Breaking the Rules

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Izzy was back pretty quickly, and she could tell that he’d been successful by the way he was holding his bag. It was no longer empty, and sure enough, he set it on the floor with a heavy-sounding thump.

  With the two of them working together, the search of the room went that much more quickly.

  “Let’s put everything back the way we found it,” Izzy said. “No need to tip him off that we were here.”

  “Was there anything that led you to believe there’s a second gun?” she asked him, looking up from putting the cushions back on the reclining chair. “An empty box, or a different type of ammo or …?”

  “No,” he said. “We just wanted to be extra careful.”

  That we referred to Izzy and Dan.

  “This must’ve made Danny crazy,” Eden said. “I remember him always asking that, first thing, whenever Ivette got a new boyfriend. Does he own a weapon? It really freaked him out, the idea of some stranger bringing a gun into the house.”

  “I bet,” Izzy said.

  “Do you want me to go into Ben’s room and help decide which of his things to take?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go back there,” he said.

  Eden looked at him. “Why not?”

  “There’s a deadbolt on the bedroom door.”

  “In Ben’s room?” she asked. “That used to be my room. I installed that lock.”

  “Not the way it’s currently working,” Izzy said. “Plus Greg boarded up the other window.”

  “Seriously?” she said, moving swiftly down the hall to look.

  In doing so, she passed the bathroom where Greg had locked her, not quite a year ago—where Izzy had come and rescued her.

  She paused at the door of the bedroom that had been hers when they’d first moved in. Ben had moved in with her, sometime later, when Greg had decided he needed the third bedroom for a home office—probably when he realized that Eden really wasn’t open to the idea of him visiting her in her room at night.

  And there it was—the deadbolt she’d installed on her bedroom door. But Greg had removed it and turned it around, so that it could be used to lock someone—Ben—in the room instead of keeping creepy, lecherous old drunks out.

  Izzy was right—Greg had also boarded up the second window. She’d broken the first one by throwing a chair through it.

  And yet, good, positive things had happened in this very room.

  It was in here, sitting on the bed, that Izzy had asked her to marry him. She’d thought at first that he was kidding, but he’d been dead serious.

  “Y’okay?” Izzy said, appearing now beside her, solid and tall, and still, as always, concerned for her.

  She nodded and flipped on the light and went inside. “Good thing he didn’t have a gun when I lived here, too.”

  “That very thought crossed my mind,” Izzy said as he followed her and looked around.

  Eden got right to work, making a pile of the few things Ben would want them to take. His CDs. He only had about a dozen, given to him as gifts. He had a few DVDs, too, even though there wasn’t a DVD player anywhere in the house.

  Izzy put his bag down on the bed and pushed aside the shabby dresser, revealing a spot in the corner where the tired wall-to-wall carpeting had come free from beneath the molding. He lifted it up and pulled out a manila envelope that had a rubber band tightly around it.

  It was Ben’s stash of money.

  “You should just keep that,” Eden told Izzy now as she took an extra pair of black jeans and Ben’s work boots from the closet. “He told me you gave it to him, while I was … away.”

  “Gave is gave,” Izzy said evenly. “I’m not taking it back. Besides, it’s pretty impressive that a kid his age didn’t just go out and spend it.”

  “He was keeping it for an emergency,” Eden told him as she gave the boots a second look and put them back. They were already too small. “He’s a Gillman, even though he doesn’t really think he is. We learn from an early age that the sky could fall any minute and you better have a backup plan, because sooner or later, disaster is coming.”

  T-shirts, socks, underwear—everything they took, they wouldn’t have to buy later. At least not until Ben grew out of it all in another few months.

  “That’s a hard way to live.” As Izzy packed it all in his bag, Eden gave the top of Ben’s battered desk a quick glance.

  He had a small collection of little toys and action figures—things he probably got with his Happy Meals back when he was twelve. She’d had a similar collection—Ariel from The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin’s monkey, Abu; the Brave Little Toaster and a bendable Gumby and Pokey—all of which had been swept away when the levees broke.

