F-Federal time? I thought, queasy at the very sound of the term. That’s right, I realized, this is hard-core crime we’re talking about.
Up until now, it had all been kind of a lark for me—a rollicking daytrip away from the iron chains that had kept me imprisoned at Pinnacle. But with all of the deep shit my father was in right now, and the fact that I couldn’t even qualify for a job that didn’t include peddling drugs or turning tricks, suddenly robbery seemed like the cleanest option.
“You’re on, partner!” I burst emphatically, before I could dare to let myself chicken out. I mean, what other choices did I really have? “But from now on, you call me Robin.”
“Sure,” Creek replied casually, even though he was staring me down with his glacial blue eyes to test my courage. “So meet me back in these woods tomorrow morning at six o’clock, sharp. No more sleeping in till noon. We’ve got work to do.”
He turned and walked away.
And I absolutely hated myself for thinking it, but even his back side was beautiful.
Just as he’d entered a really dark patch of shadows, and I thought he might slip away entirely, he hesitated for a moment and glanced back.
“By the way,” he said with steel in his voice, “I man the getaway vehicle from here on out. Got that? ’Cause you drive like shit.”
Chapter 7
By the time I found my way back to the clearing at Turtle Shores, I was still shaking. Holy Moses, near as I could tell, I’d just closed a deal with the Devil! He was a drop-dead gorgeous Devil, I had to admit, and I think that’s what scared me even more.
But if I didn’t do something serious about my cash flow, these trashy clothes I had on weren’t just going to be a trailer park joke—they’d be the story of my life. And I’d probably end up pregnant at 16 with a dozen crummy tattoos all over my body and only two teeth left after getting strung-out on meth.
Yet as I neared our trailer, the thought did occur to me that if it hadn’t been for Creek hiding him in a bunker last night, my dad might’ve been nabbed by the mob. Or cops could’ve traced us to the Mazda, and we’d both be in the slammer.
Why did everything have to be so complicated? Creek was good/bad, bad/good—which one was it?
I halted in front of our trailer door and shook my head.
Maybe that’s not the right question, I thought. Maybe I just need to shut down my emotions and get all the money I can, as fast as I can, and sort out reality later.
I took a deep breath and braced myself to face Brandi before I opened the door, knowing she was probably playing a rousing hand of cards with my dad by now. Hopefully, it wasn’t strip poker.
But when I swung the door open, Brandi was nowhere to be found.
In fact, my dad was all stretched out, asleep again on the couch. I noticed that the plate of ham and beans sat empty on the small table beside him, so Brandi must’ve succeeded in feeding him something. Stepping inside, I gazed at my father, who looked so cozy with Granny’s colorful patchwork quilt wrapped around him like a cocoon. His face appeared sweet and innocent, with none of the “Crocodile Cunning” that had made him so famous at Tweedle, Beckman & McArthur.
Hesitantly, I crouched down in front him and pushed aside a wisp of hair that had fallen across his forehead. It felt strange to stroke his warm skin and feel the slight perspiration on his brow—to touch his face at all, for that matter. I mean, this was the man who’d never even bothered to give me a fatherly peck on the cheek, let alone read me a bedtime story or tuck me in at night.
“Was I really so unlovable, Daddy?” I whispered, my voice splintering a little. “Or were you just too obsessed with work all those years to ever notice me?”
Inside, I half-hoped he might fess up for once to his role in our pathetic family tragedy, even though he always pretended it didn’t matter, since he made more money than God. So when his breathing hitched for a second, it sent my heart racing.
I leaned in closer, eager to hear if he might have some witty explanation for himself. But all he did was release a long, slow breath, accompanied by a ragged snore.
Of course!
Who was I to think that the great Royle McArthur, the most blood-thirsty law shark ever to circle for the kill in Cincinnati, would lower himself to give me an answer?
That is, if there even was such a thing as Royle McArthur.
Or shall I say, Doyle—
I stared at his crumpled, sleepy face and slid my hand from his forehead down to his cheek, gently patting it with my palm.
“Who are you, Daddy?” I asked, secretly wishing it was possible for me to feel his soul before he woke up and put on one of his clever masks again. No sooner did my fingers release his cheek when I heard him mumble.
