Page 36 of Brenna, Brat

“We’re going to have to stop doing this,” Campbell told me. “I don’t think that my heart can take it.”

My own heart was trying to leap out of my ribcage, so I knew what he meant. “Hi,” I said, but I definitely gasped it.

“You ok?” he asked, and I nodded. “What the hell are these videos?” he wondered next. “Is that a saber-toothed cat wearing a human costume?”

I didn’t have time to explain the latest exhibit before Alecta came out of her office. Her eyes widened when she saw Campbell. He looked great in his suits but he wore these jeans very, very well, and she noticed, too.

“I’m Alecta Alberne,” she introduced herself as she walked quickly forward. “I don’t think we’ve ever met, because I’m sure you would have remembered me.”

He blinked but recovered fast. “No, we haven’t met. Campbell Bates.”

She smiled at him, showing every tooth back to her second molars, and I thought that Alecta was actually a very pretty woman. She looked a little strange, since she was pushing fifty and dressed more like she was in her early tweens, and her greenish-yellow wig didn’t do a lot for her pretty skin. Butdespite those problems, she didn’t have a problem attracting men and it wasn’t only her promises of free drugs that drew them in. I looked up at Campbell to see if he was effected by it, but he was mostly staring around the gallery at the small screens showing the decapitations and other mutilations.

“This is interesting,” he said.

“She’s a very promising talent that I discovered,” Alecta told him, and then she stepped forward and linked her arm through his. “Let me show you around my gallery. It’s mine,” she reiterated, in case he’d misheard her or in case he hadn’t noticed the name on the sign outside. Since no one ever kept up with building maintenance, the “A” and “L” from Alecta and the “G” and “Y” from Gallery had fallen off and it wasn’t totally legible. I’d told her to talk to her mother about fixing it…

Campbell glanced over his shoulder and smiled at me, and despite my anger at being supplanted by my boss, I was glad to see him do it. The last time we’d been together, he hadn’t looked very happy, which made sense due to—

“Oh, shit!” Dion screamed for the second time that day, but I didn’t react as strongly as I had when he’d done it before.

I should have. When I looked away from Campbell, I saw the front door whip open and then I spotted the flames. We’d had grill accidents at my parents’ house before and fire had gotten somewhat out of control, but I’d never seen anything like this. There was a sudden and violent burst of orange and red and, before I even knew what was happening, choking smoke filled the gallery.

“Brenna!” I heard Campbell yell, and I was already moving, grabbing my purse so that I had keys to drive us away from here and then pushing Dion into action. I took Campbell’s hand as I ran for the back door, and the Alecta Alberne Gallery?

After that day, it didn’t exist.

Chapter 8

Nicola was furious. “Now you’re absolutely on my list!” she told me, and then she turned and looked at the man standing next to me. “If this is your fault, and you put my little sister in danger…” she said threateningly, and I had to intervene.

“Stop it,” I ordered. “The firebombing at the gallery probably didn’t have anything to do with him.”

“The fact that you were just involved in a firebombing? The fact that you’re even saying the word in relation to yourself? What is happening here?” she demanded. It had seemed like a good idea to go to Nicola’s house, since I’d been slightly upset and she was the person I looked to as a mom much more than our actual mom. I was doubting that decision now.

“It could have been random, or directed at the business. I can’t believe that I was the target,” Campbell told her. “If I was, and if I led them to your sister, then I can’t apologize enough.”

“I don’t think that it was about you,” I assured him. “Someone would have had to follow you with an incendiary device in their car, driving around and not knowing where you were going to stop. That’s a very poor plan for murder, and isn’t it more likely that a disgruntled employee or investor would firebomb your dad, instead? If anyone is to blame—”

“Brenna!” Nic admonished, and I closed my mouth. “It would have been easy for someone to follow you since your car is so distinct,” she pointed out to Campbell. The police had recovered it and it was drivable, as he’d said. But there was some interesting graffiti on it now, a lot of tags in bright colors. The bumpers were gone and one of the rear doors was also missing.

“I’m dropping it off at the dealership this afternoon to get fixed,” he told her, and I wondered how much those repairs were going to cost and if he’d have to pay out of pocket. Having just gone through the process of successfully arguing with the insurance company about the damaged floors due to the melted gum, I thought I could do it again for him. Funny that I’d spent so much time dealing with the floors when now, they were all burnt to ashes…

“Holy Mary,” I said, as the weight of the events suddenly bore down on me. “The gallery is gone.”

My sister took my hand. “As long as you’re all right, that doesn’t matter. You didn’t like that job, anyway.”

“But now what am I going to do?” I asked her.

“We’ll find something else until your label takes off,” she said. “Pretty soon, we’ll all be wearing Brenna Curran designs and you’ll make money that way.”

Nic was way too practical to believe that, but I appreciated her lies. “That’s bull,” I said, but I used a kindly tone.

“Don’t be a brat,” she said automatically. “I know they’re looking for a registrar at the hospital. You could do that for a while.”

“I’m not a brat. Maybe I could do that,” I said. I sniffed the collar of my shirt, which reeked of smoke. Probably my hair did, too, and the rest of me. It was just overwhelming—not the stench, but everything. “I can’t believe this happened,” I muttered. It had been so sudden, the burst of light and the utter confusion, and then time had seemed to stop as we’d waited for the fire trucks to arrive. People poured out from the other businesses on the street, since no one knew what would go up next. The flames and smoke had been terrifying, and one of the police officers had asked about chemicals stored in the building because it seemed like there had been accelerants.

“If anyone had ever bothered to clear out the basement, there wouldn’t have been so much flammable material to burn,” I mentioned. “And if Alecta hadn’t wanted to hire one of her friends to refinish the floors, the fire could have been contained. The bomb went right into the pile of stain and stripping supplies that the guy had left in the corner and then hadn’t touched for weeks—”

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