Breaking the Rules

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “We should start by renting another car,” Dan was already telling Izzy as he nodded at Jenn. “But I agree completely. When we go to Greg’s, we go together. Tell Eden that’s nonnegotiable. Now that we know he’s got a weapon, we have to make sure he doesn’t have it in his possession when we—Yeah, yeah, I’m with you.” He paused. “No, she still hasn’t called me back. Trust me, I would’ve called you right away if Ivette had been in touch.”

  Jenn left the door open a crack as she went outside and down the stairs to the courtyard.

  The air was hot and still and the night seemed to settle around her like a too-warm blanket. Nothing blew, nothing shifted, nothing moved.

  It wasn’t the first ceramic pot beneath which Eden and Ben had hidden their spare key, and it wasn’t the second one, either. It was the one all the way over in the corner, in the shadows. Jenn headed swiftly toward it, well aware that Danny was going to be impatient. As tired as they both were, he was going to want to be ready to head out, to go looking for Ben as soon as Izzy and Eden came back from the hospital.

  She had to dash back upstairs and wash her face and find a ponytail holder and maybe her baseball cap. She should go through Eden’s kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, too, looking for something for Danny to eat. To properly heal, he needed plenty of both rest and protein, and right now he was getting neither.

  She also wanted to search the cabinets to see if Eden had one of those padded cooler bags, so they could bring some of Ben’s insulin in the car. From what she understood, strenuous physical activity—like hiking home from the hospital in this heat—would screw up Ben’s usual schedule when it came to his insulin levels. And as for the added stress?

  Kids with diabetes did best, Jenn had read, when their lives were free from intense stress of any kind.

  She lifted the pot and slipped the key beneath and turned to go back to the elevators when—dear God!—there was someone, a man, standing right there in the shadows, blocking her path.

  She jumped back and squeaked and had her cell phone open and about to dial for help with one hand, the other drawn back, about to swing and defend herself when the man said, “Jenn?” and she realized it wasn’t a man, it was Ben.

  It was Ben, and instead of dialing 9-1-1, she quickly dialed Eden’s cell number, because Izzy was probably still on with Dan. “Thank God,” she told him. “We were just about to launch a citywide hunt for you, starting by kicking down Greg’s front door. Do you have any idea how worried we were about you …?”

  On the other end of the phone, Eden picked up. “Jenn?”

  “We found him,” Jenn told her as she reclaimed the key and pulled Ben with her into the better lit part of the courtyard. “Or rather he found us. Ben’s here, he’s safe.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” Eden breathed.

  Ben, meanwhile, had crumbled. And even though he was nearly as tall as Danny, he was still just a kid. Because unlike his older brother and sister, who’d no doubt spent years learning to keep their emotions safely out of sight, he didn’t even try to fight it—he just let go and started to cry.

  “I’ll call you back,” Jenn said to Eden, and hung up her phone.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ben told Jenn as he looked at her, his thin face pinched, his blue eyes intense despite being flooded by tears. “I just couldn’t go back to Crossroads. I’d rather die.”

  “No, honey,” Jenn said, wrapping her arms around him, her heart in her throat. “Don’t say that, Ben. You don’t mean it.”

  “But I do,” he said, with a quiet certainty that frightened her. “I should’ve just let Greg shoot me when he was waving that gun around …”

  “You did the right thing,” she told him, holding him even tighter. “When a crazy man has a gun, you do what he says. Believe me, I’ve been there, too—I know what it’s like, and it’s not easy. But you take it one minute at a time, one breath at a time, because it’s going to end. Everything bad always, eventually ends. But not if you die. If you die, it’s over.”

  He pulled back to look at her, to wipe his nose on his sleeve. “But maybe it’s better—for everyone if—”

  Oh God. “How could it be better?” she asked him sharply, because damn it, he was really scaring her.

  “Easier,” he said. “I meant easier.”

