Made for Breaking

by Lauren Gilley

28

  “Danielle Britton,” Ray told the oldest, most in-charge-looking nurse at the station, and was rewarded with a blank stare. Beside him, Eddie made a noise that might have been a squelched laugh.

  The nurse – a gray-headed thing with an I don’t think so, young man look on her lined face – propped a hand on her hip. “Danielle Britton what?”

  “A strangle case that came in about a half hour ago. We need to see her.”

  Other nurses were looking at them now – young, furtive ones. The gray one gave him the up/down routine and her gaze shot to Eddie with veiled interest; the guy couldn’t seem to help drawing female attention, even from the fifty and over crowd. But then her eyes snapped backed to Ray and the frown lines in her face grew deep as harrowed rows in a crop field. “Her father’s with her,” she said, “so you can’t play that card. You two cops?”

  “Detectives, actually,” he said, and leveled a frown of his own that had her reconsidering; her brows gave a little jump.

  His poker face – his lawyer face – was impenetrable. She realized that. “ICU,” she said, finally, and Ray grabbed Eddie by the elbow and towed him that direction before she could change her mind and call security.

  They weren’t alone as they stepped into the elevator car. Two women in track suits stood in the back corner; Ray took quick stock of them – both dabbing at their faces with tissue and talking in low, rushed murmurs – and judged them harmless, putting his back to them.

  “How,” Eddie asked, “are you gonna get us into the ICU without badges, detective?”

  He hadn’t figured that out yet; as it turned out, he didn’t have to. They stepped off the elevator and nearly collided with Arthur Britton.

  “Art.” Ray sidestepped to avoid a head-on and blocked the guy in with outstretched palms. Eddie stepped to his other side and they had him cornered as the elevator doors slid shut behind them. “We were coming up to find you.”

  Arthur was in some sort of boring, number-crunching branch of a downtown marketing firm and held some seven word title that made him, more or less, an accountant. He and Ray had never been close, but the girls had gone to school together once upon a time; if Ray remembered right, Lisa had once stuck gum in Danielle’s hair and been given a day of ISS for it. Mrs. Britton had looked outraged and Arthur had looked bored to tears at the meeting with the guidance counselor.

  Now, the man looked pale and slippery as paste, about one good cough away from vomiting. His hair was receding worse than Ray’s, and too many summers on the golf course had pressed heavy lines around his eyes and mouth. Normally, the grooves looked healthy; today, he looked ancient. His white oxford was rumpled and half-untucked from his gray Dockers. He pulled to a sharp halt, scrubbed both hands down his face, and passed a blank look between the two of them.

  “Art,” Ray said again, “Ray Russell. I was at the garden party; Cheryl was hosting. I wanted to come check on you guys.”

  Arthur swallowed hard, and the fact that they weren’t friends in the least didn’t seem to matter much in light of what had happened. He nodded; glanced back down the hall toward the sealed doors that led into the ICU waiting room.

  “How’s Dani?” Ray pressed.

  “Carla’s with her.” He licked his lips. “She was conscious when they…when they brought her in. But she was screaming her damn head off. They sedated her.”

  “Is she still awake?”

  “Sort of.” Then his eyes narrowed and snapped to Ray’s face, focused for the first time. “You came all the way to the hospital to ask that?”

  There were times – even dark, stressful, impossible times – when he missed the courtroom charade: luring witnesses into trusting and believing him, spinning stories and building rapport, working toward something. He’d always loved that, even if it made him a bastard. “I know the girls were never close,” he said, and Eddie rolled his eyes, “but we traveled in the same circles. We’re the same kind of family.” Eddie’s eyes were going to roll right out of his pretty head. “I’ve got a daughter and I’d hate to think” – he threw in a grim face for effect – “well, God forbid I ever had a crisis like this, I’d like to think I had friends looking out for me.”

  Arthur was too strung-out to argue the bullshit of the statement, so he nodded.

  “I don’t practice anymore, but I’ve got friends on the force,” Ray lied. “Have the cops been by?”

  “Yeah. She was sleeping, so they said they’d come back.”

