by Terri Garey
“So go ahead, call the cops.” Inside she was quaking, sick to her stomach, but she stood up straight, crossing her arms across her middle. “Call the cops, because I swear, if you don’t get out of my house right now, I’ll call them myself.”
The look he gave her was ominous. “You should know,” he murmured, keeping his voice low, “that I’m a pretty good poker player. Lot of time on the road between concerts.” He smiled, but it was a cold smile. “I recognize a bluff when I see one.”
Her chin went up, and she looked him squarely in the eye, refusing to look away until he did. What she was doing was for Nathan.
“Luckily for you, I’m not the kind of monster who would ruin a kid’s life by letting his mom make a fool of herself in the tabloids, even if she is a lying, scheming, manipulative bitch. You may have won this hand, but the game is far from over,” he said, and left.
Shaky, nauseous, and curiously bereft, Faith sank down on the couch and covered her face with her hands.
Damn her to Hell. How dare she look so scared and vulnerable while busy lying through her teeth. How dare she still touch something in him after he knew her for a coldhearted, opportunistic . . .
Finn strode down the driveway, fuming. He heard a woman’s laugh, and looked up to see Faith’s friend Dina leaning against the car, talking to John, his security guy. The fact that she was still in a robe and pajamas didn’t seem to bother her a bit, as she was obviously flirting, and John was obviously enjoying it.
Without a speck of guilt for ruining his friend’s fun, he clipped, “John, would you mind waiting for me in the car?”
“I’ll, ah . . . sure,” he answered, moving reluctantly to do as he was asked. “Nice talking to you.”
“Name’s Dina,” she supplied, “and it sure was.” Definitely flirting, pink robe, fuzzy slippers, and all.
John’s grin was ear to ear until he saw the look on Finn’s face. He got in the car and shut the door without another word.
“May I ask you something?”
“Depends.” Dina gave him a wary look.
“What’s wrong with Faith’s son?”
She pressed her lips together, saying nothing.
“I saw the back of his head,” Finn stated, impatient. “I saw the scar.”
She sighed, and looked away. “You should ask Faith about that.”
“I’m asking you.”
She passed a hand over her face, lower lip trembling. She hesitated, then said, “Nate has brain cancer. He had surgery last month.”
Of course.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, pushing back any thoughts of sympathy. She’d lied to him, over and over. “Does she need money?”
Dina looked at him like he was crazy. “Of course she needs money. She’s a single mom with a sick kid to raise.” Shaking her head, she added, “But don’t be getting any ideas in that department; Faith ain’t the kind to take handouts. I’ve tried to help her out before, but she won’t have it.” She shrugged, shaking her head. “That’s why I babysit for her—so she don’t have to pay for it.”
“I can help her,” he said. He was gambling that Dina seemed like a person who could smell bullshit a thousand miles away, so it would be better not to spread any. “Tell her to do the right thing, and I’ll make it worth her while.”
Dina frowned, cocking her head. “The right thing?”
“She took something from me, and I want it back. I’ll pay for it.”
Shifting her hands to her fuzzy pink hips, Dina eyed him balefully. “You sure you got the right girl? Faith isn’t like that.”
Oddly enough, he wanted to believe her, and held her gaze, trying to decide if she was telling the truth. “Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think.”
Her eyebrows went sky high. “I’ve known Faith for almost six years, and she is not a thief.” Something flitted across her face, but was quickly gone. “She told me this morning she was in trouble, and if that’s so, I’m willing to bet you’re at the heart of it.”
Finn blinked at her directness.
“You’re the first guy she’s been with in a long time,” she told him bluntly. “I know you’re a big star and all that, but she’s just a small-town Georgia girl with a full-time job and a sick son to raise. You’ve got nothing to offer her but trouble. It would probably be better if you just moved on down the road.”
Nothing to offer her? He was Finn-Fucking-Payne, king of the goddamn rock-and-roll universe; he had more money in the bank than most people could spend in a lifetime. And this young woman, a total stranger who lived in a crackerbox duplex in Marietta, Georgia, was telling him he had nothing to offer.
