“Your husband is one sick bastard,” I muttered in disgust before I stepped out and stuck my fingers into my mouth to blow a hard whistle at a cab about to coast by.
The cab stopped and the passenger seat window rolled down.
I beamed at the middle-aged driver as leaned against the window. “Hi, we need to head out to Dorchester and I’ll have an exact address for you in a few minutes here, as soon as I get the text message. Let me just get—”
“No!”
My sentence came to an abrupt stop at the shrill cry from Layla and I whipped around just in time to see Don yank again at her arm so hard it almost looked like it was twisted backwards.
“Just one second, okay?” I told the cab driver before I marched toward the struggling couple, my vision narrowed by a red haze.
“...you think you’re going anywhere, huh?” the man was hissing at Layla as he tried to drag her back into the building. We were far enough away from the museum’s entrance that any of the front desk staff wouldn’t be able to see or hear us.
Layla was sobbing fully now as she tried to writhe free from his near chokehold on her. “...please, Don, I have to find my s-son...”
“Hey!” I yelled at him as my steps picked up. “Let go of her, you brute!”
Don looked up at me and sneered. “Well, if it isn’t the ever-interfering gutter rat again.”
“At your service,” I retorted with a sly smile before I thrust my foot out in a swift kick that caught him right on the shin.
Thank God for non-constraining skirts and outrageous shoes.
He howled in pain, thanks to my incredibly awesome leather booties that sported high heels the size and sharpness of a small dagger.
Clumsily, he released Layla as he hopped up and down, clutching his leg in pain.
“Come on, get up!” I told Layla as I caught her hand and pulled her up to her feet next to me.
“You fucking bitch!” Don growled with an expression as black as his empty soul before he straightened his leg to attempt to charge at me.
I swept an arm back to keep Layla away as I hobbled on one foot, slipping off one of my boots.
“Go for it!” I spat out at him, holding my boot upside down in front of him, the pointy heel aimed at his direction. “I’ll gladly give you a frontal lobotomy and make soup out of your brain. Come on. My hand’s getting twitchy.”
Layla gasped at my taunt but stood her ground next to me.
Don’s face twisted into a nasty smile as he rubbed a hand along his jaw. There was a bit of blood on his fingers and he glanced down at it with narrowed eyes. “Don’t think I won’t make you pay for this, Charlotte.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “And don’t think I won’t be waiting to match up your shins. The offer for the frontal lobotomy will remain open anytime you feel like it. Or we could arrange for something much, much worse.”
“Charlotte,” Layla’s warning was low but urgent as she clutched my elbow to slowly pull me away from her husband. “We have to go.”
“You’re making a very grave mistake, Layla,” Don drawled, piercing his wife with a cold, steely glare. “I’d hate for you to pay the consequences but you will if you disobey me.”
I rolled my eyes at him in exaggerated disbelief even as the anger roiled inside me like a volcano about to shoot up a load of lava that would incinerate anything in its path. “How can she pass that up, buddy, when you offer her so much incentive to go do your bidding? Oh, how can a girl choose between being your chattel and your punching bag? Why make a choice when she can be both for you?”
“I’d stop talking if I were you,” Don grated with deadly intent. “Your husband needs a firmer hand with you, Charlotte, but if he can’t supply it, I’d be happy to wring your pretty little neck for you.”
I raised a brow at him, scoffing. “You can try but you might be too busy picking up your nuts from the floor when I twist them off you and try to decide whether I should feed them to the dogs for scraps. But wait! Our dear canine friends don’t actually eat scumbags—it causes some metabolism issues, I believe.”
Don’s lips nearly disappeared into a thin line just right before he lunged for us.
“Get in the cab!” I yelled to Layla, pushing her forward into the backseat as I scrambled to get in behind her with one foot bare and another tottering about five inches higher than its mate.
I was just about to leap into the cab when a hand grabbed me by the hair and yanked me back.
I could hear both Layla and the cab driver shouting.
I cried out in pain as my hair nearly got ripped off my head. With arms flailing around me, I reached behind and caught the side of Don’s face with my hand. Curling my fingers, I let my nails rip through his skin, leaving a bloody claw mark in its wake.
His hold loosened on me as he bellowed in pain and I quickly dug an elbow into his side for good measure before sprinting forward for the cab.
“Go, go, go!” Layla and I both yelled at the driver who'd scrambled back inside the cab and peeled out into traffic, leaving behind a bleeding and seething Don LeClaire on the sidewalk, staring after us with an expression veiled by the thin exhaust smoke.
It wasn’t until we were slowing to a red light that Layla and I both exhaled a sigh of relief.
My heart was still palpitating from the adrenaline and I glanced at Layla to see that she was in a similar state, panting erratically as she tried to catch her breath.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” she finally said, groaning softly as she fell back in her seat. “Don will bring down his wrath on us like the plague. And we could’ve been snapped and splashed in the tabloid front pages tomorrow.”
“If we did, at least we’d look good in the photos,” I teased, glancing down at our fancy outfits that would’ve definitely stood out in a dim street corner. “Can’t say the same for your husband. We left him a bloody, battered mess.”
