"You’re here to adopt all these children?" she asked sternly.
"Yes, Your Honor," Nat responded.
"Yes, ma’am," Helen said firmly. And grinned.
The judge ignored the grin, glanced at the paperwork she’d already studied at some length in her chambers. Looked over her glasses at the court and enjoyed the hush of bated breath from the spectators. Pursed her lips and rubbed her chin. Eyed the children.
"You’re all here to be adopted by these people?"
"No, Your Honor," Max said gravely. "Just by Kern’l ’n’ Dad."
The judge shut her eyes and refused to smile. Figured the hell with it and smiled at them anyway. Wasn’t often she had a happy courtroom, be a shame not to enjoy it while she did.
"Well," she said, "if that’s what you want, I don’t have a problem with it. So, let’s see now, we have here Colonel and Mr. Crockett, Zachary Crockett, Cara Crockett, Elizabeth Crockett, Maximilian Crockett, Jane Crockett, Arkady Crockett and Anna Crockett. Is that correct?"
"Yes, Judge."
"Good. That’s it then. Congratulations, pick up your paperwork and get that dog out of my courtroom. Dismissed."
In the ensuing pandemonium, amid kissing and crying and congratulations, Nat pulled Helen to him. While his lips and tongue kept her mouth too busy to protest, his wandering hand skimmed lecherously down her hip, rounded her bottom and drifted over her thigh, confirming to the sinful, throaty taste of her laughter, her stockinged invitation for their locked bedroom door and Later.
–END–
Guarding Grace
Our Lady of Roses parking lot was dark except for the shadows provided by the floodlights, four of which had been doused one way or another since last night. Rocks, maybe, with slingshots, but most likely guns.
Grace Brannigan Witoczynski pressed her back against the chill orange brick of the porch wall and bent to the lock on the Parish Center and Food Depot, shivering inside the late–spring warmth, eyes slowly marking either side of the path she would have to travel between the center and her car, seventy–five yards away and parked beneath one of the dead lights. Damn. Couldn’t keep track of everything no matter how hard you tried.
She hated being here by herself at night, hated the instinctive fear even more—enough to challenge it. Didn’t have to challenge herself to walk out to the parking lot alone often, but about once a month she shut down the center by herself. Usually John drove over from wherever he’d worked that day and walked her out to her car—or picked her up at the curb and drove her out to it—but he was working late himself tonight and she was on her own.
Resolutely, Grace stiffened her mouth and dealt with her fear. She’d been told often enough that her fair Scandinavian–Irish skin had no business in this part of the world—the city—alone after dark. She didn’t know whether it was idealism, courage, stupidity or the stubborn desire to show her faith in Pontiac’s efforts to reclaim the city that made her ignore the naysayers and keep the center open until its usual lock–up time when everyone else left early—whether she was required to or not. Neighborhood Watch patrols were up, crack house locations and drive–by shootings were down—at least within the radius of the parish environs—and parents made a concerted effort to know where their children were. Still, crime had leeched out of Detroit, climbed hard and fast in the outlying cities, and Afterdark was its own world, with its own rules, invisible and frightening.
She sucked up a breath of pungent city air, dropped the center’s keys into her belly pack and plucked out her car keys, wove them tightly between her fingers, tips out—her own version of spiked knuckles. Simple but effective, they’d told her in her self–defense class. She wasn’t sure.
Another breath. She straightened and let the storm door slam behind her. Eyes roving the shadows, she took the first step toward the sidewalk, the second, then she was down, moving quickly, arms swinging, legs striding fast when she cut across the parish’s newly landscaped patch of lawn, stepped over a concrete parking tie and met the parking lot: the confident, aggressive New York strut worked equally well thirty miles northwest of Detroit.
At least so far.
Knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on…
Ten feet from her truck, still striding, she fixed her eyes on the dull gleam from the Suburban’s windshield and unwound the keys from her knuckles, got ready to slide the round key into the driver’s door lock. Wishing herself behind the wheel, doors locked, engine turned over, transmission in drive, cellular phone at the ready.
