“Not immediately. I waited a couple of hours.” He took a sandwich half from the tray, then slid the remaining half toward her. “I didn’t want to wake the kids from their morning naps.”
“How considerate of you.” She picked up the sandwich and peeled back one slice of bread to look inside. They were nothing fancy—a couple slices of salami and cheese with spicy mustard on rye—but they suited him. If she didn’t like them, she could go back to her house and find something there. Better yet, she could go all the way home to Landry for lunch, and stay there.
She took a bite, chewed and swallowed. “You know, all you succeeded in doing was making two nice people who have plenty going on in their own lives think that now they need to worry about me, too.”
“They do need to worry about you. You don’t belong down here.”
“It’s not your place to make that determination.” She took another bite, then glanced around behind her. “Do you always feed your customers?”
“When they’re hungry.”
“Why?”
He leaned back against the counter. “Because the people in this neighborhood used to feed me when I was hungry.”
Leaning forward, she infringed on the space he’d just put between them. “So you’re giving something back. See, you do have a social conscience.”
Jamey scowled at her. “I never said I don’t. We don’t need your conscience trying to run our lives. If you want to give something back—” he gave her words a mocking twist “—do it in your own town, not here.”
She refused to take up the argument with him. Instead, she settled comfortably on the stool again and concentrated on the meager lunch he’d offered. After washing down the last bite, she asked, “Was your family poor?” At his blank look, she started to explain. “You said the people used to feed you—”
“We lived on Serenity Street. Of course we were poor.” Even when it was a decent neighborhood, it had still been a low-rent one. Everyone lived there because they didn’t have anyplace else to go, because their income or their health or the size of their families kept them in these fourteen blocks.
“Did your father work?”
“When he could.” At the curiosity that tidbit created in her blue eyes, he scowled and answered before she could ask. “He was a drunk. When he was sober, he worked. When payday came around, he’d go off on a binge, drink away his check and, more times than I could count, lose his job.”
“And your mother?”
He smiled tightly. Forty years ago his mother would have been one of the women Karen was so sure she could help. Who knew? Maybe she—or someone like her, someone with her education—could have helped Margie. “My mother was sick,” he said at last, meeting her gaze headon. “She drank, too, but that wasn’t her problem. She used to lock me out of the apartment from the time my dad left for work until he came staggering home fifteen or eighteen hours later. She refused to eat until she got weak. She cried for hours at a time for no reason. She went weeks without leaving her bed.”
“She suffered from depression.”
“That would be my best guess.” But there had been no money for doctors, and so Margie had remained depressed and James had continued to drink, right up until their deaths within one sad three-month period. Jamey had been in his mid-twenties, about the same age Reid was now. He hadn’t been close to either parent, but for a time he had felt lost without them. They had been his only family, except for a young son living someplace unknown, who would have preferred no father at all over the one fate had stuck him with.
“I’m sorry,” Karen said quietly.
He shrugged. “Everyone’s sorry for something.” He was sorry for the conversation they’d had earlier, for bringing her closer to tears than he was comfortable with. He was sorry he’d forgotten that she’d lost her husband, sorry that he’d provoked her into admitting the painful fact that she was the reason they’d had no children. For someone who wanted babies, who would be a good parent, that had to be a bitter sorrow.
And people like him and Meghan, who never should have been parents, managed it when they weren’t even trying. Hell, they’d been trying not to, and she’d gotten pregnant anyway.
“How’s the work going?” he asked, changing the subject before he felt compelled to offer an apology that would make them both uncomfortable.
“Fine. I’ve replaced one window and painted the upstairs bathroom.”
“You’re not going to paint everything white, are you?”
“Of course not.” Then she frowned. “How did you know I painted it white? I washed up before I came over.”
