For reasons I couldn’t explain beyond intuition, I drew into the shadows.
A car door opened and the crackle of gunfire broke out. Two shots. The car door slammed and the black sedan screeched away. I could hear my heart hammering in my chest, and it blended with the sound of running feet. I realized a moment later that they were my feet, and I was running to the mouth of the alley. I rounded the corner and came up short.
The bag lady’s body was in a heap on the sidewalk.
I rushed over and fell on my knees beside her. “Are you okay?” I said frantically, rolling her over. Her mouth was agape, her raisin eyes hollow. Dark liquid flowered through the quilted coat I’d been wearing three minutes ago.
I felt the urge to jump back but forced myself to reach inside the coat pockets. I needed to call for help, but my cell phone wasn’t there.
There was a phone booth on the corner across the street. I ran to it and dialed 911. While I waited for the operator to pick up, I glanced back at the bag lady’s body, and that’s when I felt cold adrenaline shoot through me. The body was gone.
With a shaky hand, I hung up. The sound of approaching footsteps tapped in my ears, but whether they were near or far, I couldn’t tell.
Clip, clip, clip.
He’s here, I thought. The man in the ski mask.
I shoved a few coins into the phone and gripped the receiver with both hands. I tried to remember Patch’s cell phone number. Squeezing my eyes shut, I visualized the seven numbers he’d written in red ink on my hand the first day we met. Before I could second-guess my memory, I dialed the numbers.
“What’s up?” Patch said.
I almost sobbed at the sound of his voice. I could hear the crack of billiard balls colliding on a pool table in the background, and knew he was at Bo’s Arcade. He could be here in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.
“It’s me.” I didn’t dare push my voice above a whisper.
“Nora?”
“I’m in P-Portland. On the corner of Hempshire and Nantucket. Can you pick me up? It’s urgent.”
I was huddled in the bottom of the phone booth, counting silently to one hundred, trying to remain calm, when a black Jeep Commander glided to the curb. Patch slid the door to the phone booth open and crouched in the entrance.
He peeled off his top layer—a long-sleeved black T-shirt— leaving him in a black undershirt. He fit the neckhole of the T-shirt over my head and a moment later had my arms pushed through the sleeves. The shirt dwarfed me, the sleeves hanging down well past my fingertips. It mingled the smells of smoke, saltwater, and mint soap. Something about it filled the hollow places inside me with reassurance.
“Let’s get you in the car,” Patch said. He pulled me up, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face into him.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said. The world tilted, including Patch. “I need my iron pills.”
“Shh,” he said, holding me against him. “It’s going to be all right. I’m here now.”
I managed a little nod.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Another nod. “We need to get Vee,” I said. “She’s at a party one block over.”
While Patch drove the Jeep around the corner, I listened to my chattering teeth echo around inside my head. I’d never been this frightened in my life. Seeing the dead homeless woman conjured up thoughts of my dad. My vision was tinged with red, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t flush out the image of blood.
“Were you in the middle of a pool game?” I asked, remembering the sound of billiard balls colliding in the background during our brief phone conversation.
“I was winning a condo.”
“A condo?”
“One of those swank ones on the lake. I would have hated the place. This is Highsmith. Do you have an address?”
“I can’t remember it,” I said, sitting up taller to get a better look out the windows. All of the buildings looked abandoned. There was no trace of a party. There was no trace of life, period.
“Do you have your cell?” I asked Patch.
He slid a Blackberry out of his pocket. “Battery’s low. I don’t know if it will make a call.”
I texted Vee. WHERE ARE YOU?!
CHANGE OF PLANS, she texted back. GUESS J AND E COULDN’T FIND WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING 4. WE’RE GOING HOME.
The screen drained to black.
“It died,” I told Patch. “Do you have the charger?”
“Not on me.”
“Vee’s going back to Coldwater. Do you think you could drop me off at her house?”
