by Mary Lindsey
“Sure.”
“You ever thought about becoming a police officer?”
“Me?”
“No, I was talking to the wasp on the wall behind you. Figured it had high aspirations in law enforcement.”
Sure enough, a large red wasp was crawling up the wall. Rain crossed the room, hand raised.
“You might want to use your shoe or something,” Aunt Ruby warned. “The red ones sting like crazy.”
Not if he hit it right. And that was the one thing Rain knew how to do: hit. In one sweeping move, he lunged and slapped the wasp with an open palm, then stepped on it when it hit the floor.
Staring down at the broken pieces, he felt a pang of regret for killing it. It had been out of its element and looking for a way to escape—a victim of bad timing and worse reputation. Like him. He took the paper towel offered by his aunt and scooped up the body parts.
“Careful, they can still sting after they’re dead,” she warned.
He folded the paper towel with the insect parts inside.
“You’re fast,” she said. “And really accurate. Have you ever studied martial arts or taken boxing classes or anything? You’d be good at it.”
He shook his head. He’d had real-life instruction on the streets.
“You hungry?” Before he could respond, she struck out for the kitchen. “Go throw that thing away and wash up. I’ll scramble some eggs. Does that work?”
He nodded.
“Breakfast for dinner,” she said. “Your dad’s favorite.” An odd, stricken look crossed her face, and her lips drew into a thin line. Without another word, she disappeared into the kitchen.
By the time he’d ditched the bug, washed his hands, and made it to the kitchen, Aunt Ruby was beating the shit out of some eggs in a bowl. “Grab that skillet in the bottom drawer.” She nodded at the wide drawer under the stove. “And put it on that right front burner.”
She lit the flame and drizzled some oil into the skillet out of a wine bottle with a silver spout. “Do you cook?” she asked as she poured the eggs into the pan.
“No.”
“Me neither, but eggs are easy.”
He leaned against the counter and watched her jerky movements as she scraped the eggs from the bottom of the pan once they’d cooked and solidified. It took all his willpower to not push her for information about his dad and how she knew him, but she seemed shaken.
“So, how much do you know about Roger?” she asked finally without eye contact.
Roger. The guy had never had a name until now. His heart pounded painfully.
Aunt Ruby dumped the eggs on two plates, with one having at least twice as much as the other, before returning the skillet to the cooktop with a bang. She handed him the fuller plate.
“Nothing. Mom never talked about him.”
She stilled for a moment, and it appeared her eyes got wetter, but she turned away before Rain could be certain.
“He was a good man. Did dumb things but good deep down.” She sat at the table, and Rain slid into the chair opposite, studying her face, which she’d schooled into a noncommittal whatever expression. He knew that look. He’d mastered it for when the cops or authorities questioned him.
He took a bite of eggs and waited. He was good at waiting. He’d done it his whole life.
Aunt Ruby set down her fork. “I’m sad you didn’t get to meet him.”
His mom had led him to believe her dealings with his father were nothing more than a hook-up with a stranger resulting in a bad outcome: him. Yet, here was her twin sister talking about the guy like they were close and calling him a good man. He dug into the eggs, hoping she’d continue.
“We grew up in this house, your mom and I.” She looked around the small kitchen. “I always thought she’d come back home. I’d hoped…” She shook her head and took a bite of her eggs.
His mind flew back to Moth. Like him, Rain’s mom had a place to go, but even with the burden of a tiny child, she’d preferred the streets. His insides twisted as anger and sadness warred painfully.
Aunt Ruby’s phone rang, and they both flinched. “Sorry,” she said, reading the screen. “Chief is calling.”
“Yes?” she answered. Her eyes flicked to Rain’s face then back to her eggs. “Um, sure. I’ll go right now.”
She hung up and grabbed her weapon belt from the file cabinet. “Wanna go on a ride-along?”
