The Reture of Luke McGuire

by Justine Davis

  David shrugged.

  She tried again. "I heard you got grounded."

  He shrugged again. But this time at least he spoke. "It's not so bad, if you know how to get around it."

  "Are you getting around it now?"

  A third shrug. He was working awfully hard to give the impression he didn't care. "She thinks I'm in one of her stupid summer classes. And since she's off on her crusade again, she doesn't care, really."

  "David—"

  "And don't tell me she does. She doesn't know how."

  "I won't try to change your mind about that, David," she said, not wanting to make it more difficult for the boy to get along with his mother, but not wanting to deny what she suspected was the truth, either. "But if you think you have it bad, imagine how it must feel to be the reason your mother's on this crusade. To know she blames you for ru­ining her life."

  For a moment David's mouth tightened stubbornly. Clearly he was still angry at his brother. But then what she'd said must have gotten through.

  "Yeah, I know she blames him. Like there's anything to blame him for. She's got such a tough life," David added sarcastically.

  "Do you remember your grandmother?"

  "Not really. I was just a baby when she died. And my mother never talks about her much. I think she was a real nasty old witch, though." He gave Amelia a sideways look. "And yeah, I know, that's probably why Mom's the way she is."

  "Doesn't make it any easier to live with though, does it?" Amelia asked sympathetically.

  "I think the old bat was awful to Luke, too."

  Well, Amelia thought, if he realized that, maybe he was coming around as far as his brother was concerned.

  "Why don't you ask him?" When he didn't answer, she added, "Or are you still not speaking to him?"

  David took a deep breath. He stared down at the counter. "I thought he'd understand. I thought he'd get me out of here."

  "He does understand. But unfortunately, everything he said was true. No official agency would let you live with him over your mother. He didn't make the laws, David."

  His head came up then. "No, but all of a sudden he's living by them?"

  "Is that what you want, for him to break the law for you? End up in trouble all over again?''

  David didn't answer, but he did look uncomfortable. So he wasn't that angry with Luke. She decided to press the point and maybe wake him up a little about his own actions, as well.

  "Or maybe you'd just rather get in trouble yourself, so he can feel even more guilty about the example he set for you?"

  His eyes widened slightly, then his gaze darted away, and she knew she'd struck a nerve. With a sinking feeling inside, she realized Mrs. Clancy was probably right about what he'd been up to.

  "You know," she said, "there are some people in town who are blaming your brother for what's going on, all the vandalism and break-ins. Don't you think he's taken enough heat around here without taking yours, too?"

  "I can't help who they blame," David said; it wasn't quite an admission, but it was close. She changed tacks.

  "Maybe your mother doesn't care like she should, David. Maybe she never learned how. But you know I care. And your brother cares, too."

  "Yeah?" It was disbelieving, but not sarcastic, giving Amelia hope.

  "Yes. He told me you were the only good memory he had of this place."

  David looked startled at that. "He did?"

  She nodded. "He came a long way, just to see if he could help. He probably already knew he couldn't do what you wanted him to, but he came anyway. Because he cares."

  David studied her for a moment. "How come you're not like the rest of them? You don't hate him for what he did back then."

  "Well, I wasn't here then. I didn't know him—"

  "A lot of them didn't, either. But they heard bad things and they believed them, and hated him even though he never did nothing to them."

  "I try not to judge people on hearsay," Amelia said, re­alizing even as she said it that she sounded a bit self-righteous. So she added, with a smile, "And I guess maybe I've always had a thing for the underdog."

  Or bad boys, she admitted silently. For whatever reason, it was true. Maybe because she'd always been so blessed good all her life, people who weren't fascinated her. Of course, it didn't hurt that this one looked like something from that slightly wicked, wrong kind of paradise.

  Mr. Spock spoke again, and this time she looked up ea­gerly and with hope. David was feeling much more favor­ably toward his brother now; if it was Luke...

  It was Snake. And entourage.

  Amelia went instantly on guard.

  "Hey, Hiller-man, what're you doin' in this place?"

  "Just hanging out," David said, and already Amelia could see the change in him. He was suddenly slouching, and his entire expression had changed to one of cocky insolence touched with chronic anger.

  "She's a little old for you, isn't she?" one of the other boys said, with a snicker.

  "And boring, like these books," Snake said, giving Ame­lia a look that reminded her rather forcefully of the knife he no doubt had in his pocket. But he turned back to David then, and Amelia cravenly let out an inaudible breath of relief.

  "You want to hang with us," Snake said, "you can't keep comin' here. Makes you look like a wimp, you know?"

  "Yeah, sure," David said with a shrug.

  "C'mon, man, we got plans to make before midnight."

  "Sure," David said again.

  And just like that he walked out with them, leaving Ame­lia stunned anew at the power of peer pressure.

  And more worried than ever that David was headed for serious trouble.

  * * *

  "Going to be with us much longer?"

  Luke grimaced as he handed the motel night manager an­other day's rent for tomorrow. "I don't know."

  He hadn't intended to be here this long. And for the past two days, he'd just hung around doing not much of anything, except going through the money he'd allotted for the trip.

