Turn Up the Heat (4 page)

“There’s nothing I can do,” Kincaid’s lawyer, Grant Devin, said for the third or fourth time.

“It doesn’t belong to him. He stole it.” Kincaid tried to make it a dry recitation of facts, but his anger rang through.

“So you say,” Grant said.

“Are you on my side, or not?” Kincaid demanded, then was pissed at himself, because of course Grant was on his side. No one could be more on anyone’s side than Grant had been on his.

Grant winced. “I’m sorry, I was just—it’s habit. Cataloguing what’s court-admitted fact and what’s hearsay. You know how I feel about him. I hate him every bit as much as you do.”

“No,
I’m
sorry.” Kincaid thumped himself on the chest, a
my bad
gesture.

Grant stroked one side of his mustache, a habit he’d had as long as Kincaid had known him. Grant and his now-ex-wife Jeannie owned land near his grandparents’. They’d been his grandparents’ close friends, and after Kincaid’s grandfather’s death, Grant had played surrogate to Kincaid, taking him fishing and mountain biking from time to time on the conservation land that bordered both properties. Kincaid had always liked Grant a lot—he allowed no bullshit and treated him like an adult. And Kincaid liked him even more now, because the guy had given up so much—everything, really—to try to save Kincaid’s ass.

“He abused her. And now he’s living in her house—”

My home.

Most of the time, Kincaid tried to blot out the sights and scents, but when his defenses were down at night, they crowded his mind. As a child, he’d played soldier, cop, adventurer, pirate, on his grandparents’ land, heavily forested, rich with fir, spruce, and ponderosa pine, and still worth a fortune to the timber company that had unsuccessfully wooed his family. When he was done playing, he ran to the small house, where his grandfather had cleared trees long ago to create an oasis of sun in the middle of the woods. His grandmother—Nan, he’d called her, because her name was Nancy, and she was too young for “Grandma”—fed him chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven, or, at dinnertime, long-simmered stews, roasted chicken, meaty Bolognese. As he drifted to sleep, strawberry bubble bath wafted down the hall, the scent of his grandmother taking a much-needed moment to herself.

“Caid,” Grant said gently. He was in his late sixties, bitterly divorced, deeply invested in his work. In fact, Grant’s endless devotion to Kincaid’s case had been the final straw for his beleaguered wife, who had gotten herself a dental degree, opened up shop as a dentist, and declared that she’d be happier—and better cared for—on her own.

Kincaid was fairly certain Grant hadn’t bought new clothes since Jeannie left, if the jeans and flannel shirt he was wearing were any indication. Seven years after the fact, Grant still had a quality of bleary post-divorce confusion about him, but Kincaid got the feeling he was happy to be able to work any hours he wanted without harassment.

Kincaid shook his head. “There was a will. I know there was. Nan talked about it all the time. She wanted everything to go to Safe Haven.”

From the time Kincaid was a young teenager, his grandmother had volunteered at Safe Haven, a shelter where homeless kids could also receive an elementary education. She ran clothing drives, assisted in classrooms, and eventually served on the board.

I take care of strays of all kinds,
she would tell him, patting him on the head—that was when she was still a couple of inches taller than he was, which didn’t last long. And she did. Not just the children at Safe Haven, but him, of course, as well as dogs, cats, and small wild creatures. She took them in, healed them, fed them, loved them.

She’d tried her best to fill all the gaps and patch up all his wounds. Still, he’d gotten scared sometimes, because she was older than everyone else’s parents. Because his parents had died and his grandfather had died and he knew people died, just like that, without giving you any warning. Without giving you time to get used to the idea or to make plans. But she’d told him not to worry. She’d promised him.
No matter what, Kincaid, I will
always
take care of you.

She’d died only a handful of weeks after he’d gone to prison, had a fatal heart attack. And he’d blamed himself for that, too, for the stress he’d put her under and the beatings he hadn’t, in the end, managed to save her from.

“It’s the only thing I can do for her. She took care of me, and the only thing I can do for her is make sure her money ends up where I know she wanted it to go. And not—”

Not in Arnie Sinclair’s hands. Not in the hands of a man who did the opposite of taking care. Who hurt and destroyed.

