Blood Red (25 page)

“Jelly. I’m telling you, Richie, they’re all dead and jelly on the rocks.”

“You’re sick and obsessed.”

“You’re short and a bitch.”

“Maybe, but I ain’t your bitch.”

“No. You’re Whalen’s bitch, and her husband’s if he ever finds out about you two.”

“There’s nothing to find out.”

“Yet.”

“Fuck you.”

“No way, my balls hurt too much.”

Ben woke up with Maggie in the bed next to him. She was asleep, her face highlighted with shades of gold by the afternoon sun. His jaw hurt, his ribs ached, and his entire side felt like someone had parked a car on it, and he didn’t care in the least. He spent almost ten minutes looking at her, studying her, loving the way she looked while she slept.

Loving her. That was the problem here. He wasn’t supposed to love her. Even if he was, he sure as hell didn’t expect her to love him back.

That part he got right at least. It was sweet of her to stay, to make sure he was all right through the night, but he wasn’t about to read anything into it.

Her hair was a wild mess of curls, half of which fell across her face and hid the curves and edges of her cheek and jaw. Her lips were just slightly parted and he could see the white of her teeth as she breathed in and out softly.

There was a strong desire to lean over and kiss her awake. There was also a desperate need to drain his bladder. He let common sense override his desires and climbed carefully out of the bed.

Ten minutes later he was brewing coffee. Five minutes after that, he was whipping eggs into froth and chopping ham. He didn’t have any fresh mushrooms, so the canned ones would have to suffice.

He tried for an omelet; he got scrambled eggs with cheese, ham, and canned mushrooms. After that, he set the concoction on a plate, poured a cup of coffee and added the same amount of milk and sugar he’d seen Maggie add at the restaurant; it was enough sugar to put most people into a diabetic coma.

She was sitting up in his bed when he got back to the room. Maggie smiled a good morning to him and reached for the coffee gratefully as he set it down.

“Good morning.” He smiled and savored the look of her for a second before heading back into his kitchen for his plate.

“You coming back?”

“Yeah.” He did, carrying a plate identical to hers, but with five times as much sugar in the coffee.

“How are you feeling?” She sipped and looked over the lip of the mug at him.

“Better,” he shrugged. “My face doesn’t hurt that much, at least.” He sat at the foot of the bed, and set his plate down. “Thanks for staying.”

“Well, it was sort of my fault.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“If you didn’t know me, he wouldn’t have done that.”

“He would have. He said it was nothing personal, just business.”

“Did he say why?”

“So I wouldn’t tell anyone what you do.”

She started as if he’d slapped her. “He told you?” Her voice had dropped an octave; what came from her mouth was a sultry whisper that was purely unintentional.

“No. I sort of found out when the police were questioning me about Brian Freemont.”

Maggie looked at the wall, her lower lip trembling a bit. She was angry, he could see that, but she was also humiliated and embarrassed.

“Maggie.”

She didn’t respond; she was still looking through the wall.

“Maggie. Look at me.”

The glare she fired at him would have withered steel. Normally he would have been backing away in terror. This was different.

“Maggie, it’s okay. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“Maybe I didn’t want
you
to know. Did you think of that?”

“So pretend I don’t.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Ben, and you know it.”

“It does if you want it to.”

“I’m sitting here thinking I’ve finally got a friend, you know? Someone I can just be myself with, and he pulls this shit!” The mug went flying as her hands went to her face.

There are a thousand acts of courage committed every day that will never be catalogued as the actions of heroes. There are people who face the world as little as possible and for whom the act of going to the grocery store is a monumental feat. There are children who deal with their worst fears every single time they get onto a school bus and face another day where no one cares about them and the bullies are always waiting. For Ben Kirby, the very idea of touching Maggie was an act of courage. She was his ideal and she was the only one he’d let close to him in a long time.

He reached out and put his arms around her, leaning his chin into her hair. She resisted at first. She tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t let her.

