“No problem. So, you never told me your name.”
“Jared.”
“That’s prett—uh, a good name.” He cleared his throat, but his voice was even raspier than before when he said, “What were you hoping to get outta The Spot, Jared?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Someplace to just…be, I guess. Do you know what I mean? I just wanted somewhere I didn’t have to leave the minute I got settled.” He noticed the griminess of his own hand as he brought up the candy for another bite. “And I’d sure like a shower. Maybe I oughtta go to the Salvation Army, after all.” He’d been avoiding those kind of shelters, for fear someone might recognize his face. The truth was, though, he didn’t even know if he’d been on the news here. What was hot news in Colorado Springs might not be worth mentioning in Denver. And he was rapidly reaching the point where he could hardly stand his own smell.
“Trust me,” P.J. interrupted his thoughts, “you wanna steer clear of the S.A. Way too many mean sum-bitches there.”
“The Salvation Army isn’t safe?” Jared stared at P.J. in shock. “Aren’t those the people who ring bells and say ‘God bless’ when you drop money in their collection pots outside the stores at Christmas time?”
“Yeah, we ain’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.” P.J. shrugged. “It’s not the people running the place who are gonna hurtcha—they’re all pretty nice. But a lot of the homeless grown-ups using the joint?” Blowing out a tuneless, expressive whistle, he shook his head. “They’d just as soon punch you in the face as give you the time of day.” Then he brightened. “We could head on over to Sock’s Place, though.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s another drop-in center. Well, it’s really kind of a church, but it’s tight. You can get a meal and shower there and catch a few hours sleep. Whaddya say?”
“Sounds good.” It sounded great. Like a little piece of heaven. He wasn’t about to say that aloud, though. Playing it cool was difficult, but he sure as hell didn’t have to come off sounding like a hick.
It also felt really nice, he admitted a few minutes later as he and P.J. set off for the new place, to have someone to hang out with. Right up there near the top of the Horrendo-meter was how alone he’d felt in this ongoing nightmare. It was good to have someone to talk to.
Not that he did much of the talking. P.J. seemed to be a jawer by nature; he had an opinion on everything under the sun and didn’t hesitate to state it. That was fine with Jared. The smaller boy had obviously been on the streets longer than he had and he was a font of good information that most likely would have taken Jared weeks to learn for himself.
Studying the other youth as P.J. skipped backward in front of him, telling him ways to blend in around the Auraria College campus in order to catch some rest during the days, he thought the two of them probably looked like Mutt and Jeff. He possessed the Hamilton genes, which meant he was tall and rangy, all long arms and legs. To his disgust, he wasn’t the least bit buff, but Cook said that was because he was still growing into his bones. She insisted he’d be buff enough before he knew it.
He wasn’t exactly holding his breath waiting for that to happen, but compared to P.J. he could have been a fricking graduate of the Charles Atlas school of bodybuilding. The other boy was nearly a foot shorter than he and so fine-boned that he appeared almost girlishly delicate. To be fair, that impression was gained mostly by what was on view: the little dude’s big-eyed face and stick-thin arms. The rest of him was buried beneath a T-shirt about three sizes too large and a pair of wide-legged jeans that sagged off his skinny hips and pooled their frayed hems around sneakers that had seen better days. Somehow Jared doubted that the rest of P.J. was any more filled-out, though. Hell, his face didn’t even exhibit a trace of fuzz yet.
“How old are you, anyway?” he demanded.
“Gonna be fifteen in a few months.”
“Yeah?” Jared studied him skeptically. “How many months do you consider a few?”
“’Bout twenty.” P.J. grinned unrepentantly. “How about you? I bet you must be around eighteen, huh?”
“Not until November.”
“I was close.”
Jared snorted. “Closer than thirteen is to fifteen, anyhow.” But his disdain was all for show, and they both knew it. “So, what does P.J. stand for?”
“Priscilla Jayne.”