Grant sighed. “But there’s no will.”

“He hid it, then. Or destroyed all the paper copies.”

“So you say,” repeated Grant, his skepticism written on his grizzled, bearded face.

Kincaid didn’t bother to fight him this time. The guy was a lawyer; he couldn’t help it.

Grant poked a finger against the surface of his desk. “The reality, from a legal perspective, is that there’s no will, and Arnie Sinclair was married to your grandmother. He’s her next of kin, and the money and the land, everything, is his.”

“He coerced her into that marriage.” It had been during the late stages of the trial, one of the final blows to Kincaid’s equilibrium.
I couldn’t save her from that, either.

Grant shook his head. “No. She was just—she was a softie, Kincaid. She probably thought she could save him. You know, turn him away from the dark side.”

Grant was almost certainly right. Nan had once said to Kincaid,
I’m a sucker for the wounded and the feral.
Arnie had been the latter, for sure. But that wasn’t the point. “He hid the will. He stole her money.”

“Kincaid, I know how painful this is—”

“I can’t just let it go.”

“You can, and you have to. There’s
nothing
you can do.”

“I can find that will.”

“No, you fucking can’t,” said Grant.

Kincaid had never heard Grant curse, had never seen him this angry.

“You make one wrong move and you’re back behind bars. You so much as
breathe
near your grandmother’s property, you so much as bare your teeth in Arnie Sinclair’s direction—I don’t have to tell you the cops in Yeowing hate your guts. You’ll be back in prison so fast, you won’t even have time to call me. Ten years ago, Arnie Sinclair had everyone’s sympathy because he was an ‘older guy.’ Now he’s an
old man.
How do you think it’ll go down if you’re caught on
his
property? Messing with his stuff?
Threatening him?
”

Kincaid knew Grant was right. And since the assault Arnie had spent almost ten more years in the town where Kincaid had grown up, establishing even more deeply his right to be there, the compassion of his neighbors, the “fact” that he’d been innocent of the abuse Kincaid had accused him of. The law had declared that Kincaid was a criminal and Arnie was above reproach.

“Not well,” admitted Kincaid.

“Caid. I know how you feel.”

Kincaid couldn’t meet his eyes—too much pity there. And too many words in his own head:
I don’t think you do. I don’t think you know what it’s like to discover that the woman who raised you is being hurt, and you didn’t have any idea. I don’t think you know what it’s like to be the only thing standing between someone you love and physical pain. I don’t think you know what it’s like to be at the heart of rage and frustration, to lash out and to wake up from that place to realize you’ve become what you hated.

I don’t think you know what it’s like to want even the feeblest semblance of justice more than you want sleep or food or sex.

He flashed on the sensation of Lily’s lithe body moving in the space between him and the brick wall, on the red suffusing her face as she’d watched him spill all over his fist.

More than you want sleep or food,
he amended, and was angry at himself, not for the first time, for his weakness Friday night.

Grant was still talking. “I know how hard this must be for you. All of it. I know how much you’ve suffered. But you can’t throw away your freedom.”

“That’s not how she would have seen it,” Kincaid said. “If she knew she could do something that would help those kids, she wouldn’t talk about throwing anything away.”

He remembered one night when the shelter had been full and the volunteer manager had called his grandmother to ask what she should do about two kids—siblings—who’d just showed up. He and his grandmother had been sitting by the fire in their pajamas, drowsy and peaceful, with Brady the golden retriever stretched out beside him. When the call had come in, Nan had gotten dressed and driven to the shelter to pick up the kids, who’d spent the night sleeping on the pullout couch, by the fire, wearing Kincaid’s outgrown pj’s, with Brady curled up at their feet. Those kids had passed out of their lives the next day, but there had been others—kids she’d taken shopping for clothes, kids she’d tutored, kids she’d lectured, cajoled, disciplined, convinced not to give up on the idea of an education, a better life.

And yet, she’d never been too busy with those kids to spend time with him. To help him with his homework. To tuck him into bed.

