Under the Gun (20 page)

So this is how it ends, I thought dejectedly. With a tombstone that said,
Sophie Lawson: Probably Should Have Listened.

I sniffled.

Though the painkillers took the edge off the pain, I could feel hot tears at the edges
of my eyes, and the niggling flick of anger starting in my chest.

“Oh, hey, you’re out already.”

I whirled, then groaned, doubling over. “Not enough painkillers!” But I steeled myself
and pushed my fists against my hips. “Why did you desert me? Where were you?”

Alex patted my shoulder, his palm a delicious, comforting weight against my skin.
“If I deserted you, do you think I’d come back?” he asked.

I frowned. “I have bad hair. I’m a little sensitive.”

“Here.” He reached into a plastic SF Memorial bag and produced the ugliest—but sweetest—hat
I’d ever seen. It was a navy-blue trucker number with the words
Somebunny at SF Memorial Loves Me
written in hot pink glitter. A pair of floppy, plush, pink bunny ears shot out either
side.

My heart melted. It could have been the painkillers, or the fact that I’d bludgeoned
a man with a taxidermied owl just hours before, but the gesture was enormous and touching.
I took the hat in both hands, holding it delicately like the treasure that it was.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, as Alex blurred in front of me.

He took the hat and perched it on my head, pulling it low over my mangled scalp. “How
does it feel?”

“Like the crown jewels,” I said, stroking one of the shoulder-length bunny ears.

“How much pain medication did they give you?”

I was leaning on Alex as he led me through the double doors into my apartment building,
and by the time we reached the third-floor landing, he was carrying me, my head was
lolled back like a rag doll, and I thought I was flying.

“Did you—did you kill her?” I heard Nina ask.

I heard someone sniff heavily at the air. “No, she’s definitely not dead. But she
smells like she’s on the verge.”

I rolled my eyes to the back of my head and saw Vlad, upside down, hands on hips.

“Where’s your cape?” I mumbled.

“She’s been drugged,” Alex explained. “Painkillers. I think I’ll just put her to bed.”

“No!” I sat up in Alex’s arms and all the blood that had rushed to my head drained
to my feet while my plush bunny ears flopped against my cheeks. I blinked at the symphony
of electric spots that danced in the living room. “Shower first. Must remove layers
of dusty crap from skin. Hey, Nina, when’d you get here?”

Alex positioned me on the couch and Nina held out a hand for me. “I can take it from
here.”

I don’t know why—or how, exactly—but I lurched forward, throwing my arms around Alex’s
leg. “I can’t let you go,” I warbled into his kneecap. “I have to make things right.”

“Sophie.” I felt Nina’s ice-cold fingertips on my shoulder, working to loosen my vise-like
grip on Alex’s leg. I wouldn’t let him go.

“Don’t leave,” I said, pressing my cheek against his rock-solid thigh and trying to
talk to him over his crotch. “Please.”

I saw the alarm in Alex’s eyes—but there was a twinge of sympathy in there, too. “I’ll
stay.” He looked at Nina. “I feel partly responsible for this anyway. I should have
been protecting her.”

Nina pulled her hand out of mine and put her hands on hips. “Yeah, you should have.
What happened? Where were you when—what the hell is on your hat?”

“Somebunny loves me,” I cooed.

“It was the only hat in the place,” Alex murmured.

“I love it so much,” I said, stroking one of the ears, my eyes starting to mist again.
“This man is a prince.”

Nina furrowed her brow.

“He tried to save me, Neens, honest. But he was pinned by one-armed Care Bears and
Cool Whip containers.” I mimicked Mort’s stack falling, pinning my hero Alex in the
library. “And I saved us with an owl.”

“How many painkillers did they give her?” Vlad asked.

Nina dragged me into the tub, where I blubbered into the water and tried to explain
away my new haircut. I guess I wasn’t making much sense because before long she plucked
me from the bath, rolled me in a bathrobe, and dumped me on my bed. I think I heard
her mumble, “She’s all yours,” to Alex as I wrestled myself into a pair of underwear
and my Giants nightshirt.

