Duality: Vol 2, Euphoria (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (15 page)

“Yeah.  But I doubt we’re going to be seeing much of this place.  These disguises are too awful to work close up and in the daylight.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said, puffing up the bottom of my wig. “I can totally pull this off in public.”  I grinned.

“Except for that hunk of brown hair hanging out on your forehead, maybe.”  He smirked.

I pulled the mirror down and saw that he was right.  My bun under the wig was falling apart.  “Oh well.  We’re almost home now anyway.”

Home
.  The word sounded so weird, considering where we were.

The GPS voice came out over the car’s speaker.  “You have reached your destination.  Please take the envelope out from under the driver’s seat and follow the directions.  Do not deviate from the plan.  Keep your cell phones close.  We’ll be in touch.”  I couldn’t tell if the voice was pre-recorded or live.  It had an almost robotic tone to it.

Malcolm pulled over on the side of the road behind a parked SUV and put the car in park.  After turning off the ignition, he reached under his seat and pulled out a manila envelope, handing it to me.

I opened the flap and pulled out some papers.  Dumping the envelope upside down made some keys fall out into my lap.

“What’s it say?” asked Malcolm as I looked at the top page.

I read it aloud:

“You will be staying in the gray building on the north side of the street, number one-eight-one-nine.  Ride the elevator to the tenth floor.  Use the short, round key to open the elevator doors on that floor.  Use the other key to open the door on that floor, Letter C.  There’s food in the fridge for the next few days.  Stay inside.  Don’t let anyone in.  Don’t speak to anyone.  Don’t call anyone outside of the numbers pre-entered on the phones.  Don’t make noise.  We’ll be in touch.”

“Does it say what to do with the car?” Malcolm asked, taking the top paper from me.

I looked at the second paper. 
More instructions. 
“Directions for the car.  Drive around to the next block to find the entrance to the underground parking garage for the building.  Park the car in space number four-four-two.  Leave the keys in the apartment on the kitchen counter. Do not drive the car anywhere.  Stay in the apartment until you are contacted.”

“I guess that answers my question,” said Malcolm, handing the first sheet back to me.  “Do you see which direction I have to go to get to the parking garage?”

“I think it was back there,” I said, pointing to where we’d just come from.

“I’m going to park the car now, unless you want to go up first,” he said, his hand poised on the keys in the ignition.

“No, go park.  We’ll stay together.”  His responding smile warmed me to my toes.  No way did I want to be alone without him in this big city, even for a minute.  I was glad he was okay with that and didn’t treat me like a weenie, even though I was probably acting like one.

Malcolm pulled out into traffic and made his way around the block, getting a little sidetracked with the one-way streets.  We passed a really cool looking sushi place, which reminded me that I hadn’t had any of my favorite food in a long time.  When I was with my parents, they sometimes got some sushi to-go so I could indulge in my craving for the stuff at home.  It was the one meal my mother couldn’t make, and sitting in a restaurant was never an option for me when I was with them.  It was so unfair we were banned from going outside.  I frowned as it went by my window.  The restaurant was crowded, telling me they had awesome sushi.  I could already picture a glob of green wasabi paste floating in soy sauce…

We parked under the building and found the elevator that would take us up to the apartment.  The little key was kind of weird, but the elevator doors wouldn’t open until we figured out how to use it and got it to work.  The small lobby area of the floor we were staying on was nothing fancy, but the apartment itself was amazing.  The furniture was very contemporary and everything was so clean and shiny it looked like a team of maids had just walked out the door.

“Whoa,” said Malcolm, stopping just inside the entrance.

“Nice,” I said, walking into the living room and dropping the duffel bag I’d taken from the car to the ground.  I hadn’t even looked inside the bag yet, much more interested in the view from ten floors up.  I walked over to the big windows, planning to push aside the drapes and look out, but they wouldn’t move.  I frowned, jerking and pushing them to the side.

“Better not,” said Malcolm, standing in the kitchen, holding up some papers.

Looking over my shoulder at him, I scowled.  “What?  More instructions?”

“Yep.”  He read the paper out loud. “Do not open the curtains.  Do not leave the door open or unlocked.  Do not play music or make noise.”