  He should have just kept right on going, he thought as he headed back toward his room, after he'd left the bookstore that evening. Should have pointed the bike north, and by 3:00 a.m. he would have been home. Back in the mountains, the river country, where he'd finally found his life.

  And only the fact that it would look like he was running from Amelia had stopped him from doing just that.

  Oh? And wouldn't you have been?

  He'd been hearing way too much of that little voice in his head lately. Once it had encouraged him to take the chances that most of the time landed him in trouble, now it just seemed to nag him. Hoping to shut it off, he retreated to his room, picked up his book, and settled in to read.

  He finished the book all too soon, freeing his mind to wander. Except that it didn't; it went straight back to exactly where he didn't want it to go.

  It was only a kiss, for God's sake. What was wrong with him? He'd kissed lots of women before. Just because he hadn't meant to kiss this one but hadn't been able to stop himself didn't have to mean anything. Just because he'd only meant to make it a quick, brotherly kiss and had lost control of it didn't have to mean anything.

  The instant fire that had blazed along his nerves was a bit harder to explain away.

  He glanced at his watch. Not yet midnight. Maybe he would go for a ride, blow out the cobwebs.

  Then again, he thought, maybe not; it might not be late to him, but to most of Santiago Beach it was the middle of the night, and he didn't want to add fuel to the fire by wak­ing up the whole town snarling up and down their streets. Time was that would have been his sole goal in life, but things had changed.

  But he could take a walk, as he often did when he couldn't sleep at night. It wouldn't be at all the same here, but maybe it would help.

  Or maybe, he thought after he'd been tramping a half an hour along a sidewalk that seemed to him too level and civilized for a real walk, it would make things worse.

  He hadn't intended
to do it, but he'd been so busy fighting off the persistent thoughts of Amelia and memories of that kiss that he hadn't paid much attention to where he was going. And now he was here, as if his feet had remembered the way and forgotten to mention to his mind where they were going.

  He stopped at the corner, under the big hibiscus tree, star­ing down at the big white house in the middle of the block. His mother had been so proud of that house. No doubt she still was. The new husband she'd acquired when Luke was ten would have preferred something less grand, something designed a bit more with children in mind—he'd wanted lots of them, Luke remembered now. But then as later, Jackie got what she wanted. So Luke had spent eight years in that house, afraid to touch anything outside his own room and aware that his mother begrudged him even that much space.

  She'd even resented the time Ed Hiller had spent with Luke, and sometimes Luke thought she'd had David partly to cut down on that as well as to insure that Ed stayed in line. The other part was the fulfilling of the one desire her husband had expressed; she'd presented him with a son of his own and expected him to be happy with that.

  And Ed had been. He'd loved David with all his heart and still had enough left over to give his stepson a little. He'd wanted more children, and Luke knew he would have loved them all, but his wife had said one was enough. Even then, he hadn't counted.

  He watched the darkened house and wondered if everyone who came back home felt this odd sense of distance, as if what had happened here had happened to someone else. It wasn't that it was any better, looking back, it was simply that it didn't matter as much as it once had. Once it had been the core of his life, fueling his anger and drive to make as much trouble as he could. Now... now it was cooling em­bers, requiring intentional stirring and added fuel to produce any heat.

  A movement at the side of the house yanked him out of his reverie.

  He leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he looked into the deep shadows along the four-car garage. He'd just about decided he'd imagined it when something moved again, low; down, next to the white wall. It was awfully big for a local animal, unless the Langs still lived down the street and still fancied Newfoundlands.

  And then the shape stood up, and he knew from the height, the baggy cargo pants and the backward baseball cap that it was David.

  He wondered if his brother had taken the same way out he always had, through the bathroom window that opened over the garage roof, then down the back side, where you could just reach the edge of the patio roof. He'd never taken the boy with him, but he supposed he could have watched, And remembered.

  David moved stealthily toward the sidewalk, then up the street, away from where Luke was hidden in the shadow of the hibiscus. As David neared the comer, Luke saw two more figures appear, carrying backpacks. The three waited, and a few minutes later three more arrived. Then the six took off with purposeful yet furtive strides, heads swiveling as they checked their surroundings constantly.

  Luke knew that look. He knew exactly how it felt to be constantly on the watch, ready to run if you were spotted by the wrong person.

  He also knew what it meant. He'd done it too often him­self to forget; David and his buddies were up to something they shouldn't be.

  He waited until they were just out of sight, then started after them. He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he couldn't not go.

  He hadn't gone far when he realized the follower himself was being followed. A car was behind him, a small black coupe, keeping its distance, but never so far that the driver would lose sight of him. He wondered if maybe it was an undercover police car, but it looked pretty racy for that, un­less things had changed mightily at Santiago Beach PD.

  His attention now split between the boys up ahead and the car behind, he kept going. It was an odd sort of real, physical flashback to a time when skulking along darkened streets had been a regular habit of his.

  They reached Main Street, and Luke knew he would have to be careful now. There was too much open space, too many places where his quarry could spot him. If they turned north, there wasn't much cover; if they went south, there was an occasional recessed doorway in front of the busi­nesses along the block that would afford some cover, and the courtyard of the community center, with all its trees and benches.