He shoved the last bite of eggs in his mouth. “Sure.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’ll be boring.” She fastened the belt around her waist as he cleared both plates from the table. “The most exciting calls I’ve been on recently were a treed raccoon and the sparrow that flew through Mrs. Whittaker’s window and got stuck in her sunroom.” She grinned. “And I didn’t even get to cuff anybody.”
He dried his hands and followed her out the door, sliding into the front passenger seat of the cruiser. “What’s the call about this time?”
She shook her head and put the car in gear. “Oh, it’s Helga Goff again. She lives all by herself out past the east end of the rock. Honestly, if I lived out there, I’d get spooked, too. She’s spotted everything from space aliens to Sasquatch to Wolf Man over the years. I suspect she’s just lonely and likes the attention. Always has fresh baked cookies.”
She turned onto the highway and headed toward a large stone hill, rising in the moonlight like the shell of a huge, smooth turtle. “Beware of the cookies. She always leaves out one thing or another. They’re terrible.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“This time she swears there’s a mermaid behind her back hedge.”
He chuckled.
“Yeah, I always get the winners.”
“How many people are on the police force here?”
“Just the chief, me, and Gerald, the guy who does dispatch, filing, answers phones, works on the cruiser, and is the station handyman.”
“Does he want to be a cop?”
“I’ve no idea. I doubt it. He’d be a menace to society with a weapon. Can’t even use the stapler safely.”
A huge hill loomed to the left of the car now, and it seemed to glow in the moonlight. “What’s that?”
“Oh. Enchanted Rock. It’s a giant dome of pink granite pushed up by volcanic activity. People come from all over to climb it. The Parks and Wildlife Department oversees a couple thousand acres of recreational land, including Enchanted Rock.”
“Enchanted.”
“Yeah. The Native Americans indigenous to this area believed it held magic. Later, the German settlers had a legend about it. Some of their descendants still believe it.” She shook her head and laughed. “It’s said that on a full moon, the power of the earth reaches for the heavens at that one spot, infusing the surrounding area with magic strong enough to change man to beast.”
He stared at the menacing rock, crouching as if ready to rise from the ground in the eerie glow of the full moon. “What kind of beast?”
“Dunno. Maybe a mermaid.” She winked. “Let’s ask Mrs. Goff. Her people go way back around here.”
Gravel crunched under the tires as she turned onto a dirt road running toward the hill, ending at a small cottage with ornate wooden cutouts around the porch.
An elderly white-haired woman wearing a bathrobe waited on the porch.
“Remember, the cookies are at your own risk,” Aunt Ruby warned with a grin as she pushed open her car door.
“Took you long enough to get here,” the woman said.
Rain joined his aunt on the sidewalk. “This is my sister’s boy, Aaron,” Aunt Ruby said.
The woman eyed him, eyebrows raised. “Yes, I know.”
Ruby shifted uncomfortably. “You called about seeing something suspicious?”
The old woman’s eyes were still fixed on him as if she were trying to look inside him, and his throat tightened under her unnerving stare. “Yes.” Finally, she looked away, and he could breathe. “There’s a mermaid behind my back hedge.” She held
out a plate of cookies. “I baked some cookies for you. Would you like one?”
Aunt Ruby shot Rain an amused glance. “Thank you. We’d love one.”
She took a small, oddly shaped cookie with blackened edges, and so did he, and Mrs. Goff smiled.
“I’ll, um, go check the back hedge. You get the barn, okay, Aaron? If you see a mermaid, the code word is ‘Ariel.’ Yell it and I’ll come take it into custody. Periodically, let’s give an all clear as we go.”
He bit back a smile. “Will do.”
Mrs. Goff’s brow furrowed with disappointment. “Aren’t you going to eat your cookies?”
“Work before reward. Let’s go, Aaron.”
His aunt pulled him around the side of the house. “Throw it away in the bushes and tell her it was delicious. You’ll thank me for this.” When he looked over his shoulder, the woman was peering around the side of the porch.
