Killing Bliss

by EC Sheedy

  So she'd chewed on it all afternoon, thought things through—and painted the whole interior of Cabin Eight while she did it—and her mind always returned to Cade, that warm feeling in her chest when she thought about him.

  It had to be him.

  He was smart, he'd been a cop once, and he was... calm.

  And she was going out to dinner with him, which would change her life forever.

  You could end up in jail, Addilene Wartenski—you, Beauty, and Gus. You gotta understand that, be prepared for it.

  She nodded in agreement with her own thoughts, tugged distractedly at the top button on her best shirt, and tried to ignore the dread tangled into all that truth and trust she was so high on. She told herself it didn't matter.

  She had it straight, finally. Right was right, and she'd hold that thought until it was proven otherwise. She coughed out a lump of air clotted in her throat and breathed, if not easier, at least more surely.

  Her stomach tight, she walked to the window in time to see Cade say good-bye to Redge before heading toward her house.

  To take her out to dinner.

  It was kind of funny, if you squeezed a bit of humor into all the worry. Here he was, buying her dinner in the hope he'd get her into bed, while sex was the last thing on her mind.

  Almost...

  Cade rapped on the door, and as she walked toward it, she noticed her bedroom door was open. Her suitcase, packed but still open, sat on her bed. She quickly backtracked and closed the door.

  Well, Professor Harding, I hope you 're half the man I think you are, because I'm about to put my friends' lives—and mine—in your hands. Let me down, make one wrong move, and it's a midnight border crossing for me.

  * * *

  "You always so quiet?" Cade asked, ten minutes into the drive to town. He slanted her a glance, saw the tense lines around her mouth, how she held her head high, her eyes straight ahead on the road in front of them.

  "I'm thinking. I don't talk when I think."

  "Then you must do a lot of thinking." They passed a stand of trees and turned into the setting sun. It tore through the windshield, nearly blinding them both. He flipped the visors down. "You're also very sneaky."

  Her eyes shot to his, annoyed. "I am not."

  "You managed to get me reading Zero all the way back across the lake." He lifted a brow. "As I remember, you said your brain was hurting."

  "It was," she said, not giving an inch. "When you're not used to them, words are hard. Like eating nuts without any teeth."

  "You do have a way of putting things." He laughed.

  Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into a parking spot a few feet from the cafe, the same one where he'd had breakfast the first day he'd been in town. "Here we are."

  She looked out the car window, tucked her lower lip under her teeth, then said, "We could go back to my place." She looked at him, her expression hopeful and... scared. "Maybe get some Chinese. Like last time?"

  He got out of the car, went around, and opened her door. "We go back to your place, and I can pretty much guarantee I'll try to kiss you again. And we both know how happy that makes you." Hell, he'd had trouble enough under that tree today, watching her struggle to form his words with that beautiful mouth of hers. He'd been a saint so far, but he wouldn't take any bets on how long it would last. This stubborn, workaholic, uptight brunette stirred salsa into his testosterone. Dinner out, a table between them, was the safest option.

  "Maybe I'd like it this time." She widened her eyes, as if to convince him she meant it.

  He eyed her. "You're being sneaky again. But if you're so wild to kiss me all of a sudden, we'll fit it in later." He shook his head, irritated at how tempted he was. "Now get out of the car, would you? All that reading made me hungry."

  Flounced was the word to describe her royal descent from his Cherokee and her walk to their table at the back of the tiny restaurant When they'd taken their seats, the waitress, a middle-aged dynamo with a down-home smile, filled their water glasses and dropped off two menus.

  "Sorry, no specials tonight," she said. "Cook's hurt his toe."

  The cause and effect between a sore toe and the lack of a special might be shaky, but Cade let it go and turned to Addy. "Do you like red or white?"

  "Pardon?" she said distractedly, continuing her careful scan of the small cafe.

  "Wine. Red or white?"

  She sat, ramrod straight in her chair, her eyes barely connecting with his when she said, "You choose. Either's okay."

