“Because somebody needs to tell you what to do. You don’t have the sense to figure it out for yourself.”
She shoved her two-toned hair from her face, her bottom lip stuck out the way Daisy’s did when she was pissed. “Where’s the stuff I asked you to bring?”
Sean smacked his phone on the table harder than he should have. “With everything else you own.”
After giving him a distrustful look, she picked up the phone and stared blankly for the time it took her to recognize the scene in the photo. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, my house— My things— Oh, my God, what happened? What am I gonna do? Where am I gonna live when I get out of here?”
Reclaiming the phone, Sean put it in his pocket, then leaned against the concrete-block wall. “I went there to pick up your stuff. I took Daisy and her foster mother with me so Daisy could get a photo of you and Great-Grandma’s necklace for Dahlia. We were there, Maggie, in the hall outside the girls’ room when the kitchen exploded. We could have been killed!”
Maggie hugged her thin self, pivoting from side to side. “You say that like it’s my fault. I wasn’t there! I didn’t do anything!”
Sean had a routine physical every spring, and every year he heard the same thing: you’re in good shape, your blood pressure’s perfect, your cholesterol, your heart. At the moment, he was pretty sure his head was about to explode. “You and your worthless friends made meth there how many damn times? And did it never occur to you to clean the place once in a freaking while? My God, you raised your babies there! You let them play on that floor, put things in their mouths, live with criminals and drugs. You raised them like animals, Maggie!”
Her head jerked up, her face pale. “You know what it was like. It was old and shabby and never taken care of, and after Daddy died, it was all I had. What was I supposed to do?”
“Clean it. Put your trash in the trash can, and when it’s full, haul it out to the curb. Wash dishes when you’re done with them. Sweep the floor every day. Put a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Scrub the bathroom and yourself and the girls and your clothes. Just because the place is shabby doesn’t mean you have to revel in it like a pig in a pen.”
She drew her shoulders back and raised her chin to look down at him, no matter that he was four inches taller. “Easy for you to criticize when you got a nice place of your own far away and you got plenty of money. Cleanin’ that old place is pointless. It’s old and ugly and stinking, it’s always been old and ugly and stinking, and it’ll always be—”
She broke off with a hiccup, no doubt remembering that it was now a soggy pile of ash, debris and brick—and probably smelled better than it had in years. Fifteen hundred degrees of searing heat could clean away a lot of filth. All she had left now was Daisy, Dahlia and herself.
Sean wanted desperately to believe that she valued the girls most, but the unlikelihood of that made his gut knot. He’d told her Daisy had been in the house, and she hadn’t even asked if she was all right. All her concern was for herself—her house, her things, where she would live. Not even a halfhearted thought left over for her kids.
“Sit down, Maggie. We need to talk.”
She looked about to refuse, then sank onto one of the orange stools. He took the one next to her, turning sideways to face her. “Your arraignment’s coming up next week. What is your lawyer telling you to do about these charges?”
Lacing her fingers together, she began popping her knuckles. “That’s privileged information.” A good fierce scowl made her look away, then heave a sigh and lean close. “The district attorney wants to make a deal. She wants me to tell her everything I know about Davey—that’s my boyfriend—and she says maybe I can get a lighter sentence.” She scoffed, “Lighter, my ass. I ain’t going to jail for what Davey did. I’m waitin’ for a better offer. No jail time. A new start someplace better, since we ain’t got a house anymore.”
As Sean stared at her, old memories flashed through his mind: Maggie at six and eight and ten, young and sweet and still innocent, still hopeful. She looked twice her age now, bony and unhealthy, easily agitated, in denial about her life. Did she really believe the D.A. would offer a new start? That she could turn on a major drug dealer and happily start over in a new place? That she would waltz away from these charges, from Copper Lake, Davey and Craig with no consequences?
Somewhere inside she had to know none of that was going to happen. Dreams didn’t come true for Holigans—look at him, back in hell after a fourteen-year reprieve—but Maggie had learned young that pretending was easier than facing reality.
