“I’m being punished, aren’t I?” Courtney said. “I stole my sister’s boyfriend—”
“Ten years ago,” Trudy said. “I’m over it. I was over it before you stole him. You’re not being punished. I didn’t want him, which I told you at the time. He’s a jerk, I have an affinity for jerks—”
“Hey,” Nolan said.
“—and you’re better off without him.”
“But not without the MacGuffin!”
“I’m working on that.” Trudy looked around the last toy store in town. How the hell am I going to get this year’s MacGuffin? “I’ll get it, Court.”
“And two toxic wastes,” Courtney said, gulping.
“Two toxic wastes. Got it.” Maybe if she just stuck the toxic-waste packets in the MacGuffin box, Leroy wouldn’t notice the doll didn’t actually spit it.
“And wrapping paper,” Courtney said, sounding less frantic.
“Right.” Trudy grabbed a package of red-and-white paper off the rack that came before the checkout counter and snagged a roll of Scotch tape while she was at it. “Got it. I gotta go. Go do something besides drink.”
“This year’s MacGuffin,” Courtney said.
“Your gingerbread is burning,” Trudy said, and clicked off the phone.
“Trouble at home?” Nolan said, sounding sympathetic.
“Absolutely not. Everything is fine.”
He reached past her, nudging her gently with his shoulder as he pulled two bright green foil packages off the counter rack. “You’ll need these.”
He dropped them on top of the MacGuffin box and she saw the words Toxic Waste! emblazoned on them in neon red.
“Thank you,” she said, and then the woman in the bobble cap picked up her bags and left, and Trudy dumped everything onto the counter.
The cashier looked at the MacGuffin box with something approaching awe. “Where’d you find this?”
“On a shelf behind some other boxes,” Trudy said for what she sincerely hoped was the last time.
“Man, did you ever get lucky,” the cashier said, and began to ring it up.
“That’s me,” Trudy said, trying to forget that Nolan was about to leave her again, that the wrong MacGuffin was in front of her, and that Madonna was still lisping about greed overhead. “Nothing but luck, twenty-four-seven.”
“A thousand,” Nolan said from behind her when she’d handed over her credit card and seen the MacGuffin go in one shopping bag and the Twinkletoes in another. “Come on; that’s a damn good offer.”
“No,” Trudy said, picked up her bags, and left.
*
Fifteen minutes later, Trudy stood on the street corner, juggling her three shopping bags and signaling awkwardly for a cab. There was one around the corner that was stubbornly off duty, and every other one that went by had people in the backseat. They were probably just circling the block to annoy her. She shifted the bags again, her feet aching as the cold from the concrete permeated the thin soles of her boots, trying to think of a way to get a Mac Two short of breaking into Evil Nemesis Brandon’s house and stealing his.
It started to snow.
If I had some matches, I could strike them all and bask in the glow, Trudy thought, and then a cab pulled up in front of her and Reese opened the door.
“I got a lead on this year’s MacGuffins,” he said as he got out to stand in front of her. “Get in and we’ll go get them.”
Trudy gaped at him. “You’re kidding.”
“No. I know this guy.”
Trudy frowned at him in disbelief. “You know this guy. I’ve been to every toy store in town, but you know this guy.”
“Not a toy store. A warehouse.”
“A warehouse. No, thank you.” Trudy reached around him to signal for another cab, which passed her by, its tires crunching in the snow. She craned her neck to see around the corner, but the cab that had been there was gone. The streets were emptying out, stores starting to close. I am so screwed, she thought.
“Oh, come on.” Reese held the cab door open for her and gestured her in. “This guy called around and found out about this warehouse where they got a shipment in, but the delivery people didn’t come back for them. He says there are dozens of them there.” Reese smiled at her, surfer cute. “So the warehouse guys are selling them out the back door. We’re gonna pay through the nose, but hey, they’ve got Mac Twos.”
Trudy put her hand down and tried to be practical—getting in a cab and going to a warehouse with a virtual stranger would be stupid even if he had been her father’s research assistant—but the snow was falling faster, and the bags weren’t getting any lighter, and the stores were closing, and Leroy still didn’t have a MacGuffin. “My feet hurt.”
Reese gestured to the cab again. “Sit.”
Trudy sat down sideways on the backseat with her feet on the curb, balancing her three bags on her lap. “A warehouse.”