All Fixed Up by Linda Grimes Page A

belly. There was no way … was there? I mean, I used birth control. Religiously. Then again, going by Thomas’s slip on the phone, so had Laura. If someone as meticulously careful as I knew CIA spooks to be could get caught …
    Crap. Where were horrible cramps when you really needed them? I did a quick calculation in my head, trying to remember how long it had been since my last period. Had I even had one since Thomas and Laura’s wedding? Things had gotten pretty messed up with the client I’d had then, and afterward the rift in my relationship with Billy had upset me so much I hadn’t exactly been paying attention to my internal calendar. If I hadn’t had a visit from good ol’ Mother Nature since—
    Holy shit! No, it couldn’t be.
    I looked at Mark with something akin to terror flowing through me. It had been a stupid, stupid misunderstanding on my part. I hadn’t even known at the time he was the one who—holy hell, God couldn’t be so cruel. Could He?
    Billy once again squeezed my hand lightly. “It’ll be over soon, cuz.”
    Would it? I thought weakly, and then gave myself a shake. This was ridiculous.
    I nodded up at Billy and tried to smile. Forced my mind to focus on Aunt Helen. Which didn’t make me feel one whit better. Funerals sucked, no matter how long and good a life the deceased had had, but then to be taken out in such a senselessly violent way … damn. It wasn’t right.
    Mom and Mo had (naturally) arranged everything. They’d tried to respect Uncle Foster’s wishes for a small graveside service with only the closest friends and family members in attendance, difficult as it was for them to plan anything low-key, but there were still a lot of people in there, most of them adaptors.
    At least the setting was beautiful, I thought, trying my best to find something positive to focus on. Aunt Helen and Uncle Foster had bought a double plot at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx back in 1974, when Duke Ellington was buried there. They were big jazz fans. The weather was crisp and clear—cold enough to be seasonal, but not to give you frostbite.
    The only disconcerting thing about the morning was the presence of several undercover security guards posted around the perimeter, trying to blend in with the mourners. Mark had insisted on it. He was working with the police on the murder case (if by “working with” you mean “had taken it over entirely”) because it involved an adaptor. He hadn’t told the local law enforcement officers that, of course. He’d merely flashed his government credentials, said something about “national security” and “need to know” (big surprise), and set them to doing the mundane groundwork, without allowing them to follow any trails that might lead to discovering the existence of adaptors. (Yeah, I’ll bet the local LEOs love when the feds come to visit.)
    I put it all down to Mark’s tendency to be extra cautious where the anonymity of the adaptor community was concerned. (Thomas had once hinted that Mark’s extreme caution had something to do with his family—whom none of us knew—but refused to discuss it more than that.) Still, somebody purposely singling out Aunt Helen? It was a ridiculous notion. She was the most inoffensive person you could imagine. There was no possible reason anyone would kill her, other than pure random malice.
    When the minister—a friendly older woman who looked like she’d be right at home baking cookies in Santa’s kitchen—finished listing all the wonderful things about Aunt Helen (it was a long list), Uncle Foster picked up the saxophone from a stand between two huge wreaths of anthuriums. The waxy red flowers, with their obscene protrusions, had been Aunt Helen’s favorite—she said they always looked happy to see her.
    If there’d been tears before, the floodgates opened on