We were more than ready after two hours of lifting and unloading what seemed like a hundred cases of beer. After Charlie discussed wages, wrote down our hours, and filled us in on our work expectations, we headed for the door.
“I have an empty basement—it’s kinda like an apartment,” Charlie announced.
We turned slowly.
Charlie busied himself wiping the bar. “North Las Vegas is kinda far away. Always heavy traffic, that route.”
We glanced at each other, none of us knowing what to say.
“You wouldn’t have to worry about being late for work…that’s all I’m sayin’.” He checked a clean glass for spots.
The last thing I needed was another bitter drunk in my life. It was enough that he was going to be our boss, but I had no interest in being in his company 24/7. “I’d rather…” I started, but Billi Jo’s begging eyes stopped me. Suffocate myself.
“It’s not much,” Charlie continued, “just a dreary old basement. Nobody’s stayed down there for a couple of years…”
“We’re not into taking charity,” Kat said.
“Who said anything about charity?” Charlie snuffed his cigarette out in a red plastic ashtray. “I just thought it might make up for the fact that I won’t be able to pay as much if I hire all three of you.”
I gave my best disappointed look. “Too bad we just signed a lease.”
“But we didn’t pay a deposit yet,” Billi Jo draped her bony arm around my neck and gave a little squeeze.
Kat spun me toward the door before I could say anything else. “And it just so happens, we haven’t even unpacked yet.”
Charlie followed us to the parking lot and helped us carry our meager belongings down some concrete steps and through the basement door. Pulling a string hanging from a single light bulb fixture, he led us into the apartment area. It was no shock that the basement was musty, damp, and excessively gray—an ideal place for a serial killer to stash his victims.
“Oh boy, you weren’t jokin’,” Billi Jo said as she evaluated the one-room slab of concrete.
To the left of the door sat an extremely old white metal refrigerator next to a puny sink and sliver of a counter top. Pointing to a rusty green oven, Charlie mumbled, “Oven doesn’t work. I reckon you can use the kitchen upstairs if you need to—long as you clean up your own mess.”
Off to the side was a tiny bathroom with some really scary green and brown linoleum on the floor. “Not too much hot water here, so ya gotta be fast with your showers. Sink always drips, too,” he added.
The centerpiece of the living area was a burnt-toast-colored couch. It was positioned to face an archaic floor-model television with a foil-wrapped antenna configuration—very likely a set of deer antlers.
A full-sized bed was shoved against a divider wall of concrete, and on the other side of it was a doorless closet. That was it—nothing more, nothing less. Unless you counted the cobwebs and dust.
“Told ya,” Charlie said, flopping his arms upward then back down to his sides.
He took a few steps toward the door but stopped to reach for something behind it. Holding out a big, rectangular box, he said, “Here’s a cot somebody can use. It’s the old fashioned kind, so you’ll need some—”
I reached for it since I was the closest. “We can manage.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna need some—”
“We don’t need any help.”
“If you say so,” he added with a little more smugness than I cared for.
“I can put a cot together. I’m sort of an outdoorsy type,” I grumbled as I snatched the box out of his hands.
“Hmm,” he grunted, his eyes resting on my injured face. “Outdoorsy people don’t usually look like that after they ride their bikes.” I could tell Charlie and me were going to get along wonderfully.
Pushing me out of the way, Kat broke in, “Thanks for everything, Charlie. We’ll be up as soon as we get our things put away.” Which should take all of about two minutes. All we had were some clothes, toiletries, and a couple of boxes of I don’t know what.
As soon as he was out the door, her head snapped in my direction. “You could try being a little nicer, you know. He’s the only person since we arrived in Vegas willing to give us a chance. We could always go back to sleeping in the car.”
“He started it…grumpy old man,” I muttered.
Kat scowled at me. “He’s not the only grumpy one around here.”
“Has anyone else noticed he’s the clone of Jack?” I asked. “Do you have any idea how hard he’s going to be to live with?”
“If we can live with a boyfriend-killing fugitive, surely you can live with a grumpy old man.” Billi Jo said it in the same nonchalant way she would have if she were telling me my lipstick color was all wrong. She was the only person who could say something like that and get away with it.
Gripping my shoulders, Kat steered me to the concrete cubicle. “I think you need to get some rest. Why don’t you go set the cot up in the bedroom? You could use a little time-out.” She cleared her throat. “I meant time alone.”
“Sure, the mental case is gonna require more solitary confinement than the rest of you petty criminals.” I hoisted my ‘bed in a box’ off to the troll closet.
“Not what I meant,” Kat said, but I could hear the truth in her voice.
As I dumped the box of metal rods and canvas onto the middle of the floor, I hissed at the inanimate objects, “It’s just a stupid cot for God’s sake, not rocket science.”
After a ridiculously long time, I managed to wrangle the cot into submission. I sat down on it, and it immediately ejected me onto the floor.
Picking myself up and stumbling over the pieces, I huffed around to the ‘living area’ to recruit some help. Billi Jo kept her eyes on an instruction manual she was reading as she thrust a small plastic bag at me. “Here, Charlie said you might need these.”
“What is it?”
