by Amy Faye
Besides, Ava's hungry. She ought to go to the bedroom now. It would be inconsiderate to just pull her breasts out in the middle of the house. The staff might see, after all. And then she'd have to have another lecture from Mitch.
He'd have to remind her how it is that his guests in the house act around the staff. They don't do silly things like that. Either carry a blanket—a blanket that she wasn't currently carrying—or go into private. It's much more polite that way.
Mitchell really can't stand it when people aren't polite. And for a while, Anna didn't have to worry about what Mitchell could or couldn't stand. Those times are gone, now.
She's got to keep all of that in mind, or it could turn into trouble.
Anna doesn't want any trouble. She doesn't want to have any fights. She just wants to be left alone. Alone with Ava. The rest of it doesn't matter. As long as she can have her daughter, not a whole lot else matters, so Mitch can get mad at her if he has to.
But otherwise, she'll follow his rules, because it's not hard to figure out that if she breaks them, it won't be 'talking-to's forever.
Eventually, when he really wants her to learn a lesson, he's going to do something that will make sure that she learns it, and it won't take long for a guy as smart as Mitch to figure out how to teach her that lesson.
Hell, never mind 'taking time.' He'd already taught her a valuable lesson. A lesson that she'd learned time and again, but one that she could always use a reminder on, no matter how many times she learned it.
She was too dumb to learn properly the first time, so she had to be reminded over and over. Eventually, maybe, if she was lucky, she'd finally learn her lesson, and it was a simple one.
Don't question Mitch.
It's just easier that way.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The apology has gone through three separate drafts. None of them have resembled each other except in passing, and none of them sound good when Josh Meadows finally reads them all aloud.
There's a good reason that he never took up a career in speech-writing, and that reason is that he's not good at it. There are other reasons, as well, but the first and biggest is that it would be impossible for him to keep any sort of job doing it.
Not enjoying the work comes at a distant second, though it would have disqualified the job to begin with, all the same.
So it's with a heavy heart that he forces himself to ignore the temptation to simply not write a speech. Because this is going to be a big deal, in front of several television cameras, and he'd better not fuck it up in front of… well, at the very least, several hundred people.
Thinking the numbers will be any higher than that might just cause more nervousness still. So in the interest of keeping himself sane and stable, Josh is using the old tightrope-walker's trick and not looking down. Because much like tightrope-walkers, he's got a long way to fall beneath him, and he's walking a very thin line indeed.
A thin line between sounding like an ass-kisser who won't do his god damn job if it happens to run up against the wrong sort of person, and punching Mitch in the mouth again until they need to wire his jaw shut.
Still, if he says the right things, who knows. Some guys end up on easy street after lying through their teeth, offering to file paperwork wrong, offering to protect anyone who will pay them.
If he offers similar 'services,' maybe he can live the rest of his life free and easy. Maybe he can get himself a nice boat house, and keep his mind off of things. Maybe he can forget that Anna Witt ever existed, that he'd ever met her.
Maybe he can forget what she felt like in his arms. Maybe he can forget the way the pit in his stomach that opened up whenever Josh made the mistake of thinking what it would be like in that house for her daughter.
The little girl wasn't his concern. She wasn't his daughter. He hadn't even really dated Anna. It wasn't a real relationship. It was a fling. It lasted a couple of days, and then it went away.
Which is exactly what it should have done. He'd made a mistake falling for someone when he was working her case. He was a professional. He should have known better. He did know better. He knew better than to let himself get involved with someone like that.
But it had happened anyway, in spite of his knowing better. In spite of the fact that he was smart, good at his job. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do. Which made it that much more upsetting that he was sitting on a whole lot of trouble that wasn't going away no matter what he did.
There were things that worried Josh. Things that should have worried him more. If he'd been worried about Anna before, how much more worried should he be now?
Now, he had a lot more concerns than when he'd first met her.
Girls get into trouble. They get into trouble with the wrong sorts of guys. It's what they do. She'd gotten into trouble, and she's turned to him. It showed a sort of pattern. The wrong sorts of guys.
Well, that was fine. That was understandable. Nobody could fault a girl for turning to the same sort of trouble that they know best. It's totally within the realm of the ordinary. She was just doing what she knew to do.
It's in her bones. She's used to turning to guys who like trouble. Who are good at trouble. Mitchell's one of those guys. Josh is another one.
But what was eating at the edge of Josh's mind was that Mitch seemed to have gotten himself into a good amount of trouble this time. The kind of trouble that doesn't just go away on its own.
He'd looked through those safety deposit box videos thirty times before he'd been suspended. Now he only had the images, but the video played in his head just fine. It wasn't hard to remember.
After all, there wasn't much to see.
He'd looked through the footage, he'd looked through the papers. He'd looked through the list of what was missing. There was a lot missing.
There always seemed to be, after all. A whole lot of everything, and not a whole lot of evidence of anything.
