I rolled my eyes at myself. “Yeah. You can have the bed, but only till I get home.” I pointed at him. “And take the sheets with you when you leave.”
“How long do you think that will be? ’Til you come home, I mean.”
My lips tensed. I thought of collecting my big paycheck from the Poppenhouses, and then I thought of never seeing Keilana again. I wasn’t sure which one of those thoughts made my stomach lurch, but it did. “It won’t be long now.” I prayed that would be true.
“Are you okay, Belinda? You’ve been sort of quiet tonight.”
I hadn’t been quiet at all. I’d told him all about living with Keilana and school and the college life from a new perspective. Then we’d talked for a while about the progress reports I was sending Keilana’s father every three days. But he was right about one thing. I’d felt … I don’t know … “off” for lack of a better word.
I was never very good at hiding my feelings and I smiled ruefully at Russ. “I’m ... I guess this job is starting to get to me. All the lying and spying. It’s a lot easier when you don’t know the person whose privacy you’re invading.”
He gave me a sympathetic look, then turned to glance out his window. “It’s just a job. Money in your pocket, ya know? You can’t let it tie you into knots. Besides, from what the parents said, the kid is hell on wheels. If someone is spying on her, it’s because of her own doing.”
My jaw clenched with sudden anger. “That’s bullshit! Keilana doesn’t deserve what I’m doing to her. Yeah, she can make me crazy and all, but she’s also funny and smart and kind. She even laughs when I repeat the lousy jokes you’ve told me.”
My blood pressure was still rising and I didn’t try to stop it. “She smiles at me when I do something right in class. And last week, out of the blue, she bought me a quart of my favorite flavor of ice cream and put it in the freezer without saying a word. She’s on some campus committee that collects used clothes for women and kids in battered women’s shelters. Bet you didn’t know that either?”
Russ didn’t answer, but his eyes widened a bit.
I was on a roll, the words pouring out of me in an angry stream. “Of course you didn’t. Nobody even thinks she’d do something that wasn’t all about her. And I used to be just as ignorant. Oh, and she offered to help me pass my impossible fucking classes. For free.” I left out the part about her wanting to get me naked since it didn’t really help me get my point across.
“I guess I didn’t know any of that,” Russ admitted after a moment of worriedly staring at me. “But you make her sound like some goodie-two-shoes.” He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “I find that hard to believe, even with the way you’ve blabbered on all night about how great she is.”
My mouth opened but no words came out. Had I really blabbered? “I do not blabber. And she’s not some lame Girl Scout. But she’s not some rotten rich bitch either. I’ve found out a lot of other good things about her that I’ll bet her parents don’t even know.” I couldn’t hide my disgust. It was hard enough hiding my distain in my progress reports I had to submit to the Poppenhouses. “I’ve been there for weeks and they haven’t bothered to call her once.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “They told me that she refuses to return their calls.”
I slapped the steering wheel with my open hand. “They aren’t even trying! They can’t just give up. They are the parents. And they are the ones who hired us to spy on her. Of course Keilana is angry. Wouldn’t you be?”
A tiny crease appeared between Russ’s eyes. “The Poppenhouses aren’t giving up on her. If they were, they wouldn’t have hired you, Belinda.”
I knew that was true even though my sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Poppenhouse diminished every day I lived with their daughter. Nobody who hasn’t been treated badly acted the way Keilana did. Nobody. And since they seemed to be as much to blame as Keilana for their sucky parent/child relationship, I refused to go out of my way to let them off the hook. “The parents probably made matters worse by hiring me. If Keilana ever finds out ...” My heart sped up a little at the mere thought. “She’ll never trust them.” Or me. “Ever again. And I mean never.”
I was all wound up, but I didn’t want to argue with Russ, so I forced my shoulders to relax and somehow managed a slow, calming breath. “Look,” I said as I glanced sideways. “I’ve been with Keilana nearly twenty-four seven; she’s not a bad person. She’s not.” My eyes begged him to believe me. I’m not sure why that was suddenly so important to me. It just was.
