Alicia frowned.
Was Liam using Gretchen to stir up trouble, or had she come to Alicia all on her own? Either way, they were a problem. He might be able to get Gretchen on his side. Liam was a bigger problem.
“Look, Alicia, I’m not going to compete for your attention. If you want Liam, just say the word and . . .”
Drew met Alicia’s gaze. This time she didn’t look away.
“I don’t,” she said, looking worried.
“Okay. You may consider him a friend, but are you sure that’s all he wants from you?”
Alicia looked troubled. Her dark eyebrows pulled together over her blue eyes.
“What he wants is irrelevant,” she said at last. “I’m with you. That is, if you still want to be.”
Drew set his coffee cup on the table and offered his hand. After a second’s hesitation, Alicia took it, and Drew smiled.
“Of course I want to be with you,” he said. “You already know that. You also know I’m not the jealous type. But I want you to think hard about something.”
“What?”
“Think about Liam and his motivations. Is it possible he still has feelings for you?” Drew shrugged. “Look, I can’t blame the guy. I’m crazy about you too, and if I lost you, I would do everything I could to get you back, including telling lies about him.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” she said.
She covered his hand with hers, and Drew knew that he’d won. Leaning across the narrow table, Drew kissed her. The press of her lips tasted sweet, like victory.
Chapter 9
Rain drizzled down in a fine mist and mingled with the sweat on Charles Sully’s face. He’d already worked out, and the ache of swollen muscles in his chest and arms was a pleasant reminder of what Lara would call his “penance.” Penance. That was a fucking joke. Other than his grandfather’s funeral, he’d never been to church in his life.
He’d been thirteen then, and his mother had dressed him in a borrowed suit, some ugly gray piece of shit. She didn’t care it was too small. She wanted him to look decent. But he hadn’t looked decent. He’d looked like a fat, pizza-faced kid with the jacket buttons straining around his gut and the cuffs of the pants riding up on his ankles. The suit pinched. It was itchy and he couldn’t wait to take the fucking thing off. That was the last time he’d been goaded into wearing a suit. It was also the last time his mother had forced him to do anything against his will.
The constant thrum of cars speeding past on nearby Aurora Avenue was barely muted by the sparse greenbelt bordering the parking lot outside his condo. Hunkered down over the trunk of a bright-green Dodge Super Bee, he examined the coarse fabric of the lining with a flashlight. Small bits of debris—leaves, twigs, torn fabric—he deposited in a white Safeway bag. The earthy smell brought him back to the forest.
As a kid, when things got bad at home, Sully escaped into the trees. Deep in the woods, he couldn’t hear his mother nagging or his father yelling. Alone he would slide into the trees and become invisible. Even now the forest offered the isolation and escape he needed.
He slowly swiveled the light back and forth, and a glimmer of metal caught his eye.
A gold hoop earring had woven its way into the fabric. Carefully he wiggled the thin metal with his thick fingers, freeing it from the bottom of the car’s trunk without tearing any of the fibers loose. He held it up for a brief examination. If he’d overlooked this, what else had he missed?
Beads of sweat raced down the back of his neck, and Sully scratched them away, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. He was alone. Casually he strolled across the parking lot and dropped the gold hoop through the broad slats of the storm drain. If there had been two earrings, he might have been able to pass them off as a gift, but one did him no good at all. If Lara had found the earring, she would have had lots of questions about where it came from and who it belonged to and on and on.
He didn’t need that shit.
Sully returned to the car and resumed his examination of the trunk—more slowly this time, determined not to miss a single thing. He froze. Captured in the yellow beam of light was a red speck on the charcoal-gray fabric near the opening for the spare tire.
“Fuck,” he growled.
Reaching down, he smudged the speck with his finger. It caked off under his nail like dried mud, but he knew it wasn’t mud. He would need to do a more thorough cleaning soon.
The whine of the handheld vacuum cleaner masked the sound of her footsteps. She was directly behind him when he finally heard her high-pitched voice.
