Son of the Enemy

by Ana Barrons

  Hiding.

  Waiting.

  She could no longer hear the pinging from her bedroom. Why had it stopped? As though it had a mind of its own, her hand raised the butcher knife higher, grasped it tighter. Was John outside or inside?

  The floorboards in the hallway between her bedroom and office began to creak. She tried to swallow but her spit had dried up. If it was John, wouldn’t he say something? Let her know it was just him?

  “John?” she whispered, knowing he probably couldn’t hear her.

  No answer. But the floorboards stopped creaking.

  She closed her eyes. She badly wanted to shout out his name. Or yell for help. Or do something. Anything but stand here with her back to the wall and wait for whoever it was to sneak up and stick a knife in her chest.

  I love you…

  Thud.

  Nausea churned in her stomach. Too much wine. Too many terrifying memories, sounds and images that appeared as though in a dream. She wasn’t sure she knew what was real anymore. Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. She screamed and pivoted, hit a wall of muscle.

  “Fuck! What the— Jesus, Hannah, it’s me!”

  “John?”

  He reached behind her and flipped the light on. Hannah blinked at the sudden brightness, and then gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. Blood coated the tip of the butcher knife she still held close to her chest, the point facing John. Her arm went limp. The knife hit the linoleum floor with a clatter.

  “Oh my God.” She backed away from him. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean— I thought it was him!”

  “Why were you holding a butcher knife?” He lifted up his navy sweater and tee shirt, and studied the oozing red slice the knife had made just over his bottom rib.

  Hannah felt sick at the sight of it. “Oh God. I stabbed you.” She raised her eyes to his face and saw the confusion there. “I didn’t even move the knife, the point was just sticking out and you pulled me close…”

  To her surprise he grinned. “This is what I get for making a move on you, huh?”

  “We have to get you to a doctor,” she said, too upset to be amused.

  “Let’s just clean it up. I don’t think it’s very deep.”

  She led him into the bathroom, sat him down on the toilet lid and grabbed a washcloth from the small cabinet under the sink. She soaked it in cold water and turned to him—and saw he was bare-chested.

  She inhaled sharply, but stopped herself before she said, Holy mother of God or Holy shit or an equally blasphemous expression that would have revealed her stunned, purely female reaction to seeing his male torso with its broad shoulders, well-developed muscles, flat stomach and dusting of black hair over his chest.

  He gave her a slow smile. “Mind holding that to my cut?”

  She leaned in and pressed the washcloth to the cut. It was an awkward position, and she didn’t know where to put her other hand, so she rested it on his shoulder. His skin was hot. His arm came around her legs and she met his eyes.

  “Just keeping you from wobbling,” he said. But his eyes said something else entirely.

  “You can still look at me like that after I stabbed you?”

  His expression grew serious. “You said you thought it was him. And I got the impression you were referring to a specific him as opposed to whoever was outside.” He paused. “So, who did you think I was?”

  She swallowed. John was running his hand up and down her jeans behind her knees, and she liked it too much to stop him. He was soothing her, making her feel safe…and turning her on. Somehow her hand had moved from his right shoulder to the curve of his neck.

  “Um, no one,” she said. “Just…whoever. So maybe it was an animal, then? A deer? I see them outside my window all year long.”

  He looked her in the eye. “Someone has been mutilating squirrels and leaving them lined up under your porch. Like offerings. Or threats. I find that very disturbing.”

  She’d seen the squirrels too, and yes, she’d found them disturbing. But she’d been fighting her fears for so long she wasn’t sure anymore which were rational and which weren’t. “Couldn’t an animal have done that?”

  “Animals don’t line them up. And it looks like someone used a knife on the squirrels, not teeth. Do you have any idea who would do something like that?”

  She shivered. “I don’t know. Maybe a student with a sick sense of humor?”

  “Twisted people mutilate small animals. Anyone who would do this as a prank needs psychological help.”

  She tried to concentrate on holding the washcloth to his wound, but between the mutilated squirrels and the man she was pressed against, she wasn’t sure which end was up.

  “I’d like to go back out and take a better look,” he said. “In the morning.”

  She swallowed at the implications of his words. “There was a pinging noise…when you went out.”

  “The chain on your ceiling fan. There was a stiff breeze out there.”

  She let out a breath. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  She lifted the washcloth from his wound and was shocked by how much blood it had soaked up. And fresh blood continued to ooze from the entry site. “Good Lord. I should take you to the emergency room.”

  “Nah. Got any peroxide? And a bandage of some kind? Even a big Band-Aid would probably work.”

  She blotted the cut and leaned closer to judge how deep it was. “I think it could use a couple of stitches.”

  “Let’s clean it up and then we’ll see.”

  “Here, put your hand over this.” She eased away from his body and pulled out peroxide, gauze pads, tape and a box of butterfly bandages. She tried to kneel in front of him, but he had to move his legs apart so she’d fit. Oh God. This was more temptation than she could manage.

  “I better do this quickly,” she murmured.

  “Take your time.” She didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling.