“And that reminds me”—my tone dared him to disagree—“she’s not doing dope!” Oops, I was starting to get all crazy again.
“You think she’s hooking?”
A prostitute? I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white and my hands hurt. I fought back the bitter taste of bile. “No way.”
“What’s going on with her then? It’s gotta be something,” Russ said, looking mildly startled by my vehemence.
“I-I …” I just shook my head. “I don’t know.” A sigh escaped. I was still angry at myself for letting Keilana out of my sight in the first place. “I think she’s just a regular, mixed-up young woman, who is really angry with her parents and is as mistrustful of everyone else as she is of them. I’ll admit she’s got a secret though. Or we wouldn’t be driving around in the rain looking for her.”
He smiled wickedly. “She won’t have the secret for long.”
I couldn’t help but feel a tingle of anticipation in my belly. The chase was on.
We drove in silence for a few moments before he asked, “Do you think Keilana’s attractive?”
“God, yes,” I said a lot more quickly than I’d intended. I bit my tongue and briefly closed my eyes. Crap.
A relieved-looking smile broke out on Russ’s face. “Belinda,” he taunted with a chuckle. “You’re hot for your roomie!” He slapped his knee, and laughed a little louder. “God, you had me worried there for a minute.”
“Shut up.” There was no way I could deny it and get away with it, so I didn’t even bother trying. I wasn’t just hot for Keilana. I was long past hot. About now I would fit nicely into the “smoldering piles of ashes” category. There were times when I was sure that everyone around me could see steam rising from my ears and other hotter, wetter parts of my body as I burned apart from within.
“She drives you to distraction, doesn’t she?”
I swallowed my pride. “Yes. Yes. Yes! I can’t think anymore because I want her so badly! Happy?”
He clucked his tongue at me. “You do know that Kale Poppenhouse would probably hire a hit man to bury your ass in the Mexican desert if you as much as laid a finger on her, don’t you?” His expression turned serious. “You’re playing with fire.”
“I’m well aware of that, Russ.” I smiled a sickly-sweet smile. “But thanks so much for reminding me.”
“No problem.” He wiped mock sweat from his brow. “For a second I thought you had your head screwed on backwards and had ... I dunno ... a crush on her or something equally stupid. I should have known you wouldn’t go and do something so nuts. Wanting to bang her is dangerous, but completely understandable. Falling for her would be ... well, even you aren’t that crazy.”
My face heated as I considered his words. Falling for her? Was I? God above, I knew in my heart that I was just that crazy! I stopped for a red light and rubbed my temples with one hand. They were starting to throb.
A crush was way, way worse than just wanting to jump her bones. Sex I could deal with. A case of unrequited puppy love was something that I hadn’t had since the eighth grade. And come to think of it, it had ended badly then too.
I wasn’t anxious to repeat the experience.
The light turned green and I punched the gas pedal, slamming Russ back against his seat.
“Okay,” I said, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “I admit that I’m hot for her.”
He smiled smugly as he braced himself in his seat. “I knew it!”
; “But that’s all you get out of me on the subject. At least for tonight. Oh, and Russ?” I turned my head to face him. “You really need to stop teasing me about this right now.”
He blinked. “I do?”
“Yes.” I slowed my Mustang down so that I could scan a small parking lot for Keilana’s car. “Because now that I know how easy it is to kick you in the balls, I’m much more likely to do it again. At any moment the mood strikes me, as a matter of fact.”
He gulped, and amazingly, that shut him up tighter than a clam ... for all of five seconds.
He shook his head and gave me an envious look. “Belinda, you could have more pussy than the Humane Society if you’d only open your eyes to the women around you.”
I hung my head. “Jesus, Russ.”
“Just don’t let it be with a client’s daughter.”
“Do you always have to be so disgusting?” I wasn’t angry that he’d blown off my threat. He usually did.
He let out a low whistle as he shook his head. “I can’t blame you for sniffin’ after the Poppenhouse kid. There’s something sexy as hell about her.”