  When he'd ordered them a decent red, the waitress moved on. Cade picked up his menu but didn't look at it, because he was too fascinated by Addy. She looked like a gazelle on the lookout for a hungry lion, ready to bolt on cue.

  He relaxed back into his chair, studied her: tight mouth, darting eyes, hands locked together on the top of the table. "You're scared," he finally said, not masking his surprise. Hell, this cozy cafe in the heart of farm country was anything but threatening.

  "I am not scared."

  "Liar."

  The word, meant as a tease, seemed to upset her. "I'm not a liar... not anymore. I hate lies." She looked away from him and sighed. "My mom said every lie you tell puts a scar on your soul." Her eyes were wide when they met his again, and strangely innocent.

  The waitress arrived with the wine and poured. When she was gone, Cade raised his glass, mainly to hide his shock at her mention of family. "To your mother, obviously a very smart woman." Talk about lies. Hell, he was in a box made of the damn things, and it grew smaller by the second, but he saw an opening and took it. "Are you and your mother close?"

  "Were. She died when I was nine." She said the words quickly, as if the speed of delivery would pull her past the pain of grief. Like running in the rain, Cade knew it wouldn't work.

  "Tough." He wanted to reach across the table, take her hand. Instead, he drank some wine.

  "Uh-huh." Her gaze slipped away from his. "She was the best."

  "Then what?"

  "Then?"

  "After she died? Then what?"

  She hesitated, but only for a moment, then she swallowed. "I went to live with my aunt." She raised her eyes, met his directly. "Gloria Wartenski." She looked ashen, but when she lifted her chin, her gaze was determined, even reckless. "That's my name, too. My real name. Addilene Wartenski."

  Jesus. Cade's heart started to pound.

  He wanted to bolt, suddenly scared shitless about what she might tell him, the risk she was taking, and what he'd be ethically bound to do with the information.

  There'd been a murder, he reminded himself, and a boy was kidnapped—or worse. Addy might not have had anything to do with either crime, but someone had, and it was his job to find out who. Which didn't stop him from feeling like the worst goddamn cur on planet Earth. He drummed up a response, couched it in neutral tones. "What prompted the change?"

  "Ready to order?" The waitress came up behind Addy and she nearly leaped from her chair.

  Her eyes, wide and bright, and looking fevered, locked on Cade's. "Can we go?" she pleaded. "Right now. I, uh, don't feel well."

  He started to say... God knows what, stopped and pulled out his wallet. Tossing enough cash on the table to cover the wine and a generous tip, he said to the waitress, "We'll be leaving, thanks."

  "No problem, honey. Ya'll come back when the missus is feeling better."

  He went around the table, took Addy's arm, and helped her to her feet She was so passive, he thought she was going to faint.

  When they were outside, he stopped, turned her to face him. "Breathe," he said. "Nice and deep."

  She closed her eyes and did what she was told.

  "Better?" He bent his head so he could see her face, brushed some spikes of hair off her forehead.

  She nodded. "Much, thanks."

  "Come on, I'll get you home." He put his arm around her and she let him, not saying a word until they got to the truck.

  "I'm sorry about what happened in there."

&nb
sp; He opened the door. "Forget it." Truth was, he was relieved she'd stopped talking when she did, because it would give him time to think or procrastinate. Hell, even with what she'd already told him, he should call in the police. Addilene Wartenski's name was on an outstanding arrest warrant as an accomplice to murder, for God's sake. But it was one of those shoulds, for right now at least, he decided to ignore.

  A few miles up the road, he heard her sigh long enough and hard enough to expel every trace of oxygen from her lungs. "Cade?" she said, keeping her face toward the passenger-side window.

  "Uh-huh."

  "When we get home, I want to tell you a story. And I want you to listen—to all of it. Will you handle it?"

  He kept his eyes on the road, his mind off her odd turn of phrase. Even so, he sensed when she turned her head and set those blue-gray eyes of hers to bore into him. "Sure." He spared her a quick glance. "If that's what you want to do."

  "It's what I have to do," she said, her voice barely a whisper. They drove the last few miles without words, as if both of them knew her story would change everything, and neither of them were happy about it.