“Make this look good,” she said, pulling out her flashlight. “Give her a fun night. Barn is that way.” She pointed to the left at a structure the size of a two-car garage before stalking toward a row of shoulder-high bushes lining the back of the property, swinging the flashlight dramatically left and right. “All clear!” she shouted.
With a chuckle, he followed a foot trail over the rocky terrain to the wooden barn. After touching his tongue to the edge of the cookie, he grimaced, spit, and then dropped the nasty-tasting thing between a cactus and a jagged rock the height of a bench. It tasted like the woman had used salt instead of sugar.
He opened the double doors and looked inside, finding nothing but some old buckets and empty, open-topped wooden crates. Obviously, this building hadn’t been used in a while. “All clear!” he shouted, playing along with Ruby’s game.
He closed the doors and circled toward the back of the building, picking his way over rocks and patches of cacti, grateful for his steel-toed boots. When he made the turn behind the barn, tension clawed his spine, and his adrenaline spiked. Frozen in place, he held his breath. Something was here, and it sure as hell wasn’t a mermaid. This was the same feeling he’d had at the cornfield last night—the unmistakable sensation of being watched.
Scanning from one side to the other, he searched the rugged area behind the barn that stretched for miles all the way to the base of Enchanted Rock. If someone were out there, it would be impossible to spot him.
“All clear!” his aunt shouted in the distance.
He took a shallow breath, still not moving, as something slunk through the shadows past a copse of trees fifty or so yards out. Another something followed it. They moved quickly, at least three of them, like dogs or coyotes or maybe mountain lions, low to the ground, before disappearing behind a cluster of boulders.
Just animals doing what animals do. Nothing sinister. He took a deep breath and relaxed, almost giddy with relief. There were no skinheads or gangs hunting him around here. He was safe for the first time in years, he reminded himself.
“All clear!” he yelled to his aunt as he headed along the side of the barn, cursing internally for losing his shit over nothing.
Right before he made it to the path, something crashed inside the barn, like a bucket falling over.
Heart hammering, he snuck back to the building, grabbing a two-by-four board leaning against the outside that would make a good weapon, before swinging the doors open.
He stood in the doorway, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the barn. Nothing was there. Maybe it had been a raccoon, like his aunt had mentioned at the house. Or a feral cat. He squinted into darkness broken only by moonlight spilling through the open doors across the dirt floor.
“Aaron?” Ruby’s voice called.
Board in hand, he prowled along the left side, across the back to the right corner, the most shadowed spot in the space. By now, his eyes had adjusted to the dark.
And there, crouched in a ball, tucked up tight behind a crate, was the mermaid.
Wild, tangled hair partially screened pale shoulders, arms, and breasts. And then, her eerie, familiar eyes met his, her expression as naked and exposed as her body.
“Aaron,” his aunt called again. “All clear?”
Holy shit. No. Nothing was clear. Why was the girl from his calculus class naked in Mrs. Goff’s barn? Here, in the middle of nowhere.
“You okay?” he whispered.
She nodded once.
“Need help?”
She shook her head, hard.
“Need a ride home?”
Again, she shook her head.
He stared, spellbound by her primal, terrifying beauty. Like she’d sprung from the earth itself.
“Aaron?” His aunt’s voice sounded closer.
The girl shrank further into the shadows. His eyes locked on hers, unsure what to do. He wasn’t comfortable leaving her alone, naked, in the middle of this harsh place. He should reveal her. Tell his aunt what he’d found and make sure she got home safely. That guy named Thomas had called her Friederike. The other one, Kurt, had called her Freddie.
Wordlessly, she pleaded. He knew this look. It was the same one he’d seen only weeks before on the girl in the park. Help me. Don’t let them hurt me.
“All clear,” he shouted. Her eyes never left his, as if she was as confused by his actions as he was by hers. “Nothing here. All clear.”
Five
Rain relaxed in his desk when Freddie and her three buddies skidded into the calculus classroom right as the bell rang. He’d been uneasy all night about leaving her in Mrs. Goff’s barn. Not having wheels or any way to go check on her was messed up. At least in the city, he could catch a bus. And then to make things worse, Ruby clammed up tight on the way home and said she was too tired to talk about his mom or dad.
