Anna Strong Chronicles 02 Blood Drive

by Jeanne C. Stein

  I hitch my purse up around my shoulder. I don’t have to ask why my neighbor called David and not me. He’s the type that refers to women as “little ladies”. “Finish up with Jake,” I tell David. “I’ll go on out to the cottage.”

  “Do you want to wait for us?”

  “No.” I know from experience how long the paperwork can take. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I’ll see you and Max back at the office.”

  I hang up and turn to Frey. “I have to go. I’ll try to get back tonight, but it may be late.”

  He nods and opens the front door to allow me to pass through. “I hope there’s nothing wrong at your home.”

  He has picked the story out of my head. I should be used to it by now, but it irks me. It’s dumb and childish, but I turn the tables. I look him square in the eyes, smile, and conjure up the image I remember from a long ago trip to the zoo. It involved a randy old lion and his less than enthusiastic cage mate.

  I don’t get the reaction I want. In fact, Frey’s reaction is far from embarrassment. Sexual energy blazes out and I feel my own face flush hot.

  I hear him laugh as he shuts the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  It’s late afternoon and I luck out by hitting the freeways in that all too brief period between the lunch crowd exiting MissionValley and the downtown commuters heading home. Under these conditions, MissionBeach is only a twenty minute drive from Frey’s condo. I make it in fifteen.

  I’ve lived in MissionBeach most of my life. The community is an eclectic mix of old, new, and no money. The differences are reflected in the architecture, and nowhere is that more obvious than where I live. Isthmus Court is bordered on one side by the boardwalk that runs along the beach and on the other by MissionBeach’s main thoroughfare,

  Mission Boulevard

  . My cottage, a gift from my grandparents, was the only original bungalow on the block-until it burned to the ground three months ago. My neighbor lives in the type of monstrosity that new money seems to love-a big stucco box that rises three stories on its tiny lot. When I decided to rebuild, I used his architect. I was in a hurry to get going, I wanted my home back, and though I wasn’t sure how it would work out, the guy surprised me. It turns out that he hates the cookie-cutter look of the new stuff as much as I do. He was delighted to do something different.

  So here I am, approaching the newly fenced yard surrounding my place. To my neighbor’s great disappointment, the only concession I made in the rebuild was to add a second story master bedroom with a wrap around deck. Otherwise, the red clapboard cottage retains all the simple charm of the original. And the house is small enough that I have a front yard and a patio in back. A rarity in this neighborhood.

  I glance at my watch. It’s almost four and there are no workmen in sight. They’ve no doubt left for the day. I use my key and step inside.

  The place smells of new paint and freshly sawed wood. A glance around the living room confirms that the floorboards are finished. The polished oak floors gleam in the late afternoon sun. I retained the Craftsman touches of the old place, too, built in bookcases, wood framed windows.

  In the kitchen, the cupboards are hung. The pungent odor of stained wood fills the air. I get a thrill when I see the contractor’s note on counter. “All done, Ms. Strong,” it reads. “Welcome home.”

  I find myself smiling until the reason I’m here reasserts itself in my head. If someone is trespassing I’ll damn well find out. I’m not going to lose my home again.

  It’s time to check upstairs. I leave my handbag on a kitchen counter and go on up. It’s carpeted here and I detect different odors-glue, paint, wool. Something else. It stops me dead at the doorway, tenses my muscles, and raises the hair on the back of my neck.

  It’s nothing I can see. The room is empty. But there are footprints on the carpet. Not the prints of work boots. Bare feet.

  And the smell is the must of unwashed hair and skin.

  The footprints track across the carpet and out the sliding glass doors to the deck. There are no curtains up yet so I have a clear view outside. There’s no one out there. But the door is unlocked and when I lean over the railing, I realize how easy it would be for someone to climb down onto the garage roof below and jump to the ground-especially if they’re in a hurry to get out. The back leads to an alley. An easy, convenient escape route.

  I’m wondering how I can remedy that when a small movement catches the corner of my eye. It’s a reflection in the side window of the garage, fleeting, like a cloud passing over the sun. But it’s enough. Perhaps my barefoot intruder hasn’t left after all.