Grimly, he refocused on the conversation. “Ty says they caught you and him both, Maggie, in the act. What do you know that could make that go away for you?”
She picked at her nails, swiped one palm on her loose uniform pants, then leaned even closer. A whiff of odor—sweat, need, despair—wafted on the air between them. “Davey’s not just a meth cook,” she whispered. “The police don’t know that yet. He works for some hotshot dealer back east that the cops have been trying to get for ages, and he told me a lot of stuff.”
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Craig had said about Davey. He’d been right—and right to worry about Maggie talking. How the hell was Sean supposed to convince her to keep her mouth shut?
She shifted awkwardly. “Come on, Johnny. People make deals all the time. They get off on all kinds of crimes, and it’s not like what I did was so bad. I wasn’t making the meth. I just helped get some of the supplies and let him do it at the house and—and helped him out a little when he needed it.”
“And used the finished product. And endangered your daughters’ lives, to say nothing of your own and mine and Sophy’s. Maggie, you’ve committed God knows how many felonies, and now you’re spouting off about informing on your boyfriend’s boss. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”
“It’s no big deal. It beats going to prison.” She shook her head stubbornly. “I done all this before, and I never went. I won’t go this time, either.”
God, was her brain too fried to realize how lucky she’d been before? The judge had cut her a break every time, and she’d just kept proving she couldn’t learn from it. Now the breaks had run out. Prison was the least of her worries, and she didn’t have a clue.
“You need to forget about rolling on Davey and his boss. You’ll get yourself killed that way. Just accept responsibility, Maggie. Plead guilty. Take whatever sentence they give you and be grateful for it.”
Her stare was disbelieving. “Plead guilty? Are you crazy? They’ll lock me up for ten or fifteen years! Do you know how long that is?”
Yeah, he knew. It was more than a lifetime. In the beginning, it was impossible to even imagine that this was your world now: concrete walls, armed guards, thieves and rapists and murderers. Nothing to wear but a uniform, nothing to do but count the minutes, then the hours, then the days, until you realized you were driving yourself crazy. Losing hope and faith, a little bit of your sanity, a little bit of your humanity.
“It’s better than being dead,” he said flatly.
Though, in the beginning, not by much.
She shook her head, hair swinging, reminding him of Daisy and Dahlia. “No one’s gonna kill me, not when I get my deal. I’ll be out of here, Johnny—out of this damn cell, out of this damn town and state. No one will ever find me.”
Rising, he walked to the window. He smelled of smoke and pine and dirt, and the dried trickle of blood pulled at the gash when he moved his left arm. He just wanted to take a shower or three, sleep a few hours and wake up to a smarter, more realistic sister who could see past her desire for drugs to the gravity of the situation she was in and the worse one she intended to set into motion.
Since the odds of that happening were somewhere between zero and none...
She came to stand beside him, bumping his arm with her shoulder. He winced but didn’t complain. “Maybe if you’d gotten yourself in trouble more often, you’d understand how the game is played.” It
was the cheeriest he’d heard her. “When I get off this time, I’m gonna clean up, Johnny, I swear. I’ll go to rehab, do counseling, get a piss test every week. I’ll get healthy and get a job, and I’ll even start taking the girls to church. Dahlia started school, you know. I’ll join the PTO and maybe volunteer there. I’ll be a good mom and a good sister and a good person. It’ll all turn out just fine. You’ll see.”
Finally, some mention of Daisy and Dahlia. It was too little, too late to impress him, but at least she didn’t plan to abandon them permanently.
Which was probably the best thing she could do for them.
He gazed down at her sadly, tiredly. “Here’s the thing, Maggie—hotshot drug dealers don’t get to be hotshots by being nice guys. They’re dangerous, and if the cops can’t get this guy, that means he’s smart, too, and he keeps an eye on his people. He knows Davey’s been seeing you. He knows Davey told you too much. Do you think he would hesitate to kill you if he thought for one second that you might be a threat to his business?”
He hesitated, his voice going deeper, quieter. “Do you think he would hesitate to kill Daisy and Dahlia?”