  “Not for Dan,” she told him, absolutely. “And not for me, having to stand at his side as we bury you? You honestly think that’s easier?”

  He’d flinched at her insistence at making sure he understood what he was saying. Suicide wasn’t a painless oblivion. There was an afterward—as family and friends tried to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives.

  “I’m just … I’m never going to change,” he told her in a voice that was so quiet she almost didn’t hear him. “I’m never going to be the son that my mother wants.”

  “Well then, fuck her!” Jenn said, and he looked up in shock at the violence of her words. “She’s been a shitty mother anyway. Not just to you, but to Danny and Eden, too. Probably Sandy as well, but I’ve never met her, so … But you know, I used to think it was weird, the way you all call her Ivette, but I get it now, I do. She’s not your mother, Ben. You know who your real mother is? Eden is. And Danny is, too. So if it comes down to some crap Ivette tells you versus the truth from Eden and Dan, what are you doing listening to Ivette?”

  Ben just shook his head.

  “Who are you going to believe?” Jenn asked him again. “Are you going to believe Ivette—who’s just echoing what stupid, ignorant Greg says—or are you going to believe Danny and Eden and Izzy and me? And the billions of other people in the world who also know—beyond the shadow of a doubt—that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, that you are exactly as you were meant to be, and that a world without you in it would be a much sadder, darker place.”

  He was silent for several long moments. But then he said, “I just don’t get why she doesn’t love me.”

  “She’s broken,” Jenn told him quietly. “Some people are just … broken. It’s definitely not you, kid. Because I just met you, and I already love you.” She held out her hand to him. “So come on. Let’s go inside and let your brother know that you’re safe. We’ve got to figure out what to do next. The staff at the hospital are probably freaking out.”

  “Let’s just go to San Diego,” Ben said as he took her hand and walked with her toward the elevators. “Ivette and Greg’ll eventually forget I was ever there. Kind of the way they did after Eden left. Ivette actually got in touch with her by e-mail and told her not to come back.”

  “Well, that’s one way to do it,” Jenn told him. “I’m not sure it’s the right way, but that’s one of the things we’re going to figure out. But this I promise you: we’re not letting you go back to live with that awful man, and we’re not letting you go back to Crossroads.”

  Ben nodded, but she could tell that he still didn’t completely believe her.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  FRIDAY, 8 MAY 2009

  It was close to noon before they made it back to the apartment. Ben had really screwed the pooch by sneaking out of the pediatrics ward.

  The nurses who’d discovered he was missing last night had called the police, thinking it was Greg who’d somehow snatched him. They’d sent a squad car over to the house, where they’d found Ben’s stepfather in the middle of a honking nasty bender, thanks to Izzy’s creative gifting. The man had been halfway through his second bottle of scotch and had answered the door buck naked. The abusive comments he’d made to the female police officer had resulted in his fugly ass being dragged to the station, where he’d spent the rest of the night in the drunk tank.

  And normally, Izzy and Eden both would’ve celebrated Greg’s impending court date, but in this case? With Greg the only so-called adult at home, with Ivette still off the map, and Ben gone walkabout from the hospital? It had sent the alarm lights over at Child Protective Services into a real tizzy of a red alert.

  A
nd that dreaded three-day preliminary investigation had been opened.

  The caseworker—a nice but harried man named Larry—had told Izzy that if Ivette didn’t turn up in these next few days, he would be required to launch a full inquiry, which would take thirty very long days. And probably result in Ben being placed in foster care for the duration. Only after that could Izzy and Eden and Dan petition for custody of the kid—and they might not get it, on account of their wanting to live out of state, in San Diego.

  Because of that, they’d quickly devised a new plan. It was the same as their old plan, but now they had a limited amount of time to make it happen: find Ivette and get her to convince Greg—who was Ben’s adoptive father, as it turned out—to join her in giving permission for Ben to move to San Diego to live with Danny, Eden, and Izzy. And then go before the state social workers and psychologists and put on the show of a lifetime and convince them that there was no need for that further investigation. Convince them that it would be in Ben’s best interest to live in the happy, stress-free, sunshine-and-rainbows home that Dan, Eden, and Izzy would provide for him, in loving three-part harmony, together in California.