  If he pleaded, he’d come across as creepy; it’d be better to forge ahead with feigned authority. “Let me talk to her. A familiar, non-threatening face. If she can tell me anything, I can put some calls in, get the ball rolling with the five-oh.”

  Arthur’s brows gave a jump. “You could do that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He considered a moment, then tipped his head toward the doors. “Go ahead. Carla’s there. I’m gonna run home and get some things for her.”

  Ray gave Eddie a look that told him to stay put in the hall; he would fire off a text if the cops showed back up. “Can you buzz me in?” Ray asked, and just as simple as that, he was in the ICU.

  Carla Britton had expensive taste, but she hadn’t grown up on a fish farm with boy-short hair, and she lacked Cheryl’s warm worldliness. She was a redhead, her hair in a blunt, shiny bob that swung forward in front of her face, diamonds glittering from her throat, hands and earlobes that peeked through the curtain of her hair. Her dress was expensive and better suited to a younger woman; she sat in a plastic chair at her daughter’s bedside, heels tucked beneath her chair, bare toes quivering on the tile, arches flexed. She was shivering and Ray didn’t know if it was nerves, or the sixty-eight degree hospital air.

  Her head snapped around at the sound of his footfalls and her eyes were deer-in-headlights startled. “W-w-who…”

  “Ray Russell,” he said, and didn’t offer a handshake because he figured she wouldn’t accept it. “I’m old friends with Art. My wife was hosting the party tonight and I wanted to come check on Dani.”

  She accepted the explanation without question, which irked him. What if he’d been the strangler coming to revisit his victim? She didn’t know that; she should have at least called her husband to verify. But she said, “Oh,” and turned to glance at her daughter, reaching for her still hand on top of the blankets.

  Danielle was a beautiful girl: well-defined, aristocratic features, full lips, high, winged brows and rich, chocolate hair. He thought he remembered some of Lisa’s ranted chatter about her having had a boob job after high school. Except for being a little pale, and having the darkening blue prints of fingers around her throat, she looked peaceful. There was an IV that he guessed delivered pain meds, sedatives and fluids hooked in her left arm.

  “If it’s possible,” he said, and Carla Britton gasped like she’d forgotten he was in the room. “I’d like to wake her and ask a few questions about the attack.” He wasn’t going through his fake explanation again. “I have police connections,” he said.

  “Oh.” She blinked at him, then said, “Oh,” like she actually comprehended. She made a face. “They had to sedate her; she’s been so upset.”

  “I’ll keep it short,” he promised. “If I can tell the police what I know, send them in the right direction, it’ll save her a real interrogation.”

  She must have agreed because she reached up and smoothed her daughter’s hair back. “Dani? Sweetie?” She patted her hand. “Can you wake up for me?”

  Danielle rolled her head on the pillow and murmured something.

  “Dani? Honey?”

  Her fingers twitched and her brow furrowed. Her eyes came open one at a time, slowly as if the lids had been glued together. Ray had to give her credit for fighting the sedation; her eyes – brown and bloodshot – drifted across the monitors, the curtain, her mother…and then came to him and locked hard with terror. A man had attacked her, without a doubt.

  “Danielle,” he said, and she pressed bac
k against her pillow, her pallid complexion going sheet-white. “You’re okay. I’m your dad’s friend. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Carla looked up to him, brows plucked together. “She looks upset. I don’t think – ”

  “No,” Danielle said, and her voice was a rusty croak. She shook her head, hair rustling against the pillow.

  “You don’t remember?” Ray pressed, ignoring the girl’s mother. “Or you don’t want to tell me?”

  Her eyes – even under sedation – brimmed with the wild, mindless panic of a prey animal.

  Ray had made a career of questioning victims, but suddenly, there was a cold finger of fear tracing down his spine. Without courtroom and Sunday best, a gallery of jurors or the civilized safety of procedure, he was just a guy in a room talking to a girl with handprints around her throat; and all he could think of was: what if it had been Lisa?

