Liar, Liar

by Lisa Jackson

  For a split second, as the huge car’s speed increased and she felt as if Didi were being intentionally reckless, Remmi considered calling out, letting her mom know she was hiding in the space, but she held back. Didi would kill Remmi if she found out her teenager had stowed away in the car. Well, actually, Remmi hadn’t intended to stow away at all. She’d been hiding. From her mom.

  And it had backfired.

  Big-time.

  Cautiously, Remmi peered through a small slit between the cargo area and the back seat, a tiny peephole Didi had installed. The scent of cigarette smoke reached her nostrils, and she heard music from the radio. The twins, her half siblings, were silent for once, not crying, but Remmi couldn’t see them. From her vantage point, she saw little more than the back of her mother’s head, Didi’s blond “Marilyn” wig securely in place.

  Why the costume?

  Remmi hazarded a quick glance toward the wide rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of her mom’s face, sunglasses over the bridge of her nose, lips pouty and colored a glossy pink, even a signature mole drawn near the corner of her mouth.

  Oh, Mom, what’re you doing?

  Remmi wished to high heaven that she hadn’t decided at the last possible second to hide in the cargo space. She’d thought Didi was working, and Seneca, the twins’ nanny, had retired to her room for the night as the babies had fallen asleep in their shared crib. Remmi, whose room was part of the converted garage on the far end of the house, had thought she was safe, that no one would check on her until her mother returned sometime after her last show, usually after 2:00 AM. She’d planned to sneak out her bedroom window, and with the keys she’d already lifted out of the drawer in the kitchen, she’d intended to drive her mother’s crappy old Toyota into the night. The windows of her room were mounted high, slanted panes near the apex of the sloped ceiling, accessible by climbing onto the headboard of her bed and scrambling over, impossible to reach from the outside without a ladder.

  But she’d done it.

  She’d slid through the narrow opening, hung by her fingers from the sill, then softly dropped to the dusty ground below, the heat of the desert still simmering, the sun beginning to sink in the western sky.

  All to meet a boy.

  A boy who was probably bad news. Or worse. But there was something about him, something that caught her attention and made the blood pound a little in her ears when his dark eyes found hers. Even now, stuck in the sweltering cargo space, her heart trip-hammered and the back of her throat went dry at the thought of Noah Scott. Older, with a bad-boy reputation, he was definitely not Didi-approved. Which made him all the more attractive, she decided. But she couldn’t help herself. God, he was sexy. She had dreams about his hands on her body and how kissing him made her tingle all over, even in places she hadn’t realized were meant to tingle.

  Stop it!

  She couldn’t think about him—fantasize about him. Not when she was trapped in Didi’s Cadillac, going to God-only-knew-where.

  Earlier, she’d snagged the keys to the Toyota, just after dinner, waited for Seneca to close her door, gave it another ten minutes, then slid out of the window and dropped lithely to the ground. She’d just settled behind the wheel of the Camry (she’d taught herself to drive on the sly and was fairly adept, even though she was still only fifteen) when she spied her mother’s Caddy rounding the corner of the street leading to their driveway in this crummy part of town.

  Crap!

  She’d sunk down in the Toyota’s battered driver’s seat, barely peeking over the dash as Didi had driven into the garage. Counting out three minutes in her head, she’d waited for Didi to head into the house. The second her mother was inside, Remmi had slipped into the open garage and thought she could sneak into her room, as it was just a few steps down the short hallway. Once Didi was past the kitchen, Remmi would be able to quietly ease the door open and make her way to the bedroom.

  No one, especially her mother, would be the wiser.

  She’d thought.

  Listening over the thudding of her own heartbeat, Remmi had wrapped her fingers around the doorknob when she’d heard the distinctive click of Didi’s heels approaching her direction.

  Crap!

  Rather than try to make it outside, where, if Didi chose to lock up, Remmi wouldn’t be able to get back into the house, she’d slipped away from the garage door and silently opened a back door of the monster of a car. Without thinking, she’d rolled into the back seat of the Caddy and engaged the secret lever Didi had installed. The seat back had flipped down, and Remmi had forced her body into the cramped cargo space. Without really thinking, she’d found the inside latch, and the rolled leather seat had sprung into place once more, clicking into place as Didi emerged from the house with one of the baby carriers.

