Diana Rowland - How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back

“I let you off easy,” I said sharply, then stepped past him, unlocked the office door, and peered cautiously out. No sign of any Saberton guys hanging around outside the shop. I eased to the front and peeked around the globes. Edwards and Trench Coat were nowhere in sight, and I didn’t see anyone else who could remotely be a security type in disguise. I decided to be cautiously optimistic that no one had seen me.

Shop dude was still curled on the floor when I returned. “What are you going to do?” he asked, voice muffled by the hand he held to his bleeding nose.

I gave him a disgusted look. It pissed me off that I couldn’t do anything to this guy except leave him with a broken nose, but all the other options would draw a bunch of unwanted attention to me. “I’m going to leave , you fucking prick.”

Anger and fear danced across his face. His eyes flicked from me to the door, as if unable to believe it could be that simple.

I wanted to make it as unsimple as possible, but I only had a few options at the moment. I prodded him in the lower ribs with the toe of my shoe. Hard. “Gimme your wallet,” I ordered.

His jaw tightened, but he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and slapped it onto the floor in front of him. I crouched and checked out the contents. Looked like over four hundred in cash, and an absolutely ridiculous number of credit cards. I yanked his ID out and peered at it. “You’re a piece of shit, Jerome Womack.” I wanted to leave him with some sort of threat about how I’d deal with him later, but at this point I needed to get the fuck out of there even more. In a perfect world I’d be able to take care of all my other shit, then return here and exact glorious vengeance for every woman this shitstain had abused or taken advantage of. But this wasn’t a perfect world. I knew that from hard experience.

Straightening, I jammed the wallet into the pocket of my jacket then grabbed a rubber band off the desk. “Have fun cancelling all your cards, asshole.”

With that I grabbed the black wool coat off the rack and tugged it on, slapped the fedora onto my head, and left.

As soon as I was a couple of blocks from Greene Street I removed the cash and chucked the wallet and its credit cards into a trash can. The fedora I stuffed under my shirt, then I raked my hair back with my fingers and tied it back with the rubberband. Finally, I buttoned the coat up—which reached to my ankles—stuck my fedora-padded tummy out, and pretended to be pregnant. A glance in a shop window had me fairly satisfied with the result. I sure as hell didn’t look like a homeless waif anymore. Or like Angel Crawford, for that matter, which was also fine.

Yet my mind whirled with worry and confusion as I made my way to the subway station. How the hell did Saberton know about the meet with Brian? I knew it was possible to listen in on cell phone conversations, but supposedly the phones Naomi bought were the kind that couldn’t be spied on. Plus, Saberton would have to know where either Brian or I was at to do so, and if they knew that, then they could’ve simply grabbed us instead of listening to a stupid call.

The train for the return uptown was crowded, and I gave a distracted no-thank-you shake of my head to an older gentleman who tried to give me his seat. By the time I remembered I was supposedly pregnant, he’d sat back down, and it was too late. Probably for the best since I’d have felt a bit guilty taking a seat from someone I’d normally give one to.

Instead I gripped the pole and continued to fret about Saberton showing up at the meet. Someone tipped them off. It was the only possible answer, and I hated it. A miserable dread clung to me as the train continued on its way. I sure as hell hadn’t told anyone besides the Krewe about the meet, but that meant it had to have been one of the others. Had Kyle’s impassioned story, explaining his hatred of Saberton, been an elaborate pile of bullshit? I tried to consider the possibility that his capture had been fake, but why would he have gone so far to make sure the rest of us escaped—and with Andrew Saber? If Saberton’s plan was to allow us to escape so that we would then lead them to Dr. Nikas, why not simply, oh, I dunno, let us fucking escape instead of chasing us into the sewer?

Or maybe it was Naomi/Heather/Julia? My misery deepened at the thought, but the truth was that she had the deepest ties to Saberton. Maybe her whole defection had been a long con to get Pietro and Dr. Nikas. But why tip off Saberton about the meet if the goal was to get to Dr. Nikas? Naomi wasn’t stupid. It would make more sense for her to wait until we all joined up with Dr. Nikas and Brian and then let Saberton know where we were. And the same argument applied to Philip. He was at the bottom of the suspect list, but I had to consider the possibility that he’d been subverted during the time he was undercover with Saberton.

Wrapped up in my thoughts and worries and stress, it wasn’t until I saw signs for “168th Street” that I realized I’d totally missed my stop. I scrambled off the train with far more speed than a pregnant me should’ve had, then peered around in confusion until a woman took pity on me and showed me how to get on the train going the other direction.

By the time I emerged from the subway at Lincoln Center, I still hadn’t come up with a brilliant explanation for how Saberton knew about the meet with Brian. Nothing made sense. I stopped at a little grocery and bought snacks, sandwiches, ibuprofen, bottled water, and vitamin C with Jerome Womack’s money, then took the slightly rumpled fedora out from under my shirt and stuffed it into the bag before heading to the sewer hatch. Yet as I climbed down the ladder my stupid, neurotic, and paranoid brain tried to insist that the tunnel would be empty and the others gone, either because Naomi-or-Philip was the insider and had thrown Philip-or-Naomi to the Saberton wolves as soon as I left, OR because Naomi and Philip simultaneously decided that I had no clue what I was doing, was obviously dead weight and would get them all killed, and it would be best for them to cut and run while they had the chance.

Thankfully, my stupid, neurotic, and paranoid brain was quite wrong about all of this. Naomi was in the same spot, eyes closed and face drawn, apparently dozing. Philip sat against the wall a few feet away, and his unfocused expression told me the MegaPlague had attacked again. Andrew was the only perky one. Well, his eyes were, at least, as they glared at me above the gag shoved into his mouth. The rest of him was bound in a secure hogtie.

“Naomi? Philip? I have stuff to eat and drink.” I set the bag down between Naomi and Philip. Naomi muttered something and sighed without waking, but Philip opened his eyes.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

My throat tightened. “He wasn’t there. I’ll explain in a minute.”

His forehead creased in concern, but he gave me a slight nod. “When you can,” he said, with understanding in his voice even though he had no way of knowing all the shit that had happened.

How the hell can either of them be the insider? They were my friends. If one of them had tipped off Saberton, it would mean that friendship was bullshit. I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle that. Both of them were too damn special to me.

Still unsettled, I let Philip take care of getting the stuff out of the bag while I shifted over to Andrew and pulled the gag from his mouth. “Sorry,” I said as I undid the hogtie. “Do you need something to drink?”

“Sorry? Really?” He struggled to a sitting position, mouth twisted in contempt. “Somehow I doubt that.”