Breaking the Rules

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Izzy had it all figured out. Illegally obtained drugs, plus addictive behavior, plus threat of arrest and incarceration …? He was going to use what he’d found in that oven in the kitchen to buy Danny and Eden everything they wanted—Ben’s release from that prison of intolerance, and a signed letter granting the fifteen-year-old permission to go to San Diego and live with either his brother or his sister.

  Izzy had it all figured out, until Greg opened his ugly-ass mouth, and smugly informed them, “He won’t be there. Crossroads has a half a dozen sister organizations, all across the country, used when certain family members are uncooperative. Benjamin is on his way to an undisclosed location right now. Even I don’t know where he’s going. All I know is he won’t come back until he’s cured.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  If Izzy had had to put money on which of the Gillmans would lose their shit first on account of getting that kind of bad news about Ben, he would’ve picked Eden. But it was Danny who went over the edge as he tightened his grip on Greg. The older man flapped and flailed, but he didn’t stand a chance as his stepson choked the jumping bejesus out of him.

  And maybe Danny was just trying to scare him. Maybe he was intending to stop before the old dude actually stopped breathing, but it sure as hell didn’t look like it.

  Ivette didn’t think he was going to stop, either—her screeching started up again.

  Jenn, too, was on that bus. “Please, Danny, don’t,” she said. She looked at Izzy beseechingly in a silent do something as she opened the screen door, stepped inside, and tried to pull Dan back. But all she succeeded in doing was hugging him—there was no way she could manhandle him away from Greg.

  There was no way Izzy could do it, either. Not by force. Well, he could do it by force, but not without seriously damaging Greg in the process.

  So Izzy did the only thing he could. He took Jenn’s lead, and just put his arms around Dan, too, holding on to him from behind.

  “Don’t do this, brother,” he said quietly as Ivette wailed from where she’d fallen, prostrate on the floor. “This doesn’t make it better, it only makes it worse.”

  And then Eden spoke up from her place of exile, still out on the stoop. “Danny, Ben needs you,” she pleaded. “And … I do, too.”

  And with that, Danny finally released Greg. Izzy caught the old man and kept him from falling as the asshat gasped for air. Damn, he smelled bad.

  “I’m done,” Danny told his mother. “Sending money, answering your calls … It’s over. And I’m taking Ben, even if I have to drag you to court to do it.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ivette sobbed. “You’re my son, and I love you!”

  “No, you don’t,” Dan said. “You only love your alcohol and your drugs. You want to be part of my life? You lose this asshole, and you put yourself through rehab. If you do that? Then we’ll talk.”

  He put his arm around Jenn and went out the screen door, where, on the stoop, he stopped and roughly pulled Eden in for a hug. “Eedie, I’m so sorry,” Dan said, his voice breaking.

  And Eden—tough, resilient, screw-you-attitude Eden—started to cry, too, with deep, body-shaking sobs.

  “Get them into your car, and wait for me,” Izzy told Jenn, who was the only one who wasn’t weeping—okay, well, she was, too, but she looked as if she could still see well enough to navigate the stairs. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

  As they moved away from the house, Izzy turned back to Greg and Ivette.

  “So,” he said. “I’m betting someone, somewhere, knows where Ben is …”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  SATURDAY, 9 MAY 2009

  0200

  Ben wasn’t waiting for them, back at the apartment.

  Danny knew that that had been a real long shot, but he’d been hopeful just the same.

  Whatever Zanella had threatened his mother and her scum-sucking husband with, it had worked like gangbusters—to a degree. He’d returned to their car with signed letters stating that both Ivette and Greg gave their full and complete permission for Ben to move to San Diego to live with either Danny or Eden. And they’d promised, under threat of … whatever—Izzy wouldn’t say—to both appear at CPS in the morning to give a similar statement in person.