Taking a deep breath, he willed his heart to slow as he watched Freddie slip into her seat, giving the dark-haired guy scrambling to his desk next to hers one of the finest go-to-hell looks he’d ever seen. Then, his heart turned back into a jackhammer when she twisted and stared directly at him. He stared right back, and to his surprise, she looked away first.
All night, he’d tossed and turned, wondering how she’d ended up naked in that barn—trying really hard not to focus too much on the naked part. Maybe her clothes had been stashed somewhere in the building—or maybe she’d had a ride nearby. Either way, she must’ve had shoes with her. No way could she have gotten far barefoot with all those prickly plants and rocks.
All logical conclusions pointed to her being there to hook up with someone. Why else would she have been naked? But he’d seen no evidence of anyone else, and her clothes would have been there. She’d also seemed scared—beyond being caught fooling around.
A middle-aged woman with short brown hair entered the classroom and shut the door behind her, then wrote her name on the board. “I’m Miss Kendleton. Mr. Pratt had a family emergency and won’t be here today.”
Again, Freddie gave the guy next to her a vicious glare, and he recoiled, tucking his chin like a scolded toddler.
“Please pull out your homework, and I’ll come by to check it,” Miss Kendleton said.
Rain tore the page of work out of his binder that he’d half-assed his way through between classes and placed it on his desk. Neither Freddie nor her three friends made any move to get their homework.
The substitute worked her way around the room and eventually reached Rain’s desk. She took his paper and, without even looking at the work, put a checkmark on the top next to his name, then ran her fingers down the grade-book page. “You wrote Rain, but the only Ryland here is Aaron. Is that you?”
He could feel his classmates’ eyes on him as he nodded.
“Any relation to Ruby and Lynn?”
“My aunt and mom.” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“I went to school with them. I’m in Ruby’s book club.”
Ms. James had mentioned the book club yesterday. Did everyone in this hick town know everyone else? And was every person who lived here in A
unt Ruby’s book club? Evidently, and it made him uncomfortable. It was easy to get lost in a big city. Here, everyone was up in your business.
As she moved on to the guy in front of him, Rain glanced up to find several students staring at him with interest, including Freddie. Her hair was tamed into a ponytail today, but she wore the same clothes as yesterday. Her wrinkled jeans were smeared with dirt and green stains like she’d rolled down a hill or something. And she had some wicked scratches on her arms.
Those hadn’t been there in the barn. He’d seen every inch of her arms—as well as other parts that had kept him up all night—and there had been no scratches.
Her eyes narrowed as she noticed he was staring at the marks, and she whipped back around in her chair.
As the teacher explained a formula and worked several problems on the board, he studied Freddie’s three friends. They appeared to be in the same clothes as yesterday, too, though he hadn’t paid as much attention to them as he had her. The dark-haired guy in the front row cast occasional nervous glances at Freddie, who ignored him. The skinny guy she’d called Kurt, sitting next to the big one named Thomas, had a cut lip and a grass stain on his shirt, and neither of the boys wore the cocky attitude he’d seen the day before.
The teacher erased the board and wrote a new problem, then announced, “Okay. I want you to pair up in groups of two or three to solve this. It’s due by the end of the period.”
Perfect. Maybe he could get some answers—and not to the math problem. He shot to his feet and walked along the outside wall to stand right in front of the desk of the dark-haired guy in the first row. After the boys had teamed up yesterday, he had no desire to make nice. “Move,” was all he said. The guy’s eyes were as dark as the Freddie’s were pale. He made no move, but the girl stood, as if to leave. Rain took her hand. “Please sit. We need to talk.”
She jerked her hand away and glared at the two girls a row back who quit staring and lowered their heads, suddenly entranced with their work. “I’d rather not.”
“I can’t imagine why.” He narrowed his eyes at the guy. “Move. Now.”
