“Yeah?” He entered with a can of Dr. Pepper in one noticeably clean hand – clearly lunch break was still in session.
“What’s Mark’s girlfriend doing here?” she whispered as the woman closed the distance to the door and reached for the handle. She had a canvas tote bag slung over one shoulder of her bright turquoise peasant top. Her white crops were hemmed in sparkling silver applique that matched the combs sweeping her mass of platinum hair off her forehead.
“Dunno.” He shrugged.
A fresh blast of hot air, more forceful than what slipped in through the windows, created a whirlwind of paperwork on the desk. Lisa slapped at it as Ellen swept into the room, pushing her sunglasses up on her forehead.
“Well hey, ya’ll!” she said in such a loud, cheerful voice that Drew was startled from his chair nap and came awake with a snort and a flailing of arms. His cast thumped against the wall and Lisa winced in sympathetic pain.
“Hi.” So far, based on their two encounters, Lisa liked Ellen in the way she liked all friendly people – she found the woman pleasant, but without knowing her truly, felt she had every right to be cautious. Suspicious even.
Ellen didn’t seem to notice. “Hi, Johnny-boy!” she crowed happily, and pulled him into a smothering hug.
Lisa traded amused glances with the now-awake Drew. They were doing that now, since the night before, since her dad’s spilling of information and Drew’s strange dog-pat to her head. She hadn’t taken her walls down, but somehow, he’d managed to throw a grappling hook up and scale his way to the top. And not, surprisingly, by force, but through that steadfast blandness of his. Bland she could grow to like. Bland she did like.
“Oh, hi, dear.” Ellen had disentangled from Johnny and was beaming at Lisa now, setting her tote bag on a rare free section of desk. “I thought I’d bring the boys a little something from my kitchen.”
Hokey occasionally worked, if it was genuine, and Ellen seemed, with that smile that went all the way up to her extravagant smoky-shadowed eyes, to be genuinely hokey. Lisa had to grin. “I think they actually just got done with lunch. If they have double lunch, I don’t have a prayer of getting them back to work.”
Ellen winked at her and pushed down the sides of the bag to reveal a Tupperware cake plate. “Not lunch. Three layer chocolate fudge cake.” She popped the lid and Lisa got a peek of neatly swirled, rich dark chocolate fudge icing. The half a turkey sandwich she’d choked down for lunch screamed for some company.
“Wow, um…”
“I brought plates and plastic forks,” Ellen said brightly. “It’ll be a fun treat, don’t ya think?”
Lisa thought it would be nothing but a distractor that prevented the guys from diving back into work, and that it would be a miracle if Big Tom’s Fastback was finished before the year was out. But her uncle Mark had such poor taste in women… She couldn’t remember a time when one had brought him dessert at work. His women were petty and shallow and too young and never anything more than a weekend dalliance, so it seemed unjust to rob her uncle of three layer chocolate fudge cake, even if it pushed back their schedule.
“I think it sounds great.” Lisa knew she didn’t do bright and happy well, and the boys’ glances proved that she’d sounded just as wooden in her delivery as she’d felt. Ellen didn’t seem to notice, though, and ventured out into the garage after Mark, white pants and all. “Did I really sound that bad?” she asked when Ellen was gone.
Johnny laughed, but Drew’s smile was softer, more sympathetic. “No.”
Ray wasn’t in-shop, off making the rounds with his payroll business, so of course the boys camped out in the office and devoured Ellen’s baking. Lisa nibbled her way through half a piece and then went outside, the humid afternoon suddenly sounding less stuffy than the tiny office crammed with humans. She went to the edge of the parking lot, up near the sidewalk, and propped a hip against the shiny, but very empty shell of an old Nova that was slanted across the front corner as advertising. They’d pulled in nearly a quarter of their business thanks to interested passersby who’d stopped to ask if the Nova was for sale.
There was a kid dressed up like a sub sandwich holding a sign on the sidewalk a few dozen yards away, advertising the deli next door. Afternoon soccer mom traffic cruised past sluggishly, the hot breeze generated by the dozens of passing minivans stirring Lisa’s hair and filling her nostrils with the familiar smells of motor oil, sunbaked pavement, and whatever delightful things they were grilling at the Longhorn down the street.
