“That’s true a lot of the time.” She shrugged. “But the note doesn’t sound like something a female would write. It’s very…pathetically creepy. That doesn’t scream ‘girl’ to me.”
“Yep, that’s guys for ya: pathetically creepy.”
Another white, straight, pretty smile split her face. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You say that a lot,” he countered, reaching for his beer with his good hand.
Maybe it was a trick of the red and gold and blue lights above them, but he thought her cheeks were tinged with color as she glanced away from him. “I’m not a sweet person, in case you couldn’t tell.” And it almost sounded like an apology, like she wished she were sweeter.
“Sweet’s overrated.”
Lisa laughed. “Too bad no one agrees with you on that.”
He watched her a moment – he did that so much now that it was a possibility he was sleepwalking at night and that he was the creeper sending her flowers – and he thought this threat had to be linked to Ray’s sketchy activities, because he just couldn’t believe she’d brought this down on herself. She didn’t think of herself as sweet, but he was convinced she was. Her mouth was sweet. The way her hair framed her face was sweet. Under her tough outer shell, he had a feeling she was sweet as sugar, and overcompensating for it. She’d been engaged once upon a time. And had her heart broken. A real man could survive the sharp slice of a woman’s tongue on occasion; it was like he’d thought all along: this was Ray’s doing, this stalker.
“Who’d wanna hurt you?” he asked, surprised by how much gravity he’d levered into the question, surprised that he’d spoken it aloud at all.
Her eyes cut toward him, just white-lined crescents in profile with party lights reflected on them, but he saw fear in them. “Lots of people, I’m sure.”
“You scared?”
“I don’t wanna be.”
And he believed her. He had no doubts that the last thing this girl wanted to be was a damsel. Unfortunately, when it came to her current predicament, she was about a hundred pounds of can’t-do-a-damn-thing-about-it.
“Hey, girl!” someone shouted to his left and he turned to see Lisa’s blonde, curvy friend whose name he couldn’t remember taking the stool beside him. She – was it Jessica? She looked like a Jessica – leaned across the bar, the neckline of her bright blue dress cutting into her breasts and gave him a calculating glance before her eyes went to Lisa. “Total coincidence from hell. Guess who I saw pulling in outside?”
Lisa groaned. “Please don’t tell me – ”
“Tristan.”
“What’s that asshole want?” Drew asked before he could check himself.
The friend – man, what was her name? – gave him a slow smile, eyes twinkling. “Not a Tristan fan, I take it.”
“Have you seen Tristan’s face?” Lisa asked, and with another sigh, she hopped off her stool and returned to her post behind the bar. She stopped across from them to tie her apron back on and Drew figured she hadn’t taken the break she’d truly wanted…or needed.
“Seconds, Tony?”
The lawyer, dressed down in khakis and a white Ralph Lauren button-up, waved away Cheryl’s offer of another round of Key Lime tartlets as she cleared their dishes from the table. “Oh, no. It was delicious, but no. I’m gonna be on the treadmill an extra hour as is.”
She rolled her eyes as she turned away from him. There’d been a time when Tony had limped up the stairs to their old apartment in holey shoes with pizza stains on his Fruit of the Loom t-shirts, and now he was the picture of a posh Alpharetta attorney, brand conscious and image savvy. It made her a little bit nauseous, to be honest.
“Dinner was great, baby,” Ray said behind her as she turned on the tap and passed their dessert plates beneath it. She smiled, but faintly, because it wasn’t just a compliment, it was a request that she leave them alone to talk for a bit.
“Good,” she acknowledged, and stowed the dishes in the washer. She didn’t turn it on, though, not yet, because as she left them with a smile and slipped into the family room, she didn’t want the chugging and sloshing of the ancient old Whirlpool to drown out their voices.