  Remmi, peeking through the specialized peephole, had held her breath and silently prayed, Don’t let her find me, oh, please God, don’t let her—

  The Caddy’s back door flew open. Muttering to herself as she’d secured the carrier into position, Didi didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss. She’d quickly returned to the house. Remmi had reached for the lever but never got the chance to escape. Less than a minute after strapping in the first carrier, Didi had reappeared with the second.

  Once both car seats had been locked into place, Remmi had been trapped.

  Only then did she notice that Didi was dressed in her favorite Marilyn Monroe costume, all pink and shimmery. She’d climbed behind the wheel and jammed her keys into the ignition. The massive car with its huge engine had roared to life, and Didi had backed out of the garage without a word.

  Five seconds later, she’d rammed the Cadillac into drive, hit the gas, and headed to the desert. With her infants strapped into the back seat of this boat of a car, and Remmi hidden in the trunk, Didi drove as if the devil himself were chasing her.

  Why?

  What was with the full-Marilyn regalia?

  And where to?

  Remmi bit her lower lip nervously.

  Where the hell was she headed?

  * * *

  “Son of a bitch!” Noah kicked a rock hard enough for it to hit against the weathered side of the barn and bang so loudly that the dog sleeping on the porch gave a startled bark. Roscoe, who was a mix of some kind of sheepdog and who knew what else, raised his speckled, shaggy head, yawned, wagged his stub of a tail, then settled back on the old rag rug that was his bed, his nose buried in the faded fabric, eyes bright and focused on Noah.

  “It’s okay,” Noah grumbled, but it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Noah was itching for a fight. He was supposed to meet a girl. Not just any girl, but a girl he’d just met the other day at the lake. She wasn’t his usual type, was a little on the nerdy side, and young, too, but she was smart and hadn’t been intimidated by him. The daughter of some weird showgirl, a woman impersonator, he thought. Didi Storm. Yeah, that was the mother’s name. Like him, the girl, Remmi, had no real dad in the picture, and he could see she would soon become a knockout. Her brown hair was streaked a reddish gold—naturally, he’d guessed, from the blasting Nevada sun. Freckles dusted a long but straight nose, and her eyes, somewhere between green and gold, flashed with intelligence and humor. He’d tested her, and she could give as well as she could take. Built tall and lean, with small breasts and hips that barely flared, she didn’t seem to care that she wasn’t as curvy as some of the girls she hung out with.

  Including that bitch Mandi Preston, who, while they’d all been swimming in the lake, had made a point of pressing her impressive boobs up against him. She was a tease, and as those massive breasts, held in place by a slip of a red bikini bra, had grazed the bare skin of his back, he’d had an immediate reaction, a hard-on forming despite the cool water. He’d tried to hide his boner, but it had been impossible, and Mandi had known just what she’d accomplished. It was a game with her, but he wasn’t interested in her. Never had been. All blond tousled hair, bubblegum-pink lipstick, and high-pitched giggling, he’d fo
und her too . . . commercial? Too much like a TV bimbo? No, maybe she was just a fake. He knew she was smarter than she pretended to be; he’d seen flashes of it, and the flirty dumb act bothered him.

  Not so Remmi.

  She said what was on her mind and didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought. She’d seen the display in the lake as she’d lain on a towel and read a book. Over the cover, she’d watched as Mandi had splashed and rubbed up against Noah. Arching a dark eyebrow, she’d caught Noah’s eye, given her head a shake, and closed the paperback. As she’d scooped up her towel, flip-flops, and small cooler, he’d waited for his damned cock to cooperate; then he’d followed her to the parking area.

  “What?” she’d asked when she unlocked the door of a beat-up Toyota and slid into the sunbaked interior.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “You’re right. You don’t.” She’d jabbed her keys into the ignition.

  “You got a license?” he asked. If she was sixteen, he’d be surprised.

  “So how is that any of your business?” She’d flashed him a cool smile and started the engine, stomping on the gas and backing up so quickly she’d nearly hit him—he’d jumped back, just in case—then, sliding her sunglasses over that long nose, she’d nearly clipped a signpost that listed the rules of the swim park. He wondered if she’d done it on purpose, as if she were thumbing her nose at authority.

