by TA Moore
“You said he knew you’d been here.”
She pinched her lips together in acknowledgment of that, but her fingers still clutched the phone. Her grip was tight enough that it had split the scabs over her knuckles so they oozed.
“What if my mom calls?” she asked. “What if something happens to her?”
Harry tugged at her elbow. “Gran never calls, Mom. Please.”
From the way Nadine’s face twisted, that was a painful truth. She looked down at her hands, took a snotty breath, and finally handed over the phone to Kelly. He powered it down with capable, tanned fingers and dropped it in his pocket.
“I’ll get you a burner,” he promised. “You can’t tell anyone where you are, though, not even your best friend or your—”
“I don’t have any friends,” Nadine said. She flicked a tear off her bruised cheek with her fingers, and a tight, bitter little smile settled on her mouth. “They didn’t like James.”
If they’d been any sort of friends, Clayton didn’t expect they’d feel great about being proved right. He glanced at Maureen and tilted his head to the door. She rolled her eyes at him but patted Nadine on the knee and excused herself to go and get a smoke.
“Before we go, Nadine, we need to talk about what happened,” Clayton said. “Do you want Kelly to leave?”
She shook her head before he finished what he had to say. “I can’t tell you anything. Please. If I do….”
The words ran out, and she pulled Harry into a bone-squashing hug.
The boy protested with a little-kid’s bluntness. “Mom, I can’t breathe.” He tried to squirm under her arm and nearly slid off the couch.
There was a harsh, unkind part of Clayton that wanted to snap at her to pull herself together. It wouldn’t be fair, or do any good, and he knew that, but the situation was bringing out all his worst traits.
He volunteered pro bono hours, but the work was usually clean, at the remove of a legal document and a consultation, not blood on his hands—he’d forgotten how it got under your nails—and the cloying smell of tears and fear on the back of his tongue.
It had been over twenty years since he’d been that sour-smelling, little boy, angry at the world, or at least his part of it. Yet here he stood in clothes that cost more than his old house, and all those bitter, impatient words clawed at the inside of his throat.
Except Nadine wasn’t his mom. She loved her son. She had a chance. They both did.
“Nadine, if your husband did this—”
She shook her head. “He didn’t,” she said. “I promise. Okay? Please. Just don’t ask—”
“It was the men,” Harry piped up abruptly as he scrambled away from his mom. “They came to the house to see Dad, but he wasn’t there and—”
“Harry!”
“I don’t care! Dad’s a… Dad’s a dick,” Harry blurted out with a brittle mixture of defiance and fear. It was obviously the worst thing he could think of to say. Tears welled in his eyes, and he scrubbed his sleeve across his face. Nadine reached for him. “I don’t care if he gets in trouble. I don’t. I hope he… he… goes to jail forever!”
“Stop that. Harry, you don’t mean that,” Nadine said. “Your dad loves you, no matter what happens between him and me. He loves you.”
Harry looked very old for a minute. Maybe that was the first thing he’d ever known as an absolute in his life.
“No,” he said firmly. “He doesn’t.”
There weren’t many tears left in Nadine. She covered her mouth with her cupped hand and stared at her son through a film of what she had left. Her two attempts to say something died on her parted lips before she could make a syllable. In the end she just shook her head and slumped defeatedly back into the couch.
“Then you’re right, kid. He’s a dick,” Kelly said. The sound of the word in someone else’s mouth made Harry giggle nervously, a shy hiccup of sound. Kelly leaned down and put his hand on Harry’s narrow shoulder. “Look, we need to talk to your mom. Could you go find Mrs. Park and tell her that I told her you deserve a bar of chocolate?”
Harry glared dubiously at him. “I’m not three.”
“If you don’t want it, I’ll have it,” Kelly said.
Harry snorted at that suggestion. He twisted his fingers in the stretched fabric of his T-shirt as he tried to decide what to do. “You’ll be nice to my mom?” he asked.
“Hey, my mom would blister my ears for me if I weren’t,” Kelly said. “We’re going to be friends.”