Jared stopped dead. “You’re a girl?” His voice cracked on the last word, but he was too busy staring and reassessing to care.
“Of course I’m a girl! Jeez! Why does everybody think I’m not?” Looking down at her chest, she plucked the cloth away from its flat planes. “It’s because I ain’t got no boobies, isn’t it? Well, I’m gonna have ’em someday, you know. I’m just a late bloomer.” Her little triangular face went forlorn. “I’d sure have a lot less money troubles if I had ’em now, though.”
“How’s that?” Now that he knew she was a girl, he was amazed he hadn’t tumbled to it the second he’d clapped eyes on her. Shit. In hindsight, it seemed so obvious.
“If I had a nice rack—or, okay, any boobs at all—I could turn tricks and my money problems would be yesterday’s news.” But she made a sour face. “All right, the truth is, part of me is just as glad that’s not an option, but if you tell anybody I said so, I’ll deny it. Don’t cha think, though, that the whole sex thing seems really…icky?”
“Well, yeah.” He looked at her and thought she didn’t look all that much older than his niece Esme. His stomach rolled at the thought of some sweaty old man rolling around on top of her and he reached out to rap his knuckles against the top of her backward-facing baseball cap. “Hel-lo! Letting fat old guys do whatever they want to you with their pudgy damp hands? Be glad you don’t have the stuff.”
“Yeah, well, easy for you to say. I bet you could make a bundle.” She gave him a jaundiced once-over. “It must be nice to be gorgeous.”
He made a face at the latter comment, but warmed inside all the same at the thought of someone thinking he was good-looking. He also perked up at the idea of making some money. He was down to his last twelve dollars. “Women will pay for sex?” That didn’t sound like such a bad deal. He’d only had sex twice, but he’d liked it.
A lot. P.J. made a rude sound. “Not women, you dumb-shit. Men.”
“No fucking way!” He jumped back, as if the very notion were contagious. “That’s sick.”
“Yeah,” she agreed glumly. “Like I said, the whole deal is really icky.”
“It’s not the sex that sucks, P.J. I’m no big expert, but I’d rank getting laid right up there with hot-fudge sundaes. That’s with girls, though. I’m not into the guy-guy thing.” The mere thought made him queasy.
“Hot-fudge sundaes, huh?” She regarded him with some interest. “I like those. Whaddya wanna bet, though, that only boys get that out of sex? Girls probably end up with mud pies that only look like sundaes.”
“Hey!” He felt vaguely insulted by her assertion until he thought of Beth Chamberlain, with whom he’d shared his first sexual experience. “Well, maybe it is better for guys the first few times.” Then Vanessa Spaulding, an older woman of nineteen who’d taught him a thing or two, popped into his mind. “But if a guy knows what he’s doing, it gets way better.”
“That’s good to know.” P.J. shrugged. “Still, if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon skip the sweaty groping and go straight to the chocolate-covered ice cream.”
He laughed. It was the first thing he’d found remotely amusing since tearing out of the Colorado Springs mansion, and suddenly things didn’t seem quite as scary now that he had someone to hang out with. He gave the young girl a friendly shove to the shoulder. “You’re all right, you know that? I’m glad we met.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
JOHN CLIMBED THE EXTERIOR staircase of the six-car garage behind the mansion. Reaching the top, he glanced back over his shoulder toward the kitchen door, which he could just see from his vantage point. Then he turned back and gave the
antique brass door knocker several authoritative, decisive raps. Mary, the housekeeper, had told him he’d find Victoria there, and he had no legitimate reason to doubt her. But what would Tori be doing in an apartment over the garage—having a hot and heavy affair with the chauffeur?
Jesus, Ace. Okay, so it didn’t strike him as particularly funny. It should have—considering how much she’d changed over the years, the very notion should have been ironic, or at least marginally amusing. Instead, the mere idea of her getting down and dirty with some faceless man irritated the hell out of him. Which made no sense at all. It wasn’t as if he expected she’d been celibate for the past six years.