  Could he really be this stupid? Drew had always known he wasn’t gifted – hell, he wasn’t even sure he was smart – but was he really so stupid as to find himself in this position?

  “A mistake?” he’d asked Lisa afterward, in the moonlight, in the panting silence. And he’d said nothing since. He’d laid her over the hood of a car, without condom, sweet talk, or promise, and had then been mute their whole drive to Double Vision. Now, he watched her serve drinks from a bar stool, and he watched the fine tremors of intensifying anger go dancing across the taut muscles in her arms. She smiled, she even forced a laugh or two for her customers, but underneath her glittery lip gloss and smoke gray eye shadow, she was seething. At least…he thought so. He had no other explanation for the way her face snapped back like a rubber band when she thought no one could see her; her lips thinned and her eyes flashed and she was a little bit terrifying as she pulled glasses and poured shots.

  He had to say something.

  “Lisa,” he tried as she passed in front of him. When she ignored him, he waited for her to pass back the other way and said, “Lis,” with a pleading note in his voice.

  She halted like she didn’t want to – arms still reaching out ahead of her, legs mid-stride and off-balance – and darted him a glance from the corners of her eyes, refusing to give him her full attention. She said nothing.

  “Can we talk?” he asked. “Maybe when you go on break?”

  In answer, she snatched her apron off, fumbling with the strings and cursing under her breath; she headed for the back hall at a march and Drew slipped off his stool to head after her.

  Down the wood-paneled, fluorescent-flickering corridor that led to the exit, the din of the bar dulled to white noise, the music a hot pulse that came up through the floor. Lisa’s angry strut reminded him, for some reason, of a cat, and her dark ponytail whipped as she ducked through the door of the employee locker room, a warning toss of sleek hair that told him to follow at his own risk.

  He paused a moment, his casted hand on the doorjamb, and asked himself what he would say. Was he afraid of her? Of what she would expect now that he’d touched her – been inside her? No. There was guilt, and regret, and worry, but there was no fear. And under the others, deep down and fragile, was even a kernel of hope – hope that her skin was still tingling the way his was, that she wanted a chance to try again. Because he was a dumbass prize fighter with nothing but a duffel of clothes to his name, and Lisa Russell was the best thing to happen to him since…ever. And because of that, he had a feeling that, whatever he was to her, it wasn’t good, and didn’t even begin to hedge toward best.

  Steeling himself against her eruption, he pushed through the swinging door.

  And wasn’t prepared for the scene that greeted him.

  Lisa sat on the same long wooden bench where she’d bandaged his hand before, her platform sandals tucked together on the floor, an arm around her middle, thumbnail clenched between her teeth, lashes batting a fast rhythm against her cheeks. In the moment between the door closing and her eyes snatching up to his, guarded and closed, he could have sworn she was about to cry. There were tears in her voice, but not on her face as she launched her offensive.

  “Never again,” she said with such force that it catapulted her to her feet, her body rigid with the tension of conviction that crackled through those two words. Her eyes had a wild, animal shine to them, and her straight, white teeth were bared like fangs. “I said – I’ve been saying – that I would never let some guy compromise anything about me ever again!”

  Drew hadn’t expected this; he blinked stupidly. “Lisa, I asked you – ”

  “Oh, fuck your asking. I knew better. I let you – ” She spun away from him and paced down the length of the bench, little hands balled into fists at her sides.

  He sighed. Even worse than having a female with hurt feelings over his silence, he had indignant, don’t-need-a-man Lisa on his hands. He could have apologized for his silence – soothed with empty platitudes – but he had no idea how to fix this, whatever it was. After a long moment of watching her narrow back – and wishing he’d had a chance to see the skin beneath her yellow halter top in warm lamplight – he said, “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  Her head whipped around.

  “Remember? You said, ‘tell anyone and I’ll kill you,’ so I wasn’t gonna say anything. I figured we were gonna pretend it never happened.”

  Something went rippling across her face: pain, regret, guilt, something. She pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Right.”