Alex knocked on my open door frame. “Are you decent?”

I felt my grin spread to my earlobes. “You’re so gentlemanly.”

With his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulder pressed up against the door
frame, he looked like an Abercrombie model, or one of the headless guys from a romance
novel cover.

My whole body was weighted with the far-reaching ooze of the painkillers, but my mind
seemed clear enough and I was desperate not to be alone.

“Can you come in here, please?” With enormous effort, I snaked a single arm free from
my blankets and patted the mattress next to me. “Sit with me.”

Alex looked uncertain, but he came into the room and stood beside me.

“Sit.” I patted the mattress again.

“I don’t think—I mean, you and Will . . .”

I tried to sit up, tried to get my eyes to widen and focus on Alex’s drawn face. “No
me and Will,” I finally said, though my lips felt like flapping bananas. “No me and
Will.”

Alex’s sweet lips pushed up into a half smile and he sat. “You don’t have any idea
what you’re saying, Lawson, do you?”

His voice was soothing and melodic, the tone making my eyelids heavy.

“I know what I’m saying,” I mumbled. “Will, me . . . not serious. It was—it was .
. .” My tongue felt immovable. “It was you.”

I felt Alex’s palm on my forehead. A shiver shot through me as he gently brushed my
hair away, his fingers playing through the long strands. I closed my eyes, letting
the feeling flow through me.

“It was always you,” I said.

“Shh, Lawson. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do,” I said, certain I was nodding my head emphatically. “It’s not Will. Will is
my Guardian. You’re my angel. My angel Alex.”

I pried an eye open to see Alex’s eyes on me, the intense cobalt fixed, focused. He
licked his lips, his smile soft. “I’ll always be your angel, Lawson.”

“My angel Alex,” I mumbled again. “Stay with me. Stay with me here, tonight. Stay
forever.” I reached out and found his torso, then worked my fingers under his shirt.
He sucked in a breath when my fingertips brushed over his bare skin. He ran his fingers
through my hair; I rubbed my fingers over his navel, up his stair-step abs. “Please,
Alex.”

“Lawson . . .”

Suddenly, I didn’t just want him—I
needed
him. Desire flowed through every inch of me and my body, heavy and leaden twenty
minutes ago, was suddenly alive and on desperate fire. I sat up, clutched at him.
I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled him to me, pressing my lips against his,
kissing him hungrily.

He kissed me back and something inside me exploded. I gripped at his chest, slid my
other hand from his hair to his shoulder, yanking to remove his shirt. He grabbed
my hand and when he pulled his lips from mine, their immediate absence felt so wrong
it was painful.

“What?”

Alex’s breath was ragged, labored. His skin was hot, but his eyes and his touch were
gentle. “We can’t do this, Lawson. You don’t want this. You’re drugged.”

I swung my head. “No, no. I know what I want. I want you.”

Alex gently pushed me away from him, using his other hand to cup my chin. “You’re
gorgeous.”

Pain filled every inch of me and the edges of my lips pulled down. “You don’t want
me?”

He brushed a thumb over my bottom lip. “I want you more than anything, Lawson.”

“Is it Heaven, then? You don’t want to do anything to keep you out of Heaven again?”

His eyes suddenly went dark and bedroomy, his smile wry but slightly lascivious. “The
things I want to do to you would keep me out of Heaven forever and it’d be worth it.”
He brushed a tender kiss over my forehead. “But not now. Not like this.”

“But I—”

“Shh, sleep, sweetheart.”

I tried to protest, but Alex’s arms were strong around me and my body had gotten heavy
again. He laid me down gently, pulling my covers up and tucking them around me. I
was suddenly so incredibly tired.

“You’re a good angel,” I murmured.

I heard his soft chuckle as he straightened. “Go to sleep, okay?”

I nodded, pushing my head into the pillow. My eyes were narrow slits now; I could
just make out Alex’s back as he turned to leave.

“I love you,” I muttered.

I was groggy, but I saw him stiffen and pause. Then he pulled the door gently shut
behind him.