  But getting Ben released from Crossroads was apparently another thing entirely. When pressed, Greg was foggy about the details of the arrangements he’d made with the Crossroads staff, for picking up Ben. He’d been under the impression that it wasn’t scheduled to happen until the morning. But maybe he’d been confused, and it was the transporting Ben to Utah or Alabama part of it that was scheduled for the morning.

  In which case, Ben could well still be at the Las Vegas Crossroads compound.

  After failing to raise the facility via phone, Izzy had offered to make a little in-person visit. Dan had expected Eden to volunteer to go along—but she didn’t. And then he found out that Greg was going, too, as Izzy’s unwilling and belligerent copilot.

  It was then that the three of them—Danny, Jenni, and Eden—headed back here.

  “Ben’s last blood sugar reading was after we got home from the wedding,” Eden reported now, coming out of the kitchen with the device. “Around ten o’clock.”

  “And we think he left the apartment … when?” Dan asked. He’d changed out of his uniform and was digging through his pack for a clean pair of socks.

  “We don’t really know.” Eden sighed as she sat down next to Danny on the couch. “Izzy and I had a fight—it must’ve been around, wow, midnight?” She sighed again. “We got loud. I think it might be my fault—Ben’s leaving the apartment the way he did.”

  “Or maybe it wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Dan suggested. “Maybe it was … just Ben being Ben.”

  Jenn had been sitting across the room, in the easy chair, with her eyes closed, but now she stood up. “I’m going to make some tea,” she announced, but she came over—no easy feat with all of the mattresses on the floor—and she kissed Danny before she went into the other room. Not because she wanted tea, but because she wanted to give them privacy to talk.

  Dan smiled at his sister. “She’s training me and I just got a kiss, so I must be doing something right.”

  “Training?” Eden repeated.

  “Yeah,” Dan said. “That’s not what she’d call it, but we Gillmans are so messed up, we need to be reminded, frequently, how to be human. For example”—he raised his voice so Jenn could hear him from the kitchen—“I managed not to kill anyone tonight.”

  Jenn laughed. “Yes, I made special note of that,” she called back.

  “Even though I wanted to,” Dan told Eden. “I had my arm against Greg’s throat, but it was really Ivette I wanted to …” He sighed, still feeling sick from all he’d learned tonight. “How come you didn’t tell me? About Ron and … the insulin?”

  She looked up from her examination of Ben’s meter. Her answer wasn’t really that much of a surprise. “Because,” she said simply, “I didn’t think you’d believe me, either.”

  Ouch.

  He tried to imagine how awful it must’ve been, to have survived all that Eden had—the hurricane, the flooding, her courageous quest to save Ben, and her assumed failure despite all of her sacrifices—and then have her own mother believe Ron’s lies.

  “She’s damaged,” Dan told Eden now, talking about Ivette.

  “I know.”

  “I’m damaged, too,” he admitted. “But … I’m getting better.”

  “Is that an apology?”

  He forced a smile. “I kind of feel like I should start every sentence I ever say to you with I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I know it’s lame to make excuses, but growing up in that house, with Sandy? I used to go out, looking for her, late at night, so she wouldn’t spend the entire night passed out on the neighbor’s lawn—or worse, in the street—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” Eden said. “I was there, too.”

  “You were so much younger
.”

  “But I knew what you were doing.”

  “I am sorry,” he said. “Because you were right when you said … what you said. You’re not Sandy.”

  Eden nodded. “And you’re not Dad. I know that, too.”

  She was talking about his accidentally hitting Jenn, and he had to look away so she didn’t see the tears that leaped into his eyes. Or maybe it was okay to let her see. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Thank you, too,” she whispered back. “Although, for a while, I thought I was. Sandy. After … I think maybe I tried to be just like her, since everyone thought … And I made a lot of bad mistakes, I’m well aware of that. I also owe you a lot of money—I want to pay you back—I’ve got most of it—”

  “From stripping?” he asked, looking at her, and she didn’t disagree. “Like that’s not a mistake?”

  “I quit,” she told him. “Working at the club. Izzy asked me to, so …”

  “Good,” he said. “Because you have plenty of other options.”

