Page 33 of Heart and Soul
She takes a moment to think, then says in a soft voice, “I think it’s time I apologized. I know this may be hard to believe, Shayne, but the truth is, she genuinely likes you.”
All my senses go on high alert. “Shelikes me?”
“I know it doesn’t seem that way, but she does. Trust me.”
“Okay, but she who? Who’s ‘she?’”
“Charlotte.”
I shoot to my feet so quickly that my chair topples backward with a loud bang against the kitchen tile. Hillerman flinches at the sound, leaning forward to plant her chair on all four legs. She seems dazed, looking around as though she doesn’t know where she is. Spotting the bowl of ramen noodles, she shoves it away in disgust. Whipping the sunglasses off, she gives me a distrustful glare. “What happened?”
It takes every ounce of self-control to keep from blurting,You’re possessed by demons! That’s what happened! Ruby was right; it takes one to know one! Either that, or you have multiple personalities, because the person I just had a whole conversation with was not Agent Hillerman.
Or was it? Maybe I just talked to the real Hillerman, and the manipulative bitch who is now staring me down is the demon. Maybe I’ve been dealing with her demons all along. What will she do if she realizes I know? I don’t want to find out, so I just say, “Sorry; you dozed off, so I was trying to be quiet. Epic fail.” I pull my chair upright.
“Did I say anything?” She watches me closely.
I feel like I’m taking a polygraph test. I say “No,” half expecting a loud buzzer to signal that I’ve failed.
“Because I do sometimes,” she explains. “I talk in my sleep. I walk in my sleep.”
“You make noodles in your sleep?”
“No, I remember that. Must have dozed off, like you said. I’ll pay you back.”
“You think I eat that shit? If it don’t got meat, I don’t eat.”
Hillerman sits down, noticeably relaxing, which means I beat the polygraph. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m sure it’s no shock to you that I don’t do a lot of sleepovers.” I don’t have a response for that. After a moment of awkward silence, she asks, “Did I wake you up?”
“No. Brenner did.”
“He and Russo head out?”
“Yep.” We sit in more awkward silence. I’m sure she must be getting suspicious of my short answers. Any second she’ll ask if I’m absolutely sure nothing weird happened in her sleep. I need to move on to another topic, or go back upstairs—something!—but my mind is bogged down with the difficult options before me.
On the one hand is the obvious: if Hillerman’s some kind of demon, then I can’t trust her, even more than I already didn’t trust her. So I should get Brenner and myself as far from her as possible.
On the other hand is the gamble: Hillerman doesn’t know I know, and she’s the only person in the world who can take me where I have to go. I need her for this case, so I should play dumb and keep her as close to me as possible.
Hillerman narrows her bloodshot eyes at me. “Are you sure nothing weird happened—”
I cut her off. “Are you done sleeping? Because we should have hit the road the second Brenner and Russo were out the door.”
Hillerman pulls her hair into a ponytail. “Is that so?”
“You said it yourself. You and I are federal agents. The boys can poke around crime scenes all they want—we both know we only let them play cops to get them out of our hair, so we can do therealwork.”
“Are you saying you want to join my task force?”
“No. I’m saying you and I partner up, just this once.”
“Off the books?”
“Obviously. This is going to take off-the-books kind of work, starting with off-the-books questions, which you’ll give off-the-books answers to.”
“Such as?”
“Arael Moaz.”
