Breaking the Rules

by Suzanne Brockmann

  As usual, he knew what she was thinking. “I’m not going anywhere.” But then he amended it. “Unless you want me to.”

  “I want Ben to be safe,” she told him. She wanted so much more than that, but she knew better than to couch their relationship in terms that dealt with anything other than sex and her little brother.

  “Well, good,” Izzy said, “because I want that, too.”

  “Enough to live with me?” she asked. “For an undetermined amount of time—but possibly as long as three years? That’s crazy. That’s longer than most jail terms.”

  He sighed at that. “Living with you isn’t a hardship,” he told her.

  “Despite the fact that the sex isn’t really all that great?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “I said it’s not as great as, I don’t know, as maybe it could be. And … maybe this is a good thing. That this happened. Maybe we could, I don’t know, start over.”

  “Start over,” she said, unable to keep her hurt from making her sound surly.

  “Yeah,” Izzy said. “If we both promise not to lie to each other—”

  “I thought I did that,” she said. “Last night.”

  “You didn’t say it,” he countered.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die?” Eden asked. “What are you, twelve?”

  “No,” he said, clearly frustrated with her, too, but like her, he was hyperaware that Big John was watching them. So he lowered his voice. “I just—”

  “How does that work, anyway?” Eden interrupted him. She kept her voice low, too, but she didn’t try to hide her upset. “Because if you think I’m a liar, then I could be lying when I promise I won’t lie to you. So what’s the point?”

  “It’s just … I don’t know. A way to start over,” he said again. “To start clean.”

  “Okay, then. I promise I won’t lie to you—about anything,” Eden told him, sitting back in her chair. “Not even to be nice. Cross my heart and hope to die. So look out if your ass looks fat in those pants, because I’m not going to lie about it.”

  Izzy smiled at that. “I’m not really that worried about—”

  “That was a bad example,” she said. “A stupid haircut. If you get one, watch out.”

  “That’s a possibility,” he said, “having had my share of stupid haircuts. I’ll consider myself warned.”

  “Your turn,” she said.

  Izzy looked at her and his smile faded. “I promise I won’t lie to you anymore, either,” he said.

  “Have you?” she asked. “Lied to me?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “About what?”

  “About you working here. I don’t want you stripping, I don’t,” he said, then closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. “I was pretending that I wanted it to be your choice. I think you should quit because yada yada, but if we’re going to move forward from here?” He opened his eyes and looked at her, and it was clear that he was dead serious. “No more. Not here, and not in California, either.”

  Eden gazed back at him.

  But he wasn’t done. “Not even when I’m away,” he said. “Especially not when I’m away. I know you think you found yourself a good situation and that you felt safe. Safe enough, anyway, but the truth is, it’s dangerous. Besides, you’re better than that and … The idea of all those hands on you? I know they’re not supposed to touch, but I also know that they do. And I don’t want it. I don’t want to share.”

  Eden could tell from his body language that he was expecting her to argue or to come out with some kind of You’re not the boss of me exclamation. Instead, she nodded. She’d already handwritten her letter of resignation and left it up on Alan’s desk. Because this way she wouldn’t have to lie to the social workers tomorrow. Plus she knew Danny was going to raise a stink if she tried to keep it up. Besides, she didn’t like being touched, either. “Okay,” she said.

  “Really? Just like that?” He was surprised.

  “No,” she said, a touch snarkishly. “I’m lying.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said, “because you promised you wouldn’t.”

  There was something in his eyes, now, that looked a lot like hope.

  “You know what sucks?” Eden asked him, “almost as much as you do?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “When I work some stupid minimum-wage job, and the manager puts his hands all over me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Yeah, there is something—”

  “Something that won’t get you arrested,” she added.

  “How about you let me help you find a job?” Izzy asked. “When we get to San Diego.”

  Eden shrugged. “I’m happy to let you try,” she said.

  He smiled at that. “There is no try.”

  “Yeah, well, people generally don’t want to hire me,” she told him. “Unless they want to get in my pants. Try to get in my pants. And there definitely is a try, because they do it. But they don’t succeed.”

  “I’ll help you find a job,” he said again, “with people who’ll respect you.”

  And there he sat, just looking at Eden, as just a few feet away, up on that stage, Darlene danced. She might as well have been invisible as far as Izzy was concerned.

  And Eden opened her mouth and said, “If you get to tell me where I can or can’t work, then I get to tell you … No more Marias. If you’re with me, you’re only with me. For as long as we’re together. Whether it’s three days or three years.”

  “That goes both ways,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, too.

  And she should have felt better. They’d reached an understanding. Like Izzy’d said, they’d started over. They’d set up some guidelines and rules for their relationship. It should have been a good thing.

  But all she felt was as if they’d started a giant clock ticking, counting down to the moment Ben would turn eighteen and Izzy would say good-bye.

  It wasn’t an if—he’d made that more than clear. It was a very definite when.

  And that was on top of the fact that nothing they’d said, not even Izzy’s apology, had soothed the hurt that came from knowing he’d believed she’d taken that money right out of his wallet.