  “Right,” Drew repeated, studying every twitch of her lashes, waiting for the moment when she let slip what was really bothering her. “So we don’t have to do this” – he gestured between them, at the empty air charged with what they weren’t going to say – “if you don’t want to. We can honest to God pretend nothing happened.” That wasn’t what he wanted, but she did…

  Maybe she did. She did, didn’t she…?

  Her eyes moved over him, sharp and attentive, assessing. He remembered the breathy sound of his name on her lips in the garage, the seeking way her fingers had probed through his shirt. Her invitation had been unmistakable then. Now – this new invitation – was unbelievable.

  Realization slammed into him: she didn’t want to pretend, she wanted to acknowledge, and she wanted him to be an obnoxious ass about it. She wanted him to stake a claim.

  “Yeah,” she said, and blinked hard again. “Yeah, we should do that.” She shook her head. “Sorry I jumped all over you about it.”

  She didn’t look at him as she moved to the door, but she hesitated. It was only a second, but it was long enough to confirm his suspicion: never again was sounding like a long damn time all of a sudden.

  Sly looked like he thought he could have somehow gotten better answers from Danielle Britton. “Nothing?” he asked over the Bailey’s spiked coffee Cheryl set in front of him.

  “Nothing.” Ray blew the steam off his own mug and frowned over the top of Sly’s head where Cheryl stood at the stove “not listening.” He couldn’t keep things from her, true, but he didn’t have to be happy about it. “She was scared shitless.”

  “Yeah,” Sly said, “but now she’s scared shitless and we know nothing.”

  The guy wasn’t big on backtalk, and Ray shot him a look that told him he didn’t expect any now.

  At the stove, Cheryl turned and put her back to the counter, brown eyes colliding with Ray’s. “You know he’s violent,” she said levelly, not betraying the brave face she was trying to maintain. “And you know he isn’t picky; he’ll hurt anyone who gets in the way. Danielle got in the way somehow.” She passed a glance over all of them. “So that’s not nothing.”

  Sly stared down into his coffee.

  Ray sent his wife a mental thanks that she accepted with a nod and turned back to the stove.

  “You know what I think you should do?” she asked over her shoulder. When he didn’t ask, she continued: “I think you should have Lisa talk to the other girls at the party. My guess is that one of them knows something; what they won’t tell y
our grumpy face, baby, they might tell her.”

  It was three by the time she’d gone slipping through the slumbering house, showered, and fallen across her bed to the sound of Hektor’s snoring. Her body was exhausted, but her mind was spinning, and what she wanted most was the last thing she should.

  Somehow, she’d expected – wanted – a fight from Drew; she’d wanted him to be insistent and invested, had wanted him to argue against her shoving him away. But he’d gone along with her wishes, no questions asked. Their mutual lapse in judgment at the garage was going to be just that – a lapse, one they would both forget and from which they’d move forward and not look back. Morgan would have applauded her: she’d had a meaningless tumble with a hot guy. But Lisa wasn’t applauding anything, save her own naïve conviction that never again had truly meant something.

  Drew, she decided, was the world’s most passive boxer.

  With a reproachful inward scowl, she flipped back the covers and pulled a tattered old flannel shirt on over her pajamas. Forgoing her flip-flops because they made too much noise, she slipped from her room, leaving Hektor behind, and moved back through the house, silent as a ghost.

  Idiot, she scolded herself as she punched in the alarm code. This was a bad idea on so many levels. Her dad, the guys…too many people stood to make her life hell over this. She reset the alarm and flitted out the door before the countdown on the keypad reached zero.

  The driveway was a mosaic of the lace-edged shadows of oak limbs. The concrete was still warm from the day’s baking beneath her feet, the grit sharp on the pads of her toes. A breeze tossed the branches together and they whispered; she pulled her flannel shirt tight and picked her way between all their trucks, heading for the carriage house. It was too dark to see the steps, but she knew them by feel, and the red door waited at the top, black in the night, foreboding in its solidity. She could still turn around, could still decide that Drew was right after all and that forgetting was the best thing for both of them. But instead, fueled by a need that had nothing to do with sex and that scared her breathless, she tested the knob, found it unlocked, and let herself in.