Harry sighed pointedly. “You can’t be friends with a girl,” he said. “You’re a boy. You can only be friends with boys. Dad says that girls are only good to have around when you’re a grown-up.”
“Harry!” Nadine blurted, mortification taking precedence over shock and pain. “I’ve told you, don’t repeat everything your dad says. Go with Mrs. Park!”
After a moment Harry looked to Clayton for the final assurance. Clayton nodded at the door. “Go on.” He waited for the scuff of Harry’s feet to fade away and looked at Nadine.
“I’m your lawyer. I’m not going to make you go to the police if you don’t want to,” he said. “But if I’m going to represent you, I need to know what’s going on.”
Kelly perched on the duct-taped-on arm of the couch. It managed not to fall off, and he crossed his arms. His soft, faded gray shirt clung to the solid planes of his body. “We’re going to try and find out anyhow,” he admitted. “Better you tell us now than we go and whack a hornet’s nest.”
It took a minute.
Nadine stared down at her knees for a tight resentful second before she finally broke and started to speak. It came out like a confession, in a low, bitter voice that cracked whenever she blamed herself.
“I didn’t know who they were. Just two men I’ve seen with James sometimes, outside in the car with him or at the bar. But he doesn’t introduce me to his friends. I shouldn’t have let them in, when they knocked on the door, but I thought they were there to see James. He’s been okay lately. He hasn’t lost his temper in ages, not since I came here, so I didn’t want to….” Her composure and her voice cracked at the same time. She finally looked up and admitted wearily, “I didn’t want to go back to normal. When did being scared of him become normal?”
It sounded like a genuine question, like she’d appreciate an answer. Clayton wished he could help her with that. He was surprised when Kelly had one.
“When you needed it to be,” he said. “People are afraid of being randomly mugged or in a car accident, but they plan for the unleashed, aggressive dog they pass every day and the bully that’s always at the school gates. It’s not any nicer, but it’s easier. It’s safer.”
Nadine touched her nose with tentative fingers and winced.
“Not today.”
Kelly gave her a slow, warm smile. “Can’t plan for everything.”
She nodded, grabbed for his hand, and hung on to it, her fingers white and bony as she squeezed tightly and took a deep breath. Kelly gave Clayton a quick, startled look, although if he’d ever taken out that smile and that voice before—a hint of learned Irish caught around his t’s and r’s—he should be used to people getting attached to him. Clayton gestured at him to be patient, at least long enough for Nadine to finish her story.
“I shouldn’t have let them in,” she said. “James had had a falling out with them over… something. I don’t know. I didn’t understand what they were talking about. Something about money, I think? He owed them it, or he said he’d get it for them and he hadn’t? They wanted to talk, but James doesn’t like it… he doesn’t like being told what to do. They should have known that. He was…. He does this thing where he just yells at you? You’re trying to be calm, to talk it out, but he’s just screaming in your face until you get mad. Then he’s so calm.”
Kelly clenched his jaw at the description, a grimace of understanding that Nadine missed and Clayton filed away to think about later.
“And these friends?” Clayton aske
d. “They got mad?”
Nadine finally let go of Kelly’s hand and went to touch her nose again, but she caught herself at the last minute. Instead she pushed her arm out in an abrupt gesture, her fingers spread wide and stiff.
“They pushed me into a wall. My face. They pushed my face into a wall. I think that’s when I broke my nose. I didn’t really feel anything, but I heard a pop, and one of them ripped out my earrings. They were just cheap, but he did it anyhow. He called it a down payment, and then he… he said he’d be back.”
“Was Harry there?” Clayton asked.
Nadine dropped her gaze to her knees and shook her head. “He was outside,” she said. “I told him what happened. That’s all. He didn’t see anything.”
As lies went, it was halfhearted. Clayton considered calling her on it, but it didn’t seem worth it yet. He needed the rest of the story, and then he could pick at the untruths and fabrications. All of his clients lied to him eventually, but at least Nadine wanted to protect someone and not some stocks she’d hidden offshore.