All right, that was exactly what he expected. So sue him.
It didn’t help the nascent case of jealousy swirling in his gut that the woman who yanked the door open hardly looked as if getting down and dirty were outside the realm of possibility. Gone was the sheath-and-pearls-attired socialite. In her place stood a familiar barefoot woman clad in a threadbare pair of cutoffs and an oversize white shirt, the tails of which had been knotted at her waist over a lipstick-red sports bra. The shirt looked as if it might have belonged to her father, so long were its tails and so bulky its rolled-back cuffs that ended just below her elbows. And her hair was a wild, sun-streaked, flyaway nimbus floating out from beneath the little red triangular bandana she’d tied behind her head. But it was the ragged threads straggling against her firm, freckled thighs that riveted his attention.
“Can I do something for you, Miglionni, or did you just come up here to stare at my legs?”
He tore his gaze away from the long, smooth, bare expanse. “You gotta admit, they’re ogle-worthy,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Believe it or not, though, I actually did have something to tell you—those beauties just drove whatever it was clean out of my head.” He didn’t plan the grin he flashed her; as with damn near every other time he’d ever been in her company, she drew a reaction from him that was purely spontaneous. “Man, Tori. I’d forgotten how pretty your legs are. You oughtta wear short shorts more often.” He couldn’t stop himself from giving them a final once-over before he made a conscious effort to look elsewhere. No sense giving her any more opportunities to accuse him of sexual harassment.
He glanced past her into the depths of the big open room. A huge worktable, littered with mechanical pencils and blueprints, wood scraps and piles of fabric, stood down near the end of the room. In the midst of the chaos stood two little houses about three feet tall. One was made of balsa wood and was fairly plain, but the other looked very elaborate. Deep shelves behind the table held several other balsa models and one stone one, each in a different style. “Whoa. Are those yours?”
“Yes.”
She relinquished her position blocking the door when he stepped forward and he strode past her, crossing to the table. He saw that the models on the table had an open back and, bending down, he checked out the interior of the ornate one before glancing up at her. “What is this, a dollhouse?”
“Yes.”
He indicated the other. “And this one?”
“It’s the prototype.”
“And you made both of them?” He tipped his chin to include the other prototypes on the shelves. “You made all of these?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.” He gave the one still in progress a more thorough inspection. “I can’t believe the attention to detail. It’s perfect.” It had gingerbread shingles on the roof, a wraparound porch with spindle railings, two balconies and a bay window. Each room was fully realized, from window seats and the tiny oak paneling forming the wainscoting in the parlor, to the old-fashioned wallpaper and white porcelain pedestal sink in the upstairs bathroom. He flipped a switch on a little metal box he saw sitting on the table next to the dollhouse, and minuscule lights within the model came on. Laughter rolled out of his chest. “This is so cool.”
Victoria blinked as she watched Rocket circle the table to investigate the other models on the shelves. He possessed such bedrock masculinity that she would have thought he’d find her dollhouses too sissy for his consideration—or at least dismiss them with no more than a cursory glance. Instead he seemed fascinated. When he came to the stone castle and glanced over his shoulder at her, his dark eyes all but shot sparks of pure, engaged interest.
“This one’s different. It’s more like a guy’s dollhouse.”
A laugh escaped her. “Good call. I made it for a boy with an extensive collection of metal toy soldiers, most of which are knights, kings, horses and other assorted medieval warriors. It was my first experience with masonry and I’m pretty proud of the way it turned out.” Coming around the worktable to stand next to him, she hauled the castle off the shelf and placed it on the table. “Look.” She reached across his arm and past the turrets into the castle’s open top. “It has a working drawbridge and portcullis and if you move this stone just so—” she demonstrated with a fingertip “—and then the one next to it like this—shazam!” The interior wall swivelled to expose a secret room that had walls bristling with sketches of medieval weaponry.