  I lock the door to the deck and move quickly outside. There are no windows facing the rear of the house from the garage so it’s not hard to sneak around to the front. I haven’t installed the security code on the garage door yet since I haven’t been using it. When I hit the open mode and the door slides up, someone small and blonde dashes around me, racing for the alley.

  But quick as she is, I’m quicker. I reach an arm around her waist and whirl her around.

  My brother’s eyes, big with alarm and panic, flash up at me.

  It’s so disorienting, I almost let her go.

  Almost.

  Trish struggles, but she’s no match for my strength. I hold her against my chest, saying nothing, waiting for her to calm down.

  At last she does. The energy drains from her like water down a pipe. She sags against me, resigned. After a long moment, she draws herself up and pulls back.

  I let her go, dropping my hands from her shoulders, but staying close enough to thwart another escape attempt. She’s small boned and fragile, wearing jeans that sag around her hips and an oversized sweatshirt. Her hair is loose around her face, dirty and uncombed. Her nails are unpolished, bitten to the quick.

  She blows out a breath and swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. But she doesn’t look up at me. “You know who I am?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, the quick intake of breath, the forceful exhalation. This time, though, she squares her shoulders and those luminous eyes meet mine. “Are you going to take me back?”

  I know what I should say. I know what I should do. But something in this girl’s quiet desperation sounds an alarm that pushes all those rational responses out of my head. I rack my brain for something that would put a teenager at ease. I can only come up with a lame, “Are you hungry? We could go down the street to the Mission for something to eat.”

  She starts to nod, but the gesture turns into a shrug. “Ryan is getting food. He’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Ryan?” Suddenly I’m hit with the suspicion that maybe Trish isn’t as innocent as I’ve assumed.

  My tone must reflect this because Trish frowns. “It’s not likethat . He’s been helping me. He got me away from-”

  She stops short. “God. What’s the use? If you’re going to take me back to my mother, let’s just get it over with.”

  Her eyes dart over my shoulder, flashing an unintentional warning. I whirl around as a blur of teeth and fur launches itself at me. A dog. A large dog that seems bent on tearing my throat out.

  Instinctively, the animal in me responds. It’s no match. The dog is a German shepherd mix, eighty pounds or so, but in the time it takes me to reach out an arm, I’ve locked my hand around the dog’s throat. I use its momentum to throw it to the ground, my own teeth gnashing in conditioned reflex before reason takes over. I lean over the dog, exerting just enough pressure to render it helpless. When the adrenaline stops pumping, I glance back at Trish and the boy who seems to have materialized from God knows where to stand beside her. Their faces are stamped with the same emotions-shock, fear, no understanding of what they just witnessed, and no clue how to react to it.

  “I assume you’re Ryan,” I say, breaking the stalemate. “Want to call off your dog?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  One of the good things about becoming vampire is that your physical abilities are remarkably enhanced. Thing
s like speed and strength. Everything with the dog happens so quickly, the two astounded teenagers who witness it literally don’t believe their eyes. Ryan’s mouth hangs open and Trish has a dazed, confused look that would be comical if the circumstances weren’t beginning to tick me off.

  “Yo, Ryan,” I snap again. The dog is starting to recover, squirming and growling as he tries to shake off my hands. “I mean it. Call off your dog or he’s going to get hurt.”

  The kid finally responds. His mouth opens and closes a couple of times before he gets the words out. “Cujo. Down.”

  Cujo?

  I feel the dog relax and ease my hands away. In a flash, the same dog who was hell bent on ripping my throat out is lapping at my face like it’s a burger pop.

  With a shudder, I jump to my feet, scrubbing at my face with the back of my hand. There’s nothing I hate more than dog slobber.

  Cujo scrambles up, too, and wriggles his way to Ryan’s side, his whole body vibrating to the beat of a wildly wagging tail.

  Ryan reaches down and cradles the dog’s head. “Good boy.”