“Mm, I think he said they were pins or something…to hold the cot together.”
Charlie: one, me: zero.
Breathe.
After winning round two of my cot-wrestling match, I took a minute to cozy up my new living space. Well, two minutes really, because first I had to get up the courage to open Mom’s old suitcase again. I pulled out a cracked picture frame of my mom, my sister, and me and propped it on my cardboard, cot-side table. Studying the picture, I tried to memorize every detail of that one moment of happiness. Jamie looked so much like Jack, only with Mom’s green eyes. I looked just like Mom except for my blue eyes, Siberian Husky blue, she’d always called them. Did I have the same eyes as my dad? A stranger’s eyes?
Deciding to torture myself further, I shuffled through some loose pictures when a newspaper clipping I hadn’t noticed before caught my eye. I picked it up and read it:
Police Officer Killed, College Student Critically Injured
Officer Nathaniel Logan Warner was killed yesterday during a drug bust. College student Carl Joseph MaKade is listed in critical condition after sustaining gunshots to the groin and shoulder. Officer Warner is survived by his pregnant wife…
I skimmed the rest of the details but noticed it was dated the same year I was born—two months before I was born, to be exact. Maybe one of them was my father. Knowing my luck, it was the one who left behind his pregnant wife. Either way, seventeen years ago I was someone’s mistake. Still am.
“Hey, River, come here.” Billi Jo startled me from thoughts about my father’s identity. I dropped the article into the suitcase and let the lid slam shut. After sliding the suitcase underneath the cot, I went back to the living area. Plopping down on the couch, I narrowly missed two springs that had come through. Billi Jo came over and set a cardboard box in front of me, then knelt down on the floor.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
“Oh, just a box I snagged from my uncle’s room. He calls it his ‘official card game winning box’. And then I threw in some other c
rap I found sitting on his dresser.” She started pulling things out.
“First you car-jacked his ride, then his football ring, now this? I’m afraid this life of crime is beginning to suit you,” I teased, letting myself relax a little and forget the reason we were here.
“Travis is due a little punishment for taking my necklace. Besides, he doesn’t always acquire his goods legally, so I figure anything’s fair game.” She shrugged.
“You are quite the bandit these days.” Kat rifled through the box. “Let’s see, we have the world’s smallest microwave—this could come in handy. A tool set—”
Billi Jo kneeled down across from me and grabbed the first thing she saw. “Ooh, an old Polaroid camera. Wonder if it works?” Click. Of course she had it aimed at my battered face.
Kat and I glared at her, and she pitched it back in the box without checking to see if the picture had turned out.
“Oh, and these will come in handy.” Billi Jo snapped up three thick gold chain necklaces and draped them around her neck. Turning her baseball cap to the side, she crossed her arms in front of her. “Yo, ya’ll got a gold tooth to go with this?”
I winced. “I’m pretty sure gangsters don’t say ya’ll. But if you were going for the country hick version of a wannabe gangster, then you nailed it.”
“I reckon that makes me a hickster,” she twanged and broke into a knee-slapping hillbilly jig.
Kat howled and I cracked a smile, but I’m not sure it could be seen from the outside.
After Kat wrestled the necklaces away from Bojangles, she put them back in the box.
“Why’d you say you brought the gold chains?” Not waiting for her answer, I continued to rummage through the box until I came across a fancy leather knife case. “Okay, I get everything else, but what’s this hunting knife for? You plan on skinnin’ a deer here in the big city?” Just for a moment, I felt on the edge of normal.
“The gold chains are for emergency income,” Billi Jo answered, and then hesitated. “The knife is in case we need a weapon.”
“Weapon.” I repeated the word that ended all my delusions of normal. It had only been days since I used a weapon—a lethal one. My hands went numb and, without realizing it, I let the knife and case slip to the floor. This was not the moving party it could’ve been—if only I hadn’t murdered my boyfriend and gone on a crime spree with my friends.
The heavy burden of reality left everyone silent. My friends’ lives had been forever changed by my actions. We went from celebrating the last day of our junior year to stealing gold chains for money and carrying weapons. From sleeping in our own beds to sleeping in cars and cots in dank basements. From free to fugitive…
“Do you guys realize what you’ve signed up for?” I got up and went into the pretend bedroom. I lay down on Charlie’s crappy old cot and curled up in the fetal position. I deserved solitary confinement.
Unable to close my eyes, I stared at the picture of my mom on the bedside table, and Justice’s words replayed in my head. “Don’t shut down on me again,” he’d said before I’d left his house that morning to meet Logan. But it was too late for that. I shut down after my mom died, and I was doing it now. The school counselor had called it a coping mechanism. I called it survival.
Only this time, I didn’t have Justice to pull me out of it.
14
TEMPPORARY HOME
When I woke up, it took me a minute to remember where I was. After peeling myself off the narrow army cot, I staggered up the creaky wooden stairs to the bar where the early morning sun streamed through the front windows. Sliding into a booth, I propped my elbows on the table and rested my head in my palms. In no time, I was hypnotized by a beam of floating dust particles, and my thoughts wandered back to Texas.