  The look she shot him was not one of agreement.

  Dan sat forward. “You do,” he said. “You’re good with kids—weren’t you working as a nanny for a while?”

  “For a single mom,” she said. “But the women with the husbands? They don’t want to hire me. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “You know, Jenk and Lindsey are having a baby,” Dan told her.

  Eden’s face brightened. “I know. Izzy told me. That’s so great.”

  “Jenk was telling me that there’s such a baby boom going on, over where Lindsey works, at Troubleshooters, they’re talking about setting up child care, right on the premises.”

  “Seriously?” Eden asked.

  “One of the pregnancies is Tommy’s wife, Kelly,” Dan said. “And since he owns the place …”

  “Well, that’s really great,” Eden said.

  “Sophia’s pregnant, too,” Dan said. “You remember her, right?”

  “The Sophia you have a mad crush on?” Eden lowered her voice to ask, her eyes wide.

  “Had,” he corrected her, glancing toward the kitchen. “Past tense. Very, very past tense.”

  “How did that happen? By immaculate conception? While she was flying around on her perfect angel wings?”

  Dan had to laugh. “No, I’m pretty sure it happened the good old-fashioned human way. She’s married now. To Dave Malkoff.”

  “What?” Eden said, her mouth dropping open. “Wow, I missed a lot. It’s like I went away for a while, and came back to some kind of weird alternate universe where Princess Sophia married the grumpy troll.”

  “Dave’s not so grumpy anymore.”

  She laughed. “I bet.”

  “If you want,” Dan said, “I could check with Tommy, maybe get you a job interview. If they’re actually gonna go ahead with the child-care thing …”

  She was silent, so he quickly added, “Unless it’s too soon, you know, for you to work with, um, infants. And I’m sorry if that’s a touchy subject—”

  “No,” Eden said. “No. It’s not. I just … need to think about it a little bit, before …”

  “Just let me know,” he said. “Okay?”

  She nodded and they sat in silence for a moment, but then Dan had to ask, “Do you, I don’t know, want to press charges? Against Ron? I don’t think it’s too late. Statute of limitations and everything. We could—”

  She was shaking her head. “Ron’s already in jail.”

  “But not for what he did to you,” Dan pointed out.

  “You and Izzy are so much alike,” Eden told him. “Always ready to rush in and slay the dragons. Ron’s in jail—he can’t hurt anyone else. And me? I’m … okay.”

  “Are you?” Dan asked.

  She didn’t answer him directly. She just said, almost wistfully, “Do you think maybe things would’ve been different? If Charlie hadn’t died?”

  “Maybe,” Dan said, smiling as he remembered the one man that their mother had hooked up with that he’d actually liked. Loved, even. “I don’t know, Eed. Ivette seemed to be the happiest she’d ever been when she was with him, so … Yeah. Maybe.”

  “He was teaching her how to be human,” Eden told him, using close to his own words. “But he ran out of time.” She laughed, but it wasn’t because she thought anything was funny. “Do you know he was the only person who told me that I was going to be okay, after John Franklin dumped me? Everyone else told me I was going to hell, that you reap what you sow, but Charlie told me that making bad choices was a part of growing up. I’d made the mistake of believing John, and … Live and learn, Charlie said. But then, just a few days later, he was gone. And then Katrina happened, and the thing with Ron, and … I started making bad choices on purpose. Because I didn’t think I deserved anything better.”

  “Is that why you were fighting with Zanella?” he asked her quietly. “Because you don’t think you deserve to be happy?”

  “No, actually, I’m good with being happy these days,” she said, and she looked away, but not before he saw the misery in her eyes. “Izzy, um, told me he was leaving. For good.”

  Shit. “Eden, he sometimes drives me nuts, but he’s …” Dan laughed and rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but … beneath his outer asshole, you were right. Zanella is a good guy. I mean, tonight? When he went off? Fuck you and fuck you! That was pretty beautiful. And if there’s one thing that I have absolutely no doubt about? Even when he’s pissing me off? It’s that he loves you.”