“Alay-seeee-ahhh,” he said, somewhere between a call and a moan.
“Myyy . . . Alay-seeee-ahhh . . .”
In that moment, his expression became stern, and I swear his voice sounded rocky and almost a little . . . haunted, as though his mind was searching for something precious he’d lost.
And I couldn’t tell if maybe he was having a nightmare, or if he was physically ailing.
“Daddy?” I jiggled him a little. “Y-You okay? Should we get you to a doctor?”
His lashes fluttered. Then I saw his eyes barely open a crack. He appeared groggy, as if he were somewhere very far away. As he struggled to focus on my features, taking in the curve of my forehead and cheeks, all at once his eyes grew as big as silver dollars.
Bolstering himself with his good arm beneath him, he managed to pitch his body upright.
Whoa—my dad stared at me, wide-eyed, like he’d just seen a ghost.
“Alay-see-ahh?” he gasped, his face turning a little pale.
There was such a sad yearning in his voice, like his heart was . . . breaking.
“Amorrrey . . . amorrrey mio!”
Beads of sweat shone on his forehead now. Shaking, he reached out his good hand to touch my cheek, a bit wary, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether I was real.
“Myyy . . . Alay-see-ahh . . .”
With a deep release from his chest, my father sighed as though the mere sound of those words had filled him up with a golden light. And for the first time ever, I saw his eyes actually sparkle, as if he’d just caught sight of an angel.
Oh Lord, I thought, if only I could bottle the way he’s looking at me right now, and keep it till the end of time.
Because it was pure . . . love.
And I wanted to throw my arms around him right then and there.
But I couldn’t, because I was too mesmerized by the way it felt to have my very own father caress my cheek, like . . . like—
He genuinely cared about me.
And then his eyes welled up.
“Where . . . arrrrre . . . yooou?” he struggled to say. A couple of tears slipped down his cheek, slowly dripping onto his purple paisley collar.
“I-I’m right here, Daddy,” I answered, my eyes moistening up, too. “It’s me, Robin—remember? We drove from Cincinnati to Bender Lake. Yesterday.”
“Baby?”
My dad’s gaze traced the inside of our trailer for a few seconds before returning to settle on my face.
“Baby girrrl?”
“Yeah, Daddy,” I snuffled, struck by the tender way he’d said those words, as though maybe he’d kept me cradled in his heart all along, but I just never knew it. “I’m your daughter. Your Robin. Do you feel all right?”
Without warning, the color in my dad’s face blanched from a shallow pink to an almost green. And before I could stop him, he began to hurl at the orange shag rug in our trailer, covering his brand new shoes with regurgitated bits of ham and beans.
“Oh, Daddy,” I cried, “you’ve emptied your whole lunch! And you got your nice shoes all messy, too.”
Fortunately, Granny’s quilt had escaped his path of vomit. I swiftly grabbed a towel that was hanging on the oven handle with the words Buckeye Motel printed on it.
&n
bsp; “Here you go,” I said, vigorously wiping off his brown, lace-up oxfords. Underneath the puke, I could see they were a burnished mahogany with dapper wing tips—they must’ve cost a fortune.
“They look as good as new, now. Creek brought you these shoes,” I paused, still feeling scared to death and yet grateful to the guy at the same time. “So you wouldn’t have to go barefoot anymore.”
“Gooth . . . booey,” my dad nodded with a smile.
“What?”
“Goood . . . boyyyy,” he repeated emphatically.
Oh—good boy, I realized. “Um, yeah, I guess,” I shrugged, giving his shoes a few extra swipes. “Kinda depends on how you look at it.”
My dad stared for a while at his feet, admiring the luxurious leather while I mopped up the rest of his goopy vomit. I held my nose and tossed the towel into a trash can. Reaching for a paper towel on the kitchen counter, I cleaned off my hands as best I could and dropped it in the sink, then gently patted my dad on the knee.
“He, um—he hid you last night, didn’t he, Daddy?”
“Whoooo?” My dad replied.
