Web of Smoke (11 page)

Christie nodded, rubbing her temples.

DC Porter. He was like a nightmare that refused to fade, even after the sun came up. From the first time Christie had looked into his gritty blue eyes, she’d instinctively known that he was trouble. Not that she could convince her mother of it. Her mom had been on his short leash and sang his praises every time he gave a yank. Ten years her mother’s junior, he had swept her right off her feet. She’d worshiped him.

Near the end, though, Christie thought she had glimpsed something different in her mother’s eyes. A flicker of fear, a hope for rescue. Yet she steadfastly refused any lifeline Christie threw her. Until that day….

Sam began jamming the files back into the bag. “God, I hate this guy. Describe him again.”

Christie stood, suddenly stiff as a board. “He’s average height. He’s blond and he wears his hair short now. He has this look about him. I can’t explain it. He turned my blood cold the first time I met him. But he can be charming. I’ve seen him in action and he’s good.”

“At least he doesn’t sound like any of my students. He’s begging for a lesson, though. I can’t wait to give it to him.”

They walked back to the Jeep, the intimate mood gone, the humming currents banked. Although she tried not to admit it, she felt saddened by the loss.

Chapter Ten

DC parked outside his mother’s house and waited in his car for her to come home. He didn’t go to the door because he had no reason to believe he’d be invited inside. He figured if he hadn’t been asked yet, he probably never would.

Perched on a hill, her house sat in the middle of an acre of real estate. A blanket of green grass stretched from the base of the house to a shrub border. A white stuccoed wall shielded the house from the street but, long ago, DC had found this spot on the hill to park. He’d spent many nights here, watching her cocktail parties, glittering with champagne and laughter. He’d seen his stepbrother, James, introduced like young royalty to his mother’s smiling court.

Her car rounded the corner and zoomed up the drive. Stepping from his car, DC walked down the hill, scaling the wall with a groan of sore muscles. He’d fought three women in the past few days and each had left her mark.

Landing on the macadam drive, he hunched and shuffled to the concealing foliage along the base of the wall. His fingers brushed her shiny new car as he passed it in the horseshoe driveway.

DC had never had the nerve to come so close to her domain, to actually sully the ground with his passage, and now he felt a sick, nervous tension grip him. He knew she wouldn’t welcome him.

He slipped into the backyard, where patio tables and chairs clustered around a pool that glittered like a gem centered in a red tile setting. Last July, they’d celebrated James’s thirteenth birthday out here. Their mother had carried a cake out and everyone sang, their voices drifting up the hill to DC’s secluded hideaway.

Now, rap music blasted from an upstairs window as DC crept to the back door and peered through the screen into the kitchen. His mother stood just inside, the phone cupped between her shoulder and chin. A frown marred her face. Barefoot, she paced.

“I thought you’d be home,” she said into the phone. She sounded pissed, her pause weighted, her response tight.

“I know you’re busy, but so am I.” Another tension-filled pause. “I don’t
know
what he’s doing. That’s my
point.
Unless one of us is here, there’s no way to know what he’s been up to.”

She was talking to her husband, probably about James. DC’s stepbrother was a punk who didn’t know how good he had it. James wouldn’t have survived DC’s childhood. The two sons shared a mother, but their lives couldn’