She swiped her nose on her shirtsleeve, then laughed unsteadily. “You watch too much TV. My lawyer says if my information is as good as I say, the D.A. will deal. I’ll get a whole new life. I’ll be living the good life, Johnny. Don’t I deserve that? Don’t my kids deserve that?” She laid her hand on his. “I don’t blame you. I understand now that you couldn’t take me with you back then. You were too young. But now I can get it for myself. For my kids.”
Aw, jeez. I don’t blame you for letting me down, but now don’t stand in my way. Let me go on my way, living in my own world, always taking the easy way out, even if it means getting myself killed.
Bitterly Sean faced her. “Keep your mouth shut, Maggie. Don’t talk to anyone, not the cops, not your lawyer, not your cell mate. Even if you don’t give a damn about anyone in this life except yourself, for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut.”
* * *
Sophy thought she would never get the smell of smoke from her hair, her clothes, her pores, but finally, once the shower water started turning cool, she shut it off and toweled dry. Cheery voices came from down the hall—Daisy, Dahlia, Nev—and she let them wash over her soothingly as she dressed in a denim skirt and plain white shirt. She dried her hair, braided it and put on makeup with a light hand.
She and Sean had decided to skip foster-mom’s night out after the incident at the Holigan house, but Nev would have none of it. Sophy needed a break now more than ever, and she and Ty would watch out for the girls with their lives. Since Sean had seemed more than willing, Sophy had gone along for one simple reason.
She wanted time alone with him. She wanted to be a woman, not a foster mom. She wanted to have no bigger concerns than was he going to kiss her and if he tried, was she going to let him?
The second answer was easy. Neither of her mothers had raised any fools.
The timbre of the voices changed, two males adding to the mix. With a spray of perfume, she left the bedroom and walked down the hall. Both men glanced at her, with Sean’s gaze lingering, warm and heavy, long after Ty’s had moved on.
“—talked to the arson investigator before I left the office,” Ty was saying. “She found an accelerant in the kitchen and into the hallway. All it needed was a start, then age and residue from the meth operation took care of the rest. None of the neighbors saw anyone on the street who didn’t belong, though there was a call from a guy over on Radcliff Street who reported a man coming out of the woods behind his house and cutting across his yard to the street.”
Radcliff Street was the equivalent of three, maybe four blocks from the Holigan house, nothing between them but pine thickets and overgrown honeysuckle and jasmine growing wild.
“Did he get a look at him?” Sean asked.
Ty shrugged. “Average height, jeans and shirt, kept his head down, wore a ball cap, moved quickly.”
Sophy hated to ask the question, so she avoided looking at Sean as she did. “Could it have been Gavin or Kevin?” They were his brother’s youngest boys, barely into their teens and already started down the troublemaking path. They were at that dumb-boy age when practically anything could sound like a good idea.
“No,” Ty replied. “They were doing their weekly community service shoveling the kennels at the animal shelter. Nev was supervising them.”
Nev grinned. “You vandalize my car, you’d best be prepared to pay the price.”
The drumbeat was starting in Sophy’s head again. She didn’t know if it showed, or if Nev just wanted her and Sean out of the apartment before things got any more serious, but she shooed them toward the door. “You two go out and have some nice, quiet grown-up time, and don’t worry about these children one bit. We’ll make sure they’re in as fine shape when you return as they are now.” To the girls, she explained, “That means we won’t be beating you.”
Daisy harrumphed. “You wouldn’t beat us.”
“If you did,” Dahlia joined in, “he would have to arrest you.”
“So maybe cops aren’t so bad after all.” Ty winked at the girls, then walked to the door with Sophy and Sean. “Seriously, don’t worry. I’ve got my pistol, my Taser and my handcuffs. Things’ll be fine here. You guys have fun.”
As the door closed behind them, Sophy asked, “Do you think he brought all that to protect the kids or to protect him and Nev from the kids?”
“I can’t imagine him needing anything more than a stern voice and a look. That was all it ever took for his granddad to control any of us.”