I ground my teeth together. That was the second time he’d called her a “kid” in the last five minutes. “She’s twenty-one years old, not twelve.” I would have knocked the smirk right off his face if I hadn’t been twice as obnoxious about the nineteen-year-old pet groomer’s assistant he’d briefly dated a few years ago. She still had braces on her teeth and talked about her senior prom incessantly.
“Okay, okay, she’s not jailbait,” he allowed good-naturedly. “You’re lucky there.” Then his jaw dropped the way it always did when he experienced an epiphany that he wasn’t particularly happy about. “She’s into chicks too?”
Reluctantly, I nodded. Normally, I wouldn’t share that sort of personal information about someone, but Keilana was totally out about her sexual orientation and Russ and I always talk about the women in our lives. The ones we’ve had, and the ones we only dream of having.
“Oh, man!” He couldn’t have looked more bereft if I’d told him that his beloved San Diego Chargers were moving to Calcutta. “Isn’t that always the way?” he cried. “Dammit all to hell. That blows!”
I flashed him an incredulous look. Why is it that when a guy finds out an attractive woman is a lesbian, he always takes it so personally? As though there will now be a shortage of women and that he, personally, will have to do without. “It’s not like you had a chance at her, you pervert!”
He pointed at his chest with his thumb. “Why am I the pervert?”
Thinking of Russ and Keilana together made my blood boil, but I couldn’t very well say that. “Because ... umm ... because you’re too old for her!”
His dark eyebrows rose. “You just made it very clear that she was a grownup. I’m only four years older than you.” He poked me in the shoulder a little harder than necessary. “If I’m a pervert, you’re one too.”
Shit. Rule number one, perverts who live in glass houses really shouldn’t throw stones. “I’m not married and you are.” Hah! Take that.
“And I hope to be married for a long time. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind.” His gaze softened. “Living with her must be torture, huh?”
The lump in my throat rose so unexpectedly that I didn’t answer for fear that my voice would crack. The road before us became a little blurrier.
Living with Keilana wasn’t torture. It was astonishingly easy. And that made things even harder. What was torture was the knowledge that I was taking the nascent trust and friendship we shared and shredding it to bits on a daily basis with my endless lies and duplicity. I was using her.
I was worse than her parents, who, even though they were the sort who shouldn’t have attempted to raise anything more complicated than a fern, were at least acting in part out of concern for their child. I was only in this for the money.
Russ must have noticed the sudden wave of melancholy that washed over me because he turned to face his side window again and gave me a tiny bit of privacy. He rubbed the fog that collected there with the back of his hand and peered out. I wasn’t a scum-sucking pile of shit. I was the flea on the fly on the scum-sucking pile of shit.
I could tell that Russ wanted to say more on the subject and I wasn’t sure what was holding him back. Still, I was grateful for the reprieve. He’d been peppering me with questions about my case and Keilana all night and I’d had about as much of the Curious George routine as I could handle.
A gust of wind shook my Mustang as I turned and rounded a sharp corner. Even in this lousy weather, the street I merged onto was busier than the one we’d just traveled, and pedestrians under umbrellas or baseball hats crowded the sidewalks as they waited to get into various dance clubs and bars. It was a rough and ready, young crowd that included a fair share of partying Marines.
Russ grabbed his enormous bag of cheeseburgers from the backseat. He carefully unwrapped a burger and passed it over to me, taking the time to wrap the paper around it so that I could hold the burger and not drip ketchup down my shirt as I drove. “Thanks,” I said quietly.
Then he dug out a burger for himself. “Hey,” he said around an enormous bite. He swallowed hastily. “Her BMW is white with a black bra and spoiler, right?”
“Yeah,” my head snapped in the direction that he was looking. “I can’t ... That might be it!” The headlights of a car in the parking lot illuminated what might be Keilana’s car. But the light lasted only a couple of seconds and then it was gone. I swerved into a small, gravel lot that sat between a bar and a dance club. It was a pay lot, but the attendant, who had probably spent most of the evening locked in a tiny booth with a shotgun resting on his lap as he took money, was long gone by now.