“Do not, do not, do not.  I’m already tired of all the do-nots I keep hearing,” I said, letting go of the stiff curtains.  I gave them one last look before joining Malcolm in the kitchen.  I wasn’t done with trying to get them open.  If we didn’t have the lights on inside, what harm could it do to just see the city?

“What’s for dinner?” I asked as I made my way over.

Malcolm was standing in front of the open fridge.  “TV dinners.  Decent ones, looks like.  Couple pizzas too.  Milk.  Juice.  Coke. Ice cream.”  He looked at me.  “Hungry?”

I smiled.  “Maybe for some ice cream.”

“Me too.”  He pulled the container out and put it on the counter.  We hunted around, looking for bowls and spoons.  Five minutes later we were in the living room on the couch, our duffle bags next to us and our bowls of ice cream in hand.

“Yums,” I said around a big mouth full of chocolate sweetness.

“Man, this hits the spot.” Malcolm shoved a huge spoonful into his mouth.

“The last time I had ice cream was … months ago,” I said, taking another bite.

“Nah,” said Malcolm, digging around in his bowl for his next monster bite.  “You had some in your shake at McD’s the other day.  Remember?”

I stopped eating, frozen in place for a few seconds as I thought back.  “Can you believe that was just a couple days ago?”  I looked at Malcolm wondering if it blew his mind like it did mine.

“No.  It’s nuts.”  He waved his spoon around at the room.  “We’re in Chicago?  In a high rise apartment?  No.”  He shook his head, back to spooning out ice cream.  “This isn’t real.  I’m just having a big gnarly dream right now.  I’m going to wake up soon, so I want to hurry up and finish this ice cream first.”  The rest of the dessert went into his mouth, possibly breaking a world record for the biggest bite of dairy product ever taken.

“Don’t choke to death,” I said, stirring mine around, trying to make it melt faster.  I preferred a milk shake in a bowl.

He put his bowl on the glass coffee table.  “I want to see what’s in these bags,” he said, unzipping the one closest to him.  “Ow, shit … brain freeze.”  He stopped, his eyes crossing as he winced.

I laughed, watching him battle the ice cream freezing his throat.  I took a cautious bite of my own, making sure to let it melt on my tongue before swallowing.  I hate brain freezes.

When he recovered, he pulled out some t-shirts, jeans, toiletries and a couple books.  “This must be my bag,” he said, holding up a shirt that had a beer company logo on it.

I put my bowl down on the coffee table and opened the other duffel.  I found much of the same thing.  At the bottom of the bag, though, was something different.  Whatever it was, it was heavy and shoved into a sock.  Something inside it crinkled.

“What’s that?” asked Malcolm, looking in his bag a second time, trying to find something like it but coming up empty-handed.

“I have no idea.”  I peered into the top of the sock, stretching the edges open.  All I saw was paper, but the thing was way too heavy to be just that.

“Open it,” he said.

I handed it to him.  “You do it.”

He smiled.  “It’s not a bomb.”  Then he frowned.  “At least I hope it’s not a bomb.”

He reached into the sock and pulled the thing out gingerly.  It had a piece of school notebook paper wrapped around it.  “Here,” he said, pulling the paper off and giving it to me.

My eyes scanned the page.  “It’s a note from Jasmine.”

Malcolm and I stared at the thing in his hand.  It was black, some kind of electronic device maybe.

I read the first line of the paper silently and put my finger to my lips, telling Malcolm not to say anything.  Leaning close to him and holding the paper between us so we could see it together, I finished reading to myself.

Hey, Rae-Rae. It’s me.  I’m eating some popcorn now.  It’s my fave snack.  Anyway, this is a bug detector.  The buttheads who work with my parents sometimes get a little nosey.  Thought you’d like to know when you’re being listened to.  So before you and Malcolm get it on anywhere, better do a sweep and make sure you’re not being recorded, know what I mean?  Ha ha.  Maybe I’ll see ya soon.  My phone number’s in the cell you got.  I made sure of it.  Don’t tell anyone about this equipment I snuck in here.  It’s from my dad’s stash and he’d probably be pissed.  I’m pretty sure it’s expensive.  Toodles. JB

Malcolm stood and flicked a switch on the side of the bug detector.  He waved it around the room while he watched a tiny screen on the front.  Frowning, he brought it down and shook it a few times.  Shrugging at me, he held it out again, getting up and slowly walking around the room.