I missed my sister desperately and prayed that Jack was drinking less and paying the bills more. And then, before I could push it away, thoughts of Justice crept into my head. What was he doing? Would I ever see him again? Did he hate me for what I did?
Kat startled me as she plopped down across from me, her eyes skimming my rumpled clothes. “Guess you slept good, huh?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said and then got right to one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep. “Kat, I need to check on Jamie.”
“I know you want to, but listen, the cops are going to be watching her very closely right now. If either of you tried to make contact, it would all be over.”
“At least then I wouldn’t have to drag everyone I care about through the mud with me.”
“Our decision, remember?” She lowered her head to look into my eyes. “Listen, River, it’s too late for second thoughts. You have to remember the reason you had to run in the first place. You’d be in prison, and the Westfields would make sure you never saw the light of day…or Jamie.”
I traced my fingers along the dings in the table.
“It won’t be easy, but you have to trust that she will be okay. She can take care of herself because you’ve been a good teacher. Besides, Jack’s her real dad; it’s different.”
“But that doesn’t mean he can pay the bills. He’s had me to fall back on if he loses a big poker game.”
“Isn’t there anyone else she could ask for help if the electricity gets turned off or something?” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Mm, what about Justice?”
Justice. My heart sank when I thought about the last time I saw him—that disgusted, betrayed look in his eyes when I walked away with Logan. He didn’t know I had to leave with Logan in order to protect him. He would never know.
I didn’t respond, so Kat continued, “Jamie will get in touch with us in a few weeks, so—”
“A few weeks?”
“She’ll be under heavy surveillance for at least a few weeks. Who knows, with the money the Westfields have, it could be longer.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “How? How will she get in touch with us?”
“Remember the piece of paper I gave her the night we left? It was instructions with a password and an e-mail address. My mom’s Thursday night appointment is a sleepover. Ever since our computer kicked it he’s let me use his laptop, so I know the password. After they go to sleep, Jamie can sneak into Mom’s trailer to e-mail us. Mom set up a secret e-mail account for me years ago when I was a kid—in case of emergencies. We’ve never had to use it and nobody knows about it, so it’ll be perfect. We need to find a library around here so we can use the Internet. We’ll log in using my email address, write the email, then save the draft so we only have to use one account.”
“How did you come up with that?”
“I learned from a pro. I admit my mother has some strange ways, but she’s as street smart as they come.”
I was stumped. “If that’s the case, then why does she… live in a trailer park?”
“Because it’s a safe bet.” Kat could see the bewildered look on my face, so she continued, “She’s comfortable where she is. Says she has everything she’s ever wanted: me, a roof over our heads, and all the tacky yard art a woman could ever want.”
That was something to think about. I had always assumed able-bodied, good-minded, drug-free people wanted better things for themselves. It never occurred to me that some people were simply happy where they were, comfortable and satisfied—even in Castle Court.
My blank stare must have got to her because she lit a cigarette and settled back in her seat. “She was forced to put herself in her own witness protection program.” Kat never talked about personal information like this, and I could tell she didn’t really want to. I guess she figured there was no point in holding back secrets now. It wasn’t like I was in any position to judge anybody.
“Growing up, she never felt loved by her wealthy, socialite parents or anyone else, cry me a river and so on. Then she met my biological father. He was quite a bit older than her, and she was young and naïve. At first, she said their relationship was like a fairy tale. But when Mom showed up on his doorstep and announced she
was pregnant, it didn’t go over too well. Turns out he was married with two kids and about to run for some big political office. He thought if he could give her some spending money and pay for an abortion, she’d go away.” Kat fluttered her eyelashes. “But she was in love. She made it clear she wasn’t interested in his money or an abortion, only him. The next day, he sent his ‘associates’ after her to make some pretty serious threats.”
“What about her parents? Couldn’t they have helped her?”
“They could’ve, but they wouldn’t. They didn’t have a good relationship to begin with, so when she told them she was pregnant, they sent her packing. She packed, all right, and disappeared forever.”
I took time to process the information, and then asked, “What about taxes and social security information and all that stuff? Couldn’t somebody have tracked her down if they really wanted to?”
“Mom had serious dirt on some bigwig in government—an ex-friend of her parents—who kindly arranged for her paper trail to vanish as long as she did. She changed her identity, her looks, and her address.” Kat snapped her fingers. “And voilà, Trailer Trash Barbie landed in Castle Court, knocked-up and desperate to make money.”
I gnawed on the tip of my thumbnail. “She had to come up with a cash-only business—prostitution.”
Kat grimaced a little at the word ‘prostitution’ but went on. “Mom’s made a few mistakes over the years, but she’s mostly had the same three ‘clients.’ Except for Mr. Hinkley—he was the new guy. And I have a feeling he won’t be paying her any more visits.” She admired her cigarette pack as she tapped it on the table.
“I can’t believe your mom told you all this.”
“Yeah, when I was fifteen, I got mad at her and had the bright idea I was going to track my father down. She let me know what a bad idea that would be.”
“Are you still curious about him?”
“Not anymore.”
I wished I wasn’t curious about mine. “After what your father did to her, how could she ever trust a man?”
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