Pebbles skidded over the rough blacktop to one side of her and she started, jerking to look. The light from the three remaining floodlights at the back of the lot revealed nothing; she distributed her weight equally on the balls of her feet, tried to breathe herself calm the way she’d been taught and jammed her key at the lock.
The scrape came again, closer this time; yelling, Grace swung away from the truck, not wanting to be taken from behind, raking high with the key. She heard the grunt and curse of a male voice before someone grabbed at her wrist, attempted to body–block her against the truck. Eyes gleamed in the dark, somehow shiny and dead at the same time, here on a mission. Grace yanked her arm back and dropped the keys, opened her hand and jabbed the heel upward hard, just beneath the gleam of his eyes, jamming his nose up toward his forehead. Cartilage crunched and cracked, the sound at once repellent and satisfying. He swore and grabbed his beak, giving her room and time to bring up her knee. When he doubled over, she yelled again and kicked him hard, once, in the face: don't mess with me. He sat down, keeled slowly sideways, groaning in the shadowy light. Something metallic fell out of his hand.
Shaking, Grace looked down at him.
In class she’d been told to stomp and kick her attacker again, make sure he couldn’t follow—finish him—then get the hell away. But, God, he looked so young, skinny, malnourished, she didn’t want to; she’d already committed more violence than she’d known she was capable of. She wanted to pick up her keys and get somewhere she could wash it off, soak it away, start to believe it was only a dream.
Nervous, she dragged her foot slowly over the ground beside the truck, feeling for her keys without taking her eyes off her attacker. Couldn’t find ’em. She glanced earthward, not quite panicked; they should be right there. They weren’t. Only the dull sheen of a mud puddle off to her right. No keys.
Anxiety rose. She took her eyes off the man groaning on the ground and stooped, scrabbling around the beat–up blacktop underneath the Suburban, sliding her hand forward and back, along behind each tire, searching.
Nothing, nothing.
Panic climbed the walls of her belly, inching toward her throat, along her limbs; she fought herself to control it. She’d dropped the keys straight down, she hadn’t kicked them; they had to be here.
Down on the other side of the mud puddle, her attacker suddenly heaved himself up, grabbed the shiny thing on the pavement next to his hand and threw himself her way.
Off balance and weaponless, Grace screamed—a real scream this time, high and piercing and frightened, not just a yell—and dropped, tried to roll away, wound up soaking up mud puddle with her clothes while her keys, buried in the middle of it, bit into her hand; the knife blade swept down where she’d been, hit the parking lot near her left hip and snapped. Then he was over her.
"No!" The word was in her mind and shrieking from her throat, the only thought she had.
She grabbed her keys and swiped up, kicked high, hammering the air and him, anything she could connect with. Whatever the outcome, she would not give it up: she would claw and bite, kick and scream and damage, but she would not go passively into any good night, however poetically correct it might prove.
She heard him grunt with exertion, felt his hand grab for her throat, then suddenly he was gone. Something banged against the Suburban, thudded hollowly into a door, bumped hard against glass, slumped like a sack of meal to the pavement. There was the sound of metal slapping flesh and clicking—th
e way handcuffs sounded closing on TV—before the bright beam from a heavy flashlight caught her in the face, blinding. A hard, rough hand engulfed hers and tugged; a low male voice spoke to her, but whatever he said was lost in fog.
Oh, God, another one.
Exhausted and terrified, tight, barely articulate but thoroughly definite NO’s issuing from her throat, Grace dug her heels in at the ridge of the puddle and tried to shove herself away. The hand wrapped around hers didn’t budge, but the flashlight shifted a bit to the right of her eyes; she felt someone big squat next to her. His shin was a solid mass along the back of her hip.
"Are you all right?"
She looked at him uncomprehending; he was behind the light, she couldn’t see much. He sighed and dropped the light farther. Grace gathered every last bit of strength she could find into her fist with her keys and punched him hard where she figured the side of his head, the vulnerability of an unprotected ear, should be.
"Damn!"
Mal looked at her, surprised, hand automatically going up to rub his ear. Unbelievable. But he didn’t let go of her hand.
