by Julie Kriss
People are gonna be all over you when this gets out.
I could give this guy some attitude, tell him I was his new neighbor. But I found I had no desire to do that. Absolutely none.
“I’ll get right on it,” I said instead, thinking, What the fuck is a koi pond?
“See that you do,” the oldster sniffed, and went briskly walking on his way.
The inside of the house was beautiful—even someone like me, who knew nothing about decorating, could see that. It was all medium brown earth tones mixed with cream, like the outside. Thick glass in the connecting doors that was like looking through ice cubes. Marble tiled floors and understated art on the walls. It was a little bit 1970’s, but kept up with taste and money. Not like Shady Oaks, which had been built sometime in the sixties and never touched since. You used the same puke-colored fridge some lady in a beehive hairdo had used fifty years ago. This was different. If you’re going to go back in time, you may as well do it with class.
I dropped my duffel bag and wandered from room to room, still clutching the grocery bag. The kitchen, an open expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows and stainless steel appliances. The main rooms, with their sloping ceilings and wide views of the golf course and the hills beyond. Upstairs, the bedrooms, four of them, each beautifully decorated and immaculately clean. The bathrooms, that could fit a freaking football team. I wandered everything, taking it in.
Back downstairs I found a door with another keypad, and when I punched in the code I found it opened into the garage. Granddad, it seemed, had taste in cars too. There was a 1970 Mustang and a 1968 Thunderbird. A newer Mercedes, shiny black and sleek. I poked under the hood and saw that the cars needed restoring, including the Merc. Maybe Graham had fancied himself a mechanic, then never got around to it. The keys were on a hook next to the garage door, as if Graham had just hung him there on the way into the house.
It should have creeped me out, going through a dead man’s house and looking at his things, but it didn’t. First of all, he hadn’t actually died here. And he hadn’t actually lived here—the house was furnished, but it wasn’t lived-in. There were no stacks of newspapers or favorite photos or coffee cups. Graham Wilder had used this as a second home, a place to get away from LA once or twice a year.
I didn’t know who Graham Wilder was. I didn’t know what he was like. Not even what he looked like, come to think of it. It made it easier, that I had no memories here. People inherited houses all the time, right? It was no big deal. So I’d live in Diablo, in this place. It was either that or go back to my place in Shady Oaks. Which meant kicking out my best friend, Max, who I’d given the apartment to while I was in prison.
I stood in the kitchen, staring out the big windows at the back yard—actually about an acre of garden and trees—and thinking. I couldn’t see a single neighbor, the properties were so big here, and I felt like I was the only man in the world. There was a man-made pond back there—the koi pond, I assumed. It really did have scum on it. I should do something about that, like my white-haired neighbor had said. Was I supposed to do it? Or was I supposed to call someone?
Jesus, Devon, get a grip and think.
My cell phone rang. Not the new one that Ben had given me, but the old one from my old life. My pre-prison life.
I reached into my plastic grocery bag and fished it out, answering it. “Yeah?”
“Wilder,” said the voice on the other end. It was Gray Jensen, my old buddy. “Come to the club.”
I’d been out for a matter of hours. How the hell did he know? “Listen,” I said. “I think you figured out I don’t work for you anymore.”
“Sure you do,” he said. He cleared his throat, just a quick split second of sound, and I realized he was nervous about something. “You’re out, and you need work, right? You need money. I have a job. I need a driver.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I tried to keep my voice calm. “I just did two years. I got out this morning. I’m not driving shit.”
“You are driving shit, or you know the consequences,” Gray said. “Your crazy-ass buddy, who lives in your old apartment now. You drive for me or he gets a visit.”
So he knew that Max had moved to town. Fuck. I stomped down my anger and did a quick calculation. Something was different, an undercurrent I felt in my gut. “I don’t take orders from you,” I told him. “I did two years for you, and I never gave you up. We’re done. Unless you’d like me to make some calls and tell the cops who set me up for that TV gig.”
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like that. That was a mistake.”
“It sure fucking was. Did it feel good to give up your own brother?”
“I had no choice in that. Listen, Wilder, the point is that you’re not done until I say so.”
My gut instincts spoke up again. Gray was trying to scare me—because something had scared him. Suddenly I was sure of it. “Until you say so?” I said. “Or until Craig Bastien says so, since you dance to his tune?”
There was a beat of silence. Gray was small-time, but Craig Bastien was not. Gray was stolen TV’s, but Craig Bastien was drugs—lots and lots of them. Craig Bastien could eat Gray for breakfast. Maybe he already had.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gray said finally.
“You think I don’t know where all that Oxy came from?” I said to him. “You think I don’t know who was behind that part? It sure as hell wasn’t you. What did he threaten you with, Gray? You got someone he’s gonna kill if you don’t move his product?”
“It’s me he’s gonna kill, dipshit,” Gray said. He sounded shaky now, worried. Gray had never been all that tough. “And probably you, unless we all do what he says. I do the jobs he gives me, I take the money he cuts me, and I don’t ask questions. And so far I’m still alive. I suggest you do the same.”
