Building a Family

by M. K. Stelmack

  She did, and all Trevor said before ending the call was, “I’ll bring her.”

  “That’s presuming a lot,” Connie said, glancing around for...anything.

  “I can’t see you letting her take a beating.”

  She couldn’t see herself taking a beating, either. “Listen,” she said, “I probably shouldn’t take my purse. Those guys you’re with will steal everything. Let me pop back inside—”

  She moved and he grabbed her arm. “You’ll go tell everybody. How stupid do you think I am?”

  Not as much as she hoped.

  “I’m not bringing my purse with me. That’s stupid. Here, I’ll stick it in the hedge.” She moved to drop it in there.

  “That’s stupid,” Trevor said. “Anybody can see it.” His face darkened. “Which is exactly what you want, isn’t it?”

  He grabbed her purse. “Let’s go. Now. Your phone. Give it.”

  She’d given up on calling Ben, but as long as her phone was on, the police could locate her. She could say no, but then what? He’d overpower her, bruise her up and, in the end, take it, anyway.

  As she handed it over, she tried one more angle. “Have you told your brother what you’re doing?”

  Bad move. He took her upper arm in a punishing grip and hauled her toward the passenger door. “Leave my brother out of this. Did you call him? Did you?” He shook her and she stumbled on her high heels.

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t even have his number. Check my call history yourself.”

  He did. Still holding her arm and her pink purse hanging off his other arm at a jaunty angle, he skimmed through her call log. Apparently satisfied, he powered the phone down, flung open the passenger door and pushed her in, slamming the door behind her.

  He dropped her phone into her purse and chucked it into the back.

  And they were off.

  Sort of.

  The car was a standard, and Trevor only knew stick shift from watching her drive her old car. He jolted them into third gear, down the alley. He stalled turning onto the street and again at a four-way stop.

  When he conked out crossing the tracks, Connie lost it. “Why did you get a manual? You suck at it.”

  “Shut up. I got it this far, haven’t I?”

  Got it this far? That was an odd turn of phrase. “This isn’t yours?”

  Trev revved the engine and lurched them forward as he switched to second. “No, it’s the other guy’s.”

  “Ah, Ariel’s ‘friend,’” Connie said, making air quotations. “He’s obviously done well for himself on the backs of his workers.”

  A jerky revving and Trevor switched the car to third. “Meaning I haven’t?”

  “You and your ego, Trevor. Would you quit comparing yourself to everybody?”

  “You mean to my brother, right? Just say it.” He wrenched the gearshift into Neutral but didn’t hit the gas before double-clutching into first. There was a grinding and the third stall in three blocks.

  “Don’t. Say. A. Word.”

  Connie didn’t because it was all pretty obvious.

  “Okay, you drive.” He stared straight ahead as did Connie. “You will not try anything because Ariel is still in trouble.”

  No kidding. She waited until he was out of the car before lifting herself across to the driver’s seat. She started the car and slipped it into gear.

  “Where to?”

  He gave her directions that led south of town. She tried to think of all their old haunts, but nothing came to mind. She needed to come up with a plan. Run the car off the road in front of a farmhouse and then make a run for it? That might work.

  “If you don’t volunteer to take the beating, they’ll just turn on Ariel.”

  “How do I know they won’t, anyway?”

  Now that Trevor didn’t have to coordinate his hands and feet, he relaxed against the leather cushions. “Because the guy who heads it up doesn’t care what happens to Ariel. Not really. All he wants is what I can give him.”

  “Your brother. And what your brother’s connections can get him. Fame and fortune.”

  Trevor twisted in his seat to face her. “How did you figure that?”

  “Ariel’s not dumb. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got there and she has them all tied up.”

  Trevor stroked the screen on his phone. Was he going to call just to make sure? “Is that the reason you’re not freaking out about the beating? You’re counting on a kid to rescue you.”