  She leaned in and rested her forearms high on his thighs, pulled his hand away and poured a thin stream of peroxide over the cut. John hissed at the sting. She blotted it and fit the butterfly over the cut, which stopped most of the bleeding. At some point while she was fixing up his cut, John’s hand had gone to her shoulder, and was now squeezing it. She looked up, concerned that she’d hurt him.

  “Are you in pain?” she asked.

  His voice sounded strained. “Yeah, but not in the way you think.”

  It took her a few seconds to figure out what he meant. “Oh,” she said stupidly, scrambling to get up off her knees. The hand that had been on her shoulder slid down her arm, turned her hand over and pressed warm, soft lips to her palm. He gazed up at her with those half-closed hazel eyes, then stood. Without warning he cupped her face in his big hands and kissed her, gently but with barely restrained hunger.

  He pulled back for a second, whispered, “More,” and took her lips again, easing them open to make way for a thick, hot tongue she immediately imagined in other, more intimate places. She groaned deep in her throat, and he pressed her back into the tile wall, his body hard against hers. His hands found hers and raised them above her head, fingers intertwined, pinning her. Taking control of her.

  He slanted his mouth over hers and deepened the kiss, tongues tangling and straining. They were fast approaching the point of no return, she knew. Her breasts felt heavy, aching with the need to be held in his hands. And once that happened…

  With a supreme effort, she pulled her mouth away and breathed, “John…no more.”

  They were both panting, and his body was still pressed against hers. He rubbed his face through her hair, nuzzled her neck, whispered in a low, urgent voice, “Let me stay, Hannah. I want you so bad.”

  That almost did her in. But in some dim corner of her brain, she understood that if she slept with him now she’d regret it in the morning. So she brought their joined hands down and gently eased his big body off her, then slid sideways until their bodies weren’t touching anymore. John ran both ha
nds through his hair, the muscles in his arms and chest tight. Good Lord, the man was beautiful. And able to turn her on with a touch. She shivered.

  He gave her a wry smile. “Don’t tell me you’re cold after that.”

  “It’s the contrast,” she said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.

  They gazed at each other for a few moments, and then John grabbed his shirt and sweater off the counter and pulled them over his head. “I guess I didn’t keep my promise not to come on to you. I really thought I could do it, but I should have known better.”

  “You always come on to women who stab you?”

  He grinned. “Only if it’s an accident. The ones who do it deliberately I try to avoid.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll bet there’s been more than one woman who’s fantasized about sticking a knife in you, John Emerson.”

  Edna Krantz sat straight up in her bed and held a hand to her chest. Good Lord, what had woken her? Rain tapped lightly against the windows, and she didn’t remember hearing thunder. She climbed out from under the covers, shivering, and walked through the darkened house to the kitchen. The linoleum floor was wet and covered with leaves, telling her exactly what had woken her.

  “No good rotten boy,” she muttered. She wadded up paper towels and got down on her knees. “Knew it right from the start. How I ever gave birth to such a pathetic creature I will never know.” She braced herself on one arm and wiped the floor in wide arcs. “All he’s ever brought is heartache. Heartache. Never shoulda been born.”

  When she’d finished mopping up, she tossed the paper towel in the trash bin under the sink, took a deep breath and opened the back door. She shook her head.

  “Shoulda killed him in his sleep,” she said.

  Chapter Four

  “Hannah said I could come,” Ty Bradshaw said from the doorway. “I got thrown out of class for sleeping and she’s too busy to deal with me so I asked her if I could talk to you instead and she said, ‘Why not?’”

  In the week or so John had been on campus he’d gotten friendly with some of the kids, including Ty. He joined their Frisbee games and let them climb all over his bike. He was a novelty—an adult who talked easily with them but had no control over their lives. In other words, he was safe.

  John leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. How well he remembered being sent to the office at school for one thing or another. Fighting, usually. Throwing punches, getting his ass kicked—that was the form of self-medication that worked for him at fifteen. Yeah, he got drunk occasionally with his friends, but rather than make him feel powerful, alcohol made him sad, which was exactly how he didn’t want to feel. Anger was a much cleaner, more manageable emotion. If he had given in to his sadness, he might have ended up like his mother.

  He gestured toward an empty gray desk chair. “I’m glad for the company.”

  He had turned a storage room in the basement of Grange Hall into a makeshift office by stacking some boxes in a corner and arranging the odds and ends from the drama department—cast-off clothing, lights, two gorilla suits, a fake rubber tree, and some stage flats with palm trees painted on them—so he could cram in a beat-up desk, two padded office chairs on rollers that nobody was using and a standing lamp that saved him from ever having to turn on the fluorescent lights. A couple of high windows let in sunlight filtered through thick azalea bushes, which softened the unglamorous surroundings and made his visitors feel less exposed.

  Ty sat down, straddling the padded seat, and immediately began to spin around. There was something both incongruous and fitting about this boy/man with his dark blond curls, big paws like a puppy, reeking of cigarettes and cologne, pushing off with his feet and then lifting them and staring at the floor as he spun. John crossed his arms behind his head, stretched out a bit farther and let him spin.

  “What do you do down here?” Ty asked when he stopped.