Finn sighed, and looked away.
Sad thing was, she was probably right. He had nothing but his money and his music, and if he didn’t get the ring back, he’d have neither.
“Ask her about what happened on the roof this morning. And while you’re at it, remind her that stealing is stealing, whatever the reason.” He opened the car door, ready to get in. “Ask her if whatever she’s doing is worth selling her soul for.”
She glared at him, all earlier friendliness gone.
John leaned across the front seat to make eye contact with Dina, obviously having overheard bits of their conversation. “Finn just wants her to do the right thing, that’s all. He’s missing a ring—”
“A ring?” Dina’s expression turned scornful. “Faith wouldn’t steal nobody’s ring.” She shot both men a look of disgust. “She’s got enough on her plate right now—she’s not going to risk going to jail over some celebrity pretty boy’s ring.”
Celebrity pretty boy. That’s what he was, wasn’t he?
“If she had some fun with you last night, all well and good, but if she don’t want to see you today she must have a good reason for it.” She stepped back, ready to dismiss him. “You guys get on out of here.”
“Look, we came all the way out here without involving the cops,” John said to her hastily. “Finn’s tried talking to her, and now we’re asking you to talk to her,” he urged. “All he wants is the ring back.”
Dina pressed her lips together, staring at John, who nodded encouragingly.
“I’m not the enemy,” Finn said to her quietly, but didn’t know how to elaborate.
There was a silence between them, in which she searched his eyes for the truth of his statement, and apparently found it.
“You really think she took it.”
“I do.”
“You care about her at all?”
“Enough that I don’t want to see her go to jail.”
“That’s it?”
He said nothing, letting his silence speak for itself.
She stared at him. “Just as well,” she murmured. “You’d have broken her heart.”
He shrugged. “Maybe she’d have broken mine.”
An eyebrow quirked, and for the first time, she smiled.
“Maybe she would’ve, at that.” She turned away, heading up the walk. “Probably do you good to be taken down a peg or two.”
Chapter Fifteen
“I don’t care what he said, Dina, it isn’t true.” Faith shook her head stubbornly, keeping her eyes on Nathan as he played on the swings. The afternoon sun was warm, and she was on high alert, yet still so tired . . . the fitful napping she’d done on the couch while Nate watched cartoons earlier wasn’t nearly enough. “Yes, I got carried away last night and did something I shouldn’t,” she agreed, “but it was purely physical, very spur-of-the-moment. I didn’t take his ring. As far as all that talk about whatever was going on up on the roof, I don’t know anything about it.”
No way was she going to involve Dina in any of this. All she had to do was wait until tonight, until Nate fell asleep, to call up Satan and get rid of the ring. Then everything would be back to normal.
Only better, because Nathan would be healthy again.
Dina sighed, shifting her weight on the bench. “Nobody could blame you for going a little cr
azy last night, girl . . . that man is fine.”
Faith smiled a little, despite herself. Odd how she could admit that, yet still wish she’d never laid eyes on him.
Wish she’d never met him, and never felt his hands, gentle on her skin.
“His driver seemed kind of nice, too,” Dina mused. “Lots of muscles.”
With a laugh, Faith got up to push her son on the swings. “Just your type,” she teased.
“You know it,” Dina agreed complacently. “You sure you’re okay? It ain’t every day a rock star shows up on your doorstep. It’d be okay if you had something more to tell me.”
Faith pretended she didn’t hear, reaching out to grab the chains on Nathan’s swing. “Ready, Superboy?”
“Ready!” he shouted, smiling hugely as she pulled him back as far as she could, and let him go, wishing he could fly like that every day, no worries.
“I think he liked you,” Dina said loudly, ignoring the fact that she was being ignored. “I think you liked him, too.”
Faith shook her head, giving Nate another push. “It doesn’t matter, Dina.” Another push, and then another. “It’s over.”