A shaky laugh escaped Layla. “All thanks to you. I had no idea just how vicious you could be.”
I smiled. “Oh, this kitten’s no pussy, alright.”
Layla blinked at my slightly salacious statement before she burst out laughing. Tears leaked here and there between her laughter but at least she seemed to have snapped out of her nervous state.
“You ladies going to beat up some more jackasses or just giggle endlessly in the back there?” the driver piped up, raising a curious brow at us in the rearview mirror. “Coz I still need an address here unless we're driving down to the nearest police station.”
“Right,” I said with a sheepish smile before reaching into my clutch to check my messages. I recited off the address to the taxi driver and was just searching the GPS location for it on my phone when the gadget started ringing.
“Hi, babe!” I greeted brightly—maybe too brightly—as Brandon came on the line.
“Um, hi,” he said a little uncertainly. “Where are you?”
Good question, I thought as I glanced at Layla who looked alarmed and started shaking her head at me.
Oh, great. Now, I have to improvise?
“Um, where do you think I’d be?”
“I’m not sure, really,” he answered. “I saw you with Jake earlier and he looked like someone was slowly pulling his intestines out. Is he okay?”
I snorted at the visuals. “Oh, yeah. His intestines are intact. He was just having kind of a bad night.”
“Were you two having an argument?”
“No! Nothing like that,” I reassured Brandon. “We were just having a lively conversation where we may or may not have agreed on some things. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it an argument.”
Layla gave me a dubious look and I rolled my eyes.
“Was he drunk?” Brandon asked. “He gets red in the face when he’s drunk.”
“Nah, he was more pink,” I said. “Salmon, to be exact. He had a few drinks but he wasn’t feeling really up for it so I sent him home. Packed him up in his nice car and all.”
“Did h
e say why he wasn’t having a great night?”
Why, oh why, did Brandon have to play investigative reporter tonight of all nights?
“Mmm...” I delayed, trying not to tell another white lie, no matter how good the intention was. “Women problems, from what I gathered.”
“Women problems?” Brandon scoffed. “Jake doesn’t have women problems. The reason he has women—in plural, take note—is so that he avoids problems with a specific woman.”
“You don’t think he’s capable of being faithful to one girl?” I asked, oddly curious to his reaction.
That got him to shut up and think for a minute.
“I think Jake is extremely loyal,” Brandon said quietly. “And he’s generous and kind to those he really cares about. There just hasn’t been a woman yet—outside of his family and close friends—who fell into that exclusive circle.”
I broke out into a big grin.
Maybe, just maybe, Brandon won’t kill Jake for falling for his sister.
The taxi lurched back into motion and I could almost hear Brandon frowning.
“Where are you?” he asked again. “Are you in a moving vehicle, Charlotte?”
I bit my lip as I struggled for an excuse that wouldn’t be quite a lie. “Um, you could say that. Layla and I had to make a quick trip out somewhere.”
“Layla?” Brandon repeated in surprise. “Why would you be out with Layla? Where are you two going?”
I opened my mouth to tell him about Riley and then I realized that while Brandon knew the boy, he didn’t know the boy’s mother. That was still all top-secret.
“We forgot to submit something,” I said lamely as Layla and I did a whole series of hand gestures that weren’t nearly as amusing as they were unintelligible. “Um, the uh... We forgot the, um... the liquor permit.”
“The liquor permit?” Brandon echoed, not sounding convinced one bit.
“Yeah, the liquor permit,” I nodded in as firm and steady a voice I could manage. “It’s just something logistical but we kinda misplaced it and so now we have to make sure we have it so we don’t get a penalty. It’s all good. Won’t take too long. I’ll be there before you miss me too much.”
“I already kinda of miss you,” he grumbled, pulling a smile from my lips. “I’ve barely talked to you since we got here because everyone needed one thing or another from you, and then Jake came and monopolized you all evening.”
I resisted letting out a big ‘aww’ as I imagined Brandon with a grumpy scowl that was quite adorable to no one but me. Everyone else would quake in their boots. Well, other women might wet their panties instead.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, babe,” I told him softly. “I promise.”
“Alright,” he conceded, not without a long, reluctant sigh. “Do you need me to call Gilles and send him your way?”
“No, we’re good,” I quickly said. “We, uh, rented a vehicle. From the hotel.”
It wasn’t quite a lie but only by a small stretch.
“Okay. I’ll let you go to do whatever you need to do,” he paused, his voice hinting at a smirk when he added, “Try not to kill each other, okay? I might have trouble explaining that.”
I laughed, shaking my head a little when Layla gave me a ‘Now-What?’ expression. “I’ll fight the impulse, I promise. If you don’t hear from either of us before sun-up, send out the search party.”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
When Brandon was finally off the call, I turned back to Layla only to find her looking at me wistfully.
“He really does love you, doesn’t he?” she asked.
While a part of me felt a slight pang of guilt, knowing Layla and I were in different places in terms of our marriages, I couldn’t deny the truth. “Yes, he does, very much so.”
She smiled a little. “Good.”
I looked at her, puzzled. “Knowing how much you hated me for marrying Brandon, I’m surprised.”
