The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [64]
“Hi, stranger. Looking for a lift?” She grins ironically at me.
“Let’s get out of here.” I flop into the glove-leather passenger seat and stare at the trees glumly.
She pulls off slowly and we drive in silence for about five minutes. “You could have gotten yourself killed back there,” she says quietly. “What got into you?”
I count the passing palm trees. After I reach fifty I let myself open my mouth. “I wanted to check out a hunch.”
Without taking her eyes off the road she reaches over with her right hand and squeezes my left leg. “I don’t want you getting yourself killed,” she says, her voice toneless and over-controlled.
I pay attention to her in a way I can’t describe, feeling for whatever it is that connects us. It’s deep and wide as a river, invisible and fluid and powerful enough to drown in. What I sense through it is more than I bargained for. Her attention’s fixed on the road ahead but her emotions are in turmoil. Grief, anger at me for being a damn fool, anxiety, jealousy. Jealousy?
“I didn’t know you cared,” I say aloud. And I’m not sure I want you to care, I think to myself.
“Oh, it’s not about you. If you get yourself killed what happens to me?”
She wants it to sound like cynical self-interest but there’s a taste of worry and confusion in her mind that undermines every word that comes out of her mouth.
“Something big is going down on this island,” I say, tacitly changing the subject before we end up in uncharted waters. “Billington’s crew has got watchers out. Seagull monitors controlled from, um, somewhere else. And then I ran into Marc. Judging by the state of my wards every goddamn corpse on the island must be moving—why the hell haven’t they chained up the graveyards? And what’s this thing they’ve got about single female tourists?”
“That might not be part of Billington’s core program.” Ramona sounds noncommittal but I can tell she knows more than she’s admitting. “It might be his crew carrying on behind his back. Or something less obvious.”
“Come on! If his sailors are kidnapping single females, you think he’s not going to know about it?”
Ramona turns her head to look me in the eye: “I think you underestimate just how big this scheme is.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?” I complain.
“Because I’m—” She bites her tongue. “Listen. It’s a nice day. Let’s go for a walk, huh?”
“A walk—why?” I get the most peculiar sense that she’s trying to tell me something without putting it into words.
“Let’s just say I wanna see your boxers, okay?”
She grins. Her good humor’s more fragile than it looks, but just for a moment I like what I can see. “Okay.” I yawn, the aftereffects of the chase catching up with me. “Where do you want to go?”
“There’s a spot near Orient Bay.”
She drives past tourists and local traffic in silence. I keep my mouth shut. I’m not good at handling emotional stuff and Ramona confuses the hell out of me. It’s almost enough to make me wish Mo was around; life would be a lot simpler.
We hit a side road and drive along it until we pass a bunch of the usual beachside shops and restaurants and a car park. Ramona noses the Ferrari between a Land Rover and a rack of brightly painted boneshaker bicycles and kills the engine. “C’mon,” she says, jumping out and popping open the trunk. “I bought you a towel, trunks, and sandals.”
“Huh?”
She prods me in the ribs. “Strip off!” I look at her dubiously but her expression is mulish. There’s a concrete convenience nearby so I wander over to it and go inside. I pull my polo shirt off, then lose the shoes, socks, and trousers before pulling on the swimming trunks. I have my limits: the smartphone I keep. I go back outside. Ramona is just about hopping up and down with impatience. “What are you doing with that phone?” she asks. “Come on, it’ll be safe in the glove compartment.”
“Nope. Not doing.” I cross my arms defensively. The Treo doesn’t fit nicely in the baggy boxer-style trunks’ pocket, but I’m not handing it over. “You want my wallet, you can have