by Leroux, Lucy
Ethan sniffed. That shitty delivery kid could shove it. The building was starting to shape up. As Mason had declared, it had excellent bones. Most of the remaining work was cosmetic. Once they got rid of the crumbling stucco on the exterior and restored the original brickwork, it would look great. And his double-pane weatherproofed windows would be an amazing place to watch the storm.
He shoved his fleece-lined leather gloves into his pocket to open his mailbox. Damn it. The envelope was back.
Yesterday, he’d found it in his slot. It had been filled with grubby tens, twenties, and a whole lot of singles. The envelope contained rent from the building’s last resident, the girl Mason hadn’t kicked out because he felt sorry for her.
Ethan had given the rent back yesterday…along with an extra two hundred out of his own wallet. He’d stuffed it into a manila envelope, then shoved it under the corner studio’s door with a warning to vacate by the first of next month.
In theory, that should have given the girl enough time to find a new place. But that was before the blizzard hit. It was supposed to last the better part of the week. The weather would hamper apartment hunting, which meant he might have to give the woman an extra couple of weeks. However, getting the envelope back was a bad sign. What if she didn’t understand English enough to read his note?
Damn it. He was going to have to talk to her in person.
Ethan wasn’t afraid of crushing someone. He did it to criminals in the interrogation room regularly, but this was different. For fuck’s sake, it was a single mom.
Trying not to swear aloud, he turned the corner instead of heading for the stairs. Maybe he would finally catch his sneaky little tenant at home this time. The woman had been avoiding him for weeks. And he was fairly certain she was turning out the lights and pretending not to be home whenever she heard him in the hall.
Not this time. This couldn’t go on. Ethan needed to look the girl in the eye to get a verbal agreement she would start searching for a new place. He didn’t want this hanging over his head anymore.
What the hell was the woman’s name again? He squinted at the envelope, but he hadn’t written it down. The only identifying information was the apartment number drawn in a script so precise it could have been typed. Doesn’t matter. He didn’t need to know her name.
Ethan turned the corner of the short hallway leading to the first-floor units. Stopping short, he stared.
There was a tiny figure in the middle of the hall. He blinked, but the apparition didn’t fade or disappear. In front of him, there was a living breathing child, standing there like an oversized garden gnome.
Not oversized by much. The child seemed too small to be standing upright. Ethan eyeballed the tiny being. It couldn’t be more than a year old. The toddler was wearing a puffy hot pink snowsuit, the kind that was so thick it forced its arms out like the Stay Puft marshmallow man. Ethan couldn’t tell if it was male or female, despite the color of the suit, though he’d bet on a girl. Then again, the suit could have been a hand-me-down. The patches indicated it was used.
“Hey…kid,” he finished lamely. “Where’s your mom?”
It—her?—raised its head, a pair of huge dark eyes blinking up. The child tottered, turning around to face the other way. Ethan relaxed as another small but adult-sized figure came toward him and the child.
It had to be the tenant girl, although he would have found it impossible to guess if he’d seen her on the street. She was wrapped in too many layers. The woman’s body was covered in two coats, and a multitude of scarves obscured half her face. Nothing appeared thick enough for the current weather, which was presumably why she’d layered up.
“Hi. I’m glad I finally caught you,” he said, cocking his head as she marched down the hall toward him.
Her mittened hand ran along the wall. Behind her and the kid, he could see the studio door, open at last. A brown bag partially filled with groceries rested on the floor outside.
The girl reached for the kid so slowly Ethan wondered if she were drunk. That was how the inebriated moved—extremely carefully.
She didn’t acknowledge his words—only picked up the child and turned around.
Fuck. That was rude. “Did you hear me?”
How did he say that in Spanish? He wracked his brain. Spanish was the easiest of the languages he’d learned in college. Why couldn’t he remember a damn thing?
“Hey. I’m talking to you.”
Still nothing. The woman was inching down the hall, her progress molasses slow. The toddler in her arms was babbling softly as if it was telling her all about its day.
