Her ears were pierced up into the cartilage. She wore four studs in one and six in the other, all tiny gemstones twinkling with a brightness she would never achieve, not until she tore the veil of shyness from her face.
“Doctor Craig,” she said quietly. “Donnie can’t come no more.”
Of all the words Susan had expected to hear from her mouth, those astonished her.
“What?”
She frowned. “He can’t come no more. I’m leaving. I’m moving out.”
This was usually a milestone. “Why, Graciela. That’s wonderful.”
The young woman would not meet her eyes. She looked around the van. “I’ve got a place,” she said. “For the two of us.”
“Are you working?”
Graciela nodded. “I get my license from beauty school next month. I’ve got work already.” She smoothed a wing of soft, lustrous hair from her brow.
“That’s wonderful. Have you celebrated yet?”
“No. No one else here knows. I didn’t tell nobody.” Graciela’s tone matched her sullen expression. “So he can’t come,” she added for the third time.
Susan looked back over her shoulder at Donnie. His face, what could be seen of it under the helmet, was pinched tight in concentration. She’d come so far with him. She took a deep breath and, reaching out, squeezed Graciela’s shoulder in encouragement. “You’ve come a long way. So has Donnie. Tell you what—give me your new address, and I’ll try to come by once a week for him.”
Graciela’s already slim face narrowed. Then, she nodded. “If you don’t tell nobody.”
She was probably not being released from the program, Susan thought. She was probably leaving to rejoin her ex-boyfriend or a new one. “I can’t tell, Graciela,” Susan answered brightly. “I’m your doctor, right?”
Graciela took the scrap of paper Susan tore out and handed to her and, screwing her face into lines of concentration that mirrored Donnie’s expression, painstakingly wrote out her new address. She shoved it back into Susan’s hand. “I’m moving in tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t tell nobody.”
“I won’t.” Susan watched as the young mother left, shuffling her way across the worn, celery-colored front lawn back toward the shelter house. She put the address into her wallet thoughtfully, wondering how to salvage Donnie from all this.
Hotchkiss felt cold. He sank deeper into the tepid spa so that it became a supreme effort just to keep his jawline above the water. The gentle waves, for the jets had gone off timer long ago—when was it? He had no memory of it—the soft tide left in their wake lapped at his chin. His eyelids had anchors on them. Sunset had left the horizon, and he stared, when he could keep his eyes open, at a velvet shroud sprinkled with crystalline pinpoint of light. The mountain air was so clear, he could even distinguish blue stars from white.
If he cared to.
Stephen Hotchkiss found that he cared less and less, about anything. Even the constant roar of his own pulsing bloodstream in his ears had weakened, leaving him in total peace. There were no worries prickling at him, no nags yelling into his ears, tugging on his arms, images standing in his way. It could only get more peaceful below the water.
His spine sagged and he slipped farther into the tub. He let out a deep sigh, and allowed himself to slide all the way down. The water had a flat iron taste to it, almost bloodlike. He coughed only once as the liquid raced into his mouth and nostrils, a token cough, token of his resistance to the fate awaiting him.
A hand grabbed him by the arm. Water fountained upward with the violence of the attacker. Fingers of steel coiled themselves into his hair and jerked, yanked, pulling him upward, out of the water. Hotchkiss coughed again, weakly, retching wetly down the front of his chest. Night air iced into his face. He blinked numbly, unseeing. Someone muscled him out of the spa and then hefted him over a shoulder. His ears roared as he lay head downward. He heard the floor creak as the man carried him into the bedroom, warm air caressing him, so much warmer than the water had been, and dropped him like a wet sack onto the bed.
“You don’t get out of it this easy, Hotchkiss,” his rescuer said.
Stephen blinked into the face of the same apparition which had haunted him earlier, but fear had gone. He could not muster any emotion. He rolled over onto his belly, clutching the bedcovers around him for warmth as he began to shiver violently. The hand, skin so hot it felt like it was branding him, grasped an ankle.
“Nasty cut, Hotchkiss.”
There was a moment of pain, quite sharp and distinctive, and then the foot was being wrapped.
“We know who you are, and you’re not getting away from us this easily.”
Hotchkiss retched damply into the corner of the bedspread, moved his face away from it, feeling weak as a mewling kitten.
Someone tucked warm and dry covers about his quaking form.
“Don’t forget you owe us.”
He could not reply.
The floorboards creaked as his tormentor left. He dared not move until the house had grown as still as a mausoleum.
Hotchkiss lay facedown, then realized how close to death he’d come, how close to release and safety, and that he’d been pulled back.
He began weeping. It was not for joy.
Dudley called her from a phone booth. The convenience store lot was busy and he watched the young girls stroll by, seemingly oblivious to his gaze, as the signal rang. She picked up on the car phone, he could hear the difference in transmission.