“What about James?” he asked instead.
“He didn’t touch me.”
“What did he do?”
Nadine looked up at him from under her lashes. “Nothing,” she said. “He was… he didn’t seem to realize what had happened… until I tried to call the police.”
She cuddled her cast to her chest and picked at the cracks in the plaster with broken nails.
“Did he do that?”
She lifted her shoulders slightly. “I wouldn’t let go of the phone,” she said. “It was stupid. If I’d just listened to—Jesus. Do you hear me?”
“I’ve heard worse,” Clayton said. Nadine looked at him dubiously. “When the violent partner says ‘if only they’d just listen.’”
Nadine didn’t smile, but something tight and painful loosened around the corners of her mouth.
“Easier said than done, though. He didn’t touch me. I think if he had I wouldn’t be here. I’d have made excuses for him if he’d lost his temper. Except he didn’t. I fell. I was dizzy, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t see.” She gestured at the raw spot of scalp at her temple. It would have bled a lot, a sheet of blood down over her eye. Nadine lifted her broken arm and stared at the cast that was meant to protect it. There was a bitter sort of depth in that. “He stood on my arm until I let go of the phone and then told me he knew I’d been here, but he wasn’t worried. That if I left, he’d get Harry. That I’d never see him again.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Clayton said confidently.
“He seemed really sure.”
“So am I,” Clayton said. “And people pay me a lot of money to be sure about these things.”
Nadine stared at him uncertainly, and then, in a mirror of her son, turned to Kelly.
He stood up off the arm of the couch. It listed a bit more than when he’d sat down. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans.
“I get paid all right money to find out stuff he can be sure about,” he cracked with a flash of that careless, sweet smile. It faded into an earnest expression. “You can trust him. He’s a good lawyer, and he’s a good man.”
It was that kind of sunny optimism that made Clayton want to drag Kelly into his world and his bed until he saw the error of his ways. Clayton was an excellent lawyer, but he wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t a bad one—Kelly had seen enough of those—but he had flaws.
But it convinced Nadine to finally nod her head and mouth “Okay,” so Clayton let it go.
“Good,” he said. “Tonight we’ll get you and Harry somewhere safe, get a doctor out—”
She flinched. “I can’t go to the hospital. He’ll know. He knew last time.”
“I can get a doctor to do a house call,” Clayton promised. He ignored the twitch of dismay from his greedier side. There had been too many empty pockets in his past for generosity to come naturally. He always had to work at it. “There’s no way that James will know, but we need to have a medical record of this. We might need it later. Tomorrow we can discuss what your strategy is going to be and what you can expect.”
“That it will be hard,” Nadine said. “You already told me that.”
Kelly gave her a hand up off the couch. “Call it a recap.”
Clayton gave him a sharp look. Sometimes Kelly’s easy charm wasn’t appropriate. “It’s important you understand that, just because we can win, doesn’t mean this will be easy,” he said. “If your husband is going to fight us, he can drag the process out to cause you as much pain as possible.”
“I don’t think he could hurt me any more than he already has,” Nadine said quietly.
That was a failure of imagination on her part, but it could be part of tomorrow’s discussion. In the meantime Clayton called a car to get them to Kelly’s safe house.
NADINE TRIED not to look dismayed as she climbed out of the glossy black sedan and stared at the small gray house on the handkerchief of dead grass and sand. A heavy strip of chain link fenced it from the street, but that hadn’t stopped something from taking a crap right in the middle of the dead little garden. It had probably been an animal.
“You sure you’re okay?” The cab driver dropped the passenger-side window to check on Nadine. Behind her glasses, Clayton caught the unfriendly flick of her eyes toward him. “If you want, I can take you somewhere else. The hospital?”
For a second he thought a daunted Nadine might actually take her up on the offer. Then she straightened her shoulders and shook her head.
“Thank you, but this is where I need to be,” she said.
Clayton handed the driver two fifties. She folded them in her fingers, seemingly caught between temptation and the dark suspicion that it was hush money.