  Or maybe he’d just hoped so.

  Didn’t matter. He was hooked, and he’d caught up with her twice more at the lake, bringing his own ratty towel and stretching out beside her as she pretended to read. Maybe she was really trying. But her gaze kept straying from the pages of the paperback, a battered copy of a Stephen King novel, to the lake, where the water shimmered under the harsh sun. Boats, sometimes pulling skiers, cut through the clear water, engines churning, frothy wakes widening behind them. Swimmers kept closer to the shore, Moms with toddlers or teenagers hanging out in packs.

  Remmi came alone, most of the time.

  He liked that.

  In fact, he liked her.

  And it surprised him.

  She was, after all, jailbait, or so he’d thought. She couldn’t be sixteen, despite the car. She was kind of on her own, helping out with her infant siblings, working at a burger joint, and waiting for school to start. And she liked computers, was kind of a geek when it came to the net, something that was completely foreign to him.

  Yet, he’d felt a kinship with her, as if they were both some kind of misfit. He was out of high school and fast running out of options, his job as the clean-up guy on construction sites a dead end. His life at home the same. He needed to move on. But tonight?

  Remmi.

  He felt a jolt of anticipation fire his blood and mentally kicked himself when his thoughts took him to imagining her warm lips and soft body. Shit, what was he thinking?

  Nothing good.

  Then again, not so bad.

  Oh, hell, who knew? Maybe he was making a bigger deal of it than it was, but say what you will, hadn’t she agreed to meet him tonight? In a park not far from the edge of town. They planned to go dirt biking in the desert. Alone.

  Despite the fact that he was supposedly grounded.

  By his stepfather. Ike Baxter, a big, burly guy with swarthy skin, a thick salt-and-pepper flattop, and eyes drilled deep into his skull, seemed to think he could tell Noah just exactly what to do. If he ordered, “Jump,” Noah was supposed to respond, “How high, sir?” Yeah, right. Ike could go jump into the deepest lake around, preferably chained to a cement block. God, he hated that miserable son of a bitch. What his mother saw in him escaped Noah.

  But there it was.

  And the big jerk-wad had grounded him because his “chores” hadn’t been done in a timely fashion, the task in question being setting fence posts in cement-like soil after a ten-hour stretch at his job. Well, screw that.

  “Shit,” he said, and swiped at the sweat running down his face. Mad at the world, Noah eyed the stucco house with its cracked walls and missing roof tiles. Even though he knew it was near-suicide, he considered “borrowing” the crappy Yamaha motorcycle on which Ike was forever tinkering. The dirt bike was a beater, circa 1968, in Noah’s opinion, but something the old man treasured and called “classic.” Noah snorted his disdain at Ike’s lofty notion of the relic. Still, the bike still had some kick in it, and he needed to get out. Now. While he could. Cora Sue, his mother, was MIA again, probably down at Slaughter’s, sipping vodka, getting wasted, and trying to forget the landscape of her pathetic life. As for his old man? Ike had taken off an hour or so ago, but not before rattling off a list of chores for his stepson, an edict reinforced by a threat that, if he failed to get them done, he’d be grounded “for the rest of the month, maybe more. We’ll see.” Who knew when the fucker would show up again? As if Noah cared. Ike Baxter was a hard-ass son of a bitch who didn’t like his wife’s “snot-nosed smart-mouthed jackass” any more than the jackass liked him. Yeah, Stepdaddy was a real dick-wad. Too good for Cora Sue, but she gravitated to losers, one after another, including his biological old man, who’d done a quick vanishing act before he was born. Never had he met the “sperm donor,” as Cora Sue had so appropriately named Ronnie Scott, though she’d chased him rigorously and futilely for child support that never appeared. The only help she’d ever gotten from Noah’s dad was in the form of Ronnie’s widowed mother, a religious nutjob who had taken care of her grandson while Cora Sue waited tables at one of the smaller casinos just off the Strip.

  The last Noah had heard, dear old Dad was banging out license plates or doing laundry or some other menial labor while serving time in prison in California. Noah didn’t know which lockup housed his father, and he didn’t much care.