He took a deep breath, shaking his head as he followed them. “Look, lady, we need to talk about the apartment. I know you discussed staying here with my friend Mason, but his offer was short term. We can’t keep letting you live here while we’re redoing this floor. The old landlord never should have signed a lease so late in the game.”
None of the rentals had been legal by that point. The place was in bad shape—full of rats and bad wiring. Fortunately, the other tenants had been quick to find better accommodations when the extent of the problems had been pointed out to them.
The rats were long gone. It was the first problem they’d taken care of. But this girl…fuck, what was she doing now?
She had stopped halfway to the door, her arm out to touch the wall. Her arm dropped. She leaned against the wall, using it for support as she dragged herself forward. It was a familiar move. He’d done the same thing in college when he’d been too wasted to walk in a straight line to his dorm room.
And with a kid, too. Did that fucking dive bar pay her in drinks?
Really pissed now, he stalked over to her before she reached the open doorway. “Are you seriously going to pretend I’m not here?”
If she shut the fucking door in his face, he was going to break it down. Putting a hand on her arm, he gently tugged.
Her reaction was instantaneous. The woman reared back and pulled away, holding the puffy pink baby tighter to her chest. He caught a glimpse of huge brown eyes and a flushed face. She leaned against the wall again, glancing from him to the door as if weighing the distance. One step was all she could manage. She slid down the wall with the kid in her arms.
Swearing, Ethan dived. He caught them just before the kid slipped headfirst out of her mother’s arms. The woman slumped, her head falling back, exposing more of her face. Cheeks red, she shivered.
What the hell? His squatter—tenant—wasn’t drunk.
She was sick.
Chapter Three
Ethan carried the woman and her kid inside the apartment. It was a furnished unit, but the decor was sparse with only a bed, a table, and two chairs.
The mattress had been dragged off the frame to the floor. The metal bars that should have been supporting it were stacked in pieces in the corner with a few towels and a worn bathmat thrown over it—probably for the kid’s protection.
He set the kid down with one arm. It tottered around in its puffy pink suit as he laid the woman down on the mattress. Her pulled her many scarves and beanie hat off.
A torrent of black hair spilled out. Her features were fine, and she had a slightly darker cast to her skin like the Cuban and Puerto Rican girls he sometimes dated. Her face was flushed and feverish. And beautiful.
Holy hell. Mason had told him she was young, but he hadn’t expected her to look like jailbait. And with a kid already, too.
“Are you all right?” Ethan asked in a loud voice.
The woman’s eyes narrowed to slits, then closed as her head turned to one side. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Perfect,” he muttered. What was he supposed to do now? Putting his fingers out, he tentatively touched her face.
Hot. Too damn hot.
“I’m Ethan,” he said, a little louder. It didn’t rouse her. “I’m going to look for some aspirin. You have some, right?” If she didn’t, he had a bottle upstairs in his medicine cabinet.
T
he only response he got was a groan.
Okay, this was bad. He stood over her, disconcerted by the unevenness of her breathing. “I’m going to take your coat off,” he said.
Nothing but more shallow breaths.
“Yes, Ethan. I’d appreciate some help with my many coats,” he said aloud as he knelt beside her.
He opened the buttons of the inner and outer coats, then started tugging the sleeves off her arms. It was harder than it looked on TV. Despite years as an FBI agent, he’d never worked any cases that required he undress an unconscious man or woman.
Tugging gently, he slowly worked the two coats off, leaving the girl in a thin sweater. It was cut a bit low—a tip-getter if he ever saw one. He forced his eyes away from the enticing swell.
Well, he could hardly blame her for wearing something like that. She would need every bit of cash she could get with a kid that small.
Speaking of…better get that snowsuit off the baby before it roasts. He swiveled, expecting to see the little kid, but it was nowhere in sight.