“If someone comes looking for her,” he said, “don’t tell them where she is. For her sake. Can you wait? We won’t be long.”
She took the money. He didn’t know if that meant she’d bought the story. Either way, she waved goodbye to Nadine, rolled the windows up, and killed the engine. It was the nicest car on the street. Clayton looked around at houses with peeling paint and sagging eaves, all of it starkly lit by the incandescent glare of the LED streetlights. It wasn’t rough—no tags on the buildings, no soldiers loitering on the front porch to remind people they were there—just tired. Broken swings dangled from rusted chains in weed-thick gardens, and a scavenger’s junk heap of broken fridges and old cars were stacked up around the sides of the houses. In one of them, out of view in the back, a dog barked a monotonous, baritone objection to… something. Maybe them. Maybe a bird.
It was familiar, the sort of neighborhood where people fostered kids like Clayton. Cute toddlers got the well-meaning, college-educated, middle-class families with rooms decorated just for them and weekly appointments for their separation anxiety. Foul-mouthed, angry preteens got a spare bed in a room that smelled of other children and tired foster parents who didn’t want to add another kid to their clan but needed the state check. Some of them had been kind. Some hadn’t been. Most had been indifferent.
“Not sure this is the ambience our clients would expect when they hear ‘safe house,’” Clayton noted as he joined Kelly on the cracked pavement. “In case we ever need one for the firm’s clients.”
Kelly shrugged. “It’s safe and it’s a house.” He hitched the bag of scavenged clothes Maureen had pressed on them up onto his shoulder. A stuffed panda stuck its head out of the zipper. A torn ear and missing eye made it look a bit piratical. Clayton made a mental note to donate an appropriate check to the shelter in return and to attempt not to let his personal feelings leak out onto other people.
“I didn’t mean to criticize,” Clayton said.
Kelly gave a quick, slanted grin in profile. “Liar.”
“Frequently,” Clayton admitted. “Not right now. This neighborhood is just….”
“Depressing?” Kelly offered when Clayton paused. That wasn’t the word Clayton wanted to avoid—that it was familiar, rese
nted, too close to the bones he’d layered education and nice suits over—but it wasn’t wrong.
“Close enough.” He watched as Nadine tried to corral Harry with one arm, half mom and half climbing frame as the exhausted boy whined and hung off her. “Can you look into her husband some more tomorrow? Find me assets to free. Canvass the neighbors—”
“Teach a grandmother to suck eggs?” Kelly suggested. His grin stole any bite from the words, and he started across the pavement toward Nadine. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you what you need.”
Kelly swaggered, all loose-hipped confidence and wide shoulders. He moved like he was at ease in his own skin, and Clayton couldn’t help but wonder what he’d be like in bed.
See? Sometimes he lied. Clayton could have helped it. He just didn’t want to.
He watched Kelly juggle the gate latch, the backpack, and Nadine’s second thoughts. His mind was caught between how he’d slot Nadine’s divorce into his caseload and the things he wanted, not needed, from Kelly.
He didn’t need anyone.
There was quite a list. Somewhere in the middle was that Kelly should buy jeans that showed his ass off better. Clayton was confident he’d like it. He had yet to meet a man with abs and no ass, but it would be nice to be sure.
Clayton shook the thought away and went to help get Harry and Nadine into the house. It was more depressing inside than outside, with stained yellow walls, a few old chairs, and a hoarder’s stack of takeout cartons in the corner of the room. If there was any air-conditioning, it hadn’t been on in a while, and the house was muggy and sour-smelling.
“The code for the security system is 2785kc,” Kelly said over the slow drone of the alarm. He tapped the keypad and hit Enter, and it went quiet, except for the metronome-steady bark of the dog outside. “If someone makes you disable it, leave off the last two letters. The alarm will cut out, but we’ll still get an alert at the office and know to get out here.”
Nadine nodded and looked around the joyless place they’d brought her to live. Her jaw was clenched against any reaction. It was the face of someone who had to weigh her broken nose against a house in Glendale and a good school district for her son.