I stood up and swallowed hard, refusing to fall for one of my dad’s slick maneuvers again. This was exactly the kind of evasive response that he always resorted to whenever I asked him a direct question during my childhood that he didn’t feel like answering.
“You know who, so don’t start acting dumb with me,” I said flatly. “Creek. He hid you from the mob last night, huh? So what have you gotten yourself into this time, Doyle?”
Immediately, my father tilted up his chin, and I saw his face magically turn to stone—a granite composure that I’m quite sure he’d used a bazillion times to beat down his Cincinnati law competitors. And he might have appeared unreadeable to the ordinary layman, but I was his daughter—and I could see the cornered possum look in his eyes. Mean as sin, like usual, but equally scared.
He didn’t fool me at all.
I had the upper hand now, and he knew it.
Folding my arms, I sighed. “You can start by explaining the name Doyle, Daddy. Apparently, there’s a forty-plus chick around here named Granny Tinker who claims she’s your cousin? As in, you grew up in these woods?”
I was hoping to make him crumble. To make him confess his roots and illegal pursuits and spit out our real family history, if our surname was even McArthur at all. And who on earth was my true mother, anyway? He’d always dismissed her as some high-society floozy named “Bitsy” who’d taken off with a Chilean mountain climber right after I was born. And he claimed that she and her Latin lover had fallen to their deaths in the Andes at 12,000 feet into a fissure of ice.
So of course there were no graves, or even markers! How could I have been such an idiot and bought that ridiculous story? I should have known it was just another one of his tall tales.
Tapping my foot, I kept up my unyielding glare at my dad. All the while, I couldn’t help wondering if my real mom could be this Alessia he’d been dreaming so passionately about? Or had I simply been placed in a basket and dropped off one day on his doorstep by some forgotten lover? Good God, she might have even been a white trash chick from Turtle Shores . . .
I was close to vomiting myself now.
And knowing my dad—or who I used to think was my dad—anything was possible. But unfortunately, I wasn’t about to find out now. Because instead of caving in to my demand, my father’s gaze froze into mine with the most rigid stare I’d ever seen in my life. It actually made me shiver.
And then his lips tightened and puckered a little, as if he were working with all his might to form his words just right.
“Wobbinnnn,” he said in a weighty growl that I’d honestly never heard from him before. He lifted his good arm and swallowed my fingers in his. His grip became so tight that it made me wince.
“Creeeek . . . a . . .verrry . . . goooood . . . boy.”
He sucked on his lip for a moment and inhaled a big breath.
“Gooood . . . boyy.”
His lower lip quivered in a small spasm, then jerked awkwardly back into place so he could talk again.
“Don’t . . . break . . . hizz . . . hearrrrrt.”
My father’s words kept ricocheting around in my brain as I carefully escorted him across the Turtle Shores compound. What made him think I could possibly break Creek’s heart? I mean, the guy was a backwoods Adonis! Had my dad somehow spied that scar on Creek’s heart tattoo and made a quick assumption, like I did? Or was this his weird way of telling me that he thought I’d grown up to be pretty?
I sighed and kept a firm grip on my father’s elbow, unable to sort out the mystery behind his meaning. Like usual, whenever I tried to understand him better, he always played a slick shell game on me.
Figures, I thought. No wonder he was a successful lawyer.
Glancing up, I peered across the meadow to try and find the whereabouts of Lorraine’s trailer. I was hoping she might have a little more food left for my dad, because I feared he might grow too weak on his now empty stomach. Maybe she had something less heavy than ham and beans—like chicken soup, or crackers? Squinting hard, I studied every tree, bush, and boulder that lined the perimeter, wondering which ones might actually camouflage Lorraine’s place. All the while, I had to watch our every step to make sure we didn’t slip into one of the TNT Twins’ holes. But by the time I managed to slowly shuffle my dad across the entire compound without plunging into a single vat of pudding or jello, I still hadn’t spotted a thing. Then all of a sudden, I felt my dad stiffen and tug on my arm. He leaned his body to the left with all of his weight.
“Thizzzzss . . . wayyy,” he insisted.
