by Maren Smith
Kurt took a deep breath. “Look, it’s not that I want to see you get hurt, but I don’t think my grandmother has been totally forthcoming with everything you need to know about me.”
She didn’t know why he would be worried about that, but she moved close enough to lay her hand on his shoulder and did her best to lay those fears to rest. “You’d be surprised, I think. She’s really very proud of you. She talks about you all the time.”
That ticcing muscle leapt as he clenched his jaw. “Did she happen to mention that I’ve been at the Two Rivers Correctional Facility for the last couple years?”
Scotti nodded. “She said you had a job with the state. Were you a guard? Talk about a tough job, herding all those dangerous convicts. You probably know how to handle all sorts of situations. She’s the one who said you’d be perfect for this, and I have to say, I kind of agree.”
“I worked in the laundry, actually.”
She opened her mouth, not at all concerned with what his actual job had been, but then stopped as she realized what that meant.
He smiled, arching both eyebrows again with exaggerated humor.
“Oh,” she said, a tiny thump of shock hitting her. “You mean you were an inmate.”
“I was, and don’t worry”—he shoved off the wall—“I won’t hold you to your proposal.”
“Oh, but don’t you see? That’s even better! You don’t know my ex. You don’t know just how bad Gopher can be.”
“You dated a man named Gopher?”
Dated was such a mild word for it; she winced. “It doesn’t matter, really. What does matter, is that I’m going to need someone who’s strong and tough. Indomitable. A man’s man. Burly and rough.” She was starting to feel desperate and trying hard not to let him hear it in her tone. “Someone who can think with a crafty and—and criminal mind!”
“Thanks,” he drawled, but that twist at the corner of his mouth said he might not be taking it as the compliment that she’d meant it to be. “You don’t even know what I did to get put in prison.”
“I’m not concerned.” She tried to laugh as she said it, because frankly, she was trying not to think about that. Sadie had only ever said he’d been gone because he was ‘working for the state.’ He seemed very nice. Nothing about how he looked or spoke to her suggested he was a bad person. On the other hand, people didn’t get put in jail for no reason. Ever the optimist, she tried to find the silver lining. “You were only in the pokey for a short time, right? Whatever you did, it couldn’t have been that bad of a crime.”
“Pokey?” he echoed. He seemed about to correct her, but stopped himself. He stared at her for a long time, his jaw clenching, bunching and releasing until finally, he shook his head as if shaking himself from his thoughts. “Fine. You know what, it doesn’t matter. It’s better than bussing tables at Pirate Pete’s with a paper squid hat on my head. I’ll do it, but you’re going to listen to me. I say jump, you say how high, got it?”
“Oh, absolutely!” she crossed her heart with her fingers.
“And, I’m not killing him for you. I’m going to make that clear right up front. I’ll help you get moved to a place where Ferret—”
“Gopher.”
“—whatever, can’t find you. I’ll even put you in contact with someone at the station who won’t brush you off. After that, it’s up to you and the police to sort out a more permanent solution to your problem. Right?”
Like Frosty the Snowman under the heat of the sun, all her fears melted inside her. “He’s going to leave me alone after this, isn’t he?”
Kurt didn’t answer, per se. What he said instead, was, “I’m going to take Grams home now, but then I’ll come back. Now, can we please get out of the men’s room?”
Grinning, Scotti led the way.
Chapter Five
The sun was on his shoulders, along with Grams’s book bag. The ninety-two-year-old woman was shuffling along beside him, smiling and humming to herself. The wily old con artist.
“You need to stop telling people I was a cop,” he finally said, as they walked home together.
“I didn’t tell anyone you were a cop,” she countered.
Touché. True, he was the one who’d revealed that and judging from Scotti’s reaction, he didn’t for a second doubt that had been a slightly shocking reveal for her.
“All right,” he decided. “Maybe what I ought to say is, you know I’m not a cop anymore. So, what’s the play here?”
“No play.”
Bullshit.
“I know you better than that.”
“Can’t a woman be concerned about a friend in trouble?”
“Grams,” he warned.
The old woman abruptly stopped walking and turned on him. “Now you listen here,” she sternly began.
“Grams…” he warned again, facing her now too. He frowned. Cars were whizzing by on the road. Someone honked, but whether it was because of them, he wasn’t sure. It might have been. If it was, he knew it couldn’t look good. He was a big man, facing down an elderly woman, and he was the only one watching this who knew what a manipulative force of nature this ‘old woman’ could be.
“Don’t you ‘Grams’ me,” she replied. “You haven’t always been here, and yes, that’s not your fault. But I’ve made a friend in that young lady. She’s sweet, she’s kind—”
“She’s got good childbearing hips?” he pointedly asked.
“You noticed that too,” his grandmother teased, lightly smacking his arm with the backs of her fingers. Chuckling, she started walking again.
Tsking, nowhere near as amused as she was, he fell into step beside her again. “This is not going to go the way you want it to.”
“And how,” his grandmother asked, “do I want this to go, exactly?”
“I’m not going to date this woman.” He was firm on that. His life wasn’t set up for dating.
“She’s pretty, though.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with pretty.”