  By now, I’ve recovered enough to be angry again. Trish has moved to Ryan’s side and the two take turns patting the dog and telling it what a good boy it’s been. Ryan is the same height as Trish with the same coloring. But his clothes are clean and pressed and he’s obviously bathed in the last few days.

  Whatever their relationship, he’s not been camping out here with her.

  I suck in a breath. “Okay, you two. Enough. What’s going on? Trish, what are you doing here? How do you know me?”

  Trish throws me one of those looks that makes me remember all over again why I left teaching. The disdain only a teenager can exude. “I heard my mother talking about you,” she says. “You’re the girlfriend of some bigwig at her hospital.”

  Her hospital? I start getting the sick feeling I’ve missed something important with Carolyn. I wave a hand at Trish to continue.

  “He’s resigned now, I guess, but Mom said you had a place on the beach that you didn’t live in anymore. I looked up your address on line. When I came out, I saw that you were remodeling and the place was empty. I decided to stay here. I haven’t hurt anything. You can see for yourself.”

  Her tone morphs from bold defiance to quiet desperation. But her words make my gut twist with anxiety. Carolyn hasn’t told Trish what our relationship really is. And she works atAvery’s hospital? I give myself a mental thump on the head. I never thought to ask Carolyn where she works. There are a lot of hospitals in San Diego. What are the odds she’d work at Avery’s? More important now, though, is why would she be discussing me and with whom?

  Ryan holds out the bag he’s been clutching in his hand. “Can we talk about this while Trish eats?” he asks. “I can only bring food once a day and she hasn’t eaten since yesterday.”

  Trish’s drawn face softens when she looks at Ryan. I can hear her stomach rumble, so I nod. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  The two kids sit cross-legged on the floor of the garage and rip into the bag. He’s brought bologna sandwiches and chips and the biggest bottle of some dark soda I’ve ever seen. Typical teen fare. Not a piece of fruit or carton of milk in the mix.

  I sit down beside them and watch them eat. Cujo sneaks his way to my side and lies down with his head on my lap.

  And I hate dogs. Go figure.

  For a minute, Ryan and Trish are just two teenagers devouring their junk food with the gusto of youth. I let her finish one sandwich and start on the second before I interrupt.

  “Trish?”

  She looks up at me and I see the shadow in her eyes.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She stops chewing, the sandwich suspended in a hand that begins to shake.

  Ryan eyes flash. “She’s not going back to that house,” he says. “If you make her, we’ll just run away again. This time we’ll leave the state. We’ll go to Mexico. You’ll never find us.”

  His tone is fervent and desperate, a kid trying to explain the demon threatening his best friend to an adult he suspects doesn’t believe in them.

  But I’m not most adults.

  “Did someone hurt you, Trish?” I ask softly.

  Ryan reaches out a gentle hand and touches her shoulder. “Tell her,” he says. “Or I will.”

  Trish’s hand descends slowly, the sandwich falling from her limp fingers while tears spill onto her cheeks.

  “We don’tknow her,” she mumbles to Ryan.

  He nods toward me. “Yeah, but look at Cujo. He likes her, so she can’t be all bad.”

  I put a hand on Cujo’s head, trying to emphasize the dog’s obvious good judgment, but he looks up at me and rolls his tongue like he’s ready to plant another big doggy kiss on my face. I gently but firmly push his head back down before he can.

  Ryan’s eyes lock onto mine. “And if she was going to take you back, you’d be gone by now, right?”

  The question is directed at me. I nod. “But I can’t really help you until I know what happened.”

  Trish’s eyes go flat, passionless. “My mother,” she says simply. “My mother happened to me.”

  She stops, recomposing herself. I don’t try to rush her or ask another question. My own insides are churning. I suspect I’m not going to want to hear what she has to say. And I’m just as terribly convinced that my first instincts about Carolyn Delaney will prove to have been accurate. I didn’t like or trust the woman from the moment she walked into my parent’s home.

  Trish picks up a paper napkin from the small pile on the floor and wipes her eyes. “My mother wasn’t always-” Her voice falters, breaks. She scrubs at her eyes again and lifts her chin. “She used to be a pretty good mom. We’d do things together. Go to movies. Shopping. We didn’t have much money, but that didn’t matter.”