It had struck Josh as a coincidence the first time he noticed it. The masks were totally ordinary. Anyone who watched an action movie would have been able to figure out to get themselves a ski mask to cover up their face. It's about as standard as ideas come.
Nobody would have blinked an eye at it the first time. But someone else had used the same trick. Someone else had used the same trick several times. It wasn't easy to say with any confidence, of course.
Anyone could have pulled it off. At least, anyone who could do all the things that they'd done.
Which is why they were having trouble. Partly, because the suspect list could fill an average box of files, printed out in two columns on letter-sized paper with a twelve-point font.
Partly because of those, the ones who really looked good for it—the ones who weren't out of town but could have done it if they really wanted to, the ones who weren't in jail, the ones who hadn't gotten out of the business years ago—they all denied it.
Well, of course they denied it. But they seemed a little surprised to hear that a job had been done at all. It was a big damn surprise to them, according to the Lieutenant's interview notes.
So who the hell could have done it? Well, there was a little thought that Josh, in spite of himself, couldn't get out of his head.
The thought that Mitch didn't seem all that surprised when he'd heard that Ava had been taken.
At first it had seemed like he was numb. Like he might have had thoughts about it, but he'd kept those thoughts to himself.
Now it was harder to think that way. It was easier to look at it and see things from the perspective of seeing a guy who liked to yank his ex-girlfriend's chain.
Josh is struggling to see it any other way, really. Because that's the kind of guy that Mitch Queen is. The kind of guy who yanks chains. He yanks them because he likes yanking them, and when he yanks them, he yanks damn hard.
It's a purely instinctive read, of course. It's a pure gut feeling. He shouldn't even have thought it, because proving it all is not just impossible, it's beyond impossible. Pe
ople call shit impossible, but they mean it's very difficult.
Well, this is impossible with a capital I. Josh met the guy a few times, got a good sense for him, and it means that he hired a crew of guys to go grab his ex-girlfriend's baby.
He wouldn't just be thrown out of the courtroom with them laughing behind him. They'd be laughing so hard that it would be a real struggle for the lawyers to file their slander suit. Somehow they'd find the strength soldier on through it, in spite of the difficulty.
Which meant, the same as he'd repeated to himself a thousand times, that he'd have to have something real solid before he even dreamed of doing anything about it.
Which is where his little thought came in. The ski masks and covered-up eyes sounded a hell of a lot like what Anna had described the fellow in the Subaru to be wearing. It had sounded a lot like that, in fact.
Now, it could be nothing. Two guys wearing ski masks. They both figure, they'll hide their skin tone by covering up what little skin is showing. It's not much of a connection.
But it's a connection.
And now that he's writing these God damned speeches, trying to find ways to turn everything around, to figure a way to get out of this damned rat race, it's starting to fit together.
Because just as he reads the fourth draft of his apology speech, another total rewrite that still sounds like he thinks he's holding his nose and bobbing for apples in sewage, his phone buzzes in his pocket.
'Terry,' the Terry who works for Al Queen's estate, is Terry Green. He's a rough sort of guy. It doesn't take more than a glance at his face to know that, though. His entire life story seems like it's written there.
The guy's got 'rough sort of guy' plastered across his thrice-broken nose. But what he's also got is a history of violence. He used to be a knee-cap breaker for the mob, and did some time in the pen.
When he got out, Al was mayor. Rehabilitated the guy. Now he's as upstanding a citizen as you can ask for, aside from the nose. And that's what interests Josh Meadows.
Because if you rehabilitate one guy, how many others could you have working for you?
A guy like that gets out, an ex con with a history of violence, he knows exactly what the work-force looks like for him. It looks like 'fuck you and get out of my office.'
You hire a guy like that, you get him going straight? That's the kind of loyalty that you can't buy for a dollar. And that's the kind of loyalty that Mitch Queen has in his hands, for whatever needs doing.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Anna had seen dresses more beautiful than this one. Once, when the prince got married. That was a unique case, though. It's not every day that royalty gets married, and you expect a certain amount of exorbitant attitudes.
But in this case, it's not royalty. What she'd done to deserve it, she can't begin to say. But she's got a lot to look forward to in either case. Such a beautiful dress. The wedding is sooner than she might like, but that happens. Sometimes you just have to accept it.
Josh's face pops into her head. It's not a good time. She shouldn't be thinking about him any more. She keeps it to herself. Mitch wouldn't be happy to hear that she'd been thinking about someone else.
More than that, though, is that in spite of herself, she doesn't want to stop. She doesn't want to get the lecture, though. Because if she gets the lecture, if she gets into the fight…
That all comes together to meaning that she needs to stop. She'll need to be corrected. He hates it when she tries to keep things from him after he's already found out about them.
So she'll have to make sure that he doesn't find out in the first place. It's the only way, really.
Anna swallows her pride and swallows her worry and looks at the dress and thinks about how wonderful it will look on the altar. How everyone will be looking up and seeing her. How perfect it will all be.