  She remembered telling Alexi about what a pain it was to be beautiful. Ha. She wondered idly if her teeth would be knocked out. She could get implants, of course. But they were, like, five thousand dollars apiece.

  “No, I’m not,” she said quietly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be in this car.”

  They’d probably break her nose.

  And ribs, but those healed up well enough.

  “It’s me who arranged all of this. They hurt you and then I introduce them to McCready. My brother’s high up, you know. He lives in Spirit Lake but he’s got connections across the country.”

  “I see,” she said quietly.

  “What? What did you say?” Annoyance lined his face. His left ear. She’d spoken to his deaf ear.

  “I see,” she said louder. “Trevor, if I do this, if I take this beating, can we call it even?”

  He stared straight ahead. “Turn right at the mailboxes.”

  She began to slow. What a beautiful ride. At least she’d be going out in style.

  “McCready didn’t stand up for me. He’s senior. He could’ve pulled weight.”

  Connie eased the car onto a graveled road, stones crunching under the tires. “It could’ve gone worse for you, Trevor.”

  “People always say that. ‘It could be worse, Trevor.’ What about this?” He bared his teeth on the right side. Sure enough, a molar was missing. “The guy ripped it out of my head. It’s humiliating to smile. I smile and look ugly to everyone.”

  Connie let the car roll along in second gear on the grassy shoulder. Trevor didn’t seem to notice. “McCready’s named after our dad. You know who I was named after? The guy our dad lost a fight to. Our dad had to name me after him as part of some kind of payback. I never heard the full story. McCready has, I guess.”

  Trevor had never told her this detail of his past. She did know that McCready didn’t like to admit to being Trevor’s brother, whether from embarrassment or to protect him, she wasn’t ever sure.

  “I figure my payback will be you getting your pretty face smashed in. And for the fun of it, I’m doing it because of your pretty Ben.”

  “What did he ever do to you? I’d broken up with him long before you. You and Ben were completely separate.”

  “And joined by our stupid love for you.”

  Love? “I—I—”

  “Yeah, yeah, you didn’t know I loved you. As you can see, I got over you. Benny boy, not so much. Bought you a ring, which you carry around but won’t put on. Fun to dangle him, isn’t it?”

  Good thing she was driving so slow or she would’ve driven off the road. “For your information, I gave him back the ring.”

  “Then—” he reached into her purse “—what’s this?” He held up the ring box she’d been carrying around, forgetting to give it to Ben. How had he known it was in her purse? Right. At the restaurant, he must’ve seen it when he opened her purse to put in her phone.

  “The box is empty. See for yourself.” Once again she’d prove him wrong.

  He flipped it open.

  “Look—” she began. The ring. It was there.

  “Watch it!” Trevor yelled, and Connie yanked the car onto the road again.

  “I swear, I didn’t know the ring was there. Ben must’ve put it back. He didn’t tell me.”

  “Yeah, right.” Trevor shook his head and smiled,
his ugly smile. “And that is why you need a good thrashing, woman.”

  She’d no idea why Ben had planted the ring in her purse, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t to guarantee her a beating at the hands of a drug gang. Trevor really had gone insane.

  “Just to confirm, I go through with this and we’re even. Done. Agreed?”

  “Done. Agreed.”

  She slipped the ring out of its box and onto her ring finger. Its weight grounded her, connected her to Ben, pointed her to a shining future.

  “That’s stupid,” Trevor said. “One of the guys tonight might take it from you.”

  Connie shifted the car up to the next gear. “Over my dead body.”

  Trevor smirked. “That could be arranged.”

  * * *

  MCCREADY STOOD IN Connie’s kitchen, his massive size reducing Ben and everything in it to hobbit dimensions.

  “He must’ve taken them to some remote place he’s found,” Ben said.

  “Yep,” McCready said. The man had already stated that possibility after filling Ben in on what had happened, what was happening. Ariel and now Connie had been kidnapped. Kidnapped by Trevor McCready to be taken who knows where to be beaten. Beaten.