The Nova had no windows because it had no interior. Not even a wheel. But there was a glove box and in it, a pack of smokes Lisa had hidden there in case life got too crazy and she decided her clean streak wasn’t as important as she’d once thought. She found the slightly smashed pack of Marlboros by feel, and when she straightened, cradling it in her hands, she was startled, but not surprised to find Drew standing behind her.
She saw him scan the street, the sidewalk, and the parking lot before he glanced her way. “You smoke?”
She fiddled with the pack’s cardboard top and sighed. “Not for a couple years,” she said. “And I shouldn’t now, but…”
“You’re stressed.”
Lisa nodded, ashamed about it but not wanting to lie. Tension was being layered on piece by piece, as thick and dark as Ellen’s cake, and Lisa was slowly forgetting what relaxation felt like. She was jumpy, exhausted and sleepless, and she feared a meltdown loomed in her future. That was the thing about pressure: it couldn’t maintain a constant level – either things would come to a head with this Carl Shilling person, or Lisa would be pushed over the edge until she went numb, until she didn’t feel anything anymore. “I think something bad’s going to happen,” she heard herself say and wished she hadn’t.
When her phone trilled to life in her back pocket, she nearly leapt out of her skin, and was so embarrassed by it that she didn’t try to shrug away the hand Drew settled on her shoulder. Swearing under her breath, she slipped her phone out and saw that it was her mother calling.
“Hi, Mom,” she said with a sigh.
Cheryl could tell her daughter was caving. “I’m telling you,” she pressed, “now couldn’t be a better time for this. You and I need something to distract us.”
Lisa made an unhappy sound on the other end of the line. “Distract us right into getting kidnapped?”
It was a possibility Cheryl was already planning for. “We charge them for security and bring the boys along.”
“Hmm.”
“Just say yes,” Cheryl urged. “I know this isn’t the kind of design job we were expecting, but it’s a step in that direction. This is a good idea, Lis.”
In truth, Cheryl had decided to take the job whether or not Lisa agreed to participate. Thirty minutes earlier, when Patty Smyth’s number had flashed across the ID display on her cell phone, she’d nearly hung up on the woman in her haste to take the call. Patty had sighed and sniffled and sounded like her usual bored self: a former beauty queen and retired middle school teacher whose husband had survived the economic downturn and whose self-entitlement knew no bounds. She was in charge of a very “dignified” book club these days and she wanted to host an “evening garden party” for her “girls” in the “most dignified” of ways. Cheryl had gritted her teeth and suffered through the digs and slights – Patty wasn’t sure if after “that unfortunate business” involving Ray’s disbarment if Cheryl was still interested in designing, to which Cheryl had gently reminded that she’d offered to do Patty’s study only weeks before.
The party was to be a test. Cheryl wasn’t truly a party planner, but she knew that if she could pull it off, and if she then designed a room in Patty’s house, all of Patty’s snooty book club friends would consider using her.
“You’re gonna do it without me anyway, aren’t you?” Lisa guessed.
“Of course.”
She sighed. “Alright. I guess I’m in.”
Cheryl hung up with the truest smile to touch her
face in weeks. In her head, she was already preparing a list of supplies she would need. Tables needed to be rented, paper lanterns prepared, linens ironed. She conjured and then instantly dismissed a dozen possible tablescapes. Her gardens had reached a point of maturity at which she could clip flowers and use them in arrangements; her hydrangeas would make lovely centerpieces in ceramic bowls. Maybe some tea lights and tapers with mirrors beneath…
“I have a delivery for Cheryl Russell.”
Her head snapped up and she went stumbling out of her mental evening-time garden party and back into the current reality of the dental office. The deliveryman who peeked around a vase full of pink carnations wasn’t the same one who’d made the previous flower deliveries, but his identity was irrelevant.
“Leave them on the counter,” she said, unsmiling, and watched his face fall. Clearly, she hadn’t reacted the way most flower recipients did.