The house, relic that it was, was chopped into small, secluded rooms rather than open, free-flowing spaces like their previous house in Alpharetta. Cheryl had batted at tears with her lashes when she’d sold her furniture – the furniture she’d only dreamed of all her life – but she’d swallowed that ridiculous grief and selected more economical pieces that would be better suited for the antebellum floor plan. The parlor opposite the dining room in the front of the house was full of Russell family pieces: the striped wingback chairs, the leather settee, the secretary she’d refinished the summer before. But here in the family room, deep, cozy corduroy sofas and a chair big enough for two encircled Ray’s flat screen. The built-in bookshelves were full to bursting and disorganized, barely enough room to walk between them and the arms of the couches. But it was a homey, comfortable space. And the walls were thin, poorly insulated.
Cheryl picked up her sketch book from its resting place on the sofa table that flanked one wall. The wall that separated family room from kitchen. She had a chair there with a cross-stitched seat full of roses, and a pack of watercolor pencils in a drawer. She sat, flipped to a clean page, and her fingers began to conjure a kitchen while her ears picked up on the conversation.
“…happy here?” she heard Tony’s voice.
Ray’s response was tepid. She could imagine his accompanying shrug. “Cheryl wants to decorate houses. And God knows what Lisa really wants to do, but it’s not slinging beers and keeping books. They’re as happy as they can be, I guess.”
“You take good care of them.”
“I know.” Ray snorted. “But maybe if you’d ever get married you’d figure out that women want a lot of things, and being ‘taken care of’ isn’t at the top of that list.”
Cheryl grinned.
There was a sound like the bottom of a glass thumping on the table. “But it’s on the top of your list,” Tony said. “What the hell are you doing, Ray? I heard you went to see Shilling.”
“We had a chat, yeah.”
Her fingers stilled on the paper. Oh, Ray, don’t get yourself in trouble…
Apparently, Tony agreed with her. “You told me you weren’t going to harass him. I only gave you the intel because you -”
“I never said that,” Ray argued.
Tony sighed loudly. “You’re not a cop, and you’re not even a lawyer anymore, in case you forgot.” Cheryl could imagine the look on her husband’s face.
There was a beat of silence.
“Fine,” Tony muttered. “What’ve you found out so far?”
Ray’s voice was just a low murmur, and she pressed her head back against the wall in hopes of hearing better. “…went by the florist’s and they couldn’t tell me shit about the guy.”
“No description? Not even a vague one?”
“No. Dumbass who was there said he didn’t work in the mornings which was when the purchases were documented, and whoever it was paid cash.”
“Security tapes?”
“Now how am I gonna look at those not being a cop or lawyer? Huh?”
“Well, I’m certainly not putting lying past you at this point.”
There was another lull, and then both men chuckled. Cheryl’s hand moved, the pencil gliding across the paper again, but she felt her brows knitting themselves together.
“You know I wanna help,” Tony said, “but I’m not in any kind of position to tap into Shilling’s life. For what it’s worth, I think Mark’s right about this one – ”
“Aunt Cheryl?”
She gasped and the colored pencils slid off her lap, clattering against the hardwood in a way that she knew made her look guilty. Johnny stood in the doorway between family room and hallway, a plaid flannel shirt held in one hand. His thin, cute little face was screwed up in confusion.
“Oh, I’m sorry
.”
“No.” She pushed a smile across her lips and bent to retrieve her pencils. “It’s fine. I’m just jumpy. Whatcha need, sweetie?”
The conversation in the kitchen had come to an abrupt halt.
“One of the buttons came off and I wanted to see if you could sew it back on. Dad called and asked if I wanted to meet him down at the pool hall.”
Single fatherhood had left Mark and Johnny with more of a friendship than a parent/child relationship. The nineteen-year-old should have been hanging out with his friends rather than helping his dad pick up women at a damn pool hall, but Cheryl knew that otherwise, he would have been playing video games in his room or spending all night at the shop working on the Trans Am.
You shouldn’t have been eavesdropping anyway, she scolded herself, and set her sketch pad aside. “Sure, baby, bring it here.”
By the time Tristan made his way to the bar, Lisa was beginning to feel like she’d gathered a small contingency of supporters. Morgan was trying to chat up Drew with little success, and Trevor had come down out of his nest, taking his break with a vodka rocks and basket of hot wings. He was the one who alerted her of her ex’s approach.