Minutes later we were on the coastal highway, driving right along a cliff just above the ocean. I’d been this way before, and when the sun was out, the water was slate blue with patches of dark green where the water reflected the evergreens. It was night, and the ocean was smooth black poison.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Patch asked.
The jury was still out on whether or not I should tell Patch anything. I could tell him how after the bag lady tricked me out of my coat, she was shot. I could tell him I thought the bullet was meant for me. Then I could try explaining how the bag lady’s body had magically vanished into thin air.
I remembered the crazed look Detective Basso had directed at me when I told him someone had broken into my bedroom. I wasn’t in the mood to get eyeballed and laughed at again. Not by Patch. Not right now.
“I got lost, and a bag lady cornered me,” I said. “She talked me out of my coat. . . .” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and sniffled. “She got my beanie, too.”
“What were you doing all the way out here?” asked Patch.
“Meeting Vee at a party.”
We were halfway between Portland and Coldwater, on a stretch of lush and unpopulated highway, when steam spewed suddenly from the hood of the Jeep. Patch braked, easing the Jeep to the roadside.
“Hang on,” he said, swinging out. Lifting the hood of the Jeep, he disappeared out of sight.
A minute later he dropped the hood back in place. Brushing his hands on his pants, he came around to my window, gesturing for me to lower it.
“Bad news,” he said. “It’s the engine.”
I tried to look informed and intelligent, but I had a feeling my expression just looked blank.
Patch raised an eyebrow and said, “May it rest in peace.”
“It won’t move?”
“Not unless we push it.”
Of all the cars, he had to win the lemon.
“Where’s your cell?” Patch asked.
“I lost it.”
He grinned. “Let me guess. In your coat pocket. The bag lady really cashed in, didn’t she?”
He scouted the horizon. “Two choices. We can flag down a ride, or we can walk to the next exit and find a phone.”
I stepped out, shutting the door with force behind me. I kicked the Jeep’s right front tire. I knew I was using anger to mask my fear of what I’d been through today. As soon as I was all alone, I’d break down crying.
“I think there’s a motel at the next exit. I’ll go c-c-call a cab,” I said, my teeth chattering harder. “Y-y-you wait here with the Jeep.”
He cracked a slight smile, but it didn’t look amused. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re looking a little deranged, Angel. We’ll go together.”
Crossing my arms, I stood up to him. In tennis shoes, my eyes came level with his shoulders. I was forced to tilt my neck back to meet his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere near a motel with you.” Best to sound firm so I was less likely to change my mind.
“You think the two of us and a slummy motel make for a dangerous combination?”
Yes, actually.
Patch leaned back against the Jeep. “We can sit here and argue this.” He squinted up at the riotous sky. “But this storm is about to catch its second wind.”
As if Mother Nature wanted her say in the verdict, the sky opened and a thick concoction of rain and slee
t hailed down.
I sent Patch my coldest look, then blew out an angry sigh.
As usual, he had a point.
CHAPTER
21
TWENTY MINUTES LATER PATCH AND I WASHED UP AT the entrance to a low-budget motel. I had not spoken one word to him as we’d jogged through the sleeting rain, and now I was not only soaked, but thoroughly . . . unnerved. The rain cascaded down, and I didn’t think we would be returning to the Jeep anytime soon. Which left me, Patch, and a motel in the same equation for an undetermined amount of time.
The door chimed on our way in, and the desk clerk stood abruptly, dusting Cheetos crumbs off his lap. “What’ll it be?” he said, sucking his fingers clean of orange slime. “Just the two of you tonight?”
“We n-n-need to borrow your phone,” I chattered, hoping he could make sense of my request.
“No can do. Lines are down. Blame the storm.”
“What do y-you mean the l-lines are d-down? Do you have a cell?”
The clerk looked to Patch.
“She wants a nonsmoking room,” Patch said.
I swiveled to face Patch. Are you insane? I mouthed.
The clerk tapped a few keys at his computer. “Looks like we’ve got . . . hang on . . . Bingo! A nonsmoking king.”