The day after my run-in with Mort and the San Francisco Memorial emergency room was
blissfully uneventful—as long as I kept my mind away from thinking about my romantic
mumblings to Alex the night before. I wasn’t one-hundred-percent clear about the exact
goings-on of our conversation, but every time I even considered it, my mercury rose
and my complexion went from day-glow white to midlife crisis Corvette red. I had a
grand plan to slink out of the Underworld Detection Agency and finish my Sampson investigation
myself, while contributing to Alex’s homicide investigation via e-mail or possibly
carrier pigeon.

However, I was unable to get one Payless Shoe Source faux-leather heel out the door
before I came face to bloodless face with Dixon Andrade.

“Miss Lawson.” His eyes coasted over me. “That’s a lovely hat.”

My hand flew up to the enormous
Titanic
-style headpiece I wore. After spending twenty minutes this morning trying to perfect
a half-bald-head-hiding comb-over, Nina gave up and slapped the giant saucer on my
head.

“Thanks. I was just on my way out.”

“Certainly,” Dixon said without stepping aside. “But first I was hoping to talk to
you about our previous discussion. If you have the time, of course.” His expression
was kind enough, but his eyes were cold steel, letting me know that I’d damn well
better have the time.

I took two tentative steps back into my office and slunk into one of my visitor’s
chairs while Dixon settled himself across from me.

“Have you and Alex been able to come up with anything?”

I thought of my fingers ambling all over Alex’s bare chest the night before and shook
my head, probably a little too emphatically. “No, nothing.”

“But you two have been working together?”

“Yes, sir.” I knew I should have been uber focused on Dixon and his werewolf hypothesis.
It could be the one thing that could prove—or disprove—Sampson’s innocence, but my
mind and body only wanted to head back to the relative safety of my bed and my previous
drug-addled state. “Have you found anything new?”

Dixon looked away and then back at me. “Can you take off that hat? It’s a bit distracting.”

I clamped my hand over it. “No. It’s . . . crazy hat day. Here. At the office.” I
laced my fingers together. “Promotes employee bonding. New thing from HR. You must
not have gotten the memo.”

“Okay.”

“So has anyone else spotted this wolf? Or been attacked?”

Dixon shook his head. “Not as of late.”

I stood, my swinging shoulder bag a half inch from Dixon’s forehead. “I am going to
take that information upstairs right now to Alex, and we will throw ourselves headlong
into this investigation.” My eyes flashed. “Some more. I mean, still.” I shot him
a bared-teeth smile. “I’ll have a report for you tomorrow. How’s that?”

Dixon rose slowly. “That would be nice.”

“Okay, well.” I waved frantically. “Gotta go.”

I was so amped by the time the elevator doors opened that I didn’t stop to consider
how much I didn’t want to run into Alex, and hurried directly through the police station
vestibule and right out the front door.

 

 

My poly-cotton twinset began sticking to my back the second I stepped onto the baked
concrete of the parking lot. The fog inching in at a snail’s pace and the twilight
pink-gray of the sky, coupled with the still-searing heat gave the entire town an
eerie, zombie-apocalypse-type presence. I was pleasantly surprised that such an apocalypse
hadn’t yet begun and that my car still looked as miserably pieced together now as
it had when I left it this morning. I probably should have at least sprung for a paint
job, but I was honestly growing accustomed to my little vamp-mobile. And besides,
this way I would never mistake my Honda Accord for anyone else’s.

I slipped inside, blasted the air-conditioning, and backed out, screeching to a heart-wrenching
stop when I saw Alex in my rearview mirror. He had his hands on his hips and he waited,
nonplussed, while I threw my car into park and desperately swallowed my heart out
of my throat.

“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed, wrestling my seat belt off and flying across
the parking lot at him. “Did you not see my car? It’s a car. You should have.”

“It’s not a big car,” Alex said, cocking his head to the side.

“It’s multicolored and has the word
VAMPIRE
spray painted on the hood.”

“Yeah . . . are you planning to get that painted over anytime soon?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Yes. Right after they finish painting the house in Tuscany. Is
there a reason for you standing behind my car or do you just hope to become a speed
bump in your
next
next life?”