As she’d been instructed to do, she snapped a picture of them with her cell and then emailed it to Ray, her stomach churning.
***
The fluted glass vase shattered on impact when it crashed against the pavement. Lisa observed it with a detached sort of contained horror, noting that the pink carnations looked somehow sad as they thumped lightly down, their green stems glittering and wet, their pale petals delicate and soft against the asphalt.
Drew’s shoulders were jacked up halfway to his ears, his arms bowed out in a display of aggression that had sent the deliveryman stumbling back against his purple florist’s van. The guys were emptying out of the office, calling to her, asking what the hell was going on. Ellen had a hand over her mouth in an obvious display of shock. But Lisa didn’t respond. She stood rooted, the cigarettes crumpled in her fist, still stunned that Drew had charged the van after its arrival and snatched the flowers from the driver’s hands. Here she’d been worried about snapping, and he’d snapped.
Something bad’s going to happen, she thought again, and realized what that something was. Her dad had ruined Carl Shilling’s life when he’d turned over damning evidence to the DA. Criminals like Shilling – wife and daughter killers, sickos and freaks – needed to be out in the world in order to satisfy their sadistic proclivities. Containment cut off their addiction at the source: there were no wives and daughters to terrorize, to murder, in prison. The torture of getting caught wasn’t being exposed…it was being denied, having his impulsions prevented.
Now Carl wanted to ruin not just Ray’s life, but hers too, her mother’s. Because what was life if you slept with one eye open and were tailed by a bodyguard?
If he’d wanted to kill them, he would have come and killed them. No…he was toying with them. He was shredding their confidence and sense of safety. He was building them a prison, one bouquet at a time.
Lisa was quiet on the ride home that evening – “home,” as if crashing in the Russell carriage house constituted an actual home for him – and Drew kept stealing glances at her from the corner of his eye. He was still juiced from earlier, his sudden burst of inexplicable rage at seeing the florist van taking its sweet time in ebbing, but she had her left arm braced against the window, her right draped loosely over the wheel.
“Tell me something about you,” she said at the second red light.
“What?”
Lisa shrugged. “You know all the important things about me – not sweet, being stalked, runaway bride…all the dirty details.” She pulled her eyes away from the road long enough to give him a searching look. “What about you? Family? Side interests? Skeletons?”
The ride from Alpharetta to Cartersville was not a short one, and Drew didn’t want to spend the majority of it discussing the shitstorm that was his life up till now. But Lisa had a point – he’d come into her life and learned everything about it in short order. He was living in her parents’ garage, for God’s sakes, but she knew nothing about him. It was only fair…
He exhaled noisily. “I’m from Augusta.” He decided on the abridged version. “Mom left when I was little, Dad was always in and out of work.” He shrugged. “Nothing special.”
He saw her chew at her lower lip and wondered if she was thinking he was full of shit. “How’d you get into fighting?”
“How’s anybody get into anything?”
“Okay, Confucius.” She snorted a laugh. “You don’t have to get all defensive. I was just curious.”
She hadn’t so much as smiled since he’d sent the delivery guy running, so her chuckle was as effective as twisting his broken arm. “I was good at it,” he elaborated. He’d never been tall as a child and had grown into a rather scrawny teenager. But he’d been quick. And quiet – when you weren’t running your mouth, you noticed things about the people around you that no one else did: limps, weak left hands, a propensity to overuse a right jab. His first fight had been one of self-defense, and though he hadn’t started it, he’d ended it, the chunky, pimple-faced boy who’d attacked him in the cafeteria rolling on the ground, clutching his ruined nose and howling. “Got kicked out of school for it and didn’t see a reason to try and do much else.”
“Hmm.” She made a reflective sound. “You don’t really strike me as the violent type.”
He was so taken aback, he couldn’t help but stare at her.
She shrugged. “What? You don’t. I mean, you’re fantastic in the ring.” He thought a pop of color bloomed in her cheek. “But I can’t see you being a bully.”
“I wasn’t.”