“We’ll take it,” said Patch. He looked sideways at me, and the edges of his mouth tipped up. I narrowed my eyes.
Just then the lights overhead blinked out, plunging the lobby into darkness. We all stood silent for a moment before the clerk fumbled around and clicked on an industrial-size flashlight.
“I was a Boy Scout,” he said. “Back in the day. ‘Be prepared.’”
“Then you m-m-must have a cell phone?” I said.
“I did. Until I couldn’t pay the bill anymore.” He drew his shoulders up. “What can I say, my mom’s cheap.”
His mom? He had to be forty. Not that it was any of my business. I was far more concerned what my mom would do when she arrived home from the reception and found me gone.
“How do you want to pay?” the desk clerk asked.
“Cash,” Patch said.
The desk clerk chuckled, bobbing his head up and down. “It’s a popular form of payment here.” He leaned close and spoke in confidential tones. “We get a lot of folks who don’t want their extracurricular activities traced, if you know what I mean.”
The logical half of my brain was telling me I couldn’t actually be considering spending the night at a motel with Patch.
“This is crazy,” I told Patch in an undertone.
“I’m crazy.” He was on the brink of smiling again. “About you. How much for the flashlight?” he asked the clerk.
The clerk reached below the desk. “I’ve got something even better: survival-size candles,” he said, placing two in front of us. Striking a match, he lit one. “They’re on the house, no extra charge. Put one in the bathroom and one in the sleeping area and you’ll never know the difference. I’ll even throw in the matchbook. If nothing else, it’ll make a good keepsake.”
“Thanks,” Patch said, taking my elbow and walking me down the hall.
At room 106, Patch bolted the door behind us. He set the candle on the nightstand, then used it to light the spare. Lifting his baseball cap, he shook the ends of his hair like a wet dog.
“You need a hot shower,” he said. Taking a few steps backward, he ducked his head inside the bathroom. “Looks like bar soap and two towels.”
I tilted my chin up a fraction. “You can’t f-force me to stay here.” I’d only agreed to come this far because I didn’t want to stand out in the downpour, for one, and I had high hopes of finding a phone, for two.
“That sounded more like a question than a statement,” said Patch.
“Then ans-s-swer it.”
His rogue smile crept out. “It’s hard to concentrate on answers with you looking like that.”
I glanced down at Patch’s black shirt, wet and clinging to my body. I brushed past him and shut the bathroom door between us.
Cranking the water to full hot, I peeled out of Patch’s shirt and my clothes. One long black hair was plastered to the shower wall, and I trapped it in a square of toilet paper before flushing it. Then I stepped behind the shower curtain, watching my skin glow with heat.
Massaging soap into the muscles along my neck and down through my shoulders, I told myself I could handle sleeping in the same room as Patch. It wasn’t the smartest or safest arrangement, but I’d personally see to it that nothing happened. Besides, what choice did I have . . . right?
The spontaneous reckless half of my brain laughed at me. I knew what it was thinking. Early on I’d felt drawn to Patch by a mysterious force field. Now I felt drawn to him by something entirely different. Something with a lot of heat involved. A connection tonight was inevitable. On a scale of one to ten, that terrified me about an eight. And excited me about a nine.
I shut off the water, stepped out, and patted my skin dry. One glance at my soaked clothes was all I needed to know I had no desire to put them back on. Maybe there was a coin-operated dryer nearby . . . one that didn’t require electricity. I sighed and pulled on my camisole and panties, which had survived the worst of the rain.
“Patch?” I whispered through the door.
“Done?”
“Blow out the candle.”
“Done,” he whispered back through the door. His laughter, too, sounded so soft it could have been whispered.
Snuffing out the bathroom candle, I stepped out, meeting total blackness. I could hear Patch breathing directly in front of me. I didn’t want to think about what he was—or wasn’t— wearing, and I shook my head to fragment the picture forming in my mind. “My clothes are soaked. I don’t have anything to wear.”