“She used to be just your type.”
“You have no idea what my type—”
“Submissive,” his grandmother said with relish.
He stopped walking. “Okay, now we agreed we weren’t going to talk about that.”
“A grandmother never forgets when she walks in on her beloved—”
He barked a laugh.
“—grandson,” she said, covering her heart and staring up at him with exaggerated innocence, “spanking the hell out of some chubby little blonde with a pink stripe in her hair and a ‘Daddy’s Whore’ tramp stamp right across her—”
He stopped again, his turn now to round on her. He pointed at her. “Stop. I didn’t ask her to get that tramp stamp.”
It was his most authoritative finger and his most authoritative tone. Back before he went to prison, when he was attending the occasional dungeon party or when he had a Little girl to soothe the Daddy-Dom need inside him, that combination of voice and finger were usually enough to shut all misbehavior down. Unfortunately, his grandmother was immune to both, and he had no recourse. No matter how much she needed it, he wasn’t about to spank her.
“It didn’t displease you.”
No, it certainly had not. But he wasn’t going to talk to her about that anymore than he was going to spank her. “I also didn’t ask you to come home from Bingo early.”
“Oh,” the old woman huffed, flinging off his complaint with a flap of both hands. “You’ve been spanking your sweethearts since you were six and playing house in the backyard. You were always a Daddy. Man up!” She lightly smacked his chest with her hand. “Be a Daddy now. Protect that girl, no one else has been.” Once more walking down the sidewalk toward the apartment he’d shared with her since he’d been released from prison, she flapped her hands again and called back over her shoulder, “She needs you!”
It had been a long time since he’d had a Little, the Daddy-Dom inside him whispered.
He was absolutely not going to take th
e ‘Little’ his grandmother found and brought home for him, like a little lost puppy.
Stifling a sigh, he followed her. “I took the job.”
“Of course, you did,” she said smugly. “I raised you right. Plus, you were never able to resist helping when you knew someone needed it.”
God, he hated being predictable.
“Straighten up,” he said, because he literally had nothing else to tease her about. “There’s nothing wrong with your back, and you know it.”
Chuckling, the old woman cast him a wink. “People are always watching, honey. Always leave them guessing.”
“Con artist,” he said, not unfondly.
“Convict,” she replied in kind, then giggled. “Did you hear how that just rolls off the tongue? Oh, I like that much better than ‘cop.’ Convict,” she enunciated, and giggled again.
God help him.
* * * * *
“So,” Scotti asked, feigning cheerfulness while he knelt on her porch under the amber glow of her too-dim porch light and tried to pick her lock. “Why do you hate Mondays?”
“Because of crap like this.” Snatching a quick glance up and down the dark, residential street behind them, Kurt returned his attention to the task at hand. He jiggled the bobby pin in the front door lock. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
“They don’t send you to jail for breaking into your own house. Besides, I do have a key. I was just so rattled when I left this morning, I think I left it on the entertainment center. On any other day, I’d show you this trick I have with the kitchen window, but that’s how Gopher got in last night, so I put a wedge in it after he left.” She bent, hands on knees as she watched him jiggle the hairpin. “Something tells me breaking and entering was not your criminal career of choice.”
He stopped fidgeting with the door long enough to give her a dirty look. “Do you want to do this?”
“No,” she said, contrite. “I’m not trying to be a pain. Also, you don’t have to yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling,” he growled, once more back to the task at hand. “I can’t yell. I don’t have any voice left after you slammed my hand in the car door.”
“That was an accident.” She sounded hurt. “I was nervous and never saw your hand. I’ve already apologized three times for that. You need to forgive me and move on.”
He flashed her another quelling (he hoped) look just as a sharp metallic click emanated from the lock. “We’re in.”
“Oh,” Scotti said as he opened the door. “Awesome.”
Only she didn’t sound like it was awesome at all. She flashed an immediate smile when he glanced at her, but it never once touched her eyes. She gripped her hands, folding them tightly over her stomach as he swung the door wider, and made no effort to step inside. She was scared to go in, he realized. Honestly, legitimately scared in a way that someone ‘pranking’ 911 or staging things to get attention from friends, family, or even police wouldn’t be.
Admittedly, he’d only been halfway convinced of her story back at the library when he reluctantly accepted the job. He became completely convinced when he stepped inside, flicked the main light switch on, and suddenly a carpet-muted thump hit the second-floor ceiling almost directly above them.
He immediately flicked the light back off again.
Her breath turned instantly shaky as they both looked up at the popcorn ceiling.
“You said you lived alone,” Kurt softly clarified.
She nodded every bit as shakily as her breathing had become.
“No dogs or cats?”
She shook her head, her hands betraying all the fear that her face was trying so hard to hide.
“Stay here,” he told her. “Don’t move from this spot unless someone other than me comes down these stairs. If someone does, I want you to run like hell for the nearest neighbor, understand?”
Wringing her hands, she nodded.