  Ben leaned on the island. “You must have some idea where he’d take them. Where has he been hiding out?”

  “Checked there. Gone.”

  “Friends?”

  The corner of McCready’s mouth tightened. “None.”

  “He paints bikes. His clients?”

  McCready’s mouth tightened more. “No.”

  “You know people—” Ben refrained from lumping McCready in with them “—who have places to go for these...kinds of things. Could you ask them?”

  “I could.” McCready shifted. “But those guys want my brother, too. They would’ve already checked all the same places.”

  Anger ripped through Ben. “So you’re choosing to protect Trevor? He wants to hurt Connie. Hurt her because he blames her for the beating your people laid on him. That’s what this is all about.”

  McCready didn’t move. “He’s my brother.”

  Ben slammed his hand against the island, the instant pain almost restorative. “I gave you a chance to deal with him brother-to-brother when I brought back the pills. Whatever you said to him didn’t work. Trevor is beyond help.”

  Ben reached for his phone. “We’re done. I’m calling the police.”

  From the other end of the island McCready withdrew a knife. “Don’t.”

  Ben slid open his screen and touched the phone app. The knife crashed against his phone, knocking it to the tile floor. Ben cursed and bent for his phone, only to have McCready’s boot smash it to bits.

  Ben stayed in his crouch and rammed McCready, propelling them both backward against the fridge. McCready shoved his booted foot against Ben’s collar and knocked Ben back to the floor. Ben scrambled to get to his feet before the big man came at him again.

  “Don’t.” McCready’s single, repeated word held a warning but something else, too. A request.

  Ben moved into a squatting position and waited. McCready nodded once.

  “I’ll find Connie and the girl. The rest...the rest comes after. No police. Or else I won’t get the help we need.”

  Ben wasn’t convinced that excluding the police was the answer. And how could he be sure that McCready wasn’t making this deal in order to delay locating Trevor? Then again, Ben wasn’t equipped to do this alone. No use involving Seth, either, because he was as clueless as Ben when it came to Trevor’s whereabouts.

  “Yeah. All right.”

  McCready stepped back, giving Ben room to rise.

  McCready opened his phone, and made a call. Then another, and another. With each one, Ben listened to McCready offer deals, make concessions, confirm loyalties—and, slowly but surely, sell out his brother.

  After the sixth call, McCready returned his knife to his jacket. “Let’s go get your girls.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TREVOR HAD CONNIE drive to the end of a narrow gravel road and park beside a field covered with stubble from last year’s crop. Stubble was a good name for the old grain stalks, rough and bristly like a man’s unshaven cheek. Or wait, was the facial hair named after the straw? And why was she even thinking about this?

  Trevor ordered her to cross the field to a giant metal shed set on a grassy patch in the field, probably used to store farm equipment or something. What did she know?

  Her heels sunk into the softened earth and dirt immediately piled between the soles of her shoes and her bare feet. The least of her worries. So, too, the chill evening air that pebbled her bare arms.

  Just let Ariel be safe.

  Trevor fell silent as they crossed to the shed, which allowed Connie to steel herself against whatever was on the other side of the metal walls. They crossed in front of the closed bay doors and rounded the corner.

  A teenager sprang to attention from where he’d been lounging beside a side door. He fumbled for something inside his jacket, his right hand busy holding his smoke.

  “Easy,” Trevor said. “Just us.”

  “Don’t scare me like that,” the guard said.

  Trevor pushed him aside. He rapped on the door. Two old cars were parked against the shed facing out. The getaway cars. Trevor clamped his fingers around her arm.

  “At this point, I’m not going to try to make a run for it,” Connie said, and twisted her arm free just as the front door opened.

  To another kid. Okay, maybe he could pass for twenty. He held a gun. Connie couldn’t help it. She looked at his knuckles. His hands were pretty unmarked for someone whose eyes held the distant coldness of a killer.

