Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) Read Free

glanced into an enormous empty lobby. No security guard, nothing but open elevator doors on the far wall.
    Unfastening the handcuff so I didn’t look like an escaped convict, I went back outside and checked for an alley where the thief could have hidden, but unless he was in a Dumpster spilling over with boxes and trash bags, he was gone. And so was Andre’s deposit. I was so screwed.
    I couldn’t panic and trash an alley in search of filthy lucre while kids were crying and hurt. Abandoning my fruitless hunt, I tucked the handcuffs into my bag and hurried up the street to prevent Leibowitz from forcing a girl with a crumpled leg to her feet.
    “Her leg could be broken, numbnuts! Block off the intersection until the ambulance gets here.” Ignoring the twinge of pain, I kneeled down and cradled her head on my lap while her friends gathered around, cursing and sobbing.
    “You.” I looked pointedly at the guys in their teamshirts. “Get out there and help the officer stop traffic. Did anyone get a look at the license plate? Write it down while you can still remember it.”
    “That was Dara’s new computer,” the injured girl whispered. “She babysat monsters for two years to buy that.”
    A once-shiny laptop now bearing a tire track lay crumpled beside a weeping girl holding the hand of the limo’s victim. Knowing how hard it was for anyone in this neighborhood to raise that kind of cash, how proud she must have been to have her own computer, I felt her pain. Even I couldn’t afford a nice setup like that one had been, and I had ten years on these kids.
    “We’ll get the bastards,” I muttered, more to myself than to them. I’d seen enough of the license plate to know where to start. The Zone was an hour’s drive and a gargantuan psychological distance from D.C., but those were government plates I’d glimpsed while on my knees.
    I saw disbelief in the kids’ eyes, but they politely refrained from arguing—rightfully so. They knew no one cared what happened to people who lived in a blighted area so poor that the inhabitants couldn’t escape their unmarketable homes. And I looked more like a bronzed garden gnome with limp hair than a champion of justice.
    I could hear the ambulance siren wailing in the distance. I prayed the buzzing in my pocket was Max texting me that he was on his way. “Leibowitz, did you catch the license plate number?” I shouted.
    Standing in the intersection, directing traffic aroundhim, he shot me a disgruntled look. “You want me to lose my job reporting a senator ? You really think I’m that stupid?”
    Yeah, I did. “That’s what you get paid to do! They’re not above the law!” I yelled back, but maybe I was the one who was stupid, expecting justice in the face of all evidence otherwise. “Did you see who ripped off my deposit bag?”
    This time, he stared in disbelief. “Did the bus hit you in the head? Don’t go blaming me for theft if Legrande accuses you of stealing. There wasn’t nobody back there but us.”
    Visions of unemployment and homelessness danced in my head. Andre would be furious. I’d had a lot of bad days in my twenty-six years, but this one was promising to rank right up there with the day I got arrested and had my leg crushed.

2

    T he ambulance arrived. Leibowitz took names. I took the partial license plate one of the kids had written down.
    Seething with repressed rage at failing in my responsibility to Andre, frustrated at my inability to help innocent kids, and exhausted from overexerting my bad leg, I checked my cell phone for Max’s message. There was none. The buzz had been a wrong number.
    The very bad awful day threatened to escalate.
    My knees ached from where I’d scraped them onthe sidewalk. That’s what I got for trying to look professional by wearing a skirt when jeans would do.
    I also did it to annoy Andre, who’d learned his lesson about believing anything in a skirt was available. That didn’t make my scraped knees feel