Grant crossed his arms. “It’s too big a risk. You’re a free man—”

Something on Kincaid’s face made Grant retrace his steps. “I know it sucks not to be able to drink or hang out in bars or travel or go back to the town where you grew up—”

Kincaid shook his head. “It’s not that. It was me in Arnie’s house, me who grabbed that knife, me who threatened him, and me who cut him. I know I deserved to go to prison, no matter what you argued. And I know I’m lucky to be out. I’m lucky to get parole. You did good, best you could. It’s not that. But free? This isn’t freedom. Knowing he’s out there, gloating, that he hurt her and took everything away from her. Everything.”

There were times—so many times—in prison that he’d thought,
I wish I’d killed him.
And so many other times he’d thought,
I wish I’d never gone there.
That was the rest of his life, poised between those two regrets, and remembering the horror of what he’d become in those moments in Arnie Sinclair’s house.

Grant sighed. “You won’t be free if you go back to prison. You’ll be the opposite of free.”

Kincaid shrugged. “There are all different kinds of free. I won’t let him take away what belongs to those kids.”

Because I owe her that much
.
I couldn’t help her, but I can do this.

Grant turned away, and for a second Kincaid thought he was finally going to wash his hands of him. But then Grant sighed. “I get it. Just—do only what you absolutely have to. Keep your nose clean otherwise. And if it’s illegal, don’t tell me about it, okay?”

Kincaid nodded, feeling something loosen in his chest. Grant was the closest thing he had to a friend these days, and it meant a lot to have his support, even grudgingly given. Even with all those warnings attached.

“And for fuck’s sake,” Grant said, “be careful.”

“Who are you looking for?”

That was Lily’s sister, Sierra, and there was no putting anything past her. She and her husband, Reg, and their kids, Alana, Joelle, and Ben, had come into the diner for brunch. It was Saturday morning, eight days past Lily’s fateful alleyway encounter, and she was still looking up hopefully every time someone entered. For the first few days, she told herself Kincaid’s absence could be coincidence—he’d missed a day or two, they’d missed each other when she was doing a brunch shift and he’d come for dinner—but by Thursday she’d had to admit that it was much more likely that he was avoiding her.

That didn’t stop her from jumping a foot every time the door opened.

And Sierra had noticed.

Lily set down the plates she was carrying—scrambled eggs and bacon for the kids, an avocado, bacon, and cheddar omelet for Reg, and French toast for Sierra—and ignored her sister’s question.

“Can I get anyone anything else?”

Her nieces and nephew shook their heads, and Reg smiled at her. She was glad her sister had married such a nice guy, a towhead with a perpetual smile and a personality to match.

“I think we’re set. Don’t play and eat,” Sierra said absently to her youngest, Ben, who was tapping on the screen of an aging iPod touch with his right hand and shoveling eggs into his mouth with his left.

“I’m making a pig volcano,” Ben said, proudly.

“What’s a pig volcano?” Lily asked.

Blond-haired, angelic Ben and his equally blond sisters, Alana and Joelle, all began talking at once. Alana, the oldest at ten, won out and explained. A pig volcano, she said, was when you mined a hole in the ground, filled it with pigs, and pumped it full of water. Because the hole was already chock-full of pigs, it could accept only so much water before it would erupt, shooting pigs skyward.

“Of course. Didn’t you tell me Minecraft was educational?” Lily inquired of her sister.

“It is,” Sierra said. “They have to solve problems. In order to make a pig volcano, first they need stone, and in order to get stone, they need a pickaxe, and in order to get a pickaxe they have to get wood and craft it—”

“Excellent preparation for real life,” Lily said dryly. “Pig volcanos are very important for survival.”

Alana crossed her arms. “You’re supposed to take our side. You’re our auntie. If you tell her it’s not educational, she won’t let us play.”

“I said it was excellent preparation for real life,” Lily said.

“You were being
sarcastic,
” Alana said, but she leaned her head against Lily. She smelled like sunscreen and breakfast and child, and when Lily bent to kiss her, her blond hair was soft and silky against Lily’s cheek.

“You can play Minecraft after you’ve finished,” Sierra said. “Just don’t fight over the iPod. Take turns nicely. Use the timer.”

“We always take turns nicely,” Ben said.

Lily turned to go back to the kitchen.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sierra said. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

Lily pretended not to hear, but she knew Sierra saw right through her.