  So she took Ben’s Toy Story figures and his Pokémon cards, his Transformers and several other action figures she didn’t recognize, and jammed them into Izzy’s bag along with the far more logical socks and briefs.

  Izzy noticed—he noticed everything. But he didn’t comment.

  “That everything?” he asked.

  Eden nodded. “What’s next?”

  “Ivette,” Izzy said. “We need to find out where she’s working so we can get an address and pay her a visit.”

  “Kitchen,” Eden said. “There might be something stuck to the fridge with a magnet. If not, there’s a place on the counter where we always put the mail. I don’t know if they still do that now, but …”

  “Mail as in, maybe there’s a paycheck?” Izzy asked.

  Eden made the sound of the raspberry. “Greg would’ve cashed that. They share a bank account. I’m thinking pay stub or envelope left in the rubble—something with the company’s return address.”

  “Show me,” Izzy said.

  After they’d returned from Ben’s interview with the social worker named Larry over at CPS, Jennilyn and Ben sat at the kitchen table, heads together. They were using Jenn’s laptop to surf the Internet, searching for three-bedroom apartments in San Diego.

  “There are definitely more two-bedrooms than three,” Jenni told Dan as he came in to get a glass of water. “Even when I expand the search to include houses. And the prices …” She made a face. “Well, they’re great compared to New York City, but …”

  “Then maybe we should look for a two-bedroom,” Dan said. “I can bunk in with Ben—which won’t be that often,” he added as his little brother’s discomfort levels increased. Jenn had been right—the kid didn’t know him very well, and vice versa. Dan didn’t have even a fraction of the relationship with Ben that Eden did. And clearly the thought of having to share a room was not a happy one. “The teams’ve been spending a lot of time overseas and, um …”

  And as those words left his mouth, Dan realized that they weren’t going to inspire any kind of a yay response, this time from Jenn, considering the last time he’d gone wheels up he’d nearly died.

  Way to work the room, Gillman. Freak everyone out.

  But Jenn took it in stride. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t look perturbed. “If it’ll mostly be Eden and Ben living there,” she said evenly, “then a two-bedroom makes sense. And with Izzy and Eden chipping in …”

  “Are they really back together?” Ben asked. He’d already learned to look to Jenn for a bullshit-free answer. “Enough to want to live together? I mean, even just a few days ago, Eden was pretty adamant that it was over.”

  “Well, you know Eden,” Dan started, but Jenn cut him off.

  “People sometimes think they know what they want,” she told the kid, “and then they find out they’re completely wrong. Go figure, you know?”

  “I just don’t want her to do something she doesn’t want to do, for my sake.” Ben looked up at Dan. “You, too. I don’t want you to have to—”

  “I’m actually looking forward to getting to know you better,” Danny told him. He tried to make a joke, because the kid was looking so serious. “Although to be honest—I can’t lie—I’d rather be sharing a room with Jennilyn.”

  “I would, you know, sleep on the couch w
henever Jenn comes to visit,” Ben told Danny, still so painfully somber. It was clear he was trying to be as small a pain in the ass as possible.

  “That’d be great, buddy,” Dan said, even though his heart sank as he looked over their shoulders and saw the monthly rents of the two-bedroom apartments that were available. Even if he paid half? Along with the money he was going to have to keep sending to his mother … They were going to be eating a lot of pasta and taking a lot of staycations. Good-bye weekend trips to Manhattan, to visit Jenn …

  She reached for him, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. “We’re going to make this work,” she said. “I’ll be visiting a lot”—She poked Ben in the ribs and actually made him laugh—“so I’ll be taking you up on that sleep-on-the-couch offer.”

  “Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.”

  Izzy and Eden were back, and Jenni and Ben both turned to greet them, eager for news.

  “Was my money still there?” Ben asked.

  “It was, thanks to your continued brilliance in finding hiding places where Greg and Ivette would never look,” Eden answered as she crossed to the refrigerator and pulled out an apple from the crisper drawer. “You always were good at that.”