  Izzy cleared his throat. “About Maria …”

  Eden briefly closed her eyes. Way to bring her down to another, as of yet unexplored, level of hell. “I really don’t want to know.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You do. She hit on me, but I turned her down.”

  She looked at him then as her emotions twisted within her. She didn’t want to feel so stupidly happy at that news. “And … you want some kind of congratulatory medal …?”

  He smiled at that. “No, I’m just trying to be forthright. I kind of lied to you about her. You know, by omission.”

  “Anything else?” she asked. “I mean, as long as we’re here in the confessional?”

  Izzy laughed, because this place was about as far from churchlike as it could possibly be. But this time, when he reached for her hand, Eden didn’t pull away. She just gave up and let him link their fingers together.

  “Thanks,” he said. “For forgiving me.”

  “But I haven’t yet,” she admitted. “I’ll get there eventually …” Probably the next time they made love—or had sex, as Izzy called it. She felt tears welling again in her eyes, so she took her hand back to brush them away. “Just not tonight. Tonight I’m just going to wallow in hating you.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  She stood up. “I already quit,” she told him. “So let’s go make Ben happy and cruise the strip, see if we can’t find Neesha.”

  Izzy looked as if he’d far rather go back to her apartment and sleep for eighteen hours, but he nodded valiantly and even managed a smile. “Just let me stop for coffee, and I’m up for anything.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2009

/>   4:58 P.M.

  She still had a full hour before it was time to meet Clarice, but Neesha headed over to the hamburger place early—being cautious as usual.

  She walked from the bus station, where she’d used the bathroom to change into the same halter top that she’d worn the previous night.

  She didn’t have a jacket, so she’d used one of the shirts Ben had given her to cover the sequins, because she didn’t want to draw attention to herself until she arrived at the private party.

  It didn’t matter that she smelled of perspiration or worse—this was the last time she would ever wear this top. She would return here later and change back into a far less eye-catching shirt, then bring the clothes she’d borrowed back to Ben’s sister, along with money to clean or even just replace them.

  She’d leave it in a bag outside the apartment door, wishing that she could—as Ben’s older brother suggested—write a note. Just to say thank you. And good luck.

  But she didn’t know how to write in English, and there was a bus that left for L.A. at midnight, and she was determined to be on it, so she wouldn’t have time to knock and give them that message face-to-face.

  The hamburger place where she’d first met Clarice was now in sight, and Neesha walked toward it with a sense of dread, despite knowing that she’d almost made it past the finish line.

  * * *

  Izzy needed coffee.

  The bartender at D’Amato’s had told him there was a Starbucks just a few blocks away, on Paradise Road—which was also where Neesha had told Dan and Jenn that she could find “work.”

  Eden knew exactly where it was. “It’s up on the left,” she directed him. “Across from the ‘Billions Served’ sign …?”

  “I got it,” he said as he spotted the familiar logo. “Thanks.” He glanced at her as he signaled to make the turn into the lot. She’d been quiet ever since leaving D’Amato’s, and now she was gazing out the window with no small degree of intensity.

  Looking for a Neesha in a haystack.

  It wasn’t just a case of Eden wanting to be able to tell Ben that they’d spent some time searching. She honestly wanted to find the girl, and Izzy tried to imagine what it had been like, fifteen years old and in charge of getting her little brother and her sister’s kids to safety with a category-five hurricane bearing down on them.

  She’d driven them out of their low-lying neighborhood in her brother-in-law’s car, or so she’d told him. Izzy suspected there was more to the story than she’d revealed.

  And now was not the time to ask her about it. Since they’d left the club, she’d answered the few questions he’d asked in monosyllables. Did you have dinner? No. Are you hungry? No.

  He had to wait for a group of businessmen—meetings over and ready to party—who were walking down the sidewalk before he pulled into the parking lot. For this part of town, at this time of late afternoon, both the Starbucks and the fast-food joints nearby were jumping—but mostly with traffic from cars.

  The sidewalks were fairly empty. Compared with the teeming crowds out on the strip, this part of the city was a pedestrian ghost town.

  “You want anything?” Izzy asked Eden as he put the car into park and double-checked that his wallet was still in his pocket.

  She said, “No thanks,” as she turned to crane her head and get a look at another group of people coming out of the Mickey D’s. But it was a family, trying to get an affordable meal amid all of the vice and sin. They probably didn’t even realize that the skinny blonde in the microskirt, who’d walked past them in the parking lot, was a hooker.

  Which was probably a good thing, because Dad, with his camera, might’ve tried to take her picture. As it was, the man took a second and then a third glance as she leaned in the passenger-side window of a pickup truck, to talk to the driver and simultaneously show the world a flash of candy-apple-red panties.

  “Lock this door behind me,” Izzy ordered Eden, and left the car running, a/c blasting, as he got out. He waited for her to push the lock button, and when it clicked, he moved through the oppressive heat and went inside the Starbucks, where there was, of course, an interminably slow-moving line.

  Neesha almost walked right into it.