The reflection of flashing neon from nearby signs off my wet windshield made it tough to see, but I was certain that the BMW was empty and that Keilana was nowhere in sight. I pulled up right behind what I thought was her car, and gave it another quick glance before I kept right on driving to the back of the parking lot.
There were no empty spots but I managed to fit my Mustang next to the last car in a row, though it meant two of my wheels were resting on the curb. Luckily, it was getting dark fast.
I killed the engine. “I tried, but I couldn’t see whether the license plate matched.”
“Christ, Belinda, how many white Beemers matching that description do you think are parked on the edge of The Devil’s Belly? That’s the one. Gotta be.”
We both tossed our half-eaten burgers onto the dashboard. A tickle of excitement caused me to stop worrying about how I felt about Keilana and start focusing on why I was here.
“I’m gonna go check the plates just to be sure,” I said.
Russ rolled his eyes. Then he nodded and pulled his baseball cap a little lower on his head. “I’ll go check the plates. This the number?” He plucked a small, folded piece of paper from my ashtray.
I opened my mouth to protest and he held up a forestalling hand. “Let me,” he said. “The girl—”
I glared at him.
“Errr ... I mean, Keilana, is already pissed at her parents. If she makes you, well, you already said it. It’ll only make things worse. Not to mention the fact that it’s bad to blow things with rich clients.” He gave me a chagrined smile that made him look very much like a little boy. “I would know.”
I let out an unhappy breath. “Russ—”
Just as he reached for the door handle his cell phone rang. Reluctantly, he dug it out of his pocket, then swallowed hard when he read the illuminated phone number of the caller.
“Go ahead answer it,” I urged him. “The BMW will keep. I’m watching it. It’s about time you and Sarah made up anyway.”
“I don’t know what to say to her.”
The phone continued to ring.
I sighed. Men. “Answer it and apologize. I’ll go check the plates.”
“What if I make it worse?” The panic started in his eyes but spread to the rest of him in tw
o seconds flat. “What if she starts to cry? What if—?”
“Just say you’re sorry, for fuck’s sake!” I grabbed his hands and pushed the phone toward his head. “Answer it. Answer it. Answer it!” If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s a ringing phone.
“You talk to her!” And with that he pressed “talk” and thrust the phone in my hands, jumping out of the car before I could grab him.
“You pathetic, stinking coward,” I hissed. “Come back ... umm ... hi, Sarah?”
“Is that you, Belinda?” she asked, sounding supremely annoyed.
I guess the plain fact is, nobody likes her husband being such close friends with another woman. Much less a former lover. Even though it worked for Russ and me, I knew it had to look a little unnatural to the rest of the world.
Sarah grumbled, “Why isn’t Russ, that big chicken, answering his own phone?”
“Huh?” I barely heard what she said. Every ounce of my attention was on Russ as he approached the white BMW. Then to my horror, as if I needed further confirmation of existence of Murphy’s Law, I saw someone who looked dangerously like Keilana approaching the parking lot out of Russ’s line of vision.
My eyes bugged out of my head. Another woman was with her and they were huddled under a single, large umbrella together. “Oh, fuck me!”
“What?”
“Huh?”
“What is going on, Belinda?” Sarah demanded.
“Russ is sorry he was such an asshole. Gotta go.” I pressed a random button on the phone and threw it onto the backseat. Then I climbed into Russ’s seat to watch the horror unfold. Russ was crouched down, reading the license plate and Keilana was approaching him from the back. He glanced around, but so much water was pouring off his baseball cap, I doubted he could see more than a few feet.
Keilana was carrying something. A big purse? No, a backpack. Why would she be carrying her backpack away from school? Then I looked closer and realized this wasn’t her school backpack, which was bright yellow. This one was dark, black or maybe navy blue.
A few more steps and the other woman came into better focus. It was Billie. I groaned as I clumsily climbed over the front seats and fell head first into the back seat. Like an excited puppy going on a car ride, I all but pressed my face to the glass as I watched.
Undercover Tales Page 12