John laughed. “Excellent! I would have beefed up the back wall here for a better defense, but it looks as if you’ve got the firepower and that’s half the battle. A couple vats of boiling oil, enough supplies to hold off a siege and you’ve got yourself a good chance of holding the fort.” He turned his head to look at her. “Do you make these for a living?”
“Yes.” Finding his face suddenly much too close, his enthusiastic curiosity much too compelling, Victoria eased back a step, trying to ignore the smooth, hot-skinned drag of his inner forearm against her own. “I sort of fell into it by default. I made one for Es and a couple of her friends fell in love with it and wanted one for themselves. Their respective parents commissioned me to make them and from there word of mouth just started to build. It was confined mostly to the Mayfair area of London until last year, when I set up a Web page on the net. Now I’ve got all the work I can handle. More, really. I’ve had to turn commissions away.”
“Have you ever considered mass producing?”
“For about five minutes.” She met his gaze. “But then I rejected the idea. Not only would mass production put me right back in the very situation I was trying to avoid when I left Kimball and Jones—devoting more time to my business than to Esme—it would strip all the individuality out of the process…and probably most of the fun, as well. I need to keep it small. That way I can build each house to suit the little girl—or in the castle’s case, boy—for whom it’s meant. Each child gets a quality, almost-one-of-a-kind dollhouse and I get a creative outlet…not to mention steady employment that’s fairly lucrative for being so selective.” Much too aware of his shoulder bumping up against hers as he leaned down to test the castle’s various working parts, she moved away, going to the shelves and finding make-work straightening the remaining models. “Which reminds me, I should get back to it. You said you had a reason for coming up here?”
When she turned back, she found him checking out her legs once again, but he immediately pulled his gaze up to meet hers. “Yeah. The probability that Jared left town just got a lot stronger. I tracked down the cab driver who picked him up the night your father was murdered.”
“Oh, God.” Feeling her legs go weak, Victoria reached for the stool she used when working at the table and pulled it beneath her hips. “What did he say? Where did he take him?”
“He said the kid was extremely quiet and seemed stunned. Maybe in shock. That when he asked if he was all right, Jared laughed hysterically, but calmed down enough to insist on being taken to the bus station.”
“Did you find out where he went from there?”
“No. I couldn’t find anyone at the station who remembers selling him a ticket. But most teens on the run head for a city and since Denver’s the nearest one to Colorado Springs, odds are better than even that’s where your brother went.”
She pushed to her feet. “I can be ready to leave in ten minute
s.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there. Slow down.” He grabbed hold of her shoulders and leveled a no-nonsense, let’s not-get-ahead-of-ourselves look on her. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“But if that’s where you think he is…”
“Think being the operative word here. Running around like a couple of chickens with their heads cut off won’t gain us anything. We do this the smart way, which means I tap into my resources. First and foremost among those is Stand Up For Kids in Denver.”
“What’s that?”
“An organization that gives aid to runaways and street kids. I’ll give them a call and fax them Jared’s photograph so they can be on the lookout for him when they do their outreach in Skyline Park Sundays and Tuesdays. Kids learn quickly where they can score a free meal and some toiletries, so if Jared’s in Denver, he’ll likely show up at Skyline sooner or later. I’ve worked with this organization before and they know they can trust me not to return a kid to an abusive situation. And in return, I can trust the Stand Up counselors to give me a call as soon as they spot him.”
“Then we go to Denver?”
“Then I do, anyway.”
“If you think I’m sending you off to collect him all by yourself, John, think again. Jared’s bound to be scared to death, and he doesn’t know you from Adam.”
He gave her shoulders a tiny squeeze. “What do you say we wait until we actually have a useable lead before we argue this to a standstill?”
The commonsense suggestion made her realize the silliness of standing here arguing about it now and she couldn’t help but smile. She gave him a poke. “Deal.”
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