  Izzy, meanwhile, had set his bag down on the floor, and he met Dan’s eyes and nodded curtly, just once. His message was clear—he’d taken Greg’s handgun. He also had a shopping bag, and Dan saw that they’d stopped to buy a portable gun safe so they could store the weapon safely, here in the apartment.

  It was necessary, but Jesus, it couldn’t have been cheap.

  Izzy saw Dan looking and said, “It’s my contribution.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Dan said, but Izzy breezed past, ignoring him as he dropped a rubber-banded envelope in front of Ben.

  “What are we looking at here?” Izzy asked. “Whoa, wait, I thought we were going for a three-bedroom?”

  “I’m going to share with Dan,” Ben said.

  “Wow,” Izzy said, grabbing the kid around the shoulders, hugging him from behind. “And isn’t that every fifteen-year-old’s dream come true? Not just having a roommate, but having one who’s twice your age?”

  Ben laughed. He didn’t pull back the way he’d done when Dan had tried to hug him. “Believe me, I’d sleep on the kitchen floor, if it meant I didn’t have to live in the same house as Greg.”

  “Hey, so we got everything you wanted,” Izzy told him, “except for your porn.”

  Ben nearly choked in his haste to say, “But I don’t have any porn.” He looked at Jenn. “I don’t have any porn.”

  “Told you he didn’t have any porn,” Eden said between bites of her apple. She was grinning and it was clear she and Izzy were teasing the kid.

  Izzy straightened back up. “Trust me, he’s got plenty of porn,” he said. “But he’s smart, like me. He keeps it all up here.” He tapped Ben’s head, then tousled the kid’s hair. “How’d the interview with ol’ Larry go? You hit it outta the park?”

  Ben was laughing now, too, and it was clear, despite the way he was blushing, that he loved the attention and acceptance. “Yeah, it went okay. Particularly since he failed to ask me anything about, you know. Porn.”

  “I’m sure those questions will come.” Izzy grinned back at the kid. “He’s just waiting to catch you off guard.”

  “Porn?” Ben said in a ultra-fake voice, as if he were a terrible actor. “What is this thing, porn, of which you speak …?”

  “There you go,” Izzy said. “Good boy.”

  It was also clear, from the way Ben looked at Izzy, that he thought the SEAL was some kind of superhero.

  “You have lunch yet?” Eden asked Ben, who shook his head, no. “How about your blood sugar levels? You take ’em?”

  “I was just about to,” he said.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Izzy said as he picked up and looked at the cast-iron Buddha that sat on the kitchen counter next to the stove.

  “No,” Ben said, laughing. “I really was.”

  “Do it, please,” Eden told him. She was smiling, too, but her words were pure no-nonsense. “Don’t wait until you’re dizzy, and then go, wow, how’d that happen?”

  “I know the drill.” He stood up, pocketing the packet Izzy had given him. “You, um, looking for some privacy? Trying to get me out of the room?”

  Eden seemed surprised. “No, actually, I wasn’t.”

  “Because I was wondering if you found Ivette.”

  As Dan watched, Eden exchanged a look with Izzy, who rubbed the Buddha’s belly before he put it back. “Yes and no,” she said.

  “Aw, shit,” Dan heard himself say, because that didn’t sound like good news.

  Izzy cut to the chase. “Bottom line, she’s AWOL.”

  Danny swore again.

  “As of right now, anyway,” Izzy added. “I mean, maybe she’s heading home …”

  “We found the name of the service she’s working for,” Eden told them. “A-Plus Home Companions.”

  “I spoke to Eliza from their main office,” Izzy said, “who told me that Ivette was working for a client who was in hospice, who died early yesterday morning.”

  “I spoke to her … When was it?” Dan turned to Jenn.

  “It was late, on the sixth, probably right before he died,” Jenn told him. “Maybe she’s been dealing with the funeral arrangements—that’s why she hasn’t called you back?”

  But Izzy and Eden both were shaking their heads.

  “She was working for the deceased,” Izzy said. “His kids apparently hated her. According to Eliza, she was officially off the clock at 0400, yesterday.”

  “Great,” Dan said. “She’s on a bender.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Eden said. “That she absconded with the dead guy’s pain meds.”