“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen Ty chasing Daisy down the street. He was looking and sounding stern, but who knows if he would have caught her if Nev hadn’t grabbed her first?”
Sophy followed Sean down the stairs, always a nice position to be in with a handsome guy with a great body and the sense to not cover it with ill-fitting clothes. His jeans were snug and faded, and his shirt...ah, T-shirts were made for shoulders and chests and muscles like his.
As they walked along the sidewalk that ran from her porch to the street, she breathed deeply and was grateful to identify nothing more than clean clothes, shampoo, colognes and typical evening smells: coffee and pastries from A Cuppa Joe’s, fried foods from various downtown restaurants and the savory-sweet aromas of handcrafted pizzas as a Luigi’s delivery car drove past.
The Chevelle was parked on the street side of River’s Edge, so they walked to the corner, meeting a few pedestrians, passed by a half dozen cars. It was when they were standing on the corner, waiting for the green light, that the sense of being watched crept between her shoulder blades and down her spine. She cast a long look over her shoulder, sweeping the sidewalks, the square, the businesses along the blocks. She didn’t see anyone she knew, but there were a lot of buildings, a lot of vehicles, looking back at her.
She was a little antsy, and she told herself that was okay, mentally shaking it off. She was entitled to be wary, given that she was walking down the street with Sean of the much-gossiped-about Holigans. Without even trying, she could list twenty people who would immediately be on the phone to her parents if they saw her now. To say nothing of the fact that she’d almost been blown up in a meth house. She’d be grounded for months—and, the whole age and independent thing notwithstanding, her mother would do her best to make it happen.
When Sean gave her a tilted look, she realized she’d chuckled out loud. “Sorry. I was just thinking... When Reba and I were growing up, our mother warned us about everything you could possibly imagine, but the only dangers I’ve ever faced—getting blown up in a meth house and taken hostage at gunpoint in my own shop—never even crossed her mind.”
An electronic bird tweeted to signal the light had changed, and together they stepped off the curb. They were barely to the midpoint when tires screeched down the block. With Sean’s hand on her arm, they jogged to the other curb. As they stepped up, a white car cu
t the corner so close Sophy felt the heat from its exhaust on her bare legs.
“Pay attention, moron!” she called, then frowned. “Oh, my God, either I’m a little giddy from the whole day or the girls are rubbing off on me.”
Sean gave her a cynical, sexy look. “Just try not to say anything that I’m gonna get my ass kicked for.”
Her gaze roamed over him, finding every little detail perfect and sexy and compelling and hot-damn. “I bet you could hold your own against most guys in town.”
“Only because I learned Grandpa Holigan’s first rule of survival in the crib—always fight dirty.”
“Makes sense to me.” She waited while he opened the Chevelle door for her, and she slid in as gracefully as her short skirt would allow. Her legs were her best feature, so her motto was show them off whenever she could.
The heat inside was oppressive, but rolling the windows down allowed a cooling breeze. Sean settled in the driver’s seat, did this revving thing with the engine that probably put every male within a four-block radius on alert, then pulled from the curb. “Okay, tell me about getting taken hostage at gunpoint in your own shop.”
The look he gave her was pretty intense, so she assured him, “Oh, they weren’t after me. I mean, no criminal deliberately winds up in a quilt shop, right? I would have just been...what do they call it? Collateral damage.”
He didn’t appear comforted by the words, so she launched into the story. “Did I mention my father never paid a dime of child support? After our mother’s death, Miri went looking for dear old dad. John Smith had made a fortune in business and was making another one in politics. She embezzled the money he owed us, went to prison, served her time. When she got out, he didn’t want his precious reputation sullied and he wanted the money back, so he sent a couple guys after her. They followed her and her boyfriend from Dallas to here, had us in the storeroom at gunpoint, and she pulled a knife and cut the one guy pretty badly. It was enough of a distraction for Dean to disarm the other guy, and they all got arrested, including dear dad.”
Undercover in Copper Lake Page 9