As quietly as he could, Kurt crept across the tiled foyer toward the carpeted stairs leading up. It was surprising how fast that old ‘cop’ feeling returned. He could almost feel the weight of his utility belt, the coolness of the flashlight he no longer carried in one hand and the textured grip of the gun at his hip in the other. This wasn’t an emergency call, though, he reminded himself. And he no longer had a badge on his chest. He had to remember that.
He was just stepping up on the first stair when suddenly the light above him flicked back on again. He snapped around to find Scotti, not on the spot he’d placed her on, but just inside the door, her hand still on the light switch and her wide eyes locked on the ceiling.
Bounding back to her, he slapped the light back off again, grabbed the front of her librarian’s blouse and shoved her back out onto the porch. “What are you trying to do?” he demanded in a whisper. “Get me killed?”
“Don’t you need to see where you’re going?” she stammered.
“All that light is going to do is illuminate a nice open target—me—so your ex can start shooting!”
“Yes, but then you can see him too, and you can shoot back,” she argued, sounding both small and frightened. She was trembling and clinging to herself.
She’s just your type, Grams had said.
And God, right now in the dim glow and shadowed darkness on her porch, staring down into those fear-filled eyes, he could see it. It was the helplessness. He’d always been drawn to small, scared, and helpless.
Kurt shook himself. This was not the time or the place, not when there was a potential intruder upstairs.
“I,” he told her very slowly and clearly, “do not have a gun. That would be a violation of my parole. I would get put back in prison.” He pointed at her. “Stay put,” he repeated. “Stay quiet, and let me do my job.”
For the second time, he left her there in the doorway and quietly approached the stairs. Halfway up, he heard another sound. It was soft, just a whisper of a footstep on carpet, but when he cautiously turned the stairwell corner and peeked above the top landing, he saw nothing. Nothing but a hallway, with three open, shadowy doorways and a Disney princess nightlight splashing the colorful heroines of its movie Frozen up on the ceiling and walls. He waited, listening, but whoever might be up here with him was quietly listening back.
Climbing the last few stairs, his back to the wall, he approached the first open doorway. Without looking inside, he closed it. If the intruder up here was in that room, then they were now blinded to his movements and would have to come out in order to commit to their next intention. They wouldn’t be able to do it quietly; the opening of this door would be his warning. He’d worry about that when and if it happened. For now, he’d closed off one potential avenue of attack. There were two left.
The next open doorway was a few feet down and across the hall from him. It looked like a bathroom. The gaping shadow-filled archway at the very end of the hall offered a little more detail. The faint paleness suggested lamplight from the street below, filtering in through a window. He could just barely make out the shadow and shape of a bed beyond the cover of the partially ajar door.
He switched walls, putting that one to his back as he moved up to the edge of the bathroom threshold. He closed that door, too. There was only one potential avenue of attack left open to him.
As he slipped past the bathroom, something caught his eye. Directly across from him, the wall appeared to be creased. Thinking it first a trick of the shadow and nightlight, he reached out far enough to touch it, letting a stroke of his fingers tell him what his cop’s brain had suspiciously determined already. Someone had carved a line in the sheetrock three-fourths of the way down the length of the hallway, from the first door he’d closed, all the way to the bedroom at the end.
Scotti’s bedroom? He moved a little closer to the open door. The shadows on the bed were moving. A whisper of a cool night breeze brushed his face. He peered around the threshold just far enough to see the fluttering curtains of her bedroom window, moving in the darkness, showing the escape
the intruder had taken when whoever he was—Kurt was fairly certain he could solve that mystery in one guess—had heard them unlock the front door.
The bed looked weird.
Lumpy. The only un-neat thing he’d so far seen in Scotti’s house. Admittedly, he hadn’t seen much of it. Just the foyer downstairs, a glimpse into the bathroom, in which he’d noted the orderly counters and towels tidily hung up, and then this room. Where there was nothing on the floor. Her dresser drawers were closed, with nothing on top but a hairbrush and what looked like a handful of Lego superheroes having a choreographed battle. She had a second dresser, long and low, plus an overstuffed rocking chair in the corner by the window, both of which were buried under a small mountain of stuffed animals.
The mountains were neat, though. The Legos were neat. The dressers were neat.
The bed was lumpy.
The intruder was gone, so Kurt turned on the light.
The bed had been stabbed and slashed, the pillows destroyed, the blanket and sheets shredded.
“Gopher, my friend.” Kurt didn’t realize he was going to say anything out loud until he heard himself growl, “You’ve just fucked up.”
* * * * *
Someone was definitely in the house with them. Hovering on the porch where she’d been left, for one perfectly terrifying moment, Scotti couldn’t think what to do. Should she stay here? Should she go inside just in case Kurt needed her? Her heart was beating so hard and fast. She pressed her sweaty palms flat against her thighs. This was it. The moment of confrontation with her ex, which she had been dreading ever since she told him she didn’t think it was working and he told her, “Well, isn’t that just too damn bad?”
That had been almost a year ago, and, here she was, standing on her front porch like a petrified rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
Dredging up a slim slice of courage, she took her first hesitant step into her own house. Then she took another. She kept her eyes trained on the stairwell, but all she kept thinking was how neither she nor Kurt had anything with which to protect themselves if this went bad. Gopher was getting braver.
