by JJ Knight
Parker lets my legs fall back to the floor of the tub. With great care, he picks up a bottle of shampoo and works it through my hair. He’s never done such a simple thing, and I am profoundly moved by it.
His fingers work the long heavy strands as he tries to rinse it out. Once again I’m able to forget everything else and fall into the moment. To be protected, loved, cared for. It’s what I wanted, right? It’s what I was looking for with him.
But scenes come back to me, my hands bound, Striker sending that other fighter into the van to do whatever he wanted.
A sob catches in my throat. I jerk my head forward and shampoo suds race into my eyes. I let go of Parker to wipe them away and almost fall down. He tries to catch me, but I’m angry now, sick of the thoughts, the way the horror won’t leave.
I push him away and fling the shower curtain aside. I don’t even care about a towel but race for the bed. Only when the covers are over my head and the whole world is hidden from view do I feel any better.
The bed tilts as Parker sits on it. I can’t see him inside my tent of sheets and blankets.
“Are you okay?” he asks. His voice is muffled by the layers of bedspread on top of me.
I feel like I’m six years old, but I don’t care.
The silence goes on. Neither of us moves.
“Lily was right, there are monsters under the bed,” I say finally.
“And who did she call when she wanted to get rid of them?”
Damn it. He has me there. “She called you.”
“Did we get the job done?”
“She went back to sleep.”
Another long moment. Neither of us knows how to fix this.
“Do you remember that night we saw your father drinking from empties behind Drake’s Bar?” he asks.
I do. Mom threw my dad out of the house when I was twelve. He’d always been a drunk, but not the mean kind. The sad, contemplative version. My mother was a shrew, always on his case, pecking at him one way or another. She discovered he was with some other woman and threw his clothes out on the street.
I came home from school to find him trying to organize his shirts and underwear into piles. It was too much for me. The boxers strung across the yard. My dad, so stumbling drunk he could barely hold himself upright. And then my mom, pacing the house, screaming and cursing into the phone at her various friends who hadn’t told her about this other woman.
For a while, he was just gone. Then I guess something went wrong with the other lady and he ended up wandering the streets, bumming cigarettes and drinking cheap whiskey from a paper sack. I saw him a few times sitting on park benches. I didn’t try to approach him. I was scared of my mother and she made it very clear I was to stay far away.
He must have lost his job somewhere in there, as the next time I saw him he was dressed in tatters. It was my fourteenth birthday. I barely recognized him. He didn’t know what day it was, and when he saw me, he just waved. I turned and ran.
I didn’t start to feel empowered until I turned eighteen. I knew I could leave home whenever I wanted. My mother had no control over me.
I stayed because I could live more cheaply and always managed to arrange my school and work hours so we were never in the house at the same time during waking hours. We rarely crossed paths. I kept some food in the fridge and tidied up enough that she didn’t fuss. We got by.
Then came Parker. She despised him. Saw all the no-good in him, living as a fighter.
The night we ran into my father behind Drake’s was bad. Mom had unexpectedly come home, not feeling well, and flew into a rage when she saw Parker in my room.
We raced out of there, me feeling upset and embarrassed. We got to our favorite bar, but someone new was behind the counter. He carded me. I was not quite nineteen, so he told me to leave. Instead of going out the front, where some friends of mine were standing around and might laugh at me, Parker steered us out the back.
I was pretty sore at the world by then, between my mother and not getting a drink. When we heard the clink of a bottle falling in the dumpster, Parker pulled me behind him.
An overhead light on the back of the bar provided enough light for us to make out the man digging through the trash. Parker relaxed, realizing it was just a hunched-over old man.
“You got a buck you can spare?” the man asked, and I almost didn’t recognize his voice, as old and gravelly as it had gotten.
But when he looked up, I knew him. His bushy eyebrows hadn’t changed, nor the sad sorrowful look in his eyes.
“Madelyn,” he said. “You’re all grown.”
Parker looked back and forth between us. “You know this man?”
“He’s my dad,” I said. At the time, I thought Parker might up and leave after all this. My mother hated him. And now he would know my dad was a vagrant.
But Parker said, “Can we help you somehow? You need a place to sleep?”
I remember the tightness in my chest that came with Parker’s words. I had done nothing to help my father all this time, just feeling shame, and Parker was offering him his home?
Dad waved his hand away. “I got my own little spot,” he said. “It works for me.” He kept his eyes on me. “You’re even lovelier than your mother.”
“She is,” Parker said. He pulled out his wallet and emptied it, handing it over to my dad. “I’m sure you could stand to pick up a few things.”
Dad hesitated a second, then accepted the money. “You hang on to this one,” he said to me. “He’s one of the good ones.” He pulled out one of the three bottles tucked under his arm and swigged the contents. When it was empty, he tossed it into the dumpster with a tinkle of broken glass. “Nice seeing you.”
And he wandered off into the dark.
I seriously thought I would faint. “How are you going to pay rent now?” I asked Parker.
But he laughed and stuck my arm through his. “I got a lot of fight in me. I’ll just book another one.”