“Carlos, aren’t you going to drive me to my mother’s?”
The shrill tone of her voice was every bit as annoying as the slow screech of fingernails scraping down a chalkboard, and he cringed. He wanted to ignore her, but he knew Lara wouldn’t shut up until she got her way. He used to like that about her, back when what she wanted was him. Now he wanted to drill his fist into her fat mouth to stop her from saying another goddamned thing. He stared down into the trunk, flexing his twitchy fingers.
“Carlos, turn that damned thing off.”
He hated when she called him Carlos. Like he was a spic.
Sully’s jaw clenched. Who the fuck did she think she was? His own mother didn’t speak to him that way. You’d have thought she’d have learned her lesson by now. Maybe she was just plain dumb.
He thumbed the switch, and the vacuum cleaner ground to a halt. With all the control he could muster, he turned to face her.
Lara was a good half a foot shorter than he was. Her black hair was scraped back into a ponytail, and her fisted hands were propped on her ever-broadening hips. How many times did he have to tell her he wanted her hair loose and flowing down her back? The stupid bitch didn’t listen. Maybe she needed another lesson in respect. Maybe then she’d remember. Maybe a black eye would provoke her into wearing some makeup.
Didn’t she care about looking decent?
“Carlos, do you hear me?” she squawked again, her dark eyes boring into his.
“Of course I hear you. I’m not fucking deaf.”
“Then answer me. Are you going to drive me to my mother’s?”
“For lunch? You don’t look like you need to eat to me.”
Lara’s face went slack. Hurt flashed in her eyes, and he knew he’d struck a nerve. Before she’d gotten fat, Lara had had an insane body. Normally Sully favored blondes, but Lara in a tank top and skinny jeans had caught his eye. Ever since she got knocked up, though, she’d let herself go.
“What are you doing out here anyway?”
“Cleaning my car. What does it look like?”
Lara crossed her arms. Her dark eyebrows thickened as she frowned up at him. Goosebumps pimpled her caramel-colored skin. He could see her nipples hardening through the light cotton top she wore. At least he still liked her tits. If there was one upside to the pregnancy, it was her bulging bra. At least that could still get him going.
“You spend more time with that damned car than you do with me.”
The top of the Safeway bag fluttered in the wind, and he lowered the trunk lid, blocking her view. He couldn’t argue the point. A classic car like this cost a lot of money. It was an investment. His father had owned one just like it when Sully was a kid. Of course, it was a beater. His old man never took care of anything, while Sully prided himself on keeping the Dodge in pristine condition. What was the point in owning something if you didn’t take care of it?
“Forget it, Carlos. If it’s too much bother, I’ll ask my mother to come get me.”
His fingers curled into fists and he looked past Lara to where the neighbors shuffled by. Great. Now they had a fucking audience.
The nosy couple who lived across the hall sauntered across the parking lot. They were staring. Sully nodded his greeting. The woman screwed up her pinched face and ducked into the car, but the guy offered a weak smile.
Sully deliberately lowered his voice.
“I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
“The car is spotless. I don’t know why you need to . . .”
He shot her a look that stopped her midsentence. Her head dipped, and she cringed away from him like a beaten dog.
“I’ll wait inside,” she said.
He waited until she’d waddled around the corner, her round hips swaying under the weight of the growing baby; then he turned the vacuum cleaner back on.
Once he dropped Lara off at her mother’s, he’d look for a dumpster to stash the Safeway bag in.
He didn’t want it anywhere near his home. Just in case.
Chapter 10
The howling wind snaked around the edges of the small cabin, clawing at the tin roof. It clanged and clattered, sounding like it might actually tear free of the trusses and launch itself up into the sky. Shivering, Brooke pulled the thin edges of the blanket around her. The ratty, stinking thing barely took the edge off the damp chill that drilled deep into her bones, but it was better than freezing to death.
She stared at the plastic bucket wedged into the corner, hating it, hating every single thing about being trapped down here. Chained up. Scared. Alone.
