Outside the Lines

by Lisa Desrochers

  The police will dig into my family’s past. They may find out who we are, or they may not. Either way, if my arrest gets onto the Internet, or into the news—if my picture goes out—someone is bound to recognize me. If my screwups with Sophie and the thugs in Chicago haven’t already exposed my family, it won’t be long now. They’ll have to leave before that happens.

  If I go to jail, I’m a dead man, and there will be collateral damage. A few redneck cops holding down the fort at their backwater jail aren’t going to slow down whoever comes for me. It’s as simple as that.

  Chapter 29

  Adri

  I checked my phone when we got on the bus this morning and found a message from Chuck. Dad came looking for me last night. I called Dad and told him not to worry, that I was on my way home. He had a thousand questions, but I told him we’d talk when I got here. I expected him to be standing vigil, ready to read Rob the riot act as soon as we showed up, which is why I had him drop me at the end of the street. This is between Dad and me. But the house is empty when I get there.

  I go to my room and strip off my clothes, then look at myself in the mirror. I’m not the same person I was when I left here.

  I glide my hands over my breasts and down to my hips, remembering Rob’s hands doing the same in the shower this morning.

  But he’s leaving.

  I hesitate before grabbing my robe and heading to the shower. If I’m never going to be with Rob again, I don’t want to wash what little I still have of him away. I can still smell him on me. I don’t want to let it go.

  But I have to face my father, and if I smell of Rob and sex, it’s not going to go well.

  I shower and slip on a blouse and jeans then look at myself again. I have to come clean with Dad. Not about Rob. He can never know who Rob really is. But I have to tell him we were together. I can’t keep hiding behind Chuck.

  When Dad doesn’t answer his cell, I call the station.

  “Adri,” Doris, the night dispatcher says. She’s worked for Dad since before I was born. “Where have you been, girl? It’s been forever.”

  “Hey, Doris. Is my dad in?”

  “He’s a little tied up at the moment. He just brought someone in. But I can leave him a message to call you back when he’s got a sec.”

  “I think I’ll come down there. I really need to talk to him.”

  “Well, the paperwork will keep him busy for a while, so he should be here.”

  “Thanks, Doris.”

  As I head to the T-Bird, it feels like my intestines are tying themselves in a bow around my stomach. When I get to the station five minutes later, I still don’t have words.

  Doris is behind the bulletproof glass up front when I step through the door.

  “Hey,” I say. “He still here?”

  She nods. “I’ll buzz you back.”

  I go to the door and she buzzes me through. I turn up the hall toward Dad’s office, and when I push through the door, he’s hunched over paperwork.

  “Dad?”

  He looks up at me and his face hardens. “I’m not letting him go, Adri.”

  My eyes widen and a sick feeling rolls through my insides, because I don’t have to ask to know who “him” is. “What did you do?”

  “He took you off to God only knows where, and he was carrying a concealed weapon.”

  “What did you do?” I repeat, louder.

  “It’s my job to protect you when I can. This is one of those times.”

  Something cold tightens around my heart. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not going to let that lowlife near you again.”

  “Dad, we can’t keep doing this. I’m a grown woman, and you can’t dictate who I see or how I spend my time.”

  He stands, pressing his palms into the desk and leaning toward me. “He’s a troublemaker and a criminal. He was carrying a gun, Adri. He’s not someone you want anything to do with.”

  Tears pool in my eyes. I can’t form a coherent thought. I don’t know how much Dad knows, so I don’t dare ask anything for fear of saying the wrong thing.

  “I’m going to protect you,” he says after a long pause. “I’m never going to let anything hurt you.”

  I back toward the door, then turn and bolt past the exit to the holding cells. I peer through the gloom and see a shape in the one farthest from the door.

  “Rob!” I yell, rushing toward him.

  He stands, but before I reach him, Dad has me and is pulling me back from the bars.

  “I need you to go home,” he barks.

  I spin on him. “This is wrong!”

  “Adrianna,” he warns. “Let me do my job.”

  I’m not going to win this by standing here screaming. I need to think. I stop struggling and Dad lets me go. I look at Rob, then back at Dad.

  Dad gives my ponytail a gentle tug. “Go home, punkin. Please,” he says, softer.

  I give Rob a last glance, where he stands grasping the bars, then turn toward the door and walk away from both of them.

  Chapter 30

  Rob

  When Lee walks into the station in the morning to bail me out, she’s a wreck. The look on her face says it all. She will never forgive me. She waits until we’re in the car to lay into me.

  “You son of a bitch,” she snarls. “You have no idea what you put us through.”

  My head weighs a thousand pounds. I drop it into the headrest. “I’m sorry. I thought I could take care of it—get us back to Chicago.”

  “Your girlfriend went to Chicago, Rob!” Her glare nearly cuts me in half. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us about her?”

  I close my eyes without answering.

  “I didn’t ask her,” Lee rants, “because just the question gives too much away, but how much does she know?”

  I’m not ready for my siblings to know I told Adri our secret. “She didn’t know anything.”

  She rubs her forehead before throwing the car in gear and pulling away from the station. “She knew something, Rob.”