“Well, I guess someone’s feeling better.”

My heartbeat subsided long enough to remember that I had kind of professed my love
to Alex the night before. I felt my mouth drop open. “Is that why you threw yourself
behind my car? Because last night made you suicidal?”

“Suicidal?” Alex said, one eyebrow raised questioningly. “No. I’m not the one with
the bad haircut.”

I blew out an annoyed sigh. “What exactly was it that you wanted, Grace?”

Alex’s grin was sly. “Thought you might like to grab a bite.”

I am a lot of things: strong. Mouthy. Semi-independent. But I wasn’t made of steel.

“What kind of bite?”

He shrugged. “Your call.”

I arched a brow. “Your wallet?”

“All right.”

Rather than try to wrestle my giant hat into the car I tossed it in the trunk and
replaced it with a frayed ball cap that I pulled low over my eyes. When I got into
the car Alex looked at me and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“I’m a little insulted that you’re not wearing the hat I got you.”

“Some
bunny
found another hat.”

Alex’s cheeks bloomed a bashful pink. “Forgot about the lovely inscription.”

I snapped the door shut and Alex and I were off, windows rolled down, air pulsing
through the cab of the car.

“Feel like Italian?” I asked as I flipped on the turn signal.

“Always.”

“North Beach it is.”

“Hey, did you know there’s supposed to be a maze of underground tunnels under North
Beach?”

I grinned. “And here I thought I was the expert on the goings-on under the city.”

We pulled up to a stoplight just off Union Avenue and I listened to the car idle,
to the faint sounds of someone playing a saxophone on a distant corner. And then there
was something else.

A wail—or a moan.

“Did you hear that?” Alex asked, ear cocked toward the open window.

I turned the stereo off and leaned out my own window, holding my breath for a silent
beat. A lazy wisp of oregano-scented air wafted into the car, and on it, a chorus
of low moans. They were desperate, insistent rumbles that cut through the city noise.

I furrowed my brow. “What is that?”

Now the moans and rumbles were joined by thumps, then a shallow scraping as though
something—or someone—was being dragged.

Alex’s eyebrows went up. “Lawson?” I saw his hand hover around his concealed gun.

I held up a silencing hand. “Wait, Alex. I think it might be—”

“Zombies?”

They engulfed the car before the word was out of his mouth, their fingers scraping
against the paint, lifeless limbs thumping against the mangled exterior of my vamp-mobile.
Alex’s eyes were wide, distressed, his face ashen as their fingers came through the
open window, clawing at him, touching his skin, ruffling his hair. Zombie fingers
brushed at my face, too; a clammy hand landed on my arm, grabbed a fistful of my shirt.

I couldn’t help myself. I started to giggle.

Alex, swatting at the grey, rotting arms that waved at him, looked at me incredulously.
“You’re laughing? This is funny to you?”

One of the zombies had curled his fingers under my neck and was actively tickling
me now, giggling back at me as my laughter grew, his grin wide and goofy. I clamped
my knees together and tried not to wet myself. “They’re—they’re—they’re real!” I squeezed
out, throwing the car into park and doubling over myself.

“Of course they’re real!” Alex said. “How the hell do we kill them?”

“Double tap!” A zombie on Alex’s side of the car yelled. “Cardio-oooo!”

“Beeeeeer,” another one groaned, a rivulet of black-red blood dribbling out the side
of his mouth. “Beeer!”

Alex wrinkled his brow. “Is that zombie asking for beer? Can they do that?”

I was laughing so hard now that tears were pulsing from my eyes and I started to cough.
Finally, I got hold of myself. “They’re real, Alex. They’re real people.”

Alex paused, his lip curling up into a snarl as another zombie wannabe poked her full
torso through my window. “Graiiiiiins!” she moaned, stiff arms waving. “Graiiiins!”

“She’s a vegetarian,” I said by way of explanation.

“What the hell is going on here?” Alex wanted to know.