“It’s in your hair.” He reached out and caught a handful of coppery curls that had been liberally coated with white and immediately wished he hadn’t. He wasn’t an impressionable kid. He was forty-three years old—too damned old to find the simple touch of a woman’s hair erotic. Too damned old to think that, true to its red-hot color, it just might burn him. Way too damned old to want to wrap both hands in her hair, to use it to pull her close, to use it to trap himself alongside her.
She pulled the curls from his hand, picked at the blob of paint, then shrugged and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “It’s latex. It’ll wash out.” With a sigh, she slid to the floor. She wasn’t so short, he realized—maybe five five to his six feet. She just seemed shorter because she looked so damned fragile. “I’d better get back to work. Thanks for the lunch.”
“Let me know when you’re ready to leave, and I’ll fix you a real meal.”
The look she gave him was dry. “All right. Saturday, August 10th—”
He waited for her to go on. August 10th was this Saturday. He couldn’t possibly be lucky enough to get rid of her that soon.
“—Of the year 2025. I just might be ready to go by then.” She gave him a smart-ass smile. “See you later.”
After she left and crossed the street, he slowly approached the French doors. Leaning his shoulder against one wall, he watched as she climbed the steps to the porch, picked up a pane of glass and went in through the unlocked door. Her willingness to trust people who deserved no trust at all amazed him. It was just further proof that she was in way over her head here.
He was about to go back inside when a familiar figure down the block caught his attention and made him frown. Reid was on the stoop of the apartment house where he had once lived with his grandmother, sitting motionless and in the shade, maybe because it was too hot a day to be out and about in the sun, maybe because he didn’t want anyone noticing him. Considering that his gaze appeared to be locked on the old Victorian, it was a fair bet it was the latter.
Jamey hesitated, knowing he should go back inside the bar and forget Karen and Reid and anyone else who might be out, but when he moved, it wasn’t inside. He was halfway to the house before Reid noticed him. He stiffened, and his features formed that sullen look that was just about the only expression Jamey had ever seen on him.
The porch was small, with a two-foot-wide stoop and four steps centered between low brick walls. Reid was at the top, his back against the wall, one leg stretched out along the lower wall. Jamey sat on the opposite wall, his ankles crossed, his hands resting on the sun-warmed bricks. “You waiting for someone?”
The kid grew even more sullen, and the beginnings of a flush turned his face faint red. “It’s not against the law to sit on the steps.”
“I imagine if the people who live here had anything to say about it, it would be, at least for you and your friends.”
“Hey, I don’t care if they don’t want me around. I’m used to that.”
No doubt he was, and Jamey regretted it more than words could ever express—far more than Reid would ever believe. For a time, years ago when Meghan had brought the kid here to visit her mother and had never come back for him, Jamey had tried to tell him so. He had offered a thousand apologies and had gotten every one thrown back in his face. He had offered advice and gotten that thrown back, too. He had foolishly offered discipline,
and Reid’s temper had exploded. With an ache in his jaw from the punch the kid had landed and nothing but anger in his heart, Jamey had washed his hands of the boy who would never be his son, who had grown up to become nothing but a punk, who would die nothing but a punk, and he had walked away.
Eleven years later, he still felt guilty. He still wondered if he hadn’t lost something he couldn’t afford to lose. He still wondered if he should have offered a thousand and one apologies, two thousand and one or however the hell many it took.
“Where are your buddies?”
“Taking care of business.”
“Why aren’t you with them?”
Reid gave him a look of pure insolence. “Because it’s not my business.”
“So what are you doing here?” Jamey waited a beat before adding, “Watching Karen Montez?”
The flush that had so recently faded came back to a fast burn, reminding Jamey of nothing so much as a kid with an innocent crush on an older girl. But Reid was no kid—he’d never had the chance to be one; his parents had seen to that—and there was nothing innocent about him.
“Leave her alone,” Jamey warned, his tone friendly, his meaning not. “She’s practically old enough to be your mother, and she’s sure as hell not your type.” In truth, he had no idea how old Karen was—early thirties, if he had to guess. For all he knew, she could be closer to Reid’s age than his own.
