Heat Wave

by Jill Marie Landis

  He slipped his arms out from around her but held on to her hand. “Sunny’s downstairs in the cafeteria with your friend Westberg. Child Protective Services has Alice. How do you feel?”

  “Okay, except for my head. How should I feel?”

  “The doctors say you’ll be just fine.” His expression spoke volumes. He wanted details. “You’re lucky you have your head.”

  “Did Fred tell you what happened?”

  “No time. I wanted to be with you.” He leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me you were searching for Sunny?”

  “I wasn’t sure I’d find her. I didn’t know if she had even come back down here.”

  “You went and got yourself shot. Again.”

  She shrugged, and then winced, and tried to smile. “I guess I’m a slow learner.”

  “Maybe you should give this up.” He rubbed her hand. “Detective Westberg said something about Sunny having to testify in order to stay out of jail.”

  Kat started to nod, winced at the pain, and held her head perfectly still.

  “She’s going to have to testify against her pals from River Ridge. If she doesn’t, there’s not much we can do for her. They were into street racing, insurance fraud. Tonight they graduated into grand theft auto.”

  “Shit.” He rubbed his eyes, shook his head. “Sunny was part of it?”

  “She was their best driver, so she says, and I don’t doubt her.”

  “Is that why she left Twilight? To steal cars?”

  “Actually, she intended to come back all along, but she was planning on leaving Alice behind with you.”

  “With me?”

  “She went to Twilight hoping you’d provide a stable home for Alice. For some reason, she feels obligated to these guys and she can’t walk away. She wanted Alice out of it, but Jamie Hatcher found her before she could leave town on her own. He forced her to come back and was holding Alice as leverage, to make certain Sunny danced to his tune. He was arrested tonight, along with the rest of them.”

  “Good. Then he’s where I can’t get my hands on him.”

  “I think I shot one of them.” Her memory came to her in bits and pieces, putting itself together like a patchwork quilt.

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m not.” She closed her eyes, tried to remember everything. Only bits and pieces came back. A heavyset youth whipping around with a gun in his hand. Both of them firing. The sound of a girl screaming. Scalding pain.

  “Oh, Ty . . .” She closed her eyes. “Did I kill him?” She knew she was in the wrong business when she realized she couldn’t live with herself if she had.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”

  Afraid he was going to walk out, she tightened her grip on his hand. “Don’t leave me yet. I need you.”

  He smiled and leaned over to gently press a kiss upon her lips. “You must be hurt a lot worse than the doctor thinks if you’ll finally admit you need me.”

  As she lay there looking up into his eyes, she realized she did need him, far more than she’d been willing to admit. She watched him study the bandage on the side of her head.

  “Why didn’t you let the police handle things, Kat?”

  “I wanted to make sure Sunny would cooperate first. If I’d turned this over to the police, she’d be in jail right now.”

  She pieced together everything that had happened, how she and Sunny had planned everything out, how they waited for the police, until Sunny panicked and ran into the motel.

  “At that point, I wasn’t sure if she was going to go along with the plan or if she’d get scared, grab Alice, and disappear.”

  One look at Ty’s anguished expression kept her from giving him all the details. What mattered was that Alice was safe, that Sunny was with Fred Westberg, and that things might eventually work out for Ty’s daughter.

  “I wanted to find your daughter for you,” she said, trying to smile through her pain.

  “I should have been with you.”

  “Oh, sure. We’d probably have ended up in a double room in this place.”

  “Why’d you do it, Kat?”

  She felt as if she was standing on the edge of a deep, dark pool, ready to dive, not knowing if there were rocks below the surface. She took a deep breath and plunged in.

  “I know I can never, ever bring my little girl back, but I could try to save yours. I’ve seen how much you care, how much Sunny and Alice mean to you. I wanted to give them back to you. I had to try.”

  Chapter 36

  THE NURSE FINALLY convinced Ty that Kat would sleep for hours. He left his cell-phone number at the nurses’ station and took the elevator down to the cafeteria, where he found Sunny and Detective Westberg in a back booth, staring at each other in silent regard over mugs of coffee.

  There was only a handful of staff members in the huge room permeated with the smell of coffee and toast. Ty’s stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since three in the afternoon. He walked over to the booth and nodded to the detective.

  Westberg looked a lot like Yogi Bear in a rumpled tweed sports coat, tie, and khakis, but what the man lacked in style, he made up for in concern.

  “How’s Kat?”

  “She came to and she’s sleeping naturally now. The prognosis is great.”

  “Thank God.” The detective glanced over at Sunny. She hadn’t yet acknowledged Ty’s presence. Instead, she concentrated on the tabletop. “I spoke to the D.A.’s office. I’m putting your daughter in your hands until eight in the morning. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what it’ll mean if she skips.”

  “Don’t worry. She’s not going anywhere.” Ty couldn’t be a hundred percent certain of anything anymore, except that he wasn’t about to let Sunny out of his sight.

  The two men shook hands after a weary Westberg gave him instructions as to where they were to show up in the morning, then he walked away without a word to Sunny.