And he had. He’d gotten the job done. He’d always gotten the job done. Until I didn’t let him do it anymore. I left and let my Aunt Delores take care of me for a while.
“Maddie?” Parker asks. His hand bumps my head, feeling along the lump where I sit under the pile of covers.
I pull them off. He’s wrapped in a towel, his face full of concern.
“What about my dad?”
“That night he said —”
“I know. That you were one of the good ones.”
“Not that. He had nothing, you know. But he was proud. He had his own little spot, he said.”
“Probably under a bridge.”
“But he was still proud. And strong, in his way. You’re like that too. No matter what life throws at you, you’re going to make the best of it.”
Water droplets roll down his neck and slide across the tattoos on his arms. He’s totally earnest about this.
The thing is, I don’t know if he’s right. I don’t know how to recover from this.
Chapter 15: Parker
I pull on a pair of jeans and wait on Maddie. She’s in the bathroom, trying to comb her long hair. I’m relieved I got her out from under the covers. I don’t know what all happened to her last night. Maybe it’s more involved than I know.
I picture Striker’s hands on her and I want to kill him.
My phone has been buzzing for a half hour, but I ignored it while Maddie was so upset. Now that I’m dressed, I pick it up.
It’s a link from Jax, then some running commentary from Colt.
I click on it.
A grainy image of the black van moves onto an on-ramp to the highway. The camera’s behind it, looking at the rear tail lights and the back doors. One of the tail lights is out where Sam removed it when we placed the explosives. I see why Sam did that. It makes it easier to know which car is theirs in the dark. Plus it’s cop bait.
There’s a sudden flash of white light from the rear passenger wheel.
Hey, that’s my handiwork!
; The brake lights come on, then another flash from the front.
The van sits there for a moment.
Then all the doors fly open. The interior lights come on.
The voice from the box must have told them about the self-destruct.
The fuzzy forms of several people dash out of the van. They are freaking out, running up to the highway, then back down to the ramp. The explosives begin popping inside the interior and they start jumping off the ramp and out of view.
The camera backs away and turns. We see a couple figures limping at the base of the ramp as the car with the camera drives by.
I scroll down to the comments. Colt has said, “That was killer. Do it again.”
Sam responded, “Any time. Just say the word.”
Colt said, “I’ll make a list of top choices.”
Maddie comes out of the bathroom. I decide watching it won’t make her feel better, so I set the phone down. “You ready to get connected back to the world?” I say. “There’s a brand-new iPhone ready with your name on it.”
She looks beautiful and haunted in jeans and a simple brown tank top. Her hair is braided down the back. “Lily is probably writing me,” she says.
“I told her you broke your phone,” I say. “She decided not to ground you.”
Maddie gives a small smile. “Are you worried?” She sits next to me. “That they will learn about her?”
I put my arm around her. “Not in the least.”
“Do you think those people Colt knows would — would kill them?”
I grip her a little tighter. I’m not sure what she’s asking. “Would you want them to?”
She jerks like she’s been slapped. “No! I mean, will they?”
“I imagine if Jax had planned to kill anybody, their bodies would already have vanished.”
Maddie relaxes a little. “Okay.”
“Let’s get out for a while. We’ll stay in super-public places. Big crowds.”
She nods. “That’s fine.”
“You want me to get Colt and Jo? More company?”
“Not just yet. Maybe later.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Anything you want.”
We head out of the hotel and along the Vegas Strip. Maddie has lost all interest in everything. She doesn’t exclaim over the lavish hotels. She just walks along.
“Let’s go in Caesar’s Palace,” I say. I’m feeling more concerned as we go along. She’s not acting anything like her old self. I know I’m impatient to see her better, but I can’t help it. I had so many ideas about how this weekend would turn out. Striker’s destroyed them.
Maddie shrugs. We go inside the casino. Just like in New York–New York, the lights and sounds of the slot machines beckon.
Maddie looks up, and I feel some hope she will snap out of her upset. We walk up to a machine with the image of a cowgirl on it. It’s a digital game. “Try this one,” I say.
She sits down. Much better. I send up a prayer and a wish and a Hail Mary to cover all the bases to make this fun for her. We’ve had enough bad stuff.
I stick a twenty into the machine.
Maddie looks over the buttons and selects the number of lines she wants to bet on. The screen begins to roll with three rows of gems and cows and images of the cowgirl’s face. When it stops, she’s matched a few lines. The recording of coins hitting a tray is cheerful and encouraging.
“See, you won some,” I say. She’s up forty cents or so.
She hits the button again. I look around. The casino isn’t terribly full for midafternoon. The Roman theme extends to all the walls and ceilings with fake pillars and statues. A couple girls walk around with trays to take drink orders. Even though I almost never drink, I feel like one now.
The machine makes coin-drop noises again, so I look down. Maddie’s turned the twenty into almost thirty. “Hey, who needs fighting?” I say. “I’ll spare my face and just let you place all the bets.”
Maddie glances up with another small smile. I’ll take it. “Should we quit while we’re ahead? I would love to have a working phone.”