  “Look through old files. Yearbooks. Back copies of the school paper. Stuff like that.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  “What was the class you were sleeping in?” John asked, smiling. “Math?”

  “History. Like I give a shit about the Civil War.”

  John nodded. “Do you dislike the teacher or just the subject matter?”

  Ty shrugged his bony shoulders. “Aaron’s okay. I just don’t see the point of studying stuff that happened so long ago. Who cares? It’s over. The north won, no more slavery, case closed.”

  “You know what they say about history, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah. If you don’t study it you’re bound to relive it or some shit like that. But I really don’t think slavery’s coming back, so I’m not going to have to relive it whether I study it or not.”

  “How about your personal history, Ty? Your own family. Does that interest you?”

  Ty snorted. “My family is about as fucked up as they come, that I do know.”

  “Ever hear of Tolstoy?” John asked. Ty nodded. “He said, ‘All happy families are alike, but unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way.’”

  “I don’t know any happy families,” Ty said. “And all the unhappy families I know are more or less the same.”

  John sat up and reached for the box of tangerines that took up one corner of his desk. He tossed one to Ty and peeled one for himself. “How are they the same?”

  Ty popped a section in his mouth and talked while he chewed. “The parents are never around, and they don’t give a shit about the kids until they get in trouble. Then they send them to shrinks and pump ’em full of meds so they’ll behave and not embarrass them.” He dumped the peels in the garbage can and gestured that he wanted another tangerine. John threw him one.

  “So that about sums it up?”

  “More or less. I mean, yeah, some parents, like, beat on their kids and stuff. I guess that would be worse.”

  “What about your parents?” John started on another tangerine. “They don’t beat you, right?”

  “I live with my dad.” Ty crouched over, resting his forearms on his thighs. “He’s a prick, but he doesn’t hit me or anything. That would require him to actually be around.”

  “Does he travel a lot?”

  Ty looked up. “You know who he is, right? Big-shot Thornton Bradshaw III, local fucking hero.”

  “I know he’s building a science center and gym for the school. I guess that does make him a hero around here.”

  “Yeah, well, Hannah thinks he’s a hero or she wouldn’t be—” He looked away. “Whatever.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “What? That Hannah’s screwing around with my dad?”

  “Any of it. Your father’s relationship with your principal, his involvement in the school…” He trailed off, giving Ty an opening.

  “As long as my friends didn’t know about it, I mean, the thing with Hannah, it wasn’t so bad. But their picture was in the friggin’ Washington Post and now everybody knows.” He picked at his jeans. “But I don’t get them. She doesn’t, like, come to the house or anything. And I know for a fact that my dad fools around.”

  Bradshaw had been with Hannah and still wanted other women? The man had to be a moron. “Maybe they just enjoy each other’s company but they’re not serious about each other.”

  Ty didn’t say anything, just kept picking at a nonexistent hole in his jeans. John didn’t push it. The fact that he had gotten the boy talking at all felt like a small victory.

  “Hannah makes my dad look good,” Ty said.

  “In what way?”

  “Like he’s a normal person.”

  “Normal how? Like he didn’t have his picture in The Washington Post from time to time? Or that he wasn’t so rich?”

  Ty lifted his foot onto his other knee and stabbed at the sole of his shoe with a paper clip. “Yeah, I guess.” He paused. “Or like he didn’t hang out with guys like fucking Tony Soprano.”

  John stood in the doorway and watched Hannah gaze u
nsmiling out the window, her body turned mostly away from him, twisting that big opal ring she wore all the time around and around her finger. The sun caught the highlights in her hair, turning the loose strands at her temples golden. Had his father stood like this, unseen, watching Sharon, noticing the play of sunlight in her hair, on her eyelashes, so caught up in her beauty that everything else dropped away? Had making love to Sharon Duncan been so all-consuming that Sam Daly had been willing to give up a wife and son who adored him just to have her?

  Hannah must have sensed him behind her, because she turned slowly and gazed at him for a moment before she spoke. “Hi.”

  “Hi. Busy?”

  She shook her head and walked toward him. She was wearing a short black skirt with black stockings that hugged long, shapely legs, and a soft-looking gray turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up. Silver bangles adorned one wrist. The effect was one of simple elegance. Just like the woman herself.

  “I’m sorry about the other night,” she said. “I often do stupid things when I drink, which is why I normally only do it when I’m alone.” She looked up and smiled. “I’ve heard that’s a bad sign.”

  He smiled back, wishing fervently he had the right to walk up to her, pull her into his arms and kiss her. So he lusted after her, who wouldn’t? He had survived the FBI academy—surely he could survive being around Hannah Duncan and not touching her.

  And surely pigs would fly in heaven.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Me, I’m a sad drunk. Not a pretty sight.”

  “Sad, huh? I see you more as a belligerent drunk.”

  He had to laugh at that. “Me? Belligerent?”

  She walked around to her desk chair, and John took the wooden chair facing her. That was when he noticed the vase of red roses on the credenza behind the desk. From Bradshaw? Or from whoever had given her the yellow roses he’d spotted in her wastebasket and the mystery roses she’d been so worried about?