  “Yeah, well, great. He’s got a funny way of showing it.” She stood up, clearly not wanting to talk about this. “We need to focus on finding Ben. If he is at Crossroads, the stress is going to be intense. When Izzy calls, we should be ready to meet him with this”—she held up the meter—“and some insulin.”

  “Maybe he’s not there,” Dan suggested. “Maybe he went out looking for his freaky little friend. Neesha. Or … maybe … Do you know if Ben has a, you know …” He cleared his throat. “Boyfriend?”

  Eden shook her head. “I don’t think he does, no. He really hasn’t had any friends at all, since Deshawndra. Seriously, Dan, Neesha’s the first person his age that he hasn’t shut out.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “A boyfriend might be different. Maybe he wouldn’t tell you. I mean, I don’t think I told anyone about my first girlfriend …”

  “There’s this homophobic kid, Tim,” Eden said. “At school. And this boy, Bo, he’s got a crush on. Ben, not Tim. But Bo’s so far in the closet … How did Ben put it? He can’t even see the door.”

  “Maybe Bo turned on the closet light,” Dan said. “Jenn said Ben spent a lot of time earlier today doing something on Facebook.”

  Eden didn’t look convinced. “I think he was trying to track down the boyfriend of that kid he met at Crossroads. Peter something, from Connecticut. He wanted to make sure Peter’s friends knew he was at the facility here in Las Vegas. I didn’t quite get it when Ben first told me—how could this boy’s friends not know where he was, you know? But now it makes sense. If they ship kids across the country …”

  “It’s twisted,” Dan agreed.

  “It’s worse than twisted,” Eden said. “Jenn said she thinks it’s illegal. Transporting minors across state lines …? She’s going to talk to Maria and that other lawyer, Linda Thompson.”

  It was then, before Dan could say, that’s good, that it happened. There was a knock at the door.

  They were both startled, and they both looked over to check the time on the VCR. It was 0213.

  “Maybe Ben forgot his key,” Dan suggested. “Maybe all the drama is going to end—right now.”

  “Please, God,” Eden said as she stood up.

  Dan stood, too, relentlessly cautious. “Don’t just open it—check the peephole first.”

  Eden pointed to herself. “Female, living alone?” she said, shooting her brother a you better believe it look as she went to the apartment door and peeked out through the peephole.
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br />   She’d expected it to be Izzy, but there was no one there. Or rather, there was no one there of his height. But when she looked down toward the concrete walkway …

  “It’s Neesha,” she said to Dan and to Jenn, too, who’d come to stand in the kitchen doorway. She pulled the door open and it was, indeed, Ben’s freaky little friend, as Dan had so aptly called her.

  The girl was a mess. She was still wearing the clothes she’d had on when Eden had spotted her near the Starbucks—a T-shirt beneath which the sequined straps of a hot-pink halter top peeked out, and a pair of black pants that were dusty and torn at the knees. Her hair was a matted, sweaty mess, and she had dirt mixed in with the streaks of perspiration and tears on her face.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Eden said. “Get in here.”

  The fact that the girl came swiftly inside, and even helped Eden close the door securely behind her was telling. She was terrified and exhausted. And had probably been running, full speed, since Eden had seen her last.

  In the living room, Danny had gotten to his feet, but he sat back down as Neesha eyed him nervously.

  Jenn, meanwhile, had gone back into the kitchen and she now brought Neesha a glass of water. “Honey, here,” she said, handing it to the girl. “Drink this. You’re okay now. You’re safe with us.”

  But Neesha looked up after taking only a sip from the glass. And as she looked from Jenn to Eden and over to Danny in the living room, she said, “But I’m not. And you’re not safe here, either. They know where you live. They were here, in the courtyard.”

  “Who was?” Jenn asked as Eden glanced over at Dan. Like her, he already knew what Neesha was going to say before she said it.