  Ty slid into the seat that Westberg just vacated. He leaned forward, wishing he knew what to say. Six weeks ago if anyone told him he’d be in this situation right now, he’d have called them crazy.

  Sunny looked forlorn and isolated, with her hands clenched, fingers laced together. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

  The void of so many lost years yawned between them. He felt totally inept.

  “How are you doing, Sunny?”

  Her head snapped up. Her face was streaked with dark smears of mascara and liner, her lashes damp.

  “How do you think I’m doing, Chandler? I’m one step away from jail, my kid’s locked up in Child Protective Services, and my whole life just crumbled around me. I’m just fricking fine.”

  “We’ll have Alice back tomorrow.”

  “You have no clue how things really work, do you?” She stared back at him in disbelief. “You think they’re just going to hand her over to you? It may take weeks.”

  “I don’t intend to let it take that long. I’ll bribe someone if I have to.” He’d hire a lawyer, talk to a judge. Whatever it took.

  “Yeah? Well, good luck.”

  She was older than her years, with no reason to trust the system. For the first time he saw all the raw hopelessness in her eyes and read in them everything she’d suffered. He wished he could shoulder her pain.

  “How did you get into this, Sunny?”

  She shrugged. “Do you really care?”

  “Of course I care. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  One corner of her lips tilted. “Yeah, right. You’re here because of Kat.” She leaned back against the booth seat and wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.

  He lowered his voice but kept his tone firm.

  “Yes, but I�
��m also here for you. I want to hear your side of this, Sunny.”

  As she stared at her hands again, another tear plopped on the table.

  “It’s a long story.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  He handed her a napkin from the chrome dispenser on the table. “Let me get a cup of coffee, and then you can tell me everything.”

  SUNNY WATCHED HIM walk over to the counter, grab two ceramic mugs, and fill them with coffee. He bought two bagels and cream cheese, and when he got back pushed a plate at her.

  “Eat,” he told her. “And talk.”

  Eating was impossible. Talking sounded easier. She had no idea where to start, so she started at the beginning.

  “Five years ago, we all found each other again, all the River Ridge kids, just the way we’d been trained to. We left messages at the Outreach Mission in Hollywood—Dodge, Leaf, Jamie, Butch, a few others. Leaf brought Callie. She was a runaway.

  “We did some panhandling. The guys did odd jobs. They’d all been taught trades. Dodge was a natural with car engines. He could get anything to run. He got a job at a high-performance auto-parts shop and came into contact with a lot of street racers. He started going to the races, checking things out. Pretty soon he bought an old Honda, fixed it up, started racing. Before long he was winning everything.

  “He taught me to drive when I was fifteen and took me to races with him. I loved it. In a few months, I was better than Dodge. I had no fear. He always worried about crashing. He was only in it for the money. Me? I was in it for the rush. I get high racing.

  “One thing led to another and pretty soon we were making more money racing a couple nights a week than at anything else. Leaf was into tech stuff, burning CDs, filming the races, and selling copies on the Net.

  “The automotive guys Dodge worked for approached us about an insurance scam. They wanted us to get guys to report their cars as stolen, and strip the parts. They sold the parts and ordered more with the insurance money they collected. Everyone got a percentage; the shop marked up the appraisals and got a cut of that, too. Eventually the cars were ‘found’ and the parts replaced.”

  Sunny waited for him to react. Chandler hadn’t interrupted once, nor had he said a single word the whole time she’d been talking. His expression was blank. If he was judging her, he didn’t let it show. He wiped his hands on a paper napkin and pushed it aside.

  “Did you think it would last forever? That you wouldn’t get caught?”

  She shrugged and answered truthfully. “In the beginning, we never thought about it much. We lived day to day. After a while we got a better apartment, bought more high-tech computer equipment, had better cars. Life was great. I was bringing in more money racing than Dodge. He was running the insurance scams at quite a few shops.

  “Dodge and I got married after I had Alice, but we never told the other guys. We just went down to the courthouse and did it. Everyone would have asked a lot of questions. We were taught the River Ridge group was all the family we needed—but Dodge and I wanted more for Alice. We wanted her to be part of a real family, with both a mom and a dad. The kind we never had, you know? Like the kids on TV.”

  “But then Dodge was killed,” he said.

  She glanced down at the table, avoiding the intensity of his gaze. “The night he crashed, he was winning big. He was so far ahead of the other car that the spectators had no idea he was so close to the finish line. Some idiot pulled away from the curb, right in front of Dodge . . .” She’d been waiting at the finish line. She’d never forget the sound, like a banshee’s scream, metal tearing across metal, sparks flying above the pavement as the force of Dodge’s car dragged the other one down the street.

  Until that night, she had no idea that blood actually had a scent. She could still smell the blood and grease, the blood mixed with oil on the asphalt.

  “Dodge died, and you became the main breadwinner.”

  She drew a long, shuddering breath. Ty’s attention hadn’t wavered. It was almost three in the morning but he was wide awake.

