15. Thad
Femme fatale–nun is up to something. I watch her from my car, parked a few rows behind her in the parking garage of the Water Tower Place mall. She is acting…shady. That’s really the only word for it, honestly, and that’s not me being biased. She keeps looking around, like she’s afraid someone might see her. She’s wearing a trench-style winter coat, and even though she’s inside and underground, she puts on a pair of huge sunglasses. Surely it’s too on the nose for someone who looks like a film noir goddess from a ’40s movie to be on a secret mission wearing a trench coat and sunglasses, but she’s also acting way too shifty for it to just be a coincidence.
And there she goes, popping her collar. Oh, yeah. She’s definitely up to no good.
I trail behind her through the mall, never getting close enough that she could actually clock me, but close enough that I can keep an eye on where she goes and who, if anyone, joins her. I’m not really sure what my game plan is. I’d intended to ask her today for advice about approaching her mother for help with finding Dean, but with the way she’s acting…something isn’t adding up.
Is it possible Dean has been in contact? That he might even be here today?
Yesterday I would have said no way. But with the way she’s moving today, like she doesn’t want anyone to see her, all furtive and sneaky… Maybe.
Hanging back, I keep an eye on the back of her blonde head, picking up my pace to keep from losing her as she turns this way and that, making her way purposefully toward her destination.
I don’t pay too much attention to what store she goes into. I’m fairly confident in my ability to blend into my surroundings, even with my distinctive hair (a baseball cap helps) and my big frame. If it’s a clothing store she’s going into, I can duck behind some racks, or if I’m lucky, a display, and wait to see if Dean joins her.
But as soon as I enter this store, I stop short, immediately realizing my mistake. This is no run-of-the-mill clothing store. If the lavender walls and chandeliers didn’t give it away, I’d have figured it out from the nearly nude mannequins in lacy negligees and barely there wisps of cloth.
Lingerie store. It’s a lingerie store.
And not only am I the only man in the room—but in my baseball cap and flannel shirt, I look about as out of place as a bull in a ballroom. Realizing my error, I try to retreat as fast as possible, but not before I spot Helen a few feet away.
She’s pushed up the oversized sunglasses to the top of her head, her profile turned toward me. Though she’s still hiding behind her coat collar, she looks more relaxed now that she’s actually in the store, a little smile playing on the corner of her mouth as she looks through a display of?—
Oh, God. I swallow. Lacy panties.
Lacy red panties. I don’t know why that makes it worse, but it does. Images, unbidden, spring to my mind, despite my best efforts to keep them at bay. That round, juicy ass barely contained in those very thin, very sheer panties…
I need to go. I start to back out of the room, trying not to draw attention to myself, and promptly bump into a mannequin wearing a sheer turquoise panty set. Swearing under my breath, I try to pull away, but somehow the damn thing’s creepy plastic fingers have gotten stuck in my coat collar. Reacting more on instinct than on common sense, I twist this way and that, trying to loosen myself. Damn mannequins with their weird blank faces and bendy body parts!
Instead of freeing me, the whole mannequin falls off the display, on top of me. I hold it up with one arm, trying to reach with the other behind my back to detach its thumb, which seems to have gotten caught in that hanging loop just under my collar. I’m so caught up in the task that it only belatedly hits me that I’m causing quite a scene. I realize, too late, that I’m holding the mannequin up by one of its unnaturally firm butt cheeks, and that in all the scuffle, the mannequin’s head has dipped down, perilously close to my crotch.
Freezing, I look up, to find Helen looking back at me. Our gazes lock. We stare at each other.
Helen’s mouth drops open.
Oh, shit.