  With that thought, he jogged to the hovel of a house, where his room consisted of an attic space that was hot as hell in the summer, colder than a well digger’s butt in winter, and tight enough that he could stand only under the crown of the roof. His bed was a sleeping bag tossed over a mattress lying on a plywood floor, but there was a window, and through that small pane of glass, he could view the stars at night and watch the sun come up each morning.

  And neither Ike nor Cora Sue bothered him in the attic; they pretty much left him alone.

  Things could be worse.

  Then again, they could be a whole lot better.

  The sun was hanging low in the sky as he hurried up the dilapidated steps to the porch. Roscoe thumped his stubby tail, and Noah, in a hurry, gave the old shepherd a quick pat on the muzzle before crossing the dusty floorboards and opening the creaking screen door. He stepped into the house and found the single key dangling from a nail pounded into a post near the back door, snagged it, started outside, then hesitated. Knowing he was crossing a line, he walked through the kitchen and down a short, hot hallway, where pictures of Cora and Ike’s wedding, at one of the local drive-through chapels, were posted. Ignoring the shots of his younger, happier mother and the man who would become his tyrant of a stepfather, he slipped into the second bedroom, which was now Ike’s den. Unerringly, Noah went to the heat vent behind the scarred metal desk, removed the vent’s grimy cover, and stuck his arm down the dusty hole to a spot where the vent bent back under the house.

  His fingers scraped not one, but two plastic bags, and he withdrew the first to find a wad of cash. The other small sack was either more money, which was unlikely, or Ike’s stash of “feel-goodies,” as he referred to the weed and ecstasy and whatever else he’d scored and hidden away. This one was enough. From the looks of it, there was nearly a grand hidden inside the first bag.

  After pocketing the plastic bag and replacing the vent, he headed for the attic stairs and climbed the steep, ladder-like steps to his “room.” Once there, he went to his own hiding spot, a board near the only vent in the ceiling; he slid it out of place and reached beneath the convex arch of a roof tile. He retrieved a sock holding several hundred dollars. Not enough to start a new life, but when added
to the money he’d taken from Ike, he should do all right.

  Maybe.

  He didn’t take the time to think it through, just backed down the staircase, and headed outside, the screen door banging behind him, Roscoe giving up a disgruntled “woof.” Noah didn’t bother with the steps, just took a flying leap off the porch and ran across the parking area to the shed, another one of Ike’s private spots.

  Inside, the shed was an oven, stifling and breathless.

  A wasp buzzed angrily near an umbrella-shaped paper nest tucked in rafters low enough to touch; the building was small and compact, not quite as large as a single-bay garage. Weathered siding smelled of oil and dust, mingled with the lingering scent of stale cigarette smoke from stepdaddy’s last Camel straight. Tools lined the walls, and motorcycle parts were strewn on a bench that ran along one side of the shed, beneath the single window, where cobwebs and grime covered the small panes. The Yamaha was propped against the far wall, and without a second thought, he rolled it out of the dingy building, down the short ramp, and onto the sparse gravel of the parking area between the sagging garage and the back porch.

  He kick-started the old bike into life, and the engine caught immediately. Then he was off, the back tire sliding a little as he slipped from the scant gravel to the asphalt of the two-lane. Take that, Ike, he thought, grinning smugly. It was time to give a little back to the man who didn’t think twice about back-handing him; he was a burly son of a bitch with a cruel streak that he tried and failed to control. There would be hell to pay when Noah returned, but maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d just keep riding west; he was old enough at eighteen to do what he wanted, even if it was on a stolen motor bike.

  Oh, hell.

  His mother, if she knew what he was doing, would have a heart attack. But how much did she care? If his whereabouts weren’t engraved on the bottom of a martini glass, she wouldn’t have a clue, right? No, Cora Sue left all of her child-rearing and now teen-monitor duties to Ike the Spike or his paternal grandmother, the Sperm Donor’s aging and oh-so-religious mother. As far as Noah knew, his grandmother still regularly wrote to her felon of a son and, no doubt, spouted the same Bible verses and quotes to Ronnie as she did to Noah. She plucked them at random, from the Old Testament as well as the New. They were often butchered and spun for her own purpose, but they continued to ring in his ears.