  “I needed her to understand why we couldn’t be together, so I told her I’d killed someone, but nothing else.”

  Her expression is scathing. “You’re not together? Really? Because it’s not every day that someone who’s nothing more to you than your little brother’s teacher is willing to get on a plane and risk her life to save your butt.”

  I take a deep breath, blow it out slowly. “I don’t know what we are.”

  “Unless you’re a total moron, which considering your latest move is altogether possible, you have to know she’s in love with you.”

  I can’t breathe, so I don’t answer.

  She cuts me another quick look as she makes the turn in the middle of town. “You were going after the Savocas, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oliver?” she asks, the word catching in her throat as if it cuts on its way up.

  “That was where I planned to start.” I don’t tell her I had my chance and let it go. “I talked to Pop. He said it was Savoca who contracted the hit. Oliver’s guys tried to take me out.”

  There’s a long silence. When I look at her, her hands are tight on the wheel and there are tears streaking her face as she stares out at the road ahead. “I thought they were going to kill you.”

  “I’m sorry, Lee.” I tip my head back, drag in a deep breath. “I know you’ve been obsessing over getting revenge on them as much as I have. I thought I had to do this on my own.”

  “You’re a selfish bastard,” she grinds out. “I was an inch from calling the Feds, but if I did that, they’d move us and drop you from the program, and we’d never see you again.”

  “If we could find a way, do you still want to go back?”

  Her eyes flash to me. I see all the uncertainty I’m feeling reflected back at me in her gaze. “I don’t know. All I know for sure is we have to stick together.”

  “What if we can never go back, Lee? What if this is really our life now? Always ru
nning.”

  She sniffles back tears, swallows. “Then we’ll deal. As long as we’re together, we’ll be okay.”

  I turn and stare out the windshield as she pulls up the sand road to our house. Crash comes tearing down the driveway, barks his head off as he chases us back up it. When we step out of the car, he’s all over Lee. I’m shocked speechless when she crouches down and scoops the squirming pup into her arms. She doesn’t look back at me as she carries him into the house.

  “Who let the dog out where he could get hit?” she yells as she steps through the door.

  Ulie stumbles out to the driveway, a paint roller covered with bloodred paint in her hand and spatters all over the outfit she’s wearing—the one with the snakeskin straps and leather fringe on the shoulders that I made her take off.

  Her face is almost as red as she glares at me. “When did you turn stupid, Rob?”

  I nod at the roller in her hand. “Tell me that’s not my bedroom.”

  She launches herself into my arms. The roller whacks me in the back of the head. “If you get yourself killed, I swear to God I will kill you, you stupid jerk.”

  I grimace as I hug her back. Out of all of us, I expected Ulie to be the most anxious to get home. I didn’t figure she’d mind so much if it was over my dead body.

  Grant steps onto the porch and watches us.

  When Ulie’s done strangling me and painting the back of my head, she peels herself off and pushes past him into the house.

  I move toward the porch.

  “You went home?” Grant asks.

  “Not exactly.” I’m not really sure where home is anymore. I climb the stairs and stop in front of him. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to go back. Not for a while, anyway.”

  I expect him to rant against me, or maybe throw a punch. Instead, he just looks at me, and I’m surprised that what I see in his eyes is more relief than hate.

  He hasn’t cut his hair since we got here. It’s halfway to his shoulders now. But that’s not the only change. There’s something wiser in his face, understanding that was never there before. He scoops his helmet off the love seat, brushes past me on his way to his bike. “Welcome home.”

  He straddles the bike, guns the engine, leaves a plume of blue smoke behind as he rumbles down the driveway.

  I’m pretty sure I know my brother, but that guy, I’ve never met before. I’ve been gone five days and it’s like my whole family did some brain switch.

  I know that’s true when I look at the door and see Sherm half-tucked behind the frame, peering out at me.

  “Hey,” I say without stepping closer.

  He steps out from behind the doorframe, but doesn’t say anything.

  “You held down the fort?” I ask with a vague wave of my hand at the house.

  He nods.

  With just that gesture, my heart implodes.

  He watches me a second longer, then turns and disappears upstairs.

  I follow him up and close my bedroom door. The bed is just how I left it. I drop my duffel and pull down the sheets. Adri’s blood is still there.

  She went to Chicago to find me. That is just about the stupidest and most incredible thing anyone has ever done for me. She put herself in danger to save my sorry ass, which makes me love her so much more. But it also makes me see what a fool I was. She’s over her head in shark-infested water and she doesn’t even know it. I’ve put everyone I love in danger. It was spectacularly selfish of me to think getting involved with Adri wouldn’t do the same thing to her.

  My arraignment is on Monday. Provided Adri’s father doesn’t want to take this to the press before then, which I’m banking he won’t to shield Adri from the publicity, that’s how long I have before my face goes into the system. That’s how long I have to get my family out of here. After that, it will be too late. Anyone near me is likely to be collateral damage.

  If anything happened to Adri because of me, I wouldn’t survive it. Because I’d take down anyone and everyone responsible, which would ultimately include me.