“Your punkass is here,” he said around a mouthful, and Lisa watched his wide, white-rimmed eyes slide over toward Drew in silent question.
She nodded.
Tristan had learned something from the other night, it appeared, because he was alone, and he approached the bar with something like trepidation instead of his usual swagger. The left side of his face was still marred by the lightest traces of bruising. The blood had gone out of his eye, but it was still a little red and unhappy looking. He raked a hand back through his dark, perfect hair and gave the trio sitting at the bar a cautious glance; he knew Morgan and Trevor, and now Drew, and clearly decided to play it safe as he put several stools between himself and the DJ.
Holly was working his half of the bar and had already moved in to take his order, but Lisa waved her off. “He’ll have a Coors Light,” she told the other bartender and earned a murderous look for it that she ignored. “Why’d you come?” she asked once Holly was gone.
Tristan’s face lacked its usual mocking grin. “To apologize.”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s a good one.” A glance proved that Drew was at full attention and looked poised to launch off his stool at the slightest provocation.
Tristan followed her gaze and made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “Your new boyfriend has issues. Where’d you find this one?”
“Somewhere besides where I found you. I’ve learned not to look under rocks.”
And there was the grin, full of the nastiness she’d always hated. “You’re never gonna learn how to get along with anyone, are you?”
She returned his smile. “No.”
He shrugged and slid off his stool. His beer hadn’t arrived yet and she assumed, correctly, that he had no intention of paying for it. “You shouldn’t still hate me, Lis,” he said. “Not if you’re really over it all.”
Anger swirled in the pit of her stomach because no matter how wrong he was on the matter, she knew she’d never be able to beat back her own stubborn need to put him in his place at all times.
“Watch the mail. Missy’s sending you an invitation to the shower.” He was gone, slipped away in the crowd, before she could tell him she’d rather have a root canal than attend his wife’s baby shower.
Holly returned with the beer and frowned. “Oh, great, you ran another one off. I swear, Lisa – ”
“Yeah, yeah, keep on swearing.” It was a miracle, she thought, that she hadn’t been fired yet.
***
The Double Vision, like all bars, was a desolate, depressing place after closing. After the last of the drunken patrons had been pushed out the door and the mop boy was going around setting chairs up on tables and sprinkling cat litter on vomit; when the fluorescent tubes were flipped on and painted all the after effects of revelry in a hellish light, the hulking, empty place was hideous. Half the girls had taken their tips and were gone; the others were closing out their registers in the back. Drew was still perched on his stool, not enough beer in him to have taken the edge off, but thankful for the quiet drone of vacuums rather than the thump of audio equipment.
DJ Twist – Trevor – crossed the bar, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He’d tied the ends of his corn rows up with a rubber band and slipped a jacket on over his tall, thin frame. “Hey, bro.” He extended a hand for Drew to shake as he neared. “Good to meet you.”
The shake turned into more of a palm slide. “You too.” And it had been. Drew had been so unimpressed with the people in Lisa’s circle of friends – including Morgan, whose name he’d finally remembered – that the DJ had been a pleasant surprise.
“Lis isn’t so bad once you get to know her,” he said with a parting grin as he turned for the door.
Drew didn’t think she was that bad anyway – who was honest to God afraid of the girl? – but he kept that thought to himself. Morgan had given him advice along the same lines…only bitchier. “Stare at her all you want, she’s not gonna pay you any attention.” Said in a way that implied she might be willing to pay him some attention. He’d been concerned by how obvious he must look.
Lisa was another ten minutes or so, and when she emerged, she had put on her cowboy boots and her sandals dangled from her fingertips. Her hair was up in a sloppy ponytail and she’d pulled a hoodie over her halter top. She looked exhausted. “You ready? Well, stupid question I guess.”