She crossed her legs and tried to hold it, but with her blood sugars soaring sky-high, there was no way around it. She had to pee. Her stomach churned. She hated the indignity of squatting over the bucket and smelling her own foul waste, but what choice did she have?
Teeth clenched, she marched over to the corner. She pulled down her panties and squatted over the bucket. Her thighs screamed like she’d just run a half marathon. Urine trickled out like water leaking from a hose, and Brooke grimaced.
Business done, she trudged back to the bed. The chain hissed along the floor behind her, the links digging into the thin flesh around her bony ankle, and she slumped down onto the mattress. She peeled back the corner and pulled out the insulin pen. Six inches long, it was the same length as a writing pen and four times the size around.
The plastic housing encased a small vial of short-acting insulin. She pulled off the cap, revealing a short, slim needle.
Brooke studied the pen in the waning light, her stomach tied up in knots. Under normal circumstances a pen would have lasted her a week. But that was when she was supplementing her shots with long-acting insulin. Trapped here, she had nothing but this. Without refrigeration, the medication lost some of its potency. This small device, with the one hundred units of insulin it contained, was the only thing keeping her alive.
And while she knew she had to use it, she also knew she had to use as little as possible. She had to let her sugars run as high as she could stand, because once the insulin ran out, she was as good as dead.
Brooke grabbed the dial at the end of the pen and twisted it slowly, carefully measuring out a dose. Twelve units? No. She cranked the dial back to eight. It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t quench her cottonmouth, ease her aching muscles, or stop her skin from crawling like an army of ants marching up and down her body, but it was enough. It would keep her alive.
A violent gust of wind sent branches battering the tin roof. Brooke’s eyes cut up toward the bare cedar beams, like at any minute the big bad wolf would huff and puff and blow her house down. The walls shuddered but stood firm, and Brooke looked down at the insulin pen in her hand.
She stabbed the short needle into her thigh. The dial clicked as the insulin pen dispensed, and she replaced the cap, still holding it tight in her fist . . . reluctant to let it go. Knowing it was the only thing that kept her going. And if she lost it, she would slip quietly into a coma and never wake up.
Brooke sank onto the mattress, her knees pulled in close to her chest, still gripping the pen. Fear and despair wrapped tight around her like the moldy woolen blanket over her shoulders. Tears threatened to fall, but she willed them back. Tears would do her no good. She had to stay strong; she had to survive.
The wind howled like a wolf through the woods. The lonely sound filled the empty cabin, and Brooke closed her eyes, letting it fill her too. Her breathing evened out, and she felt herself drifting toward the edge of sleep.
Then she heard it. A crack. Her heart jolted and Brooke bolted upright on the bed. She heard a hiss and another crack. The cabin rocked and Brooke tumbled off the bed. Bright sparks of pain exploded behind her eyes as her head hit the floor.
A rumble. Up above. Brooke rolled underneath the bed frame for shelter as something hard and heavy crashed through the roof. Chunks of beam and branches rained down around her. The floor shook. Her head throbbed. She pressed her palm tight against the wound at her temple. Warm trails of blood slid down her forehead onto her cheeks.
Violent gusts of wind shuddered overhead. The smell of wet pine filled the air. Hard, slashing rain blew through the gaping hole in the roof.
She waited for more—for what was left of the cabin’s roof to cave in, for the massive trunk of the tree to pin her to the floor, for the bed frame to collapse on top of her. But that didn’t happen. She was alive. It was enough.
Chapter 11
The wind kicked up. Branches from the laurel hedge outside the window scratched against the windowpane. Unable to sleep, Marissa drifted down the darkened hall to Brooke’s room. She crept into the deep shadows, bumping into the boxes and stacks of books piled on the floor. So many of Brooke’s things hadn’t made the college cut, a treasure trove of personal belongings too dear to donate, but not vital enough to cram into her small college dorm room.
How can a place so full feel so empty? Here among Brooke’s things, fear flashed bright in her mind. She could have handled anything if she’d known Brooke was going to be okay.