  “And because she was in a hurry to avoid the police,” Ben chimed in, “she left her cell phone behind.”

  “Wow,” Izzy said, applauding. “If worst-case scenario thinking was a sport, you Gillmans would win the gold.”

  “Worst case,” Ben corrected him, “would have her ditching Greg along the way, for someone even more stupid.”

  “An ex-con polygamist who’d cook crystal meth in the bathroom,” Eden added.

  “While selling grenade launchers out of the trunk of his car,” Dan contributed, and it was weird. Even though the idea of Ivette being so freaking irresponsible royally pissed him off, he and Eden and Ben were all standing there, smiling at each other ruefully, in a rare moment of harmony.

  Maybe because it was either smile or cry. And they’d all lived this nightmare long enough to know that crying wouldn’t change anything.

  “Even if we don’t find her in time,” Dan told his sister and brother, “it’s going to be okay. One way or the other, we’re going to win this thing.”

  But Ben was clearly worried. “Maybe we could get insulin on the street, and—”

  “And your picture will end up on a milk carton,” Eden pointed out.

  “So I’ll dye my hair,” he countered. “I’ll go surfer blond. I’ve been wanting to make a change—”

  “If you really think that’s all that would have to change—” Eden started to say.

  But Izzy stopped her. “Let’s not escalate this yet,” he said, aiming his words at Ben, too. “We’ve still got time to find her.”

  “Did you get the address,” Jenn asked, “where Ivette was working? Maybe we can start there.”

  “She’s in Montana,” Izzy told them. “Apparently the old guy knew he was going to kick, and wanted to spend his last few days at his cabin, outside of Missoula.”

  “Missoula, Montana,” Dan repeated. “Fantastic.”

  “Would it be useful,” Jenn suggested, “if one of us flew up there and—”

  “No.” Dan cut her off a little too sharply, but then reached for her, pulling her up and out of her seat and into his arms. “I’m sorry, baby,” he told her, closing his eyes as she hugged him back. “But it woul
d be a waste of time.”

  “Her air travel was negotiated by the client,” Izzy reported. “It’s hard to imagine her agreeing to go up there without having a way to get back home.”

  “But it’s not hard to imagine,” Dan said, “Ivette cashing in a plane ticket and buying a much cheaper seat on a bus.” He looked at Jenn. “Which is why it would be a waste of time. She could be anywhere.”

  “Including on her way back to Vegas,” Izzy pointed out. “If she lost her cell phone—”

  “Abandoned it while making her getaway,” Ben corrected him.

  “Lost or abandoned it,” Izzy said. “That explains why she hasn’t called you back.” He looked around the room from Dan to Jenni to Ben to Eden. “I haven’t given up hope. Eden and I left her a message back at the house. We stuck it to the fridge.”

  “Assuming Greg doesn’t come home first, see it, and tear it up,” Eden interjected. “Come on, Ben. Get your meter.”

  As Ben left the little kitchen, Dan saw that Jenn was watching him.

  “This is going to work,” she said quietly, so only he could hear, as she hugged him again.

  “I’m going to cry like a baby when you leave,” he told her just as softly.

  Across the room, Izzy had to be tired—Eden, too. They both were silent, Eden finishing up her apple and Izzy staring almost hypnotically at Eden’s ass, which, in the extremely tight shorts she was wearing, left little to the imagination.

  Except maybe Izzy was just taking a quick combat nap with his eyes open, because when Eden moved to throw her apple core into the trash, he didn’t track her. He just stared into space.

  But the SEAL looked up, snapping back to present and alert when Eden quietly asked, “Any luck finding Neesha?”

  Dan let Jenn answer. “None,” she told them. “I went to that mall, while Dan stayed with Ben down at Child Services, but I didn’t see her—or anyone who looked like the man who chased you. Ben would still very much like to find her, though. And oh, while I’m thinking about it! I completely forgot last night … Neesha left you a twenty-dollar bill. She asked us to give it to you, Eden. She said that she took it from you—or maybe, Izzy—I guess, the last time she was here?”