I looked around my nice house. Gray had no idea I was in Diablo right now, no idea of what had happened to me. People are gonna be all over you when this gets out. So far I’d just been a low-level driver. What would a drug kingpin like Craig Bastien do if he found out I was worth a billion dollars?
“You get a message to Craig Bastien,” I said to Gray over the phone. Maybe it was a dangerous way to go, but when had I ever cared about danger? A man who has nothing to lose is incapable of being afraid. And despite the house I was standing in, I was still a man with nothing to lose. “You tell him to drive his own fucking getaway van. I quit. And don’t fucking call me again.”
I hung up. I looked out the window a little longer, staring at the koi pond and its scum. I decided I wasn’t going to clean the scum off just yet. The scum was moving into the neighborhood for now. Everyone was going to have to deal with it.
I grabbed the keys to my old Chevy and headed back out the door.
Eleven
Olivia
Since the night Devon Wilder had come into my apartment, blown my mind, and nearly broken my bed, I’d gone back to normal life on the surface. I knew he was gone, that he wouldn’t contact me. I understood his reasons. So I’d gotten up the next morning, taken a shower to clean my bruised, shaky, and satiated body, and gone to work like normal. He’d said he’d contact me when it was safe, and I had believed him. Okay, then. I’d wait.
I’d been waiting two years.
I pulled open the drawer of my desk at Gratchen Advertising and took out my purse, preparing to leave. I was now in my third year at this place, and I was still a junior designer—the promised promotion hadn’t showed up yet. Neither had the promised raise. The advertising business was competitive and cutthroat, my bosses told me, especially in downtown San Francisco. Everyone was fighting for the next client, and only the best would move up. And the best, at least right now, wasn’t me. They made that clear.
So I was still living at Shady Oaks, still driving my sometimes-working car. I worked, and did art class every week, and worked some more, putting aside savings from every measly paycheck. I didn’t date. I was the definition of a woman in a rut,
in every possible way. That was going to end tonight.
I slipped off my low-heeled sandals and turned off my computer. In my purse, my cell phone buzzed.
I answered it quickly. It was six thirty, but there were still a handful of people in the big open office, hunched over their desks in the quiet. “Hey, Gwen,” I said when I saw the caller ID.
“Hey,” my sister said. “We still on?”
“Just getting my shoes on.”
“Please tell me you mean spike heels.”
“Um, no.” Gwen could walk in spike heels—it was what made her a successful strip-o-gram girl. I couldn’t.
“Liv, we’re going out tonight to replace Mr. Hot Dark and Handsome. You need to dress.”
I glanced around to make sure none of my coworkers was close by. I’d told Gwen everything about that night with Devon, of course. Well, I’d left out some of the dirtier sex parts. “Not so loud. And the spike heels aren’t necessary. I’m looking for quality, not quantity.”
“Okay, maybe that’s me,” Gwen mused. “I need to get laid. I guess I’ll wear the heels.”
“What about, um, Mike?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Mike. I think he had a motorcycle or something?”
“Oh, God no.” I could practically hear her shudder over the phone. “I heard him use the word bitches. Done. That bad-boy motorcycle thing only goes so far.”
I shook my head. At this rate, Gwen was going to singlehandedly crush every eligible male in the Bay area. “Maybe he didn’t mean it,” I said.
“He said it,” Gwen said easily. “He’s done. And Liv, wear something nice. I don’t want to look at you and think you’re still pining.”
“I’m not pining.” I wasn’t. Pining was what you did for a guy who had made you promises, a guy you had something in common with, a guy you’d talked to about something other than sex or his criminal history. You pined for a man who had taken you on dates and let you imagine having babies with him, not a man who had let you get on your knees for him and then whispered filthy things in your ear and come in you twice before taking off, probably to prison.
Damn, just thinking about that made my lower belly ache. That had been the hottest night of my life. I needed to replace him. But I wasn’t pining.
Gwen was saying something else, but I looked up and saw Corey, one of the client service managers, coming across the open office space toward my cubicle. I ducked as if being caught in a crime. “Call you right back,” I whispered to my sister, and hung up.
“Olivia,” Corey said, looking at me through his stylish black-rimmed glasses. “Great, you’re still here. We need mockups of the Jelly Bread concepts.”
“I did that,” I said. “I had them all printed up and put on the board for the presentation tomorrow.”
“There are only three of them there.”
“Yes, well…” I tried to sound polite about it. “Those are the three you told me to do.”
“No, no. I never told you to do three. I need all eight of them on the board. I’m sure that’s what I said. Why would we only need three?”
How the hell would I know? He’d told me to do three; I could even see that he knew it, since his gaze wandered away from mine and he ran a hand through his artfully styled hair. “I can do the others in the morning,” I said.
“The meeting is in the morning,” he shot back. “This is Jelly Bread. It’s a big job. They’re going to freak if there are only three.”
I bit my lip. Jelly Bread was a new product being launched by a major bread company—bread that was already infused with the flavor of jam. It sounded gross to me, but the company was spending big money. I’d been at Gratchen long enough that I already know how this would end, so I gave in. “Okay.” I closed my purse and opened my desk drawer again. “I’ll go do it.”
“Perfect. And some of us have put in a sushi order at the place around the corner. Go pick it up in twenty minutes, okay? And don’t forget the wasabi this time.”