“She’s not your type, either, but that doesn’t keep you from watching her.”
He hadn’t been watching her, Jamey silently defended. He’d been watching out for her. There was a difference. Without pointing that out, he coolly asked, “And what is my type?”
“Long legs, chesty, brown hair,” Reid replied sarcastically. “Elizabeth, Janis, Rita, Donna, Meghan.”
The most recent women in his life and the first. He had never thought that Reid might have noticed. Then he focused on the last name. The kid called his mother by her first name, and the only thing he’d ever called his father—to his face, at least—was bastard. What a fine family they were.
Getting to his feet, Jamey started to walk away. After only a few steps, though, he turned back. “Stay away from her, and keep your friends away from her. I don’t want anything happening to her before I convince her to leave. Understand?” He waited a moment for a response. When none came, he turned and left, and for some odd reason, every step he took away from his son felt like a mistake, just as it had that night eleven years ago.
It was stupid. He didn’t want a son, and Reid had made it abundantly clear that he had no need of a father. He was a grown man, for God’s sake. Jamey had had little to offer him when he was a boy and even less now.
Somehow this was Karen Montez’s fault. If she hadn’t come here, he wouldn’t have to be concerned with her safety. Reid wouldn’t be interested in her, and Jamey wouldn’t have to be dealing with that. And if she hadn’t come talking about saving the women and the children, he wouldn’t be thinking about one kid who—thanks to him and Meghan—was beyond saving.
It was all Karen’s fault, and just one more reason why she had to go.
Chapter 3
Gunshots awakened Karen in the middle of the night. For a moment she lay in bed, her heart thudding, wondering where they’d come from. Not Serenity. They’d sounded more distant than that. Maybe a block over, on Trinity, or even someplace further. She said a silent prayer that it’d just been aimless shooting, that no one had been hurt, that no one lay dying in a dark, lonely street somewhere, then settled more comfortably in the bed.
The night would come when she would awaken to such a disturbance, yawn and go back to sleep, but tonight wasn’t it. After five minutes passed into ten, she left the bed, pulling a robe on over the raggedy NOPD T-shirt she slept in. A night-light in the bathroom cast a soft pink glow through the open door and a dozen feet down the hall, enough to show her the way into the living room and to the windows. Staying in the shadows, she looked out, first across the street, then down in each direction.
O’Shea’s was still open, the doors propped wide, light spilling out. She could see a few customers nursing what she hoped would be their last drinks of the night, but there was no sign of Jamey. He was probably behind the bar, a towel over his shoulder, a toothpick in his mouth, a glass of water on the counter in front of him. She hadn’t seen him drink anything stronger and wondered why. Was it because his father had been an alcoholic, because alcohol had surely added to his mother’s problems? Maybe because he’d seen the effects alcohol had on already sad lives? Maybe it was a business decision, like the drug dealer who used no drugs himself, or maybe he just didn’t like the taste.
To the right the street was quiet. That was the escape from the neighborhood, the only way in and out of the fourteen-block district. A couple of blocks to the end of Serenity, a right turn and only a half dozen blocks to the bustle of Jackson Square. A half-dozen blocks to a whole other world, one that these people could visit but couldn’t—unless they worked hard, unless they scrimped and saved and paid their dues—live in.
Three and a half of Serenity’s six blocks stretched to the left. Once it had gone further, but the road had been bulldozed away, a guardrail and a fence put up to mark the new end. If people like Jolie had their way, the same thing would be done at the opposite end, creating a little island with the dregs of society stranded inside. There were bars in those three and a half blocks, a couple of warehouses, an occasional single-family home, more that had been converted to small, overpriced apartments, a dozen or more abandoned storefronts and a park.