I heard the sound of wet fabric sliding like a squeegee over his skin. “Lucky me.” His shirt landed in a wet heap at our feet.
“This is really awkward,” I told him.
I could feel him smiling. He stood way, way too close.
“You should shower,” I said. “Right now.”
“I smell that bad?”
Actually, he smelled that good. The smoke was gone, the mint stronger.
Patch disappeared inside the bathroom. He relit the candle and left the door ajar, a sliver of light stretching across the floor and up one wall.
I slid my back down the wall until I was seated on the floor, then tipped my head against the wall. In all honesty, I couldn’t stay here tonight. I had to get home. It was wrong to stay here alone with Patch, vow of prudence or not. I had to report the bag lady’s body. Or did I? How was I supposed to report a vanished body? Talk about insane—which was the terrifying direction my thoughts were starting to go anyway.
Not wanting to dwell on the insanity idea, I concentrated on my original argument. I couldn’t stay here knowing Vee was with Elliot, in danger, when I was safe.
After a moment’s consideration I decided I needed to rephrase that thought. Safe was a relative term. As long as Patch was around, I wasn’t in harm’s way, but that didn’t mean I thought he was going to act like my guardian angel, either.
Right away, I wished I could take back the guardian angel thought. Summoning up my powers of persuasion, I banished all thoughts of angels—guardian, fallen, or otherwise—from my head. I told myself I probably was going insane. For all I knew, I’d hallucinated seeing the bag lady die. And I’d hallucinated seeing Patch’s scars.
The water stopped, and a moment later Patch strolled out wearing only his wet jeans hanging low on his waist. He left the bathroom candle lit and the door wide. Soft color glowed through the room.
One quick look and I could tell Patch clocked several hours a week running and lifting weights. A body that defined didn’t come without sweat and work. Suddenly I felt a little self-conscious. Not to mention soft.
“Which side of the bed do you want?” he asked.
“Uh . . .”
A fox smile. “Nervous?”
<
br /> “No,” I said as confidently as possible under the circumstances. And the circumstances were that I was lying through my teeth.
“You’re a bad liar,” he said, still smiling. “The worst I’ve seen.”
I put my hands on my hips and communicated a silent Excuse me?
“Come here,” he said, pulling me to my feet. I felt my earlier promise of resistance melting away. Another ten seconds of standing this close to Patch and my defense would be blown to smithereens.
A mirror hung on the wall behind him, and over his shoulder I saw the upside-down V scars gleaming black on his skin.
My whole body went rigid. I tried to blink the scars away, but they were there for good.
Without thinking, I slid my hands up his chest and around to his back. A fingertip brushed his right scar.
Patch tensed under my touch. I froze, the tip of my finger quivering on his scar. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t actually my finger moving, but me. All of me.
I was sucked into a soft, dark chute and everything went black.
CHAPTER
23
I WAS STANDING IN THE LOWER LEVEL OF BO’S ARCADE WITH my back to the wall, facing several games of pool. The windows were boarded, and I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Stevie Nicks was coming through the speakers; the song about the white-winged dove and being on the edge of seventeen. Nobody seemed surprised by my sudden appearance out of thin air.
And then I remembered I was wearing nothing but a cami and panties. I’m not all that vain, but standing in a crowd composed entirely of the opposite sex, my essentials barely covered, and nobody even looked at me? Something was . . . off.
I pinched myself. Perfectly alive, as far as I could tell.
Waving a hand to clear away the hazy cloud of cigar smoke, I spotted Patch across the room. He was sitting at a poker table, kicked back, holding a hand of cards close to his chest.
I padded barefoot across the room, crossing my arms over my chest, making sure to keep myself covered. “Can we talk?” I hissed in his ear. There was an unnerved quality to my voice. Understandable, since I had no idea how I’d come to find myself at Bo’s. One moment I was at the motel, and the next I was here.
The Complete Hush, Hush Saga Page 20