As he walked away, I quietly texted Gwen. Have to stay at work. Tonight’s off.
You’ve got to be kidding me, she texted back. What is it this time? Filling out courier slips? Getting coffee?
Both of those things had actually happened. Corey needs me to help with a presentation for tomorrow. It’s a big deal.
Tomorrow is Saturday and Corey is an asshole, she texted back. I’m trying to get you some dick here.
I made a few lame apologies and stuffed my phone back in my purse. I didn’t even like to think about dicks at the office. I worked with mostly men, and that was just… no. Even though I’d seen a couple of them notice me. They were probably nice guys—when they weren’t making me stay late for no pay and sending me for their sushi orders—but I was in the market for a different kind of dick, should we say. Rough, expert, and unapologetic. Preferably attached to Devon Wilder, but since he was out of the question, I’d have to look for second place.
I turned my computer back on and headed for the printing station, resigning myself to another night of work. Gwen was right. Next time we went out, I’d wear heels. It was time.
Twelve
Devon
Shady Oaks looked exactly the same as it had two years ago. Considering it looked exactly the same as it had in the 1960’s, this wasn’t a surprise. Shady Oaks was proof that everything changes is a lie.
I walked through the gate and up to my old apartment, taking the time to check out Olivia’s place first. Her car wasn’t in the parking lot, and her windows were dark. I raised my hand and knocked hard on my old door.
“It’s me, Max,” I said. “Devon. The door open?”
There was a long pause. He was home, I knew it. It just took him time to move around sometimes. I heard scuffling, and then a voice. “Coming.”
I waited some more. The wind picked up, making dead leaves slide along the patio in the courtyard, into the abandoned pool. An old guy came out of his door and leaned on the railing, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Another door opened, and I was surprised to see a woman come out in a cop’s uniform, walking down the corridor to the stairs, probably on her way to her shift. What the hell was a cop doing in Shady Oaks? Just the sight of her in her uniform made my pulse jump in my throat, even though I’d done my time and I hadn’t done anything wrong. The convict’s automatic reaction, I realized. I wondered if I would have it for the rest of my life.
Max’s door swung open. “Are you nuts?” he said to me. “Of course I lock my fucking door. I hear there are ex-cons in this neighborhood.”
“Ha ha, asshole,” I said. “Nice to see you too.” I held up a ratty, yellowed book in my hand, years old and well-read. A copy of Stephen King’s The Shining. “Just returning the reading material you lent me.”
Max grabbed the book from my hand. “Come on in to my place, which is actually your place,” he said.
He was still as big and muscled as he’d been in the Marines, and he hadn’t shaved in weeks. He’d come home from Afghanistan four years ago with his right leg missing below the knee and a harsh case of combat PTSD. He’d taken therapy for it, but therapy was expensive, as was the physiotherapy and the fake leg and foot he’d had made. He’d worked construction for cash under the table since he’d been home, convincing the supervisors on job sites that he could still do the work with a partly fake leg. Since I’d been in prison he’d left LA and come here, taking over my Shady Oaks apartment and finding construction gigs here instead.
He seemed to fit right in in this apartment. I was glad I’d given it to him after his father died and he had nothing left in LA. Though, judging from the amount of lived-in mess, it looked like he rarely left the place.
He was wearing jeans, a Giants tee that showed the tattoos snaking down his biceps, and his foot was bare. His other foot, the synthetic one, had a sock on it. Anyone looking at him would think he was just a guy with a limp and one sock on, for reasons unknown. Only people close to Max Reilly knew the truth.
I looked at him, and suddenly I realized I was really fucking glad to see my best friend. I also realized that I could change his life. Completely fucking change it. I could make his worries go away.
He was frowning at me, in that pissed-off grizzly bear way he had. “You coming in or what?” he asked.
I followed him inside. The apartment had the same furniture I’d left in it—worn sofa, secondhand kitchen table and chairs. Max actually had food in his kitchen, since he was a reasonable cook, unlike me. He’d also added a bookshelf, which was so overloaded with old paperbacks that they piled over the tops of the shelves and additional piles were stacked on the floor.
I followed him as he headed toward the shelf to put The Shining away. “Don’t touch the shelf,” he growled at me. “I have a system.”
I held up my hands. “I would never.”
“How did you like it?”
“I think you’re a sick man to give a guy in prison a story about a bunch of people in a haunted place they can’t get out of.”
Max put the book away and smiled to himself. “Well, I had to give you something different. You didn’t like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“That’s about a guy trapped in a mental hospital he can’t get out of,” I argued. “It was even worse.”
He shrugged, but I could see he was amused. “Okay, so I was torturing you a little. Can you blame me?”
I shook my head. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yes, I am.”
It didn’t matter. Max had visited me every month in prison, always bringing me a new book to read. Since it was only medium security, visitors were allowed to bring books, as long as they passed the security inspection. I could have gotten books inside, but Max’s library was better, and I preferred to read his picks. I’d done a lot of reading over the past few years. There wasn’t much else to do.
“Give me some non-fiction this time,” I said to him. “I’m in the mood for something true.”