“Okay, this way?” I nodded, allowing him to pull me towards a large stand of maple trees. As we grew closer, just beyond them, I could see an old pile of chopped wood that was stacked six logs high and covered with moss. Behind the wood pile, for a fleeting second, I thought I saw sunlight glint off a piece of chrome beneath some overgrown bushes. My dad continued towards it like it was due north on his internal GPS, and sure enough, the most glorious aroma on earth wafted past us.
Oh my Lord—
Warm apples . . . with a hint of cinnamon and vanilla . . . followed by the rich, buttery scent of a golden-baked crust.
Sweet Mother of God, it smelled like paradise!
I was weak at the knees before I even knew what hit me—and ready to compete with my dad in the drool department—because I hadn’t had a single thing to eat all day. And in my eagerness, I pressed on past the woodpile to the bushes, lugging at my dad to get closer to the source of what surely must be homemade apple pie. Just when I was lucky enough to spot another hint of chrome that I thought for certain revealed Lorraine’s trailer, I stumbled over a metal trip wire covered by leaves and bit the ground. Within seconds, a fleet of orange beaks were ripping at my knees and elbows.
“Ow—Ow!” I yelped, flailing my arms. I forced myself to peek past the geese to locate my dad, who was fortunately still standing and out of harm’s way. “Attack Geese! Back off!” I cried, covering my face. “Tell them to back off, Daddy!”
“ZZZSSSSSSSSSSS!”
I heard a gigantic hissing sound, and instantly I feared that the Colonel might have unleashed boa constrictors to aid his bizarre animal defense squad. Just my luck, to get squeezed to death after being bloodied by a blur of beaks in this crazy Trailer Park from Hell—
“ZZZSSSSSSSSSSS!”
The sound was even louder and more insistent this time.
And to my surprise, the Attack Geese backed up, honking indignantly.
Panting, I sat up on my elbows, eyeing the hostile flock that reluctantly stepped a few feet away from me with their wings raised and surly looks on their faces. Another big “Zzzsssssss” cut through the air, and I glanced at my dad, shocked to discover that he was the source of the sound.
Then, in a dramatic, sweeping motion, my father lifted his good arm like a mighty, outstretched wing. The geese honked nasty retorts, tossing t
heir beaks in offense. But when he reached over to grab his limp arm and hiked it up, hissing again as he let both limbs fall back to his sides in a big wave, it sent the geese flying. They stormed off into a thicket of bushes, rattling the leaves until they were out of sight.
Shaken, I stood to my feet and dusted the leaves and dirt off.
And then I couldn’t stop myself from giggling.
I mean, really Daddy. Playing “Alpha Goose,” complete with hisses and pretend wings? Where’d he learn that one, from Old Mother Hubbard? The nasty expression that still clung to his face made him look like the fiercest, badass gander ever to hit these boondocks.
And just then, my dad caught the amused look in my eyes and started to chuckle, too. He smiled and winked at me, clearly proud of himself.
“Geezss . . . arrr . . . dummm,” he slurred.
Geese are dumb—
Yep, I nodded, scanning the red welts on my arms. But that didn’t mean their bites hurt any less.
When I glanced back up at my dad, he pointed to a tall mound of bushes.
“Low-wayne,” he asserted.
He rubbed his tummy as if he were a happy Buddha and motioned to the bushes once more.
Oh, Lorraine’s place, I comprehended. And just as I’d hoped, he aimed at the nearby overgrowth of honeysuckle laced with about a million strands of ivy. I stepped over to my dad and grabbed his elbow again, directing him to the source of that heavenly aroma. When we reached the bushes, my dad pushed aside the dense foliage to reveal a metal door painted in shades of green and brown.
Camo colors, I realized. Reaching out, I tried to pull open the handle, but it was locked. Then my stomach growled impatiently, so I gave the door a hard knock.
Nothing, not even honking Attack Geese this time.
“Um, well, I guess she’s not home,” I said apologetically, feeling awful that I’d made my dad walk all that way.
My father rolled his eyes and sighed.
And when I lifted my hand to knock again, he grabbed it and shook his head like he thought I was simple.
Robin in the Hood (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 1) Page 7