  Izzy was ready to do it. When push came to shove, he could lie his balls off about how happy he’d be to share an apartment with his dear friend and teammate Danny. It was Dan he was worried about, gagging as he told that massive untruth.

  “Don’t you have to get back to San Diego soon?” Eden asked him as they went up the stairs to her apartment. Dan and Jenn had gone with Ben to his first round of official interviews at CPS. Izzy and Eden weren’t needed until the family session, which had been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

  “I’m good at least until the end of next week,” he reassured her. “I already spoke to the senior chief.”

  She nodded. She looked exhausted, and this was probably not the time to bring this up, but they were alone, and he had to grab the opportunity.

  “Speaking of work,” Izzy said as he followed her down the outside corridor to her apartment door. “You should probably call your boss at D’Amato’s and tender your resignation. That way, tomorrow? When you’re asked about your employment, you won’t have to lie.”

  Eden nodded again as she unlocked the door and he followed her inside. “It’s just such good money.” She put her handbag down, kicked off her sandals, and flopped onto the mattress on the living-room floor. “Lord, I’m tired.”

  “I’m not trying to tell you what to do,” he started.

  “Believe me, you’ve made that more than clear,” she said, eyes closed, her voice muffled by the pillow.

  “Well, good then,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything more. She just turned over onto her back and looked up at him. “Why are you still standing there? Aren’t you tired, too?”

  Izzy sighed because that bed, especially with Eden in it, was looking pretty freaking tempting. “Yeah, but … Duty calls.”

  She sat up. “Seriously?”

  He nodded as he found his duffel bag and started emptying it—both his clean and his dirty clothes, onto the shelf next to the VCR. “Agonizingly so. Why don’t you nap—I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Whatever you’re doing, I can help.”

  “Yeeeah,” he said, drawing the word out. “I’m not so sure about that. Ben gave me his key. I’m going to do a little authorized B&E over at Greg and Ivette’s, before Greg comes home from his truly big adventure at the police station.”

  She knew one of the reasons why. “You’re taking possession of his gun.”

  “Handgun,” he corrected her. “Gun is … Never mind. Yes. That’s one of the things I’m doing, including making sure he’s only got the one.”

  “What else?” she asked, then answered her own question. “Ben’s clothes and money—he’s got money hidden in his room.”

  “Yeah,” Izzy said. “He told me where, and … I’m also in charge of finding the name of the home-health-care agency that Ivette works for. We gotta locate her ASAP. We should be able to get the address where she’s working from them, so we can go over there and talk to her.”

  Eden pushed herself to her feet. “I can definitely help with that.”

  “Sweetheart, thank you, but I don’t want you to have to go back there.”

  “If no one’s there,” she pointed out, “it’s just a … really ugly place. If home has everything to do with people, then hell probably does, too. Right?”

  “I’m not completely sure about that,” Izzy told her. “There are places I wouldn’t want to go back to, even if the people who made them hell were long dead and gone.”

  “But if you’re going to be there, too,” Eden told him as she unzipped her dress and let it pool at her feet, where she stepped out of it in his own private strip show, “I can go anywhere. I just want to put on sneakers, in case we have to run.”

  “Sneakers,” Izzy repeated, unable not to laugh. “I assume you’re going to put on more than sneakers. Which is not to say the look wouldn’t work for me …”

  She was heading into the bedroom, where she kept her clothes, but now she stopped and gazed back at him. Dressed as she was in only those barely-there white panties, she was impossibly beautiful.

  Maybe stopping to take a quick nap—fifteen, twenty minutes tops—wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Eden smiled, because, as always, she knew what he was thinking.