He stopped all of a sudden, right near the front hall table.  Running the device in the air around the table, he finally slowed down by one of the back legs.  A light was going on and off until he got there; then it went on and stayed on.

I followed Malcolm into the bathroom where he didn’t find anything, then through both bedrooms where we found listening devices on the bedside tables.  We went back to the bathroom and shut the door behind us.  I turned the water on in the sink.

“What are you doing?” asked Malcolm, shutting the device off.

“Blocking out any noise,” I said.  “I saw it in a movie once.”

“What the hell, man?  They’re spying on us,” he said, scowling at the door.

“Of course they are.  They’re probably making sure we don’t leave and also listening in just in case someone comes in here.”

“Who’d come in here besides us or one of them?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Bad guys.”

Malcolm half smiled.  “Bad guys.  I thought I was the bad guy.”  He put the bug detector on the bathroom counter.  “So we have to hide in the bathroom if we want to talk.  That sucks.”

“Yes and no.  We can move one of those bugs out of the bedroom and both sleep in the same one, if you want … if you want to be able to talk before we sleep and not be standing in here.”  My face went red as I realized what I was suggesting.  I quickly tried to cover it up.  “Or we could move them both out of the rooms and have our own private areas.  Whatever you want.”

“Nah.  If we move them both, they’ll probably get suspicious.  Let’s just pick the room we like best and move the bug out of there.  And right before we go to sleep I’ll go in to the one with the bug and say goodnight to you and you can say goodnight back, and they’ll think you’re a fast sleeper or something when they don’t hear anything else all night.”

“Okay.  That works for me.”  I tried to mask my excitement at sleeping in the same room with him.  I didn’t envision anything actually happening, except maybe a little kissing if I was lucky, but I was really happy to not be sleeping alone.  Our one night together on the cots had been nice.  It should have been too stressful to sleep, but with him holding my hand like he had, it wasn’t.  Having Malcolm next to me made all the craziness that was going on seem not quite so out there.

“Which bedroom did you like best?” he asked, looking around the bathroom like there were really interesting things to see on the walls and ceilings.

“The one with the gold bedspread.”

“Okay.  Let’s go move the table into the other room.  Follow my lead.”

“Ten four,” I said, turning off the water.

He walked out of the room and I followed behind, wondering if we’d be able to pull this off and what would happen next if we did.

Chapter Twenty: Malcolm

I LEFT THE BATHROOM, TRYING to focus on the job ahead of me and not the bed I’d be sleeping in later.  With Rae.  I wasn’t sure if she meant for me to sleep on the floor, but I was going to try and get in that bed with her; not so I could make my big move or anything, but mainly because I wanted to try and get a good night’s sleep after all the craziness we’d been through.  Of course, if she decided she wanted to kiss me or whatever, I wasn’t going to fight her off.

I walked into the room we planned to sleep in and stopped in front of the table.  “Goodnight, Rae. Have a good sleep.”  I gestured at her, trying to prompt her to answer.  She looked confused at first but then brightened up.

“Oh, um, yeah.  Goodnight, Malcolm.  Sweet dreams.”  Her dimple appeared, and I couldn’t help but smile back. 
Now who’s playing spy kid?

I waved at the bed and she took the hint, pulling back the covers and bouncing around a bit, trying to make the noises of a soon-to-be sleeping person.  After a couple of rolls and loud sighs, I took the lamp off the table where the bug was and put it on the floor.  Lifting the nightstand up, I carried it out of the room as quietly as I could, leaving it in the living room as far from the bug in the front hall as possible.  I wasn’t sure if there could be interference from two bugs being too close, but I hoped not.   

I went into the other bedroom and whistled a little, pretending to get ready to sleep.  I pulled down the sheets and got into bed.  I let out a big burp for good measure.  Once a minute or two had passed, I slipped out of the room and went back to join Rae in her room.  She was sitting in the middle of the bed with both duffel bags next to her.

I shut the door behind me, making sure not to speak until I was well away from it.

“Are we good?” she asked.

“All set.  We can talk freely here, I think.  I hope.”