  Chapter 31

  Adri

  When the back door opens, I’m on the couch in the living room. I’ve thought a lot about what Dad said in his office yesterday, that he’s not going to let anything hurt me, and all the pieces are starting to click in my head. On the coffee table in front of me are some things I spent most of the night digging out of the attic. My eyes scan the pile and I know that this could totally backfire if I’m not extremely careful.

  Dad sees me sitting on the couch and immediately lowers his gaze.

  “Dad, we need to talk.”

  He notices the framed photo that Mom always kept in the drawer of her nightstand lying on the coffee table and freezes. “Where did you get that?”

  “I got it out of the attic,” I say, picking up the picture of the brand-new baby boy with a fringe of black hair.

  His gaze lifts to me and it’s raw and wounded. “Why?”

  “Because there are some things that need to be aired out.” I turn it for him to see. “Why didn’t you let Mom keep this picture out?”

  He lowers his gaze. “There are some things we don’t need reminding of.”

  “But he was your son, Daddy, even though he only lived a few days.”

  I was only three when Aaron was born, so I don’t remember him, and there’s only this one picture of him as far as I’ve ever known. When I was little, maybe four, sometimes I’d hear Mom crying in her room when Dad was at work. When I went in, she had this picture out. She’d hug me tight and tell me how much she loved me. But I never remember hearing Dad and Mom talk about him.

  I set Aaron in my lap and pick up the photo that was under it. It’s a three-by-five of a man in an army uniform. I turn it for him to see.

  The hurt in his gaze turns to anger. “What’s this all about, Adri?”

  “How old were you when Uncle Terry was killed?”

  “Fifteen. What does this have to do with anything?”

  I pick up the next photo. Grandpa. “When Grandpa was killed in the car wreck, I remember you insisted that Grandma move in with us, even though she was only two doors down.”

  “I wanted to look after her … to be sure she was safe.”

  I lift Grandma’s picture and look at it. “You wanted to protect her.”

  “Yes!” he shouts. “Of course.”

  “But you couldn’t.”

  His jaw tightens and I see a tremor in it. “No.”

  “Because there’s no way to protect someone from cancer.”

  “Adri, please,” he says, holding up his hand and backing toward the hallway. There are tears welling in his eyes, and I know this might be too much, but he needs to hear it.

  I stand from the couch with Mom’s picture in my hand. My voice is hoarse from the lump forming in my throat. “And you wanted to protect Mom.”

  His face crumples, and tears spill down his cheeks and trickle into his beard. “God, yes.”

  “But no one saw the aneurism coming.”

  He shakes his head.

  “So there was nothing you could do.”

  He leans into the wall and slides to the floor with his face in his hands.

  I go to him and sit on the floor, tears streaking my face. I pull him into my arms and rock him. “You’re an amazing cop, Dad, but there are some things you can’t control.”

  I hug him close as he fights to get his emotions under control, but it’s a losing battle. As we cry together on the floor, memories of Mom, Grandpa, Grandma flash through my mind, fueling the tears. I know Dad’s reliving some of it too by the way he shakes with silent sobs. I’ve never seen him like this, and in some ways I regret what I’ve done. But he needs to understand. He needs to stop feeling like everything is his responsibility.

  Finally, he lifts his head and scrubs a hand over his face. “You have no idea how hard it is to lose everyone you’ve ever loved. And you … I love you most of all. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you too.”

/>   “I know, Daddy, but you can’t protect me from life.”

  He blows out a weary laugh. “God knows I would if I could.”

  I tighten my arms around him. “I love you, but you have to let me make my own choices, even if they turn out to be mistakes.”

  “If anything ever happened to you, I couldn’t live with myself.” His grip on me is crushing my ribs, but I don’t push him away.

  “Things are going to happen. That’s what life is. I’ll share the ones I can with you, and I’m happy to listen when you have advice, but in the end, how I live my life has to be my decision. You have to let me live, Dad.”

  He lets me go and draws back to look at me. “So … you and Chuck … ?”

  I can tell by his expression, more sad than hopeful, that he already knows the answer.

  “I love Chuck almost as much as you, like family. He’s my safety net and my best friend, but he’s not the love of my life. I could never think of him like that.”

  His expression hardens. “And you think this Davison character is? He’s no good, Adri.”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong. You need to let him go and trust that I know what I’m doing.”

  His face reddens in anger. “I’m not going to trust him. He and that family are ghosts, and I’ve been in law enforcement long enough I know what that means. They’re a danger to society. I’m not dropping the charges until I know what their story is.”

  “Daddy, don’t to this. You’ve spent your whole life setting an example for me and everyone else in this town. You think he’s a danger to society, but if you start using the law to settle your personal grudges, how are you any better?”

  “I don’t deserve that! I’m totally justified charging him.”

  I nod. “Maybe you are. But I think you need to examine your motives. He hasn’t hurt me or anyone else in Port St. Mary.”

  “He’s hiding something, Adri. Permit or not, no law-abiding citizen needs to be toting around a gun in his waistband.”

  “He’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  “You can’t possibly know that,” he says in a low growl.

  “I can, because I know his heart.”