Finally she relented and let herself be hugged. A few moments later she even hugged back.

“I don’t think any differently now.”

She laughed bitterly into his chest. “What? You always thought I was a whore?”

“Nope. Always thought you were quiet and nice to look at.”

“Liar.”

“It’s just a job. It gets the bills paid.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“Well, you’re right.”

She stayed there for a few more seconds and Ben closed his eyes, savoring her presence the way he always did. Perhaps he would have eventually gotten up the courage to tell her he loved her, but really, it wasn’t very likely.

Only one act of courage per day, please. We have to keep up our standards
.

Kelli Entwhistle awoke in a silent house for the first time since she’d moved in with the Listers. There was no sound from the Listers’ master bedroom. Normally there would have been at least the noise of the alarm clock or the shower running.

She spent the rest of the day feeling unsettled by the experience. She still half expected Teddy to come bounding into her room to wake her, even though he’d stopped doing that around the age of eight.

When school was done, she went back to the house and cleaned it from top to bottom. She even entered the master bedroom, despite her fear that she would find a bloodied shirt, or some sign that something had happened to Michelle.

There was nothing.

Ten minutes after she’d finished cooking herself dinner, the phone rang. She answered it, fully expecting to hear her employer’s voice. It was Lori Sinclair who spoke. Lori was a nice enough woman but had all the actual brain power of a gnat. Most of her energies were focused solely on being perky.

“Hi, Kelli! It’s nice to hear from you. I was just calling to double-check on the whole Halloween Block thing. You said you could take a clutch of kids trick-or-treating and I wanted you to know I’ve got you set up with ten, plus your own, of course. I can’t talk right now, busy, busy, busy, but I’ll get hold of you in a couple of days, okay? Thanks! You’re a love, bye!”

The phone clicked in her ear, a warning that Lori was now gone and on to the next phone call.

“Fuck.” She’d forgotten all about Halloween. Lori either hadn’t heard or had forgotten that Kelli’s charge was out of the scene. And damn, didn’t that start her wanting to cry again.

“Okay, so maybe I should do it anyway. The kids still need to be watched, and I could use a chance to get out of the house.” She leaned back in her seat and thought about it. There were some sweet kids out in the area and she liked kids. She genuinely did, which never ceased to amaze her friends from school.

“It could be fun. I’ll call the girls and we’ll get it going on and maybe even dress up ourselves.” She smiled. “Then there’re some parties to hit. So, yeah, I’ll do it.” She looked around and exhaled. “Christ, I’m talking to myself again.”

The room did not answer her.

Michelle Lister never made it home. She had court for most of the day and then she had a meeting with another client, and after that she needed to dig into the legal research her interns had dragged up for her; the proper destruction of a hospital took effort.

Make no mistake about it: the entire situation was extremely personal. Her only child, a boy she loved as much as she had ever loved anything in her life, was dead. She knew that. She felt it in her heart. She let Kelli stay, of course, because the girl was practically family after the last few years, and it would have been wrong to turn her out.

And it would have been lonely. The damned house was always too big and now, well, now it was just plain monstrous. If Bill was indeed dead—a thought she tried not to let creep into her mind because, like the house, it was too big—then she would sell the house and move somewhere else, somewhere smaller without any of the emotional luggage.

For now, however, she was busy, and that meant she would have to wait a while to discuss everything with Kelli. Dinner was a double cheeseburger and fries; she ate while she drove and called to her assistants to get the paperwork ready. They were jumping hard and fast to keep Michelle happy right now, not only because of her losses, but also because her temper was legendary at the offices.

She spent three hours going over the papers and making her own notes. Tomorrow she would have them typed up and properly filed. For now it was enough to get everything ready.

After that, when she realized she had spent the day in a frenzy and might actually be able to sleep, she started for home. The air was thick outside: sometime after she’d gone to the offices, the weather had changed. Heavy ground fog slipped along the edges of the buildings and across the road like phantom waves, shifted by the wind. The air was colder too, and she felt a shiver run up her spine as the misty weather crept through her clothes.