“It makes sense. Your ring name.” A smile touched her lips. “My uncle took me and Johnny deer hunting once,” she said, and he had a feeling this was going somewhere, so he kept silent. “He still takes Johnny, but sitting up in a tree all afternoon wearing deer piss and camo isn’t my idea of a fun time. Still…it was worth the experience. Anyway,” she continued, “we didn’t walk out of the woods ‘til late that night. Mark thought it’d be cool to eat dinner up in the deer stand to celebrate our kill.” He saw her roll her eyes. “And we had to use flashlights to get back to the truck. We came across a deer carcass probably three days old. It was full of claw marks and Mark said he could tell it had been suffocated. Only cats kill like that,” she said meaningfully, sparing him a glance, “and the only cats in those woods were lynx.”
“A lynx isn’t a big cat,” Lisa said, “so it drops out of trees on large prey like that. They’re smart. They’re skill hunters, not brute strength killers.”
“Are you complimenting me?” he asked, not quite believing it.
Her grin widened as she faced the road. “Well, it was really a bobcat, not a lynx, but yeah. Showing an appreciation, whatever you wanna call it. The point is, you’re a good fighter, not just some dumbass who throws his weight around. You could go somewhere with your fighting. The Lynx could go places.”
Drew glanced away from her, wondering what had inspired this pep talk. Maybe she was tired of his lingering presence and had decided encouragement might be the thing to drive him away. He watched the road lying before them like a great gray snake and felt the familiar, forbidden pang of longing. Ricky hadn’t been the first to promise him wealth and women in exchange for his skill in the ring. He’d entertained his own hopes and dreams about this talent of his turning into a career. And yet here he sat, guarding a rich man’s daughter.
“I don’t need ‘places,’ but a car would be nice,” he said before he could stop himself. “Health insurance. Maybe a pair of shoes I hadn’t hurled all over.”
A beat of silence passed and when he felt Lisa’s hand land on his forearm on the truck’s center console, a bolt of lightning crashing through the windshield of the truck would have been less shocking. “I quit dreaming about things a long time ago,” she consoled, her fingers closing over his good wrist in a comforting gesture. “But I don’t think things can stay this shitty forever.”
He didn’t know what she was playing at, but wanted to play along, if only to prolong this sentimental crack in her façade. But he didn’t know what to say. “You gettin
g optimistic on me?”
“I’m knocking on rock bottom.” She pulled her hand away and raked it through her hair. “I’ll be tossing scripture at you ‘fore it’s all over.”
Golden sunlight was washing over the driveway and its canopy of trees like warm, foamy beer when Ray arrived home that night. He spotted Mark stretched flat on the bench swing that dangled from an oak branch as big around as a keg, a thin wisp of gray smoke marking the cigarette that was clamped between his lips. The kids – a duo that was now a trio thanks to the addition of Drew – were in the side yard playing keep-away with Hektor and a tennis ball. Ray watched them as he climbed out of his truck, frowning as he noticed the way his newest employee kept shooting smiles at Lisa; then made his way toward his brother.
“Where you been?” Mark asked without sitting up.
Ray braced a shoulder against the tree’s trunk, the bark biting into his skin through the thin barrier of his button-up shirt. “Looking for Shilling.”
“Looking for…?”
“He quit his job and according to Tony, his PO can’t pin him down.”
Mark sat up, taking his cigarette between his fingers, legs swinging off the bench to land on the grass. He didn’t need to be explained the significance of this new development. Shilling’s behavior had been disturbing, but not escalating up to this point; the flower deliveries were getting downright boring. But quitting his job was a new move, and going off the justice system radar made his next move almost impossible to predict. It had also turned Ray’s stomach into a churning vat of acid fear.
“His first kills,” he said of the wife and daughter, not knowing if those had truly been his first kills, only that they were the first on record, “weren’t identical. All the evidence pointed to the fact that the daughter was the true target and the wife got in the way.”
“Lisa and Cheryl aren’t together unless they’re at home,” Mark said, and how sick was it that it was a good piece of news?
Made for Breaking Page 22