“Absolutely.”
She cashes out and gets her printed ticket.
“Save it,” I tell her. “We can come back.”
She looks around at the lavish ceilings. “It is pretty here,” she says.
I steer her to the Forum Shops, where the Apple Store has her phone waiting. Maybe I’m asking too much for her to get over what happened right away.
I’ll just need to be patient. And I can do that.
Chapter 16: Maddie
It’s a relief to have a phone again. The sales guy tries to explain all the features, but I just want it back on my plan so it will load my backlog of messages.
“It’ll probably take an hour or so to sync since we’re porting the phone number,” the man says. “Then you’ll be able to retrieve anything that’s on the servers.”
“What about her old photos and things?” Parker asks.
“You can send in her old phone to see what they can rescue from it,” he says. “The memory is probably fine inside.”
Parker pulls his wallet out.
“You don’t have to pay for my phone,” I say.
“I want to,” he says.
I’m not thrilled about this. I like my own control of things. Besides, now I have to wait for my messages and voice mail to be transferred to the new account. I’ve already waited most of the day.
And if things don’t work out with Parker…
“Hey,” he says. “I’ll keep the accounts separate. If you decide you never want to see me again, you can just take it over.”
The sales guy puts on a big fake smile. “You have control of the plan,” he says to me. “The big guy is just paying the bill. You can call and switch payment methods whenever you want.” He hands me the phone.
“Okay,” I say. That part doesn’t matter right now. I keep the phone in my hand so I’ll know when it starts getting messages through.
We walk out of the store and through the Forum Shops. Like in the casino, the walls and ceiling are ornate, all resembling Rome. Or at least a fancy gilded version of Rome.
“You have to be hungry,” Parker says. “You want to stop for something?”
I’m not, but I say, “Sure.”
“Should I ask Colt and Jo?”
I look over at Parker. He seems at a loss at what to do with me. I don’t know what to tell him. I plaster on a smile. “That sounds like a great idea. I like Jo a lot.”
He seems so relieved, I’m glad I decided to at least try to act normal. Hopefully the longer I act it, the sooner I will start to feel it.
Colt and Jo are just up the Strip, so we pick a restaurant in between us, one that isn’t likely to be flooded with tourists and families.
When we walk in the enormous glass doors surrounded with thousands of twinkling white lights, I halt. It’s so fancy. I’m in jeans.
“Parker, we’re not dressed for this,” I say.
“We can dress any way we want,” he says. “We’re celebrities.”
The maître d’ comes from behind his podium to shake Parker’s hand. “Fine fight last night. Excellent shutdown.”
Parker smiles a little sheepishly. “Thanks.”
“Mr. McClure is inside already. Let me show you to the table.”
I run my hands down the sides of my jeans a little nervously. I’m expecting to see nothing but elegant gowns and tuxes inside.
Which is silly. It’s midafternoon.
As we pass through the tables, it’s a relief to see people dressed normally. Maybe a little better than us, but not much. A couple of the men stand up when Parker comes by to shake his hand.
This is really odd. He just won the fight last night. How does everyone know him?
“You’re on all the news, old man,” Colt says as we come up to his table, tucked in a quiet corner. Jo is wearing jeans too, so I immediately feel better. Her hair isn’t even braided today, but in a plain ponytail
.
“I haven’t turned on a television,” Parker says.
“Your 22-second takedown is all over the place,” Jo says. “With that viral video Cam made, you’re the talk of MMA.”
“Welcome to insta-fame, bro,” Colt says.
The maître d’ pulls out a chair for me and I sit gingerly on it. Another man arrives and spreads a napkin across my lap. I’ve never eaten anyplace that paid this much attention to details.
Parker plunks down in his seat. “Nobody knows anything about last night, right?”
“Nary a word,” Colt says. “You got the video?”
I snap around to Parker.
“I saw it,” he says.
“What video?” I ask.
“A little intimidation we set up for Striker,” Parker says. “It wasn’t much. Just something to remind them to back off. Sam’s big plan.”
“You want to see?” Colt asks.
I shake my head. I’m not comfortable with the idea that they are needling those people. They could do anything.
A third man arrives with a bottle of wine and shows it to Colt. He waves him away. “We’re all training here,” he says. Then he looks at me. “Unless you want it, Maddie.”
I shake my head. “No, thank you.” My voice wavers.
“Let’s go take a peek at the bathroom,” Jo says. “You look like you could use a break from the boys, and I’ve heard there’s people in there to wash your hands for you.”
“Really?” I ask.
Jo stands up and waits for me. “You boys can order for us. Something decadent that will make you jealous because you can’t have it.”
She leads me toward a back corner of the restaurant. I clutch my purse and the new phone, unwilling to leave it behind for even a few minutes. My messages should patch through anytime now. I know there’s notes from Lily that Delores typed. Parker has talked to them several times, and Lily keeps asking if I’m going to write her back.
The bathroom is as sumptuous as any fancy house I could have ever imagined. Cushioned benches with gold trim. Giant mirrors. Fresh flowers in vases on every surface.