Ethan sprang to his feet, his heart sinking to his feet at the sight of the open door. Crap. How could he have left it open? Sprinting, he ran out to the hallway. No pink. He checked the lobby next, then the adjoining hall with the mailboxes. Nothing. He dashed back to the hallway. Could it have backtracked while he wasn’t looking? Were children that age capable of climbing stairs?
He kept searching, testing doors along the way until he came upon an open one. A steep, narrow staircase disappeared into a dark void.
If that kid fell… “No, no, no.” He rushed to the basement entrance.
Ethan hit the switch next to the door, turning on the sickly fluorescents he should have replaced last Sunday. Weak blue-tinted light illuminated the space below. There was no pink at the bottom of the stairs. His feet pounded down the single flight, heaving a sigh of relief when he found nothing at all.
Bent over double, he forced his breathing to slow before straightening and jogging up the stairs. Where the hell was the kid? Nowhere, it seemed. Way to go, Agent Thomas. In less than five minutes, he’d already lost it.
Ethan bypassed the stairs, heading back to the studio apartment. Fever or not, he needed to ask the mom what the kid was called so he could start shouting its name. It would answer to its name, right?
Hustling, he pushed the door open. A little pink boot under the table caught his eye before he could put his question to the still-prone woman. Ethan knelt, biting his lip to keep from swearing.
“There you are!” Had it been there the whole time? Forgetting he shouldn’t, he swore aloud. He doubled back to close the door firmly before reaching under the table to pull the toddler out.
“C’mere, kid,” he growled, straightening and holding the kid at arm’s length.
For a second, they stared at each other. Huge dark eyes fringed with the longest inky black lashes blinked back. Then it sneezed all over his face.
He wrinkled his nose. There go all my efforts to stay healthy. He’d been using hand sanitizer three times a day while avoiding sick coworkers for weeks so he wouldn’t catch the many bugs that always made the rounds in his office in the wintertime.
Well, that had been pointless. Ethan wiped his cheek, examining the kid’s winter suit. “How do I get this thing off?”
The kid didn’t answer. Ethan hefted it sideways, searching for buttons and snaps. It took him nearly five minutes to find the zippers blended into the seams. After that, it should have been quick work to remove the outfit. It wasn’t. He tugged and pulled like one those cartoon mice trying to fit an entire wheel of cheese through a mouse hole.
Once he managed to remove the pink suit, Ethan was still at a loss. He couldn’t tell what sex the child was. It was wearing a little grey outfit underneath. As for its age—it was old enough to stand on its own.
The big dark eyes danced. It held its arms out. “Up.”
Uh-oh. Picking the toddler up to move it was one thing, but carrying it around was another. What if the kid got used to it?
“Maybe later, kid. I gotta find your mom some aspirin.” He edged away from the child as if it were radioactive.
The bathroom door was broken. Making a mental note to bring his tools down here in the morning, he then scoffed aloud. He couldn’t leave the woman here on her own. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved an inch. She was still lying in the exact position he’d left her.
Clearly, she needed a hospital—except the snow was falling past the windows at a rapid clip now. If it kept up at this rate, they would be snowed in for a couple of days, barring a miracle with the snowplow schedule.
Plus, there had been the traffic pileup he’d passed on the way home. He could call 9-1-1, but a woman with the flu wasn’t going to rate high by comparison.
Ethan couldn’t rely on emergency services. The chances of an ambulance getting through to them was next to nothing. Unless aspirin could work a literal miracle, he was going to have to bring her and the kid upstairs to his place.
Fuck me. How did he get into these situations? He avoided chicks with kids like the plague. Being forced to deliver a baby a couple of years ago had made him gun shy about that sort of thing. He certainly wasn’t one of those billionaires who loved to impregnate their wives. Even his partner was starting to drop ominous hints about starting a family. It made his skin crawl.
The bathroom was empty save for a few threadbare towels. There was no medicine in the cheap cabinet fixed to the wall. There didn’t seem to be a shelf for that sort of thing. He checked the kitchen. There were baby gummy vitamins on the counter, but not a lot else.