Josh will be beside her—she closes her eyes. No, that's not right. He won't. He'll be somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Not even in the same building. Probably not in the same city.
He'll be far away and he won't be thinking about her. Because nobody thinks about Anna. Nobody remembers her or wants to remember her, and that's just how it is. That's how it has to be. Because she's not special and she's not memorable. Not like other people.
She's just nobody. It was easy to think that she was special, somehow. Easy to fool herself. When she was all alone except for Ava, it was easy to think that she should be allowed to get some sort of ideas about who she could be.
Luckily for her, it hadn't taken more than a day or two of staying in the guest room at Mitch's place for her to remember her place. He hadn't looked at her much. He hadn't demanded that she do much of anything. That, at least, was nice.
She wasn't ready for that. Not with him. Not now.
Maybe there would come a time when she'd be able to think of him in that way again, but only a day after coming back into his life wasn't soon enough. She needed time to be able to build up to that part of their relationship again.
She needed time to be able to get everything figured out for herself. She needed to be able to think clearly, and that wasn't going to happen in the house right now. Mitch seemed to recognize that, and he's let her have her space.
She should thank him. But sometimes it's inappropriate to thank people for things. Particularly, Anna thinks, when they're doing the politeness of letting you keep your private thoughts private.
As much as he was a stickler for good manners when it came to doing the right things at the right times, he insisted just as much on making sure that you didn't do the wrong things at the wrong times.
In fact, he may have been more committed to that, on the whole. It was always better to stay silent, to stay in repose, than to do something that would upset Mitch. He could play off inaction as whatever he liked. He was very smart, and he was very capable of staying on his toes.
On the other hand, Anna wasn't smart at all. She was always messing things up. Always getting confused. She should have been with a smart guy like Mitch the whole time, to make sure that she stayed in line.
Josh was nice. He was comforting. There was a lot to like about him. But he didn't know her like Mitch did. He didn't know that she needed to be kept in check. He didn't know that she was too dumb for her own good, that she needed to be taught with a firm hand.
He didn't know that she was too dumb to be left to her own devices. He thought she was better than that. For a while, Linda almost had Anna believing it, too.
But he was wrong. They were all wrong. And now she remembered it.
A pin bites into the sensitive flesh in Anna's side. She does her best not to pull away. It only makes it hurt worse, if you pull away. It's better to just keep your arms up and take it for an instant.
"Ow," she says. She allows herself that much. The pin pulls back. It still stings even when they straighten it and it comes out the fabric on the other side.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" A woman who Anna's never seen before looks concerned. It's a strange expression to see on a stranger's face. A very strange one, in fact.
It's understandable, though. She's one of Anna's bridesmaids, and if she's a bridesmaid then she should be concerned. It's only proper.
Anna swallows her worries and her fears. There's nothing to be worried about, not any more. She's got everything under control.
Because now the only thing she has to have under control are her actions. It doesn't matter if she's nervous, not really. Mitch will take care of it.
It doesn't matter if she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't have much choice in the matter; Mitch will take care of it.
It doesn't matter, because as much as she thought she did, she doesn't matter. She should have learned that lesson by now, but she won't make that mistake again.
She's been reminded and she's in her place again and regardless of what she thought she wanted, it doesn't much matter any more. Mitch will make sure that she gets where she needs to be.
If he doesn't, t
hen this woman—Anna thinks her name is Sarah—will. She looks awfully concerned, and awfully pretty. It'd be a shame to disappoint either of them.
Anna wonders idly whether or not Mitch has fucked her. It occurred to Anna before that he might have cheated on her. It had seemed perfectly natural at the time. Of course he would want to be with other women. Women who weren't fuck-ups like she was.
Now it almost threatens to light a fire of anger in her chest. She catches it before that becomes a serious risk. It might have consequences if she were to let herself think too much about it.
She's prepared to deal with consequences, if she has to. She's done things that she knew were wrong before, when it seemed important.
The truth is, this isn't important. She's not with Mitchell because she loves him. Part of her knows that the feeling is mutual. Mitch doesn't care a whole lot about anything or anyone.
But he cares a lot about appearances. Anna knows she's not good at many things. She's dumb, she can't remember anything. She never learns. She's too flighty, too emotional.
Mitch hasn't let her get far from knowing her flaws. It's one of her better strengths, that she knows so well how flawed she is.
But her best strength is being able to keep up appearances when she has to. Because that's the one that's always been the most important out of all of them.
She can keep herself looking like she's completely fine, even when she wants to break down and cry. Even when all she wants is just to go back to her little one-bedroom apartment and wake up to a dark-eyed man cooking her eggs and bacon.
She can even smile a little. She looks in the mirror. She looks like she's handling everything. It's all moving so fast, they might be able to see a little of the stress, but everyone will just write that off.
Of course she's stressed. Who wouldn't be? All the trouble that relationship's been having… haven't you heard? She can practically hear the gossip in her head now. It's nothing like, 'the poor dear, she looks like she's getting ready to cry.'