“Our boy tried to go down for the count,” he informed her.
“No.” There was a pause which might have been pensive, or simply interference. Then, “I wouldn’t have guessed it of him. Before or after your visit?”
“After. I went back because I had my doubts.”
“He was not successful.”
“No.”
“Was there ... official interference?”
“No. I handled it.”
“But you’re sure of the attempt?”
“Yes.”
“He can’t be relied upon, then.”
Dudley watched a Vietnamese girl go by, her long dark hair like ravens’ wings fluttering almost down to her waist. “I wouldn’t think so,” he answered, watching her, thinking about her. “I made sure he knew he owed us, but he doesn’t have much spine.”
“I rely on your judgment. You know that.”
The girl turned slightly on one heel, her tanned legs bare to the mid-thigh hem of her miniskirt. She looked at him askance. She knew that he watched her from the phone booth. Dudley turned away then. She would say something to somebody, perhaps. Even if he trailed her home and waited until the darkest hours of the night, someone might remember he’d been watching her earlier. Ta-rah-rah-boom-ti-ay, you won’t stay free that way.... He brought a match out and lit it, concentrating on its beauty. He closed the song out of his mind and found words. “Use him while you can.”
“I will. Go home. Have a good dinner. We’ll talk later.”
She cut the connection without any sentimentality. He hung up, too, and left without giving anyone another glance. She would reward him, she always did. She had taught him patience to go with his cunning.
As for herself, she would have to check into alternate plans. A return to the hospital seemed advisable. She would need the quiet, the relatively laid-back attitude of the night shift to help her decide what to do about Ibie Walker.
McKenzie woke in the darkness of the room. The TV had gone off. Only the light board behind her glowed. She lay in the hospital bed a moment, letting wakefulness chase her dreams away. The night nurse had given her sleeping pills. They had dissolved sourly in her stomach, heartburn creeping up the back of her throat. She got out of bed carefully and made her way to the bathroom, only a little dizzy.
The night-light in the bathroom threw her face into sharp relief. Bruises shadowed it even more starkly, but she could see both eyes were wide open now. She’d always been a quick healer. She could not stand to see herself.
Mac ran her hand through her hair. Surely they’d let her shower tomorrow morning. Her skin crawled at the thought of the sweat and dirt ground into her hair, not to mention how the rest of her must smell. Even now she could catch the pungent odor of pizza and sweat.
She leaned over, ran the water until it warmed and shampooed her hair with the hand soap, lathering and rinsing, and lathering again until she felt human. Then she bathed all over again, toweling off carefully with the one small towel allotted her. She felt human for the first time in days.
Once back in the bed, she reconnected the phone and lay down. She thought of calling out and changed her mind, because it was after ten, and she knew Sarah panicked at calls after nine, wondering who’d died.
I did. But I’ll be all right soon.
Sarah and Seattle were already a lifetime away. It was as though she’d shed a life, the way a snake does a skin. She wondered if reptiles felt cleansed, as well as raw and new.
For a dizzying, disorienting second, it felt and sounded almost as though something had crossed the room and jumped onto the foot of the bed, settling its comforting weight against her ankles and the back of one calf. Just as Cody had always done, jumping into bed with her. In bed if she was alone, on the floor of the closet among her shoes if Jack was home.
She accepted the phenomenon and then clenched her jaw shut, realizing that nothing was there, nothing could be there. If she sat up and reached down to her toes, she would not encounter any soft, silky hide and ears, wet nose nuzzling her back, paw pads scratching at the covers to get comfortable again.
So she did not sit up. Mac closed her eyes and held tight to the ghostly sensation, knowing it would evaporate with logic. She did not feel like being alone. And whatever it was, it was better than a veil of blood being drawn over anything she looked at.
The phone shrilled. She jumped at its noise in the stillness and grabbed it up.
“How’s the dreamin’?”
Her throat closed. She could not speak for a moment.
“Miss me?” Jack laughed.
Her breath squeaked in her chest as she inhaled deeply. “I’m not coming back. Leave me alone.”
“You’ve been watching too many soaps, Mac. This is real life, you and me. I want you to come home with me, where you belong.”
Her eyes squeezed shut. She could see the kitchen floor, Cody’s life bubbling across it. She could smell it on her hands, her clothes, as she tried to scrub it up. Bile rose in her throat again. She did not know where she belonged, but it wasn’t there.
She denied him. “No.”
“You liked college. What if you enroll full-time next semester? I could make an extra run or two, pay for the tuition. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Her voice husked. “Jack, I can’t go back with you.”
His tone changed from coaxing to belligerent again. She winced at the volume coming from the phone receiver. “Why not? And who the hell was that who answered the phone last time? You got a policeman sitting up there with you? You got a man in there with you, and you wearing nothing but one of those ass-open flimsy little hospital gowns? Who was that?”