Ethan checked to make sure the woman was still on the mattress before sneaking a peek in the kitchen cabinets. I have to check for rat droppings, don’t I? He was her landlord.
The shelves held canned soup and some crackers. Another had bread and peanut butter. That was the only food fit for adults, and it was all from the local market’s discount line. The only brand names were for the baby food. She prioritized the kid.
So should you. Ethan pulled out his cell phone, deciding to dial 9-1-1 despite the odds. It rang and rang. After a few minutes, he gave up, slipping his cell into his pocket. He looked down, starting in surprise.
The kid was at his feet. He hadn’t even heard it move. “Damn, kid. Are you some sort of ninja?”
It held its arms out again. “Up!”
The command was downright imperious. Ethan glowered. The child scowled back. Giving up, he reached down, his hand touching a wet backside. “Why didn’t you just say you needed a clean diaper?” he asked.
The baby smirked.
Ethan blinked. “Aren’t you too young to give me attitude?”
It responded by laughing.
“Look, you, a clean diaper is going to have to wait,” he told it.
He needed to run upstairs. The sooner he got the mom’s fever down, the better. He felt a moment’s misgiving for leaving the baby alone, but he couldn’t carry it upstairs now.
“I’ll be right back,” he called to the woman before wondering why he kept talking to her. She wasn’t going to answer until he got that fever down.
This time, he closed the door when he exited the studio. Cursing the fact the elevators were out of order, he took the stairs two at a time until he reached his apartment.
It took him less than a minute to ransack his medicine cabinet. Aspirin—check. He pulled out the Nyquil and everything else he thought might help. On the way back down, he called his doctor friend Donovan on the off chance he was free.
Donovan didn’t answer. It had been a long shot. Ethan’s friend worked sixteen-hour days in some of the worst hellholes. Getting him on the phone was next to impossible. Usually, Ethan had to wait for Van to call him.
Not a problem, he thought, knowing he was lying to himself. The fever was the priority, and he remembered enough from his one semester of med school to know how to treat it.
He marched down to the studio apartment,
his false bravado waning the second he reached the door. It wouldn’t open.
“No freaking way.” That woman had not locked the door on him.
He banged it with his fist twice. “Hey! I’m trying to help you. Open the damn door.”
The nondescript white door stayed shut.
Okay, he could have put that a bit more reasonably with a softer tone. Clearly, the woman was not in her right mind at the moment. If she were processing information at all at this point, she’d registered him as a threat. Fruitlessly, he knocked on the wood again, his eyes drifting to the window.
No…I am not going to go outside to scale the fire escape. There was a record-breaking blizzard hitting the city. It would be the height of madness to go out there.
Behind the door, the baby started to cry.
Aw, shit. He turned around, trying to remember where he’d left his coat. Maybe he could still make it to his car. He kept his rock-climbing gear in the trunk.
He found the thick wool coat on the floor at the end of the hall. It had slid off the banister, landing on the dusty floor.
The buttons on his coat were giving him problems. Swearing, he tugged the lapels roughly to force it closed. He blinked at the flash of grey down the hall. The door to the studio was open a crack. The toddler’s hand stuck out, waving.
What the hell? He hurried to grab the tiny hand in his much larger one.
For the second time that night, Ethan wanted to kick his own ass. The door hadn’t been locked. The woman had somehow roused enough to stumble to the entrance. Perhaps she’d been trying to follow him to ask for help, but she was now on the floor, blocking the door and keeping him from opening it. In her delirium, she’d rolled away enough for the door to swing open. It must not have been latching properly. There was no way the kid had opened it herself.
Another broken thing to add to my to-do list.
The baby crawled over, pressing its little face to the gap. Ethan winced. “It’s okay. I got this, kid.”
Kneeling, he worked his hand in the crack, gently shooing the kid away. Pushing steadily, he managed to roll the woman’s shoulders away from the door until there was enough room for him to squeeze past the threshold.