She hit him again, lower this time, in the side of his neck beneath his ear where the self–defense instructor said it was "soft"; there was almost as much give to it as there’d been to the side of his head. Didn’t stop her; she continued to punch at him one–handed, connecting with his cheek, his nose, his shoulder, his jaw, until he dropped the flashlight and caught at her wrist; then she bit him. Or tried to, anyway.
"Whoa, hey!"
He straddled her legs so she couldn’t kick him, tried to pin her arms so she couldn’t hurt either one of them. She butted at his nose with her head, a direct hit.
"Ow! Damn."
Mal backed up, caught both her wrists in one hand and shoved them over her head, touched his nose; his fingers came away bloody. He stared at his fingers, at her, disbelieving and respectful. She tried to bring her knee out from under him, attempting to mash his groin. He sat back on her legs. Hard.
"Judas Priest, woman, knock it off. The bad guy’s down. I’m the shining knight. This the way you always greet him when he comes to your rescue?"
Grace caught her breath, locked down on her terror. "The knight in shining does not sit on the distressed damsel, preventing her from kneeing him in the groin and making a clean getaway, which makes you just another jerk who I don’t know attacking me in the dark."
Mal unknotted the bandanna tied like a sweatband around his head and pressed it to his nose, glanced at the unconscious sack of flesh and bones reposing beside her truck.
"Hardly clean," he assured her, but released her hands, picked up the flashlight and eased himself carefully out of range of her feet. "You got a nice technique, darlin’, but no follow through. Always finish what you start. Give the bad guys time to recover and you just make ’em mad. Kinda like a wounded elephant. Brings mayhem to mind."
"I’ll remember that as long as you remember that darlin’ is my eight–year–old daughter, not me. I’m Mrs. Witoczynski." Keys at the ready, Grace slid away from him and got to her feet, declining the hand he offered her by ignoring it.
Chuckling, Mal withdrew the offer. "Mrs. Witoczynski, gotcha. Father Rick said you were something. Now I know what he meant."
"Father Rick?" Grace snorted. Oh, yeah, Father Enrico Guillean thought she was something, all right, something that ought to be done away with. Father Rick. Right. No one called the short, conservative, iron–haired, seventy–year–old priest anything so informal—at least to his face. He wouldn’t stand for it, thought it was disrespectful. Thought women in any aspect of church ministry outside of dusting the vestry or teaching religious education classes was disrespectful, too, and thought nuns ought to be flogged for letting their hair show. Our Lady of Roses’ congregation loved him.
Grace looked at what she could see of the man who referred to the irascible Father Guillean as though he knew something about her employer of eight years that she didn’t, saw only a huge hulking shape with teeth that gleamed even in the darkness. The thought rose nonsensically to mind, The better to eat you with, my dear…. She flicked it away.
"Do I know you?" she asked.
"Not formally." He turned the flashlight toward his face, tucked the bandanna in a hip pocket, and a hand big enough to palm a basketball came out of the night toward her. "Mal Kwarles. I started at the center last week."
She didn’t ignore his hand this time exactly, it was more like she skittered away from it, wary. "The laid off cop? Deliveries and odd jobs, maintenance? From Wyoming, right?"
Mal withdrew his hand again, nodded. The would–be mugger near his feet moaned; Mal nudged him with a toe. Couldn’t blame her for being skittish. "South Dakota. I grew up around here and knew Father Rick before he turned into Father Guillean."
The image of a wide, high–boned, sharp–jawed face and long, sleek black hair seen through the windshield of the parish’s blue 1964 Chevy pickup faded before it quite formed. "Ah."
"I delivered the beds and refrigerator to Mrs. Ortiz day before yesterday."
She peered up at him, trying to pick out his features, but all the flashlight he’d aimed at his face did was make him appear big and ghoulish. "Okay."
"You don’t remember."
Grace’s attacker rolled sideways and tried to sit up; the lump on his head and the handcuffs imprisoning his wrists behind his back impeded his progress and he cursed. Mal snapped the side of the man’s head with a hard finger, both a silent reprimand for the curse and a reminder of who was in charge, and the mugger subsided.
