Heart and Soul by Jackie May (reading list .TXT) 📗

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 the real work.”

“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.”

Hillerman’s drowsiness flees in an instant. She stands to meet my gaze with a kind of impressed twinkle in her eye. “What about him?”

“Still alive, yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“And you know where he is?”

She raises one cocky brow. “I put him there myself.”

I square my shoulders to match her attitude. “Good, then you can take us there.”

Without batting an eye, she fires back, “You bet your ass I can. Just as soon as you change out of your blanket.”

I look down at the bed comforter draped over me like a robe. From beneath it, my fuzzy pink slippers poke out. Hillerman is wearing ripped jeans, a tight tank top, and a shoulder holster.

With a sigh, I trudge toward the stairs, and just so she knows who’s the boss in this partnership, I mutter, “It’s not a blanket. It’s a comforter.”

Forty minutes later, I’m white-knuckling my seat belt in the cabin of an FBI helicopter as it banks into a steep dive. My heart races up into my throat, blocking the scream that wants to come out. Icy wind screams through the cabin, whipping my hair. I have to press my feet together to keep my shoes from getting sucked out the open side door.

“You really don’t have to show off on my account!” I shout over the noise.

Hillerman, sitting calmly with one leg crossed over the other, taps her headset.

Mine has fallen down around my neck. I clap it into place over my ears and move the microphone down to my mouth. “I said, ‘Are we there yet?’”

Hillerman’s voice crackles through my headphones. “Ten seconds.”

“A forty-minute flight south, southeast. I’m guessing Cleveland?”

She points out the door, where I can now see the city lights of Cleveland far off on the horizon. “But that’s the shore way over there! Which means we’re still over…” I lean to look out the open doors, and I see nothing but moonlit water racing up at us. “Are you crazy?!”

The chopper plunges toward Lake Erie at rollercoaster speed. I shut my eyes and brace for impact, but at the last second, we pull up and touch down gently on solid ground. I first open one eye, then the other. We’re still alive, and my shoes are still on my feet, but I can feel that my hair has become a windswept lion’s mane.

Hillerman leaps out of the cabin. I don’t trust my shaking knees, so I sit down first, then slide over the lip and drop to the ground. The second I’m out, the chopper lifts off again, disappearing into the black night.

“I thought you go fast,” Hillerman says. “You race cars.”

“On the ground,” I clarify. “Flying is not really my thing.”

“How about boats?”

“Hell no. Boats are even worse than…” My voice trails off as I look around.

We’re now standing on the deck of a massive cargo ship. It’s got to be as long as several city blocks and as wide as a freeway. I’ve seen plenty of these monsters trudging down the Detroit River, but I’ve never been close enough to see how big they really are. At one end of the ship is a five-story tower with lots of windows. The rest of the deck is covered with giant, flat domes, like airplane hangars.

I follow Hillerman toward the building. “Are you telling me the supersecret underworld prison I’ve been hearing about