More nights than she could count, Marissa had peered through cracked bedroom doors, checking on the girls while they slept. Kelly stretched out like a starfish on her back, a tangled mess of sheets wound around her torso and her arms and legs flung wide. And Brooke, curled up on her side, neatly tucked under the covers, her face serene in sleep.
In the weeks since Brooke moved out, she’d found herself worrying about all the little things that could go wrong. Was Brooke eating right? Taking her insulin? Making smart choices? Marissa wasn’t stupid. College was a time when most kids experimented. Brooke wasn’t like most kids though. Her diabetes set her apart, so some of the normal things kids did—partying, binge drinking, and drugs—were more risky for Brooke.
Marissa sank down onto the bed and clutched Brooke’s pillow tight in her arms. She breathed in her daughter’s scent still clinging to the pillowcase.
Alone in the dark, she let the tears come. For once she didn’t hold back. She let it all out—the fear ratcheted tight in her chest, the frustration of not being able to do a damned thing to help find her daughter, and, most of all, the agony of not knowing. Smothered sobs racked her body until exhaustion finally overtook her and she slept.
Marissa awoke with the full light of morning shining in her face.
What time was it? Marissa craned her neck around and stared at the clock. The digital display blinked, and she realized the storm must have knocked the power out overnight. By the time she bolted out of Brooke’s room, Kelly had already left for school.
Gritting her teeth, she endured a three-minute spritzing underneath the shower’s bracing spray, then grabbed the first clean outfit from her closet before bolting out the door. After the scene she’d caused in the lobby yesterday morning, Paige Benoit might just make good on her threat to fire her, but Marissa needed her job.
She had the whole train ride into the city to regret her hasty wardrobe choice. The low-cut blouse defied the firm’s conservative dress code. And although Marissa’s legs would have been the envy of a Las Vegas show girl, she tugged self-consciously at the hem of her skirt as it rode up above her knees.
Clearly Ervine liked the view. His beady eyes never made it past chest level as he leered.
“Finally decided to show up for work today, Marissa?”
The look of contempt on her face was lost on him, since he was too busy staring at her cleavag
e to notice. She rose from her chair and handed him a stack of mail, forcing him to look up.
“If you have any concerns about my performance, feel free to discuss them with Ms. Benoit.”
Ervine’s round face flushed, and he sneered.
“No need. I hear she’s already on the warpath. I’d start updating my résumé if I were you.”
Marissa’s stomach tightened another notch and she sank back into her chair. She wasn’t surprised Benoit was out for blood. She was not known for her empathy. Still, Marissa needed this job. Maybe if she apologized and explained the situation, Benoit might understand.
The first chance she got, Marissa pulled her phone out of her purse and glanced at the display. No messages. She’d talked on the phone with Detective Crawford about Brooke’s case last night. Since then, she’d heard nothing, and she was going nuts. The lobby was empty as she dialed Crawford’s number. Before she could finish, someone called her name.
“Ms. Rooney.”
Startled, Marissa looked up. Evan Holt stood by the desk. He was tall and thin with dark hair and deep almond-shaped eyes. His wide mouth wasn’t smiling, which was a shame, really. He might actually be handsome if he didn’t look so damned uptight.
Although Evan Holt was a lawyer, he was not a member of the firm. He worked closely alongside his Aunt, managing her personal matters. Marissa quickly scanned her calendar—Tuesday morning and she found nothing to explain his sudden appearance. At a loss, she forced a smile.
“Mr. Holt, what can I do for you?”
“Ms. Rooney, could you come with me, please?”
His tone was curt, his words more an order than a request, and Marissa’s stomach sank in a sickening spiral of dread. She stood on rubbery legs, staring dumbly at him.
“Bring your things.”
This was it. They were going to fire her for violating company policy and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop them. They didn’t want to hear excuses. They didn’t care what was going on in her personal life or why she’d left the office in a panic. The only thing she couldn’t figure out was why they’d sent Evan Holt to deal with her. Surely Benoit wanted the honors.
In the Dark Page 6