthearted, now even more threatening.

This is bad
, Sadie pressed.
You need to go.

Ford stumbled forward.
Why’d they lie about Plum?
his mind asked now.
Supposed to be James’s friends, but they lied about every—

The alley suddenly went quiet.

He kept going, taking another step, and another. His head was noisy, but the silence in the air was raw and unnerving.
As if something is waiting at the end of the alley
, Sadie thought.
Something you don’t want any part of.
Unhappily she felt for the panic button, just to know it was there
.

Ford stopped walking. Sadie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

And then he stepped into the middle of the alley and hollered, “Hey! Hey, guys.”

Are you insane?
she yelped.
This is idiocy. You’re going to get—

A bright light flashed in Ford’s face, a hand grabbed him by the neck, and Linc’s voice growled in his ear, “Tell me what the hell you’re doing here and I might not slit your throat.”

Ford’s mind froze. Sadie pushed the panic button. From somewhere far away she heard a computer voice say, “Alert system on standby. Press to proceed to Ready.”