  The kid took in Trevor and widened the door for Connie to enter. As soon as she was inside, Connie scanned the gloom of the largely empty shed for Ariel. She was at the far end of the enclosure, still blindfolded, and with her ankles and wrists bound, her right leg quivering.

  Arranged around the room were seven young men. All looked young enough to be ID’d at the bar. The gang, Connie supposed. A bunch of bad kids not yet twenty with garish hair and tattoos. She might have dismissed them as wannabes, if Connie hadn’t identified three with guns. Guns! They were all pointed to the floor at the moment, but the boys held them with a carefulness that convinced Connie that the guns were ready to use.

  A boy, or young man, or whatever his age made him, detached himself from the group and came to them. His T-shirt and jeans draped from him, and his entire frame was emaciated. Was he a user as well as a dealer?

  “You Ariel’s aunt?”

  Connie made a stab at diplomacy. “Yes, Connie Greene. And you?”

  He sneered, as if he figured she was pulling a fast one. “You know what you need to do?”

  “I understand the principle,” she said slowly so her voice didn’t shake as badly as her insides were. “I’m to take Ariel’s place so she can get jumped out of your organization.”

  He took another full step toward her. “We are going to beat you until we decide we’re done, and you’re not going to stop us. Got it?”

  “Bare fists.”

  He blinked.

  “Bare fists,” Connie repeated. Diplomacy was over, but negotiations were still open. “No bars, no iron, no rings, no knives. Fists or open hand only.”

  “What are you going to do if we don’t?”

  “Then it’s not happening.”

  He shook his head, like she was full of it, but she could see his hesitation.

  “No,” Trevor said, and cut between them. “We had a deal. It was the refrigerator.”

  Refrigerator? She glanced around and located it in the opposite corner to Ariel. Its solid whiteness was almost lunar in the deepening darkness of the shed. Wait. She knew that fridge.

  Trevor crowed in laughter. “Yea
h, it’s the one you gave me. From the house. Remember how you said you couldn’t stand it because of the notes your mom put on it? Well, here it is. Ready for you!”

  Connie didn’t get it. She was missing something terribly important. She looked to Ariel. Both of the girl’s legs were jumping now, only her boot tips making contact with the hard soil.

  Then it hit her.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh.”

  They were going to box her.

  They were going to lock her in the refrigerator and fire their guns at it. The bullets might miss, or they might hit her in the chest. It was a kind of Russian roulette.

  She shook her head, in time with the frenetic rhythm of Ariel’s legs. “No, no, no, no. This wasn’t the deal.”

  “We didn’t have a deal,” Trevor said. “If you assumed we did, that’s your fault.”

  No getting through to Trevor. He was nearly frothing at the mouth for someone to hurt her. She had actually been in a relationship with a guy who now wanted her dead. Had planned her death.

  “Trevor,” she said. “You are an embarrassment to yourself and your brother.”

  Even as Trevor reddened and his fist rose against her, she turned to the thin boy-man who fancied himself a leader. “You do this and you will be hunted. You kill me in this town—my town—and you won’t get away with it. I have people, too.”

  I have people. The few hundred Lakers-on-the-Go. Seth and Mel. McCready. Even Dizzy. The people who’d applauded her at the Polar Dip.

  She inserted her left thumb between her fingers and pressed on the diamond. Ben.

  Boy-Man jutted out his chin belligerently. “I want word to get out. I want everyone to know that those under me stay in line or there’s consequences.”

  “There’ll be consequences for you, too. There always are.”

  “You can’t prove a thing. Especially if there’s a bullet in your brain.”

  “My dead body will be proof enough.”

  Ariel cried out, “Pick me. Pick me! Auntie, don’t do it. It was my fault, my fault. I can do this. I’m smaller. They’ll have less chance of hitting me.”

  Ariel was never illogical.

  “That’s not happening,” Trevor said. “It’s her. We agreed.”