  There’s nothing more pathetic than a child defending her parent-or more unnatural. It should be the other way around. Always. Ryan places an arm around Trish’s shoulders. The simple act seems to give her strength. She sits up a little straighter.

  “Anyway, I guess the trouble really started when my dad left a couple of years ago. He just walked out on us. Mom says she doesn’t know why he left. She woke up one morning and he was gone. No note. Nothing. He just left us.”

  My shoulders jump. “Your dad?”

  Misery, as intense as the pain in her voice, slumps her shoulders. “I used to think it was something I’d done. That it must have been.” She looks at Ryan and his smile of reassurance lifts the weight a little. “Ryan says it wasn’t of course. That sometimes adults do stupid things that have nothing to do with their families. He almost makes me believe it.”

  She looks so sad, I want to put my arms around her and tell her that there’s another family she could belong to. A good one that would never abandon her. But that would involve telling her that her mother has been lying to her for thirteen years.

  If she has been.

  One thing is for certain, though, Carolyn has been lying to someone.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” I say, stumbling over the word “dad.”

  “But you haven’t told me why you ran away. Was it because of what happened to your friend?”

  Trish’s brows draw together. “My friend?”

  In the same instant, Ryan draws a sharp breath and shakes his head at me. “I haven’t had a chance to tell her about that.” His tone makes it clear that he doesn’t think I should either.

  But it’s too late. Trish looks from his face to mine. “What are you talking about?”

  Ryan stiffens, the look he throws me dark with anger. “Trish has enough to worry about. She doesn’t need to hear about that other thing.”

  Trish is staring at Ryan now with burning, reproachful eyes. “What other thing, Ryan?”

  He looks away, refusing to meet her gaze or answer.

  So I do. “I’m sorry, Trish. I thought you knew. It’s Barbara.”

  “Barbara?” She repeats the name with the sa
me puzzled inflection. “What about Barbara?”

  I don’t know how to make this easy. One thing I’m sure of, Trish either doesn’t know that her friend is dead or she’s an Oscar-worthy actress. I take hold of one of her hands. “Barbara is dead, Trish. The police found her body this morning. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh my God,” Trish’s anguished cry echoes in the empty garage. She snatches her hand out of mine and rounds on Ryan. “You knew about Barbara. And you didn’t say anything?”

  Ryan doesn’t meet her eyes. He busies himself with his dog, calling him over, breaking off a bit of the sandwich in his hand and holding it out to him. He watches Cujo with fierce intensity until he can bring himself to look at Trish again. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  Trish’s face crumbles. Fat tears wet her cheeks and her shoulders shake with sobs, but she doesn’t make a sound. It’s only when she draws a deep, shuddering breath that the wail erupts. She buries her face in her hands. “Oh my god, oh my god. I’m next. I’m next. I’m next.”

  She keeps repeating the litany, ignoring me when I gather her to my chest, stroke her hair, and croon soft promises that I’ll keep her safe. She doesn’t struggle against me or try to break away. She holds herself rigid, arms wrapped tightly around her own waist.

  I look over her head at Ryan. He’s trembling as he stares at us. Neither kid has asked how Barbara was killed. It’s as if they were expecting it. “You’d better tell me what’s going on, Ryan.”

  He looks close to tears, too, but he doesn’t break down. “It’s the guys from the website,” he says, voice flat.

  “Website?”

  He nods, staring at his friend. “They want the computer back.”

  “Computer?” I sound like a parrot.

  Ryan climbs to his feet and heads for the back of the garage, Cujo at his heels. For the first time, I notice clothes and a blanket in the corner. He shuffles through the stuff, and when he turns back around, he has a laptop in his hand. Wordlessly, he brings it back to us, kneels down and powers it up. His fingers fly over the keyboard until the expression on his face tells me he’s found what he’s looking for. It’s a mixture of revulsion and fury that sends the color flooding into his cheeks. I know because he’s turned the computer around to face me and I’m experiencing the very same things.