  Time and time again over the last few weeks, he’d told her he was trying to be a father to her, but she had no idea how he was going to react to what she was about to tell him.

  She had nowhere else to turn.

  She threaded her fingers together in her lap. “Actually, Dodge didn’t die that night. Dodge is still alive. He’s in a convalescent home in the Valley on life support. He never woke up after the race.”

  He was stunned. His face revealed his shock. Finally, he asked, “Is there any hope of recovery?”

  It was the question everyone had been asking her for months. She and Jamie argued day after day about Dodge. It was always the same fight.

  “We can’t do this forever, Sunny. The doctors say he’s never going to get better.”

  “I’m not giving up hope. I can’t.”

  “You’re crazy. He’s gone already. He’s brain-dead. Let him go.”

  “He’s not dead. His heart is still beating.”

  “Because machines are keeping him alive. He might as well be dead. This is sick. Get over it. Move on.”

  Now, bone-tired, she sighed, watched her hand shake as she reached for the coffee mug, hated the show of weakness. She had to be strong. She had to keep it together so they’d give Alice back, if not to her, then to Chandler.

  She took a sip of coffee before she finally answered.

  “The doctors say there’s no hope. That he’s brain-dead. I’m his wife. They left it up to me to . . . to . . .”

  “End life support,” he finished for her.

  She pressed her lips together, jammed a fist against them until she had herself somewhat under control.

  “None of us has any insurance. Alice is covered by the state, but Dodge, he . . . I wanted him in a good place. His hospital bills are unbelievable. I couldn’t walk away from racing or there wouldn’t be enough. Jamie took over running the insurance scam. Butch and Leaf work the website and races. So does Callie, when she isn’t babysitting for me. But after the accident, there was never enough. So Jamie got hooked up with this car guy . . .”

  “What kind of car guy?”

  “He calls himself an exporter. He was going to pay us to boost cars every so often. Our trial run was last night.”

  “Boost?”

  “Steal. Heist. That’s what really got me scared for Alice. When Jamie was planning this, all I could think was, what would happen to her if we got busted? And I knew. I knew she’d end up in foster care, just like I did after the Feds busted River Ridge. I didn’t know what I was going to do, until you showed up. It was like a miracle.

  “I decided to slip up to Twilight, check out the situation. If you were for real, then I hoped you’d want Alice, too. If you were an okay guy, I planned on leaving her there, where she’d be safe. I walked out of the apartment, took the bus, and left the guys without telling them where I was going.

  “You turned out to be perfect. All those books you bought about how to raise kids. All that time you spent helping me find a job, talking about me going back to school. The way you took to Alice, babysitting and all that. Getting to know her. You’re being so great only made it worse.

  “I kept telling myself to go back to L.A., but I just . . . I couldn’t leave her.”

  “I take it Jamie came after you?”

  “One night Callie was watching Twilight Zone and suddenly remembered the name of the town, but she couldn’t remember your name. The place is so damn small that Jamie found me within an hour of driving into Twilight.

  “He was running out of cash and said they needed me, that I had to get back in the scene right away. He followed me back to your house. He wanted me to bring the Camry to L.A. and let them strip it for parts, but I told him to go screw himself. When we got back to L.A., he had Butch watch every move I m
ade. Alice was guarded twenty-four seven to make sure I didn’t skip out again.

  “I tried to convince him I hadn’t really left them for good, that I couldn’t because of Dodge. I keep hoping there might be a chance, you know? Some miracle that his brain will heal itself and Alice can grow up with her dad around.”

  Even through her tears, she was aware that Ty had pushed away his coffee mug. When he abruptly stood, she was afraid he’d heard enough. Who could blame him?

  She wiped her tears on the back of her sleeve, and noticed that he hadn’t walked away. He was sliding into the booth beside her. Before she knew it, he wrapped his arm around her, and all the tension and fear she’d carried around for so long started to crumble. She began sobbing into her hands.

  She had no idea how long she sat there crying. She wasn’t aware of the passage of time, only that she wasn’t alone anymore. Her dad was holding her. Her dad was patting her shoulder, murmuring that things would be all right.

  She wanted to believe him so badly that she cried even harder.

  Finally, when she was spent, he picked up a napkin, put his hand beneath her chin, and tilted her face up so he could wipe her eyes.

  FOR SUNNY’S SAKE, Ty wanted to wish it all away, to magically transport her back to her childhood and let her start her whole life over, this time with him there watching out for her.

  She’d survived heartache and burdens that would have crushed many adults, and yet she had gone on. She had shouldered the responsibilities, along with the pain, and had fought to hold on to her child.

  His heart ached for her. Now he was in deep, uncharted water. He had no clue what to do or say to Sunny. There was only one thing he knew for certain—he’d never abandon her.

  Not when she needed him most.

  “I’ll do everything I can to get Alice back right away. Things are going to be tough for a while, but I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  “Really?” She snuffled against the cuff of her sweater, then looked at him through swollen eyes.

  She didn’t trust him enough to know that he meant every damn word, and that hurt.