She didn’t want to involve Carter. “It was ... nobody. It wasn’t anybody. I don’t have anybody up here with me.”
“Well, Mr. Nobody got real smart-ass with me. You tell him to mind his own business. Or, better yet, you tell him to watch out for me.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Jack. Just go away and leave me alone. I’ll forget anything happened. You can go home. But I won’t go with you.”
“You’ll go if I have to drag your carcass. And don’t count on your Mr. Nobody to protect you.”
He sounded so close. So confident. She felt cold all over.
“How did you—the switchboard’s closed. How can you even call me?”
He laughed again, that low and humorless laugh. That mean laugh. “It’s closed to outside calls. But not to me. I’m on the inside, babe. I’m right here. I’m watching out for you.”
Chapter 19
Rasheed Tompkins struggled out of the garage with a basket of freshly dried laundry. He put a lean, thirteen-year-old shoulder against the door to close it behind him and waited a minute in the breezeway, the smell of clean clothes filling his senses. From his vantage point, he could see his mother as she came up the driveway and went into the house from the front, illuminated by their amber porch light. Her steps had been weary. He counted them to the kitchen counter/ desk where she would drop keys, purse, and pager, and then into the family room where his brothers and sisters and aunt were sprawled watching some stupid musical on the Disney channel.
He started into the kitchen from the garage side, banging his way into the house.
“Hey, Mom!”
She was late, really late, but they’d left her some dinner and now he’d have to do the dishes, just when he thought he was off the hook. He balanced the clothes basket on his hip for a moment, long enough to pinch the pager button to the “off” position. Just a few hours, that’s all he wanted from his mom. Just that, nothing more. He’d done it once or twice before. When the movie was over, he’d duck back in, get a soda and turn the pager back on, but for now, their mother belonged to them . He was tired of the problems of others taking her away. He had his own crap to deal with.
He took four giant gangling strides out of the kitchen, into the heart of his family, and dropped the laundry basket in front of his sister. “Your turn to fold,” he announced. “I got dishes to do.”
Joyce turned her face to him. His mom was beautiful, he thought, if old, and that smile of hers could ripen the tomatoes he had growing out back. “Rasheed. You did a good job tonight.”
“Thanks. Want your dinner?” He needed to keep her out of the kitchen for a while.
“In a minute. Let Lucy get it for me. How was practice today?”
“I sank forty-two percent from the free throw line.”
She nodded. “Getting better.”
He wrinkled his face. “I still won’t be tall enough. Not no seven foot.”
“Not any seven foot,” she corrected mildly. She put an arm around his waist and drew him close for a modified teenage hug. “Neither is Jason Kidd, and look what he’s doing. Remember, those big guys aren’t so agile. You’ve got quickness. Develop your shots and you’ll do anything you want to.”
And she pulled him closer to finish the hug. For a second, a tiny second, he felt a prickle of guilt for doing what he’d done to the pager. It didn’t last.
Jack said cagily, “You don’t know where I’m going to be. So I want you to treat me nice when I call.”
Mac closed her eyes tight, unbelieving. She wanted to scream, but knew if she did, no one would be on the phone by the time the nurse came running in. This couldn’t be happening to her.
“Do you hear me, darlin’?”
“I hear you,” she responded flatly. “You come near me, Jack, and I’ll kill you. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I will.”
That low, raspy laugh. “You just like to fight, sweetheart, so we can kiss and make up. You know you do. Besides, I not only know where you are, I know where your daddy is. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to Daddy, would you? Think about it.”
Her throat stayed so tight she could barely swallow spit, but she got the words up. “You think about this. I hate you, you son of a bitch. Touch me again, or my father, or anyone else I even know , and I’ll hunt you down. And that’s a promise.” She slammed the receiver down and jerked the cord out.
Her heart thumped wildly in her chest like a frightened rabbit. She sat up in the hospital bed and flung her legs over the side. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t!
Hands shaking so hard she could barely do it, she plugged the cord back in long enough to dial a number. Her lips felt dry and cracked, but her tongue was just as dry and she put a hand out, searching for a glass of water on the swing-out table. She curled fingers around it just as the phone number answered a
bruptly. She punched in the beeper number Joyce had given her, and then her number.
Mac drained the glass of water. It trickled down her dusty throat, more irritating than soothing. The phone rang, too soon to be Joyce. She picked it up and disconnected it, but not before she heard a hooting laugh. There was no way she could avoid Jack and still get Joyce’s call. She stared at the cord in her hand, then looped it around the rail.
She was a sitting duck. Mac pushed herself out of the bed. The room swung abruptly, then stilled as vertigo throbbed through her skull. Her feet went icy and for a breathtaking moment, she thought it had something to do with her concussion, then she realized the floor was simply cold.
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