“I hate this damn town.” She moved over to the car and double-checked to make sure that no one was lurking around the building. College towns could get weird at night and lately this one was worse than usual. Too many disappearances, too many strangers, too many people who could be a threat.

Not enough family left.

She let herself think for a second and that was a mistake. Just like that, everything washed over her again, Teddy and Bill and everything. If Bill really was gone and the last thing she’d said to him was to accuse him of sleeping around— which he hadn’t done, but it always pissed him off—she would never forgive herself.

The tears started a few seconds later and despite her best efforts they wouldn’t leave her alone. Her eyes were dripping like a bad sink and she hated it.

“Screw this!” She wiped the wet works away with her palms and opened the car door. If she was going to turn into a bawling baby she was going to do it in the comfort of her own home, no matter how little comfort it provided.

The radio went up to a little lower than deafening and she popped in her Police CD. Sting always helped make her feel a little better.

Then she was on the road and heading for home. Sting was talking about a Scottish Loch and she was letting herself start to unwind, to get a little tension undone, when she saw the flash of movement up ahead in the fog.

She tapped the brakes because, for just a second that looked like . . .

“Teddy?”

Her heart stuttered, it shivered inside of her chest. She came to a complete stop and climbed out of the car. “Teddy? Are you out there?”

“Mommy?”
His voice! Oh, Jesus, his VOICE!
She didn’t stop to think, she merely ran. Behind her the idling car moved forward, slowly gathering speed as it moved away. She was aware of the problem, but couldn’t let herself think about a car: her son was up ahead, out in the darkness of the woods.

“Mommy? I’m scared!”

“Baby! Momma’s coming!” Her heel broke and she kicked the shoe off irritably as she moved off the road and into the woods. “Momma’s coming honey, where are you?”

“Mommy!”

She turned and saw him as he dropped from the air like an angel on wings. His hair streamed around his sweet face, a red-blond halo illuminated by the dwindling taillights of the car.

The car left the road, thudding and bumping its way across the ground and coming to rest against a thick oak tree with an audible crunch.

Teddy dropped into his mother’s arms and she cried out in an ecstasy of joy. His skin was so cold in the fog, so damp, that she had a brief horrifying notion that she was touching a corpse. But dead children couldn’t move, couldn’t smile with such beauty as you pulled them closer. He smelled the way a little angel should smell: of the sea breeze and the sand.

“Mommy!” God, just hearing him, touching him was all she ever needed to be complete. She realized that now, after she had almost lost him. She’d given up, had even thought—

“Oh my God, Teddy,” her voice, usually so calm and in command, broke and she let it, the tears falling freely from her eyes as she hugged him fiercely. “Oh my baby, I thought you were dead! I thought I’d never see you again,” she cried, pressing her hot face against his shoulder and neck and braying out her joy without any inhibitions.

His delicate little hands moved into her hair and he whispered sweetly into her ear, “Mommy, I missed you.”

“Don’t you ever leave me again, baby. Don’t you dare ever run away again.”

“I won’t, Mommy. We’ll be together forever. You and me and Daddy.”

“Your father?” The cold came back, the void opened again beneath her as she struggled with the words that would make him hurt less when he heard them. Bill was dead; he had to be dead, because his shoe was left behind.

“Daddy will be with us. Here he comes now.” Teddy’s voice sounded wrong, teasing, like when he waited for her to open his present to her at Christmas. It was both a wonderful sound and an oddly chilling one.

“Honey, about your daddy . . .”

“What about me?” Bill’s voice was in her ear, directly behind her, but she’d never heard him approach and never felt his breath touch her skin. Cold, hard hands slipped across her shoulders, massaging her flesh. She shivered at the touch and tried to turn her face to see if it really was Bill she felt. He pressed his body against her, his hands gripping harder than before, and she felt his excitement as he pushed still harder against her, pinning her in place.