  “I honestly don’t know how long I’ve got before Greg gets home,” he told her, hefting the empty bag. “So really, I should go now, and I should go alone.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.”

  “I know you’re not,” he said. “But if I’m in there, and he does come home? I can get out and he won’t even know I’ve been there. If you’re with me, it’s not going to be as easy.”

  “I could wait by the front door,” she said. “Be your lookout.”

  “Eden, please get dressed,” he said. “You’re killing me.”

  “Is that a yes?” she asked him, crossing first one arm and then the other over her breasts, which really didn’t help all that much, in the giant cosmic scheme of things. She persisted. “Is it?”

  Izzy sighed again. “Wouldn’t you rather take a nap? I’d rather take a nap.”

  But she shook her head, no. “I just like it better when I’m with you,” she said quietly. “I like being with you. So, no. Unless you’re going to take a nap, too …”

  And okay. She had him with that.

  “Get dressed,” he said, bending down to pick up her sundress and toss it to her, so she could hang it in her closet. “But if Greg comes home while we’re there? You don’t mix it up with him, do you understand? Even if he pisses the shit out of you.”

  She smiled at that as she nodded, and he felt compelled to add, “Eden, I’m serious, here. If we’re over there, and he comes home, you go out the back door and you get into the car and you lock the doors. And you turn the radio up loud and you stick your fingers in your ears so you can’t hear his crap. Whatever he says and does, we don’t touch him.”

  She understood. She nodded again, very seriously. “Thank you.”

  “Please get dressed,” he said again, and she left the room to do just that.

  The house was silent and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and garbage.

  Greg’s dishes were still out on the coffee table, exactly where they’d been the last time Eden was in here, just a few short days ago.

  Her stepfather had added to the mess—an empty bottle of liquor was on the table, along with mustard-smeared take-out wrappers from McDonald’s.

  Izzy had come in first, and now he motioned for her to be quiet and wait by the front door. His eyes were dark with his concern—she wasn’t trying to keep the repugnancy she was feeling from her face—and he leaned in close to ask her, “You want to wait in the car?”

  “I’m okay,” she told him. It was hard to hold his gaze. He scared her a little bit when he got like this—all hard intensity, no lurking amusem
ent.

  “I’m trusting you here, to be honest with me,” he told her.

  “It’s harder than I thought,” she admitted. “I want him to come home so I can take another swing at him with that pickax, for sending Ben to that place.”

  Izzy smiled then at that—briefly, fiercely—before the intensity was back. “But you won’t, though, right?”

  “I won’t,” she promised.

  “Hold this, I’ll be right back.”

  Izzy had brought his empty bag inside with them, and he handed it to her now before he swiftly and silently went through the house, checking all of the rooms to make sure that Ivette hadn’t returned.

  But Eden knew that if her mother was home, the cigarette smell wouldn’t be stale. There’d be smoke in the air. Unless, of course, she’d passed out on the couch. Or the bed. Or the floor.

  “We’re clear.” Izzy came back and locked the front door, putting the chain on it. This way, if Greg came home, he wouldn’t be able to come right inside. He took his bag back from her. “Our priority is to get his handgun. Ben said Greg kept it in the closet in the master bedroom. What I need you to do while I’m looking for that—if you’re up for it—”

  “I am.”

  “—is to search the living room, under the sofa and chair cushions. I want to make sure he doesn’t have a second weapon that he keeps hidden. So if he’s got a favorite place to sit and watch TV—”

  “I’m on it,” Eden said.

  He was still standing there, watching her as she started taking apart the couch, clearly loath to leave her, so she told him again, “I’m really okay. Go get the gun we know about. I’ll feel that much safer when it’s in your hands.”

  He nodded and vanished down the hall.

  There was nothing under the sofa cushions aside from some popcorn and petrified Cheez Doodles. The upholstery was sticky and gross, but Eden searched carefully, sticking her hands down into the recesses of the furniture.