  He got lucky, they went south.

  He'd been so focused on them for the moment that he didn't realize the car had stopped until he paused at the corner to let the boys get far enough away. He glanced back; the black coupe was parked now, and just as he looked, the headlights went out. He turned back and leaned to look around the corner; the boys were walking slowly, watchfully, and he knew he had to give them more space.

  "Luke!"

  The whisper was just loud enough for him to hear, but still he nearly whacked his head on the sign advertising T-shirts at the corner tourist trap as he whipped around at the unexpected sound of his name.

  Amelia. Of all the people he might have expected to come across prowling around in the middle of the night, she would have been the last.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, still shaking off the vestiges of the alarm she'd given him.

  "The same thing you are, I think," she whispered back. "I heard David's... friends talking about something happen­ing at midnight tonight, so I followed him."

  He stared at her. "You came out in the middle of the night, following that pack of kids, when you know at least one of them is carrying a weapon? And you think you're not brave?"

  "I'm just trying to help David. That's not bravery."

  "The heck it's not," he said softly.

  He leaned back to glance around the comer of the building again. The boys were three blocks down, heading toward the beach.

  "Much farther and they'll be out of sight," he said, giving up on the whisper but still speaking quietly.

  "Then let's go."

  He looked back at her. "I suppose it's useless to say let me handle this?"

  "I can help," she insisted. "David's still a little angry with you, but I don't think he would do anything... stupid in front of me."

  "I hope you're right," Luke muttered.

  They started down the street. They had to be careful, be­cause every few minutes one of the boys would look around; they were obviously worried about being followed or spot­ted.

  "You're good at this," Amelia said when Luke pulled her into the doorway of what had been a jewelry store but was now a surf-wear shop, the third time they'd dodged out of sight.

  "I did enough sneaking up and down this street at night myself," he told her. "The names have changed, but the terrain hasn't."

  A half block later, when the whole group of boys stopped and looked around carefully, Amelia said rather despon­dently, "They really are up to no good, aren't they?"

  "Looks like it," Luke said, feeling rather grim himself.

  "Then they really are the ones who broke that window and vandalized the playground."

  Luke twisted around to look at her. "What?"

  "The front window at the convenience store up on the highway was shattered, and all the gym equipment on the playground at the park was broken up."

  "I saw the window boarded up," Luke said, turning to look back down the street. The boys hadn't moved. "Uh-oh."

  "What?"

  "They've stopped moving."

  "Maybe they've changed their minds," Amelia said hopefully.

  "That optimism of yours again." Luke wondered if he'd ever been that upbeat in his life. He doubted it. "They're being careful so they don't get caught."

  "Then... shouldn't we stop them?"

  "How?"

  "I don't know. Talk them out of it or something."

  Luke shook his head wryly. "Those boys aren't listening. To anyone. If they were, they wouldn't be here."

  "But we have to try, don't we? David might listen to me. He always has."

  "He might, normally." When he saw her brow furrow in puzzlement he tried to explain. "Normally he might listen, and I know y
ou're a good persuader... you could sure talk me into or out of about anything. But he's in front of his friends right now. And with a guy that age, he'd sooner die than go against them or let some girl talk him out of their macho plan."

  Amelia just looked at him for a long, silent moment. Even in the faint light he could see her big eyes widen even fur­ther, and only when she finally spoke did he realize what part of what he'd said she had fixated on.

  "I... could?"

  It took him a moment to figure out what she meant. And then he was grateful for the dim light, because he was sure he was blushing as his own words came back to him. You could sure talk me into or out of about anything....

  Especially out of my clothes, he added to himself, bracing himself against the rush of heated sensation that rippled through him at the thought of being naked with her. A mere kiss had been like shooting class-five rapids; anything more would be like going over the falls. Or running a river every­one said was unrunnable.

  The problem, of course, was living to tell about it.

  "Luke?"

  Her soft voicing of his name sent another burst of heat through him. With an effort he beat it back and leaned out to look down the street once more.

  They were gone.

  Luke swore under his breath, then held up a hand to fore­stall Amelia's natural query. He listened, and in the night air could hear the sound of movement and, once, the clank of metal on metal.

  "Whatever they're going to do, they've started."

  They began to hurry, still maintaining as much cover as he could. But he doubted the boys were looking now; they'd obviously decided they were clear.

  "It's the community center," Amelia whispered when they got close enough to see exactly where the boys had stopped. "I wonder—"

  He stopped her with a sharp gesture as he spotted one of the boys as he crossed in front of a light patch of wall. Then he swore again, low and harsh.

  "He's got a gas can."

  "Gas—" Amelia began, breaking off when the obvious answer came to her. "Oh, God, no, they wouldn't"

  "Don't you doubt it," Luke said grimly.

  "Luke, we've got to stop them! If they burn down the community center... I've got my cell phone."

  He knew she was right. And for the first time he consid­ered actually calling the police. But he knew too well what would happen to his brother if he did.