Veggie-Zombie bared a mouth full of grayish teeth, half smeared with a thick coat
of shiny black greasepaint. “Zombie pub crawl,” she informed. “We’re only on our second
pub.” She craned her neck to look out the windshield. “Light’s green.” She wriggled
out of the car and I inched forward, Veggie-Zombie’s undead brood wailing and flailing
in the street behind us.

“There’s hundreds of them,” Alex said, staring out the back window incredulously.

“Probably.”

“You’re not the slightest bit spooked by that?” Alex said.

“Why should I be? Those zombies are in way better spirits than the ones from the Underworld.
And they can be satiated with beer. The ones at the office? Ugh. They’re supposed
to have eaten before they come in, but if you even look the slightest bit intelligent,
they’re salivating all over your desk. I had a guy suck the hair tie right off of
my ponytail once.”

Alex shook his head in disbelief. “I’m hearing the words, but they don’t make sense.”
He was silent for a beat and I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, his serious
expression starting my giggles all over again. He gave me a dirty look. “Look, you’ve
got to cut me some slack.”

I shot him a devious smirk. “And why’s that?”

“Come on. It’s ninety degrees in San Francisco, we processed a murder scene that was
right out of a Wes Craven film, you were shish-kebabed by a hoarder, and suddenly,
the streets are overrun with the thirsty dead.” He brushed the zombie-fist marks out
of his shirt. “It’s perfectly normal that a guy would get a little unnerved.”

“Or that a guy could scream like a little girl.”

“I didn’t—”

“Geez, there’s no parking around here,” I said, letting Alex know in no uncertain
terms that the case against his manly screaming was closed. “Did everyone in the city
get a car?”

“Apparently, zombies don’t like to carpool.” He grinned.

“See? You’re warming up to the faux undead already. Ooh, spot!” I cut hard on the
wheel and screeched my little tin can of a car into a shaded spot at the edge of a
residential street. It was dark and quiet, a half block full of row houses with lights
off or curtains pulled tight, silver flashes from televisions creeping out the cracks.
We walked back down to North Beach and found a restaurant with tables set up along
the sidewalk. It was flanked by moaning zombies carrying pint glasses and iPhones,
but with the heat still heavy on the night breeze, it was perfect. I broke a greasy,
cheesy breadstick in half and took a gooey bite.

“Mmm . . .”

“So, I take it you’re off the painkillers?”

I nodded, working to unstick the cheese that was sizzling on the roof of my mouth.
“Yeah,” I said, my hand going up to my hat. “The cut doesn’t hurt much anymore. It’s
mostly the sting of the bad hair.”

Alex smiled, the grin going all the way up to his eyes, making them seem to sparkle
in the low light. I thought of the night before, of the gentle way he’d stroked my
hair. and my stomach fluttered while my heart did a quick little double beat.

I may have had only half my hair and a scissor wound in my leg, but at that second,
I felt like a very normal girl on a very normal date, with a good-looking man. No,
an amazing-looking—and amazing in general—man. The way he smiled at me—the way his
eyes burned right into me—made me feel like the only woman in the world, like a supermodel
with a full head of hair. Suddenly, I didn’t regret last night’s drug-addled fog and
romantic ramblings. Will was nice, but this was Alex.

And I loved him.

The realization shot through me from tip to tail, making me slightly dizzy and giddy
at the same time. I
loved him
.

I, Sophie Lawson, loved him, Alex Grace.

My eyes started to water and my cheeks began to hurt from my love-struck grin.

“Someone looks like the cat who swallowed the canary,” he said to me.

I let out a slow breath, my heart beginning to thunder wildly. For once in my life,
my mind was littered with images of rose petals and cartoon hearts, rather than blood
bags and bodies. When Alex rested his hand on the table, I pulled my own out of my
lap and tentatively placed it over his.

It was a test.

He smiled, and pressed his thumb on the outside of my hand, then opened his fingers
so mine could slip inside.

My whole body sung.

“This is nice.”

Alex cocked his head. “What is?”

I shrugged. “This. Me, you, breadsticks. The city
out there.
”

“Don’t tell me Sophie Lawson is getting the suburban itch.”