She had driven by the park when she’d come to look at the house weeks ago. At one time it might have been a lovely little place, but now it was just depressing. The playground equipment had been trashed, the grass was gone, the benches had been torched where they stood in concrete, and obscenities had been sprayed on every surface. It was empty during the day, but around sunset she had seen kids wandering in—aimless teenagers, young men and women, the punks and troublemakers, gathered to smoke, drink and party. They had stolen the park from the kids and claimed it—ruined it—for their own. If she listened now, even from this distance, even through closed windows, she could hear their music, loud enough, inharmonious enough, to jangle a person’s nerves. It must be hell for the poor people who lived on either side down there.
With a heavy sigh, she moved from the shadows to the long seat underneath the bay window and stretched out, plumping a pillow underneath her head. They were right—her parents, Evan’s, Jolie, Smith and Jamey. Serenity was a bad place...but it was also a sad place, and it could be fixed. Anything could be fixed with the right tools, with cooperation from the right people. Look at her. When Evan had died, she had wanted nothing more than to crawl into the casket with him and die, too. She had been convinced that her life was over, that she had nothing to live for, no reason to go on. She had been about as low as a person could go...but she had survived. She had grieved for years—she still grieved—but she had put her life back together. She had found a new reason for living. She had been fixed.
If Ryan Morgan and his gang didn’t want her there, if they were going to be her biggest problem, fine. She would fix them. She would see about getting rid of them. If they were as bad as Smith and Jamey said, then surely the police or the feds were interested in them. Surely, with a little prompting, a little encouragement, they could make some sort of case against the whole bunch of them and get them off the streets. Since she just happened to be friends with both a cop and a fed, she would see what they could do. And once those troublemakers were gone, she would focus on the other, lesser troublemakers, and sooner or later the good people of Serenity would have to see that she was making a difference. They would have to trust her.
Across the street, a couple of elderly men shuffled out of O’Shea’s, walking to the end of the block together, then turning in opposite directions. A pair of broken-down tennis shoes and faded jeans came into view through the open doors as Jamey tur
ned the chairs upside down on the tables. Most of the lights went off, just one at the back burning, then he appeared outside, carrying a chair, setting it between doors and leaning back against the brick. The nearest streetlight wasn’t burning—like about half the lights on the street; she intended to call the city about it tomorrow—but she could see clearly enough to know that he was tired. He deserved to be. It was a little after 2:00 a.m.; he had opened the bar at ten yesterday morning. Even if you weren’t particularly busy, that was a long workday.
She wondered why he lived here. Why he kept such long hours at that shabby little bar when he could earn a decent living with a lot less effort elsewhere in town. What attachment kept him on Serenity when everyone else who could leave had. Why he wasn’t married. Whether he ever had been. Mostly she wondered why he refused to support her efforts. He knew the people needed help. Why wouldn’t he give her a chance to provide it? Why wouldn’t he help her? If she was right and she could help them, it would improve life on the street. If he was right and she couldn’t, well, the sooner she failed, the sooner she would leave. Surely that would make him happy.
Somehow, she didn’t think being happy ranked very high on Jamey O’Shea’s list of priorities.
With a big yawn, she considered going back to bed, but she was comfortable where she was. She could keep an eye on the street—and on her neighbor—and no one could see that she was there.
The sound of an engine in need of tuning drew her attention to the street. It was that old Impala—the only car besides her own that she’d seen regularly in the last two days—and its driver was once again taking his half of the street right out of the middle. At the grand speed of maybe five miles an hour they approached the street, then slowed to a stop as they drew even with O’Shea’s. The right rear door opened, and Reid Donovan climbed out. A young woman followed, clinging to his hand with both of hers. She was dressed in a skirt short enough to be illegal, a vest skimpy enough to be indecent and heels of the sort Karen dreamed of being able to wear. She looked cheap, trashy, like someone a man might pick up for twenty bucks or so a few blocks away. It was the way of the kids down here. Most of the boys and young men were cocky, blustering, arrogant or sullen, and most of the girls were flashy, brash, arrogant or sullen.
Convincing Jamey Page 6