  He pulled into the Star Lake driveway, and she immediately said, "Your place, okay?"

  His cabin was dark, so he switched on the lamp beside the chair he'd been reading in earlier. He got them both a bottle of water from the fridge, then gestured with his chin to the chair. He sat on the edge of the plaid sofa. They were face-to-face, about five feet apart.

  The cabin was cool, shadowy, and silent as a crypt.

  "This is hard," she said, both hands clasping the bottled water. "Really hard. I wish I had your way with words. It would make it easier."

  "It's your story. Use any words you want to."

  That's the problem. "I don't have any—words. I've never talked about... before."

  "Try this," he said and smiled, "Once upon a time... It works for me."

  "And Zero." She looked curious but didn't smile back.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Once upon a time," she repeated as if testing the phrase on her tongue. She got up and went to the window overlooking the lake, stared out a long time. "Once upon a time, on a day long ago, there were three friends, Gus, Beauty, and... the Wart. They met on a mean street—" She looked over her shoulder at him. "That's the right term, isn't it? For a street people live on, hungry, cold most of the year, and wet for the rest?"

  "I'd say that covers it."

  She went on. The Wart met Gus and Beauty when she was twelve." She stopped, her mind seeming to wander. "It was outside Bertrand's Diner. Bertie was an okay guy, used to put his leftovers out in the alley after closing. Most places tossed them, but he always set his out in a couple of big steel pots for whoever wanted it. Sometimes there wasn't much, but there was always a crowd. Everybody was supposed to wait their turn; seems there was some kind of special pecking order." She shrugged. The Wart—hungry as usual—didn't know that, so she sort of pushed her way in, which really pissed off the big guy who'd thought up the pecking order, which meant he got his dibs on the food first. He really let her have it—"

  "What did he do to you—I mean, to Wart?"

  "He gave her a fistful of knuckles. Knocked her flat." A brief sad smile played over her lips. "She had a great shiner, though. Showed it off for days."

  Cade's stomach twisted, but he kept his mouth shut.

  "Anyway, Beauty helped her up, started to curse Big Guy out good, which made him go after her. Big mistake, because nobody messed with Beauty when Gus was around. Gus laid that guy right out. Broke his nose, it looked like, because there was blood all over the place. After that, Gus and Beauty adopted the Wart, and nobody messed with her, either. The power of three, Gus called them." A wistful look played across her face. "He said he was the Sun, Beauty was the Moon, and Wart was the Earth. Wart didn't know about all the planet stuff, but she knew they were... family. Good family, the kind who looked out for each other."

  "How long were they together?"

  "Until one awful night." Addy left the window and went back to sit in the chair. "About a year after the fight in the alley, the family was picked up on The Ave and slammed into the system. Until the system could figure out what to do with them, they put them in the home of a woman called Belle Bliss, the original Wicked Witch of the North. The wicked witch had two sons, Brett, who was harmless enough, and Frank, who... wasn't harmless. More like mean, sly, and vicious."

  Cade didn't know much about Bliss, but what she said tied in with his criminal record.

  "A man called Wayne Grover took us to Belle's place, kind of a rundown farmhouse outside of Seattle." She got up again and went back to the window, set her bottom on the low ledge and crossed her arms. "He was my caseworker, Beauty's too, as it turned out." She rubbed her forehead, looked tired suddenly, as if she were running out of energy. "He said he'd put us somewhere safe." The last was a murmur, a note to herself. "What he did was put us in hell..."

  Chapter 15

  Damn. Cade coped better with story-telling mode, and it looked as though Addy did as well. The second she made it personal, she'd taken on the air of that lost kid she'd been years before.

  He forced himself to a professional stillness he didn't feel, resisted the urge to take her in his arms, tell her everything would be okay. He needed to hear this and, more than that, she needed to get it out. "You mentioned an 'awful night,'" he said. "Tell me about it."

  She surprised him by pushing away from the window ledge and coming to sit beside him. "Turn more lights on," she said. "I need to see your face."

  "Why?"