“Okay.” Dina closed her eyes and leaned back on the bench, basking in the sun. “Whatever you say.”
A moment or two later, her cell phone rang. Wishing she’d left it at home, she ignored it, knowing it would go to voice mail. A minute later, it rang again, causing Dina to raise her head and give her a questioning look. She ignored that, too, but when it rang a third time in as many minutes she knew she was going to have to answer it or turn it off.
“It don’t sound like it’s over,” teased Dina, from the bench.
Faith gave Nate a final push and then stepped back from the swings. “I’ve gotta get this, baby,” she told him, “it could be work.”
Nervously she turned away from Dina, pulling the phone from her pocket to check the caller ID. The number was unfamiliar, and she was tempted again to leave it unanswered, but followed up her earlier bravado with Dina and defiantly pressed the Receive button.
“Hello?”
When a man’s voice—all too familiar—said, “I know what you did last night,” she nearly dropped the phone.
“Mr. Morales?” she asked, recognizing the accent, and the sneering tone, in an instant.
“Your boyfriend came to the front desk looking for you this morning,” her boss said smugly. “I think you have some explaining to do.”
She closed her eyes, refusing to go into panic mode. “Excuse me?”
“You know what I’m talking about.” Herve’s voice turned hard. “I checked with everyone, and no one saw you anywhere in the hotel after you showed Mr. High and Mighty Rock Star to his suite. The front desk was empty this morning when the next shift came on, and you never even bothered to clock out.”
Shit. How could she have forgotten about the time clock?
“Well,” he asked impatiently, “do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“I—”
“You know I could fire you over this, don’t you?” He sounded way too happy at the prospect. “I understand your son is ill. What would you do for health insurance then, hm?”
She literally felt the blood drain from her face. In the background, children were laughing, Nathan among them. “Mr. Morales, please, I can explain—”
“I’ll bet you can,” he said, in an oily tone that made her skin crawl. “But I’d prefer you do it in person. Your next shift is when, Monday night?”
Blinking back tears, she nodded, then realized he couldn’t see it. “Yes,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort.
“Good. Monday nights are always slow. You can come into my office and put that pretty little mouth of yours to good use. Ten-thirty, shall we say?”
She bit her lip on the impulse to tell the nasty creep what he could do with his job, his office, and his hateful, sneering words.
“Do we understand one another, Miss McFarland?”
Unfortunately she understood him far too well, the scumbag.
“Unless you’d prefer I start the termination paperwork right now, of course.”
“No,” she said hastily, willing herself to calm. By Monday night she’d know whether Nathan was going to live or die, and the biggest part of her ongoing nightmare would be over. “Ten-thirty, Monday night. I . . . I’ll be there.”
All she had to do was keep Herve pacified until Monday night. Once she found out Nate was healthy, she’d no longer be at anyone’s mercy, and she’d be free to find another job.
And if she found out differently, nothing was going to matter anyway.
Six hours later Faith was exhausted, damp from getting splashed during Nathan’s bath, stuffed with chicken nuggets that neither of them should’ve eaten, and busy reading Cat in the Hat for the umpteenth time.
“Mommy?” Nathan interrupted the tale of Thing One and Thing Two by asking a question. “What’s a rock star?”
Faith’s heart plummeted. She’d hoped he’d forget about Finn’s unexpected visit; she’d certainly been trying to. “That’s, ah . . . that’s a person who’s famous because of their music,” she answered, as honestly as possible. No question who Nathan was asking about, and she was too tired to dodge.
“Oh.” Nathan flipped the page backward a time or two, tracing a hand over the pictures. “He was nice.”
She closed her eyes briefly, and spoke the truth. “Yes, he was.”
“I like his name.” Nate twisted around to peer up at her. “It sounds like a fish.”
That made her laugh, just a little. “Like a fish, except with two N’s. F-I-N-N.” They’d been working on Nathan’s reading skills. He loved books, and was eager to read them on his own. In her opinion, he’d be reading at a first-grade level before he was five.
