Well, that explained the apartment, anyway.

But not the rest of it.

“So you picked a real winner, there,” I said. Again with the sarcasm. “If he’s such a catch, how come your mom didn’t approve? And don’t even try to tell me she did. Is it because he’s too old for you?”

“She’s such a bitch,” Hannah said from the little ball she’d curled herself into on the leather couch. She was wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Between the shirt and her hair, which was still dyed to resemble spumoni ice cream, she was a veritable rainbow of color. “I mean, she brings home a different guy every week practically. But I tell her about Randy and she completely flips!”

I went to the window and pulled back the curtain liner. I could see the other side of the complex. There had to be over a hundred units altogether, making up Fountain Bleu Luxury Apartments. In the center of the complex was a pitifully small, kidney-shaped pool. A young mother sat beside it, as her kids paddled around in the shallow end.

“Where’d you meet him?” I asked, dropping the curtain and turning back towards Hannah. “Internet?”

She nodded. “A manga chatroom,” she said. “Randy’s a big manga fan. You know what manga is?” The look she darted me was sly.

“Japanese illustrated novels,” I said. I wasn’t about to mention that my brother had one of the foremost manga collections in southern Indiana. “Go on.”

“Well, he asked me to meet him in a private chat room, so I did.” Hannah was picking at the threads in a hole in the knee of her jeans. “And he was just…everything I’ve ever dreamed of. He asked me to spend the weekend with him, but when I asked my mom, she was like, no.”

“So you told your newly discovered big brother, who is unfamiliar with the lengths teenage girls will go to get what they want, that your mom’s boyfriends were putting the moves on you.” I didn’t need psychic powers to tell I’d hit the nail on the head. The truth was written all over her face. “And Rob believed you and invited you to stay with him on a trial basis. And you ditched him for this Randy guy the minute you got the chance.”

She had the grace to look ashamed.

“I wanted to tell Rob where I was,” she said. “Really, I did. But Randy said—”

“Oh, wait,” I said, holding up a hand to stop her. “Let me guess what Randy said. Randy said your big brother wouldn’t understand. Randy said your big brother would try to make something dirty out of it and maybe call the cops.” Though most likely, Rob would have just beaten the guy to a bloody pulp. “Randy said that a love like the one you and he share is a sacred thing, not easily understood by us mere mortals. Did I leave anything out?”

Hannah blinked at me, looking hurt.

“You don’t need to make fun of it,” she said. “Just because things didn’t work out between you and Rob, leaving you a bitter old maid, is no reason to assume every guy is a jerk.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see. Hannah, how old is Randy?”

“He said you’d ask that,” Hannah said, getting up suddenly to go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. But I know she’d only gotten up so she wouldn’t have to meet my gaze. “Well, not you, exactly, since I never thought—I mean, Rob said you were broken up. But Randy said people would try to make something dirty out of it, just because he happens to be a few years older than me—”

“How much older than you, Hannah?” I asked in an even voice.

“He’s twenty-seven,” she said, plunking down her water glass on the imitation granite counter. “But Randy says age doesn’t mean anything! Randy says he and I knew each other in a previous life. He says we’re destined to be together—”

“Hannah,” I said in a hard voice. “You are fifteen. He is twelve years older than you are. His having a sexual relationship with you is actually illegal.”

“Randy says the laws of man don’t recognize a love that is as true as ours—”

“Hannah,” I said. “If you tell me one more thing Randy says, I am going to smack you back into last week. Do you understand?”

She blinked at me, a little taken aback, but mostly still defiant. At least she was meeting my gaze now, though.

I leaned on one hip and said, “Look. You aren’t stupid. You can’t be, because you’re related to Rob. So why are you acting like such a world-class sap?”

Her mouth fell open to reply, but I cut her off.

“You know all that stuff about the two of you meeting in another life is a load of bull. You know this Randy guy is after you for one thing. That’s why your mom didn’t approve, because she knew it, too. And you know the only reason you like Randy back is because he buys you things and pays attention to you and lets you live in this cool apartment where you can watch TV all day. Speaking of which, it’s a beautiful day outside. Why aren’t you at the pool?”

“Randy says—”

“Randy told you not to go to the pool, because someone might see you and start asking questions. Right? Doesn’t that tell you something right there, Hannah? If this Randy guy really loved you, he’d have tried to get in good with your mom, not steal you from her. He’d have waited for you until you were legal, then asked you out, not hide you away in some apartment his dad’s paying for. Sure, things are great right now. You can lounge around and do whatever you want. But what about when school starts in the fall? Are you just going to drop out? Be Randy’s love slave for the rest of your life? That’s a worthy aspiration for a girl of your intelligence.”

She raised her chin at my sneering tone. She had spunk, anyway. I’d give her that.

“I hate high school,” she said sullenly. “Everyone there is such a phony. Randy said he’d help me get my GED online—”

“Oh, right. And then what? Online college?”

“Randy says—”

“Oh, listen to yourself,” I snapped. “Randy says this, Randy says that. Don’t you have a mind of your own? Or do you just automatically do whatever Randy says?”

“Yes,” Hannah said. She was crying openly now. And not from fear or frustration.

“Yes, you have a mind of your own? Or yes, you automatically do what Randy says?”

“I can see why my brother broke up with you,” Hannah said with sudden venom. “You’re really mean!”

“Oh,” I said, smiling. “You think this is mean? I haven’t even gotten STARTED yet. Get your stuff. Now. We’re leaving.”

She stared at me, dumbfounded. “What?”