He fell into step behind her as she made her slow way across the dance floor, dodging the mop being drug across it, and up the wide steps to the catwalk and main door. Her narrow shoulders were slumped and the pointed toes of her boots rapped against the stairs, and Drew understood why Ray was so protective of his daughter: she was in a stupor of fatigue by the end of every night. The dark circles under her eyes, the vinegar in her temper…she wasn’t a happy girl, and unhappy, sleepy, preoccupied girls weren’t as aware of their surroundings as they should have been. That, and, well, she just wasn’t satisfied with the pace of her life, and that was enough to make any dad – a good dad – worry. Drew worried, more than a little, and he had no right to.
The night was balmy; thick and as welcome as a heavy quilt as it wrapped around them and chased away the chill of the bar’s AC. Drew kept so close their shadows overlapped, and he scanned the parking lot, scoping out the empty stretch of darkened pavement for anything suspicious. But all was quiet save for the rush of the occasional passing car and the sound of their footfalls on the blacktop.
Lisa fished her keys out of her purse, then fumbled them, and they fell with a metallic jangle.
“You want me to drive?” he offered.
When she stood, keys in hand again, she tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear and frowned. “No.”
“I don’t mind,” he pressed. “And you’re tired –”
“I’m not that tired,” she snapped, but then sighed, all the fight going out of her. “Okay, that’s a lie.” Her eyes flipped up to meet his. “You won’t wreck my truck, will you?”
“I think I can manage.”
“It’s a piece of shit, really, but I’m still making payments on it.”
“Like I said.”
She pressed the keys into his waiting palm and gave him one last disbelieving glance, chewing at her lip, before she retreated around the tailgate of the blue Ford and headed for the passenger door. “The gas is sticking lately,” she cautioned, “and the brake too sometimes, but – ”
“Hey.” A man’s voice behind them stopped her in her tracks.
Drew recognized the speaker before he turned, and when he did, he was not surprised to see that his former roommate, and Ricky’s fighter, Josh, looked ready to spit lightning. His eyebrows were two angry blonde slashes meeting over his nose, his hands curled to fists at his sides.
“Josh.”
“You know this guy?” Lisa asked, a
tremor of uncertainty in her voice.
“Is that how it is, then?” Josh’s voice was bubbling with acid. “You flip on us and steal from us for some bitch?”
“Whoa.” Drew took a step toward him, palms raised in a show of passivity. “Lemme explain.”
“We thought you skipped town,” Josh said. He twitched and became more agitated, so Drew backed off. “But you fell in with Russell?!”
He’d spent all this time worrying about someone who might be after Lisa that he’d missed the guy who wanted him dead. Josh had always been a fan of the Double Vision, and Drew felt like an idiot for not remembering that. “Josh, man, it’s okay, I just – ”
He was ready for the first swing. Josh had been too far away so he’d lunged forward, his sucker punch coming a half breath too late. Drew ducked it and came up with fists raised. He blocked the next two shots with his left, and then threw his own strike. His right snapped out, the jab a glancing blow that bounced off Josh’s chin…and fire exploded in his hand.
Oh, shiiiiiit…He remembered his battered knuckles too late, and the pain shot all the way up to his collar bone and snapped his teeth together. It provided just the time Josh needed to overwhelm his defenses, and then everything seemed to happen at once.
A thick hand closed around his throat and a knee caught him in the ribs. As the breath went out of him, he realized they were no longer boxing, but brawling. He grabbed a fistful of Josh’s shirt with his good hand, but his right was rippling with spasms and useless. Josh’s momentum drove them backward, and Drew’s head met the quarter panel of the truck with a sickening thump. The world went white and then black; his stomach leapt up his throat.
“Hey!”
Suddenly, nothing was holding him up, and Drew went down hard on his hands and knees, another sharp jolt of pain shooting up his right arm. Color came back to him, but the pavement seemed to tilt crazily, so he shut his eyes.
A loud click reached his ears. What was that? He knew that sound. “You think you can get to me before I pull the trigger?” Lisa’s voice floated somewhere above him. Shit: Lisa and Josh. He had to get back on his feet. “You get the hell outta here before I change my mind about calling the cops.”
Made for Breaking (The Russells Book 1) Page 17