She shrugged. “It would be more of a waste if Brandon left Simone behind only to be trapped in an unhappy marriage. Sure, my friend doesn’t have the man she wanted but it’s reassuring to know that she would’ve most likely not been happy anyway, if Brandon loves you this much. It means he probably wouldn’t have loved her the same way if he’d chosen her.”
Layla continued to surprise me.
Her logic, no matter how warped sometimes, could be startlingly clear.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said.
She levelled me a stare that was so very Layla-like in its smugness. “Come on now, Charlotte. We all love a little differently, depending on who we’re with. I can probably love my husband so much more if he weren’t the monster Don is. You’d probably love your husband less if he weren’t as devoted as Brandon. We can only love as much as the person lets us love them.”
I smirked. “Point taken.”
I put my shoe back on and fixed what I could of my hair.
A long stretch of silence passed before we spoke again.
“Do you think Riley’s okay?” Layla asked, her voice less confident this time. “He doesn’t usually disappear like this.”
I wasn’t feeling too optimistic about it but I refused to think about darker possibilities.
“He may be in one piece but having wandered around the streets on my own when I was younger and the house wasn’t somewhere I could stay, I think he wouldn’t be in great condition emotionally,” I told her frankly.
I quickly gave her a run-down of what had happened in the last few days, after Brandon and I went to visit the boy.
“I know it’s my fault,” Layla said with a groan, squeezing her eyes shut in pain. “Don was... he became very angry at me when I ran after Riley that day, when you first met him out on the street. When I came home, the house turned into a prison and my sentence began. He cut me off from the rest of the world, only occasionally letting me reply to some things to keep up appearances, but he would be there hovering over my shoulder, watching everything. He suspected I told you everything when he saw your email, which made everything worse. He didn’t hit me, knowing I’d have to show up to tonight’s party, but the verbal beating he gave me every day probably hurt just as worse.”
I remembered being very angry at my father, for a long time, but I couldn’t remember hating him particularly as much as I hated Don LeClaire right now.
With a deep breath, I loosened my tight fists before my nails cut into my skin. Remembering that I clawed Don’s face earlier, I stared at my fingers, noting the drying blood and bits of skin under my nails.
I wanted to clean it off but for some reason, seeing them gave me a strange sense of satisfaction. Maybe I was perverted in my hate but it helped to know that Don LeClaire was human and just as vulnerable as any of us.
If I could make him bleed, he could be taken down. He wasn’t an invincible force, which meant that we could fight him and actually win.
“You know what you need to do, Layla,” I said grimly, glancing up at her when she handed me a clean sheet of tissue from her evening bag. “It’s not going to be easy but you know you can do it. I’ll help you.”
A faint smile flickered across her face. “I know.”
The first address Danny sent us was for one of Riley’s friends, Toby. It was one of those tiny post-war bungalows and he was folding clean laundry with his grandmother in the living room when we descended upon them. He’d stayed home today because of an ear infection so he didn’t know about Riley’s whereabouts.
The second house Danny texted us was for another kid, Liam, and it was only a few blocks away from Danny’s apartment. It was also just as sad-looking.
We asked the taxi to wait, promising him once again a generous payment for the extra trouble, before we went into the building. Liam’s mother answered the door and after a full minute of staring at us incredulously (must be the outfits), she let us in to talk to the boy after we explained about Riley.
Liam was shorter a
nd scrawnier than Riley and he was cross-legged on the floor, doing the last of his homework, when we came up to talk to him.
“Riley hasn’t been hanging out with me much,” he said gloomily. “He’s been spending time with Curtis and his buddies. Well, he was more like following them around in the last couple of days.”
Curtis was that bully Riley was talking about before. Why the hell would he be hanging out with the kid who made his life hell?
“He was going to go with them after school,” Liam added, his cheeks swelling up slightly as he blew out a breath in exasperation. “He told me not to go with him, no matter how much I asked.”
“Where were they going, Liam?” I asked gently.
The kid blinked his big brown eyes at me. “At the old playground in the school they closed down a year ago. The Jasper Heights one.”
Layla and I glanced at each other, neither of us having any clue where that was.
“I’ll give you directions,” Liam’s mother said.
It took us about ten minutes to find our way to the school. The building itself was pretty small and dilapidated. The windows were boarded up, the grass and weeds left to grow wild, most of the light posts around the property burnt out.
“It feels like a masked serial killer is about to jump out of the shadows with a machete and hack us to death,” I told Layla as we trekked through the sloping school yard in our high heels, no less, ignoring the No-Trespassing sign we just passed.
“It’s not amusing, Charlotte,” Layla chided.
“Okay. He comes out with a chainsaw then,” I corrected as I clutched fistfuls of my billowy skirt with both hands. “And he chops us up into little pieces.”
“Charlotte!” Layla practically shrieked, pausing in her stride to glare at me. “I need to go find my son and wondering if we’re going to get chopped up any second now isn’t helping!”
I shrugged. “I’m making small talk. Isn’t that one of your silly social rules or something? Politely discuss the weather or comment on your setting or environment because people can relate to you better when you’ve shared a common experience. I’m commenting on the spook in the air and discussing a common experience.”
The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield Page 81