“Get your stuff,” I said. “I’m taking you back to your brother’s house. And then I’m calling your mother, and we’re all going to have a little talk about what is REALLY going on back at her house. And I’m betting she’s going to say none of her exes ever hit on you. And guess what? I believe her.”

Hannah looked about as shocked as a person who has grown totally used to getting her own way could look, upon suddenly finding things not going her way.

“I—I’m not going anywhere,” she cried. “You try to drag me out of here and Randy—Randy will kill you!”

“Hannah,” I said. “Let me tell you something. I just spent a year working with U.S. Marines, whose only job was to track down and detain men who’d trained at terrorist death camps. Compared to that, some twenty-seven-year-old pimp named Randy who doesn’t even own his apartment is NOTHING to me. Do you understand? NOTHING.”

Hannah’s lower lip quivered. Her gaze darted around the apartment, as if she were looking for something to throw at me. I regarded her calmly, however, from the front doorway, which I was guarding in case the ever-fabulous Randy happened to come in unexpectedly.

“Randy’s not a pimp” was all she could come up with.

“Not yet,” I said. “Give him time. I’m sure, with the love of a girl like you behind him, he’ll live up to his potential.”

“I—I HATE you!” Hannah screamed at me. “You are such a BITCH! My brother is so WRONG about you! He goes on about you like you’re some kind of PRINCESS. Did you know he keeps a SCRAPBOOK about you? Yeah, he does. Every time anything about you appears in the paper or some magazine, he clips it out and SAVES it. He’s got like ten thousand pictures of you—God, he never even misses an episode of that STUPID TV show about you. He even made ME sit and watch it. All he ever talks about is how great and brave and smart and funny you are. I wasdying to meet you someday, even though you totally ripped out his heart and stomped on it. And now I finally do meet you, and I find out you’re nothing but a huge, giant, überbitch!”

I could only blink at her, stunned not so much by her outburst—okay, not at ALL stunned by the outburst—but by its content. Rob keepsscrapbooks about me? Rob watches the TV show about me? Rob thinks I’m brave and smart and funny? She thinks I broke ROB’S heart?

Boy, had she ever gotten THAT one wrong.

Could she possibly have been telling the truth? Could any of that stuff be even remotely—

“I HATE YOU!”

I ducked just as the lamp whizzed past my head.

Good thing, too, since the thing was made of brass, and ended up denting the cheap drywall, instead of my skull.

I straightened and glared at her with narrowed eyes.

“Okay,” I said, “that’s it. You don’t get to pack your stuff. You’re coming with me now, just as you are.”

And I reached out and grabbed her by her ear.

Sure, it’s an age-old technique, used by mothers worldwide to control fractious offspring.

But did you know the U.S. Marines use it occasionally as well, to quell a recalcitrant suspect? They do, actually.

Because it not only works, but it doesn’t leave a mark. On the victim, I mean.

Oh, yeah. I learned a lot of useful stuff like that while I was overseas.

Hannah balked at first over being dragged by her ear from her boyfriend’s cushy apartment to my motorcycle. But, as I explained to her, it was either that or I called the cops, and Randy got an extra-nice surprise when he got home from work that night, in the form of an arrest for statutory rape.

She finally gave in, but not exactly what you’d call graciously. I was strapping my helmet on her—I didn’t have a spare, so I was going to have to risk my precious cranium to transport the little brat home—when she stiffened.

I knew without even glancing over my shoulder what she was looking at.

“Where is he?” I asked evenly. “And don’t get any ideas about calling him over here. I can dial nine-one-one faster than anybody you’ve ever seen.”

“He’s getting out of his car,” Hannah said, her gaze devouring the object of her affections the way Ruth devours éclairs—or would if she went off her no-flour-or-sugar diet. “He’s going to be really upset when he sees I’m gone.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “I bet five dollars you never hear from him again.”

“Are you kidding?” Hannah shook her head. “He’ll go to the ends of the earth looking for me if he has to. He told me. We’re soul mates.”

Straddling the bike, I glanced in the direction she was staring, and saw a tall, skinny guy getting out of a Trans Am.

Seriously. Why do they always drive a Trans Am?

But instead of heading for Apartment 2T, old Randy headed straight for Apartment 1S. Hannah and I watched in silence as he thumped once on the door. It opened and a dark-haired girl, who looked even younger than Hannah, peered up at him. He leaned down and pressed a kiss on her that appeared to make her knees melt, since he had to drag her back into the apartment, as her legs apparently failed to work properly anymore.

Behind me, Hannah made a faint noise, like a kitten who has only just woken from a long, deep sleep.

“Huh,” I said, gunning the engine. “Looks like Randy’s got more than one soul mate, doesn’t it?”

Then I got us out of there just as fast as I could. Without going over the speed limit, of course.

Eight

Rob was on the phone when I tugged open the screen door and then pulled a very humbled Hannah into his living room.

His jaw dropped when he saw us. Then, remembering himself, he said into the phone, “Gwen? Yeah. She just walked in. I don’t know. No, she looks fine. Yeah.” He held the phone out towards Hannah. “Your mother wants to talk to you, Han.”

Hannah’s face crumpled. Then she turned and ran dramatically up the stairs, weeping the whole way. A second later, we heard a bedroom door slam.

Rob looked at me. I rolled my eyes. He said into the phone, “Gwen? Yeah. She’s a little…upset. Let me go talk to her. Then I’ll call you back. Yeah. Bye.”

Then he hung up and stared at me some more.

“She’s in love,” I said, nodding my head in the direction Hannah’s sobs were floating from.

“But she’s all right?” he asked in a tight voice.