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

The word “baffled” probably had my picture next to it in the dictionary. “Huh?”

Philip straightened, put his hands on my shoulders, then leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “You’re bugged.”

I jerked in shock and drew back to meet his eyes. “How?” I finally managed to get out.

“I think I was a party to it,” he said, voice going dark and dangerous. “Wasn’t I, Saber?”

I spun toward Andrew and saw the glowering expression of a man who’s been caught doing something really sneaky. Realization smacked me like a shovel to the face, and I slapped my hand over the crook of my left arm. “Shit!”

“The boat launch parking lot,” Philip said. He took my wrist and pulled gently to straighten my arm.

My distress shifted to white hot fury. A few months ago, back when Philip was still undercover, he and some Saberton goons attacked me at the Tucker Point boat launch then held me down while a tech took blood samples from me. At one point the needle had felt like a ball point pen being shoved into my arm . . .

We’d never been able to figure out why they’d taken blood and then simply let me go. But now it all made sense. It was brilliant. I had to hand it to them. A lot of information got dropped in my presence, and all they had to do was wait for the perfect moment.

My lips pulled back from my teeth. “Get. It. Out.”

Face set, Philip palpated my arm and finally paused with his thumb over a spot a couple of inches below my elbow on my inner forearm. “I think this is it.” Philip flicked open a folding knife, met my eyes briefly, then made a careful slice through the skin. I clenched my jaw as the pain burned up my arm before receding. “Sorry,” he murmured as he carefully worked his fingers into the gash. “I don’t want to risk cutting any blood vessels, low as we are on brains.”

“It’s cool,” I reassured him, then glowered at Andrew. “Y’all heard everything?”

He paled, but I decided it was more at the sight of Philip digging in my forearm than because of my accusation.

“That’s how you knew we were at your apartment,” I continued, pissed, then exhaled in relief as Philip withdrew a slim plastic and metal tube about an inch long and about an eighth of an inch wide. Cripes, no wonder my arm had been itching and bothering me so much.

Philip dropped it to the floor and ground it beneath his heel. I turned to Andrew and enjoyed his wary frown as I untied his tie and pulled it free of his neck. His eyes widened with shock and dismay as I proceeded to wrap the silk around the gash in my arm.

“That’s an Ermenegildo Zegna!” he sputtered.

“And now it’s a Band-Aid,” I snapped. “How come you didn’t have people waiting at your apartment for us when we broke in?”

He pulled his gaze away from the ruined tie, scowled. “It was intermittent at best after you went to the bar and got into that fight. The audio reduced to bits and snatches, and the tracker ceased working completely.”

I quickly turned away and put a hand over my mouth to hold back a slightly hysterical laugh. The stun gun. That stupid stun gun had partially fried the bug and saved our asses.

After taking a few deep breaths to get myself under control, I took the phone back from Philip then walked a short distance down the tunnel before calling Brian back.

“It’s out and dead,” I said as soon as he answered.

“Good.” He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I should have screened you for anything unusual after that incident with Saberton, even for a piece of lint stuck to your shirt.”

“I hate that I was the cause of all of this crap.”

“ You weren’t,” he told me firmly. “Saberton played a good hand. Anyway, now that we have that settled we need to join up and figure out our next step.”

“Yeah. Stuff with Philip and me is getting worse, and it would be darn awesome if Dr. Nikas could do something about it.” I sucked in a breath. “I almost forgot to tell you! We have one of the Saberton security guards here. Weird as shit—he stumbled right up and collapsed.”

“And no one has ended him yet?” Brian asked with dangerous calm.

“Er, no.” I moved further down the tunnel and lowered my voice. “He’s a zombie . And don’t ask me how the hell that’s possible, because he wasn’t only a couple of hours ago.”

“You’re certain he’s a zombie?” Brian asked, doubt thick in his voice. “It doesn’t seem possible that he could be up and around so soon, even if he was turned immediately after you saw him.”

“I’m positive, and Philip agrees. But I can’t figure out why the hell Pietro or Kyle would turn this guy. I mean, he’s an asshole! And Pietro hated him as much as I did.” I snorted. “He even told me not to kill him if I saw him on the street—said Gentry was his.”

“Kyle?” Brian asked, and I realized he didn’t know Kyle had been taken. Before I could explain I heard a frantic scuffling sound on the other end of the line, then Dr. Nikas’s breathless voice.

“Angel. Repeat what you said.”

Mildly perplexed I did so.

“Oh, dear,” Dr. Nikas murmured. “What is his condition now?”

My confusion increased. “Out cold,” I told him. “We have him secured, though. Ziptied wrists and ankles.”

“Is his skin icy and pale?” he asked with a strange urgency. “Check the inside of his eyelids. Are they pale as well? As if there’s barely enough blood to make them pink?”

“Um, hang on, and I’ll check.” I jogged back up the tunnel to Gentry and checked his skin and eyelids. Philip gave me a questioning look, but I could only give him an I-have-no-fucking-idea shrug in response. “Yes, to all of that,” I told Dr. Nikas. “What’s going on?”

“Oh. Oh my goodness,” he breathed. “Bring him. Bring him with you when you come here.”

“Sure, but how—” I stopped at the sound of more scuffling, and then Brian came back on the line.

“Angel, tell me where you are.”

“Right by Lincoln Center.” I quickly explained where the hatch was, then brought him up to speed on Kyle’s capture, Naomi’s injury, and Andrew as hostage.

“Get everyone ready to move,” Brian said. “I’ll call you when I’m five minutes out.” And with that he hung up.

Sighing, I pocketed the phone. “Time to say goodbye to the roaches and rats, everyone.”

When the call came, we hustled everyone up the tunnel and to the surface. Or rather, Philip carried Naomi to the ladder and followed her up as she did an awkward one-footed climb, then Brian came down and hoisted Andrew—ziptied, gagged, and blindfolded—over his shoulder and carried him up the ladder, repeated the process with Gentry, and finally I brought up the rear. Fortunately, Brian had strategically parked the big-ass SUV right by the hatch, and we managed to get everyone in without any witnesses to the fact that two members of our party were having fun with zipties.

Still out cold, Gentry took up the floor by the middle row of seats, while Andrew got the floor of the back row.

Brian drove in silence, no doubt because of Andrew’s presence. Philip and I sat in the middle row while Naomi took the back in order to put her leg up on the seat. Unsettled, I kept looking down at Gentry. Why had Dr. Nikas sounded so agitated and yet so protective of the asshole? I looked up to see Brian watching me in the rearview mirror. I gave him a worried What the fuck? look, which he returned.

As soon as we were certain no one was following, I pulled out my phone and texted Jane an update on our status, along with a promise to call her as soon as I knew more. After I sent it, I sighed, wishing I had good news about Pietro for her. Instead we were back to square one. Hell, square zero.