Grace swallowed. There was an element about her rescuer that made him seem more of a threat to her wellbeing than the kid who’d assaulted her. "In this light?" She rubbed her arms, looked him up and down. At an easy six–four, two hundred ten pounds, give or take an ounce, he would hardly be unnoticeable, even in this culturally diverse section of town. "Who could tell?"
Cool, grimy water puddled in the cuffs of her best white shorts, ran in muddy rivers down the backs of her legs and pooled in her moccasins. The June night was warm, but reaction sent chill settling bone–deep. If she didn’t sit down soon, her legs would shake right out from under her. Her teeth chattered. "I’m sorry. Maybe the shock… or sometimes when I’m working, if I don’t look up…"
Before her eyes, the darkness became a tunnel, closing in. She shook her head trying to clear her vision. "I probably should remember you—" Something was wrong. All of a sudden she couldn’t stop shaking. Her head was too light and on fire at the same time, and it felt as though somebody had exchanged her real knees for a set made of rubber. She put out a hand toward the Suburban to steady herself. "You don’t seem like a fade into the woodwork kind of guy, but there we are."
Mal took a step forward. "Are you all right?"
"No," Grace said and sagged.
Mal caught her. "Grace?"
"Don’t worry," she assured him—or maybe it was herself. "It’s all right, it’s not the end of the world, just the reality part."
"Grace."
"You know my name."
"It’s on your desk. Come on, darlin’, stay with me."
"Don’t call me darlin’," Grace snapped groggily. "I’m not. And I’m not fainting." She flapped a hand at his arm, trying to push herself erect. "Not."
"Say the alphabet." Mal slipped an arm beneath her shoulder and pried her keys from her hand. "Concentrate."
"Able, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Edward, Frances, Oscar—"
Mal fitted the keys to her lock, pulled open the driver’s door of the Suburban. "Pardon?"
"—the Grouch—"
"What?"
Grace tried to push back onto her feet when Mal tried to sit her on the Suburban’s running board and push her head between her knees. "From Sesame Street, aren’t you paying attention? You know. You told me to say the alphabet. It’s harder when you spell it."
"What?" He held her down on the running board by leaning on her shoulders. "Sit. If you get
up right now, you’ll fall down."
"Can’t sit." Grace shoved at his hands. "Have to call the police, make a report, press charges so he can’t do this to anyone else for as long as it takes for a judge to set bail and him to make it, go home ’n’ see my kids and he—" She swung a flaccid fist in the direction of her attacker and the man ducked. "He might need a doctor. I think I hurt him. And anyway—" she brought her fist back to her lap in a wobbly arc that made Mal jump back "—I thought you were a cop. You spell license plates, don’t you?"
"Did you hit your head?"
"Just yours." Grace chortled. "And his. Made you both take notice."
Unable to help himself, Mal laughed. "That’s true."
"Is it all right? Did I break it?"
"No, I think it’s only sprained."
"Your head?"
"My nose."
"Oh, good." Her laughter was giggly and shrill. With a sudden twist, she propelled herself out from under Mal’s hands and lurched to her feet. "You won’t need crutches then. Oof—" She reeled drunkenly against the truck’s door. "Have to get going now, my kids—" She slumped, grabbing for the door handle. "Oh, damn," she whispered and pitched face first into Mal’s arms.
Concerned, amused, perplexed, Mal looked down at the unconscious face with the slightly crooked nose mashed into his chest. He’d learned a lot about Grace Brannigan Witoczynski in the eighteen days since he’d begun shadowing Gus Abernathy’s movements and discovered that the only thing he could count on was that Abernathy always made his way back to his apartment at her house eventually, and that if Abernathy made a promise to her he kept it. But no credit history, school yearbooks, employment vitae, medical, dental, marital or family records covered this.
He glanced at the perp she’d laid out, then refused to finish off.
Something, Father Rick had called her, bemused, as though no other word in the priest’s vocabulary came close to describing her.
Five Kids, One Christmas (The Brannigan Sisters) Page 23