  "So I can decide if, after I've told you the whole story, I need to hop the next train out of town before you call the men in blue." Gone was her wistful expression, the look of melancholy; she was all business now, sharp-eyed and focused. "I don't usually trust people much. Especially ones who were cops." She stopped, rubbed her palms together. She looked edgy again, afraid. "But this time, I have to. Trust someone, I mean."

  "That makes me what? Your only choice?" He turned on the light.

  She nodded, looked frustrated.

  "Then do it." In order to meet her eyes directly, he altered his position on the sofa, resting one knee on it and leaving one foot on the floor. "Tell me the whole story. Get it out, and we'll see where we go from there. Okay?"

  For a time all she did was breathe. The sound of it filled the quiet room. Then she mirrored his position on the sofa, settled in as if to ground herself, prepare for the words she was about to say. "When I was a teenager," she said. "I was... involved in a murder." The last four words came out so fast it was as if they'd burned her tongue.

  "Whose murder?" he asked, hating himself for having to ask a lying question, and grateful she didn't register his lack of shock.

  "My foster mother's, Belle Bliss."

  He kept his face impassive. "Go on."

  "We'd been at the Bliss place about a month when Frank raped Beauty in the barn. More of a shed, really. Dirty place, leaky, full of moldy hay. He kept her there for a long time. He had a knife..." She closed her eyes, looked as though she were struggling to sort through the ugliness. "When he let her go, she was a mess, hurting something awful, had a cut here"—she ran a hand over her collarbone area—"but Belle didn't care, wouldn't get a doctor." She stopped, and her forehead crinkled as if she'd remembered something long forgotten. "You know what she did? She hit Frank with a rolled up newspaper, across the back, like he was a dog who'd messed on the carpet. Then she went into the kitchen and got a bottle of whiskey—or something." She shook her head. "She said getting a doctor involved would mean police and police meant trouble. Frank was 'just havin' some fun,' she said, and Beauty better get used to it, because 'Frankie' wouldn't be the last man to 'dip his wick.'" Her expression hot and sick, she added, "I've never forgotten those words."

  "No, I guess not."

  She took a deep breath, went on, "Gus wasn't there when it happened. Some social worker had come, taken him downtown"�
��she shook her head, looked confused—"something about finding out who he was... I can't remember. But I know Frank wouldn't have done it if Gus had been around to stop him. Anyway, when Gus got back and found out what happened, he went after Frank. Nearly killed him before Belle broke things up—"

  "How did she do that?"

  "Not with a rolled up paper." Addy winced. "This time, she used a poker. Really tore Gus up." She touched her face fleetingly.

  "That'd do it."

  "After that, she locked us all in our room—Beauty's and mine—on the third floor, more of an attic really. She told me to 'fix up my stupid friends' and keep my mouth shut." She glanced away in disgust. "I remember her—and Frank—shoving Gus into the room, him stumbling to his knees, and Belle kicking him in the back so he fell facedown." She moistened her lips.

  "You were scared," Cade said, his gut knotted with fury.

  "Terrified. Belle was a horror, and Frank—" She let out a breath. "Anyway, after they left, when Beauty wasn't sobbing into—or pounding on—her pillow, she banged on the door, screaming how she was going to kill Frank—and Belle—the first chance she got. She was crazy, wild crazy. Gus tried to calm her down, but he wasn't in such good shape himself, could hardly see because of all the blood in his eyes. And his face..." She swallowed. "It looked like the poker had torn away part of his cheek. Beauty stopped yelling when he promised he'd take care of the Blisses 'for good' when the time was right. I told him he was as crazy as her, that nobody wanted to kill anyone, that we all had to keep it together, think things through." Her eyes looked into his, fervent and questioning. "Gus didn't really mean it, just said it to make Beauty stop crying."

  "What time was this?" He ignored her defense of Vanelleto, wanted to forge through the ugly scene she described, merge it with Grover's more objective account, Frank Bliss's statement to the police.

  "I'm not sure. Midafternoon sometime? I knew I needed to get to the bathroom, find some towels for Beauty and especially for Gus. He was bleeding so bad.... Anyway, I took the hinges off the door and sneaked down. The bathroom was on the second floor."