If he lived that long.
A shudder rippled through her.
He turned a page, tracing his fingertip over the increasingly unstable goldfish from the Cat in the Hat. “I’m better now, Mommy,” he said softly. “You don’t have to be so worried about me all the time. I can play softball.”
Faith smiled down at brown curls covering her son’s head. “We’ll play softball tomorrow,” she answered. “I promise.” She didn’t own a glove or a bat, and didn’t have the money for them, but in cases like these, that’s what credit cards were for.
“You’re a girl,” he said, a bit dismissively for someone who hadn’t played much softball. “You throw like a girl.”
“Hey!” she protested, but only halfheartedly. She did throw like a girl. While she prided herself on many things, sports was not one of them.
She resettled Nathan against her, kissed him briskly, and went back to reading Cat in the Hat. It wasn’t much longer before his head started to droop; he’d been up late watching TV with Dina the night before, and the afternoon at the park had worn him out. When he fell asleep, head pillowed on her arm, she wanted more than anything in the world to join him, but knew she couldn’t.
She had miles to go before she slept.
Easing from the bed, she put the book on the bedside table and covered him with the blanket, letting her eyes linger on his face—so perfect, so small. Before she turned out the light, she picked up his favorite stuffed dog and tucked it in next to him; he grabbed it and pulled it close, never waking.
Then she picked up her shoes from the floor beside the bed and crept from the room, checking him one more time by the gleam of the nightlight before closing the door. She stood there a few seconds, resting her head against the doorjamb, gathering her nerve. Could she do it?
She had to do it.
Slipping on her tennis shoes, she went into her bedroom and got down on her knees beside the bed. The thought entered her mind briefly that she should pray—ask God to help her, throw herself on His mercy as she had so many times when she was a child. But she was no longer a child, and God’s mercy had done her no good when her mother died, or when Jason left, or when Nathan got
brain cancer. Instead she bent and reached beneath the bed to get the grocery bag she’d stashed there earlier in the day. Inside was a box of white candles, a lighter, a loaf of bread, a bag of flour, and a bag of salt. Next to it lay the black book the Devil had given her. Missing the most important ingredient, she took everything to the back door, and went outside into the darkness.
There was quick rustling in the azalea bushes—a mouse or a snake—and a dog barking in the distance. The moon shone high and round, and after a moment on the back steps, Faith’s eyes adjusted. There was Nathan’s swing set, over by the pecan tree. Beneath the tree, in a spot marked by a flower pot, was the ring, wrapped in tinfoil to keep it clean. She dug it up by hand, breathing a sigh of relief when she found it just as she’d left it.
Casting a guilty glance over her shoulder, she could see lights inside Dina’s house, and knew her friend was still up, watching TV. It was risky to do what she was about to do in the open, but she didn’t want to do it anywhere near Nathan, so the concrete slab on the other side of the garden shed would have to do. It wasn’t a high place, but it was hidden, and could be hosed down when she was finished.
She rounded the shed and nearly tripped over Nate’s bicycle, which she hadn’t let him ride since his surgery.
Could she really do this? Could she really sell her own soul to save her child’s life?
Dashing away unwanted tears, she never saw or heard the figure that crept up behind her. A hand over her mouth, an arm like a steel band around her middle, and a sour, sulphurous odor like that of brimstone . . . those were the last things she knew before spiraling into darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
Finn stared at her as she slept. Her son looked very much like her; same hair, same fine-boned features. The boy was turned toward her, even in sleep. He was wrapped in his own blanket, and clutching a stuffed dog.
“You’re sure you didn’t use too much?” he murmured to John. “It’s been almost five hours. They didn’t even wake up during the boat ride to the island.”
“They’re fine,” John assured him. “Just a teeny bit of ether for her, a fraction of that for the boy. I checked their heart rate and their blood pressure every fifteen minutes—you saw me.” He looked up from his magazine. “Don’t worry . . . kids this age can sleep through anything. Once they’re down, it takes a bomb to wake them up.”