  She hadn’t been expecting it—although as soon as she saw it, she didn’t know why she hadn’t. It suddenly seemed so obvious that Clarice would have certain connections, and would make some inquiries about Neesha.

  But there she was—Clarice—talking to one of the men—the bald one—who’d been searching for Neesha over at the mall. He was driving a blue pickup truck. And—God—climbing into the passenger’s seat beside him was Todd. It was clear he was there to help identify her—which she knew he could do quite easily.

  He’d been one of her regular visitors through the years.

  And it was then, upon seeing him, that Neesha made her second big mistake.

  She stopped short instead of continuing to walk past, and it telegraphed her surprise, and made her stand out.

  Although she was already standing out by being one of the very few people on the sidewalk.

  And he saw her—Todd did. She saw him sit up and point directly at her, and she knew she had to run. But this part of town was unfamiliar to her, filled with massage parlors and empty lots with nowhere to hide, and she didn’t know where to go.

  “Neesha!”

  It seemed impossible, but someone was calling her name, and she spun to see Ben’s sister Eden, standing outside a car, not far from her, in a coffee-shop parking lot.

  And her heart sank, because she was surrounded, because Eden was somehow part of this, too—this plan to capture her and take her back to hell.

  They both had vehicles and she was on foot and Neesha knew it was over.

  But she did the only thing she could do as Todd got out of the truck and jogged toward the street, and toward her—because God, he had a gun.

  She ran.

  “Neesha, wait!”

  Eden looked frantically back toward the Starbucks, trying to find and signal to Izzy through the heavily tinted window as the little girl bolted down the street.

  And oh, dear Lord, she wasn’t the only one who’d spotted the girl. A man who’d climbed out of a truck in the McDonald’s parking lot was already chasing her, and the truck itself was moving to follow and—

  Holy crap, the truck was being driven by the man who’d shot at them at the mall, the man with the shaved head—the man that Eden and Izzy had seen asking questions at Greg’s house while they were staked out and waiting for Ivette.

  As the bald man moved the truck toward the entrance of the fast-food driveway, Eden looked back at his friend who was following Neesha. She saw the flash of something metallic—a gun that the man was checking to make sure it was loaded—and she knew she couldn’t wait for Izzy.

  She had to act.

  She dove back into the rental car, slamming the door behind her as she scrambled over the parking brake and into the driver’s seat. The car was already running, so all she had to do was put it into reverse.

  The parking lot and the sidewalk behind her were both clear, so Eden hit the gas.

  Izzy stood on his place on line and did his best not to fall to his knees while weeping and shouting, Venti, venti, venti! For the love of God, all I want is a big-ass cup of coffee, while up at the counter a man who was actually wearing a sweater ordered some kind of complicated but completely caffeine-free drink—really, what was the point?—and then changed his mind about seven times.

  “Oh, my God!” the girl behind the counter said, and Izzy was in total agreement.

  Until he realized that she was looking past it’s-only-115-degrees-Fahrenheit-tonight-Mommy-where’s-my-sweater man and out the window at the parking lot, where a car was leaving plenty of rubber as its tires squealed and—

  Damn, that was his car.

  Eden was behind the wheel, driving like she was insane.

  What the fuck …?

  As Izzy pushed past the cro
wd behind him and ran for the door, he caught a flash of her face as she threw the car into drive.

  Whatever she was doing, she was aware and determined—not some victim of sudden sleepwalking or in the midst of some kind of weird seizure. She was also alone in the car—unless a carjacker had climbed in and was sitting on the floor so that Izzy couldn’t see him.

  “Eden!” he shouted as he burst out into the heat of the evening, but she’d already finished backing up and had put the car into drive.

  She forsook the traditional route of leaving via the entrance to the parking lot, and instead went for the most direct pathway to the street, which involved plowing over some tired-looking shrubbery and bouncing over the curb, muffler scraping and banging as she went.

  The few pedestrians who were on the sidewalk scattered, as did the cars on the street—squealing to a stop or swerving to avoid her—and it was clear she was trying to avoid them all. Most of them.

  One man, who was in the midst of jaywalking across the avenue, seemed to be her target, and shit, yeah, she was heading right toward him. But when he dove out of the way, scrambling back the way he’d come to take cover behind a parked car, she turned the wheel and hit the brakes, hard.

  It didn’t stop her from sideswiping the car he was hiding behind, and the sound of metal on metal screamed in the oppressively hot afternoon air as she ground to a stop.

  “Eden!” Izzy shouted again, and this time she looked toward him and—Jesus—kind of waved. It was a little yes, I see you over there, hang on just a sec acknowledgment as the man she’d nearly flattened scrambled to his feet. Whatever dude was trying to get to was on Izzy’s side of the street, but instead of attempting to cross again, he ran toward a truck that was poised and ready to take a left turn out of the McDonald’s parking lot.

  And suddenly the entire situation clicked into sharp, understandable focus.

  Because that truck—a shiny new blue Ford 4×4, no doubt stolen, with a mud-obscured Nevada front plate—was being driven by their old friend from the shopping mall, Baldy McShotMyCar.