Max Collins - Before the Dawn

More shared laughter.

“The pumps’re fine,” Max lied, lightly. What was she going to do, pick her best pair of running shoes?

Hands on hips, Original Cindy asked, “What’s your secret, Boo? How’d you get yourself an invite to some Fat Daddy Greenback’s booty shake?”

Grinning, almost embarrassed, Max said, “Ain’t no booty shake... just a cocktail party.”

Original Cindy raised an eyebrow. “They gonna be tunes?”

Max felt the argument slipping away from her. “Well, yeah, I suppose.”

Original Cindy raised the other eyebrow. “Gonna be all kindsa young, firm hotties with their talent hangin’ out?”

Max smiled and sighed. “You know there will be.”

Original Cindy turned to Kendra and in unison, they bumped hips and said, “Booty shake!”

“Would I doubt my elders?” Max asked innocently.

That got the expected feigned indignation, and after some more giggling, Kendra went to her bedside table, opened the drawer, selected something, and returned to hand it to Max: a two-inch-square foil package.

“When you accessorize,” Max said, and now she was the one arching an eyebrow, “you don’t kid around.”

Original Cindy whooped in delight. “Aw-iiight,” she said, slapping five with Kendra. “Sister girl lookin’ out for ya, Boo! You gotta love it.”

Max was amused and, well, touched. “I doubt I’ll need this,” she said, “but because you’re the one givin’ me the makeover, I’ll take it with me — you never know what might come up.”

They all laughed again. In truth, that sprinkle of feline DNA in Max’s makeup had reared its furry little head again not so long ago, and Max had again found herself doing battle with her hormones. For a human being to devolve into a cat in heat, from time to time, was one of the more humiliating aspects of her test-tube development. But she was on the downside of it now.

Earlier, Kendra and Original Cindy had penciled Max’s brows, taught her about eyeliner, mascara, eye shadow, blush, and lipstick... techniques of war Manticore had skipped, criminal methods Moody had passed over...

Fifteen minutes in, her patience wearing thin, Max had asked, “Is this porn-star trip really necessary?”

Kendra looked hurt. “You want to make a good impression, don’t you?”

Max smirked. “What, you mean in the guys’ pants?”

“Boo,” O. C. said, “you have to put your trust in the hands of those with more experience in these matters. Original Cindy and sister Kendra know the ins and outs of dressin’ to kill.”

The latter phrase was more to the point, but Max had of course omitted her real purpose for attending the party. All she had told her friends was that she was going to a cocktail party — which was true. And that a very rich man had invited her — which was a lie.

O. C. waggled a finger. “You catch yourself a rich fish tonight, Boo — you just remember it was your home girls help provide the bait.”

Admiring herself in the mirror, a hand to her hair, surprised by how much she liked looking this beautiful, Max said, “But I provided the lure.”

Original Cindy, rather wistfully, said, “No argument, girlfriend... no argument.”

Kendra put her hands on either side of Max’s head. “Hold still or we’re never going to turn this pumpkin into Cinderella.”

Original Cindy seemed to be thinking over that remark — something didn’t seem right about it.

After that, Max sat painfully still throughout a forty-five-minute ordeal, rather amazed by the elaborateness of the makeup application when the end result made it look like she wasn’t wearing any. It was at this point that she’d stepped into the little black dress and now, finally — after taking one last twirl in the mirror, delighted by the shimmer of her dark curls, and the way the dress clung to her, like an attentive lover — she was ready... dressed to go to work.

After her last visit to the Sterling estate — as a cat burglar in the middle of the night — Max had decided on a new strategy to gain entry into the mansion and get information from the king of the castle. She’d found out a lot more about Jared Sterling in the meantime.

For one thing, Sterling was not the upstanding, model citizen the mainstream media liked to present to the public; however hard he tried to pass himself off as the post-Pulse poster child of responsible wealth, he was no philanthropic patron of the arts.

Otherwise, Max’s little home invasion would have made the news — bigtime. Her escapade would have been on SNN and front pages and all over the Net, and every other place in the so-called free world.

But there had been no mention of it anywhere.

The paper’s police beat hadn’t even run the usual one liner about “Officers responded to an alarm at...” No matter how private a person Sterling might be, the break-in should have made some kind of noise — certainly those alarms had. Police had no doubt responded, and either had been sent away by the great man, or any investigation of the break-in was kept confidential from the media.

Why?

Because Jared Sterling was up to what was commonly called no good.

Exactly what, Max couldn’t yet say; but Sterling was clearly dirty — as indicated in spades by his possession of the Heart of the Ocean.

And if Sterling had ordered the slaughter of the Chinese Clan, in pursuit of the stone, she would kill his ass.

But she would have to be convinced of his guilt, first; if he was nothing more than a collector who bought hot property from a fence, that meant Sterling was just a link to the real villain. And with Manticore involvement suspected in the Chinese Theatre slaughter, that villain might well be Colonel Donald Lydecker himself.

On a more mundane... but helpful... level, Max had also learned that the art collector was famously single. He collected pretty women as well as paintings, and was hosting a party to show off the new Grant Wood — at his home... this evening.

Manticore had instilled in Max the need to take advantage of any opportunity, and this seemed like a prime chance to finally meet Jared Sterling... again. Her back had been to him, in their first, brief encounter, and to her knowledge her image hadn’t been captured on any security-cam tapes.

Normally Max would have made her way to the ferry landing by the most economical — and most exhilarating — method: her Ninja. Her outfit made that impractical, though, and she wound up investing ten or twelve times as much to take a taxi. The ferry ride to Vashon Island wasn’t free, either, and another taxi took her from the landing to the front gate of the Sterling estate.

Adding up the costs, Max rolled her eyes and understood why only the rich lived way out here — who the hell else could afford the commute?

The taxi driver — an older, skinny guy who looked like he hadn’t touched solid food since the Pulse — pulled the cab up to the front gate, where a security guard in black suit with tie — dark-haired, Mediterranean-looking, not one of her playmates from the other night — approached with clipboard in hand. The cabbie waved the guard around to the back passenger’s seat where Max was sitting.

Max rolled down the window.

“You have an invitation, miss?” he asked, his tone pleasant, but his dark face serious, his brown eyes on her like lasers.

“Oh damn,” she said, pretending to dig through her tiny purse, “I have it some place...” Finally, she gave up, looked up at the guard with wide and (she hoped) lovely eyes, smiling full wattage. “Guess not... Such a long ride out here, too.”

He leaned a hand on the rolled-down window. “Perhaps if you gave me your name, I could check the guest list.”