Read Online A Is for Apple by Kate Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

been,” Xander said sulkily, touching the blood on his face.
    “Shouldn’t have shot at him then, eh?”
    He scowled at me.
    “Come on, we need to get out of here,” Luke said, pulling me to my feet and leaving Xander to sort himself out.
    “I need, like a Band-Aid or something,” he mumbled, stumbling to a row of units I guessed was his kitchen.
    “I have plenty,” I said. “I really do. Come on.”
    Xander shut all the windows and double-locked both doors and we walked back to the subway station. On the way Xander stopped at a bakery and shakily bought a large box of cupcakes with fat icing on them, handed us one each and ate the rest himself. When we emerged into the sunlight again at Penn Station, Luke’s phone rang with a voice mail and he listened to it with a frown.
    “Bollocks,” he said quietly as he deleted it.
    “What?”
    “That was Karen. She—” he glanced at Xander, who was lost in space with his last cupcake, and lowered his voice, “she said Shapiro’s kid’s booked on the red-eye tonight. Wants one of us to go home and keep an eye on him.”
    “You think he knows his father’s dead?”
    “How would he? Anyway, he’s seventeen, won’t he have school starting?”
    “I suppose,” I said. “So who’s going, you or me? And can’t Maria or Macbeth take care of him?”
    “Maria’s still in Spain,” Luke said, “and Macbeth’s disabling some high-tech security system in Germany. So it’s you or me.”
    I wanted to go home. I really did. But I wanted to go back with Luke, and that wasn’t likely to happen.
    “I think one of us has to keep an eye on Xander,” I said in an undertone.
    “Yes,” Luke said doubtfully, “and I’m really hoping you think it should be you.”
    “Homophobe.”
    “You know him better! And he likes you. You can talk about Harvey.”
    I sighed. I’d been about to suggest the same thing anyway.
    “So you’ll go home and keep tabs on a seventeen-year-old with a rich daddy. Mind you don’t go clubbing too much.”
    “I hate clubbing,” Luke said, and I felt cheered up.
    We took Xander back up to my room, not knowing what else to do with him, and Luke kissed me goodbye in the corridor.
    “Try and persuade him to leave the city,” he said. “I can’t think it’s safe for him to go home now they know where he lives. Mafia connections are not good.”
    I nodded. I didn’t want to let him go. He felt so lovely and solid in my arms.
    “When will I come home?” I asked wistfully.
    “When our Grand High Commander allows it. I don’t know. We’re going to have to try and figure this out. Why does every case we work on have a murder involved?”
    “I wouldn’t mind so much if there was an actual body,” I moaned. “How can you investigate the murder of a man who’s vanished?”
    “Sounds like a DC comic,” Luke said. He kissed my nose. “Be good.”
    “What are you, my mother?”
    “I hope you don’t kiss your mother like that,” Luke said, grinning.
    “Like what? Like this?”
    I kissed him properly, and if we hadn’t been in public it might have gone a lot further. But Luke pulled away from me before it did, and picked up the rucksack which consisted his total luggage, said, “Bye, then,” and walked away.
    I stood watching him until he was out of sight, then I opened the door back into my room and found Xander in the bathroom, dabbing at his temple with wet cotton wool.
    “Here,” I took it from him and sat him down on the toilet lid, “let me.”
    “So is this a girlie thing? Mother hen taking care of bleeding chickie?”
    I have to be the most unmotherly person there ever was. “Don’t push it,” I said. “Your hands were shaking, that’s all.”
    He glanced down at them. “I need a cigarette.”
    “Not in my room. The hotel police will come after you.” I cleaned up most of the blood and looked critically at the cut on his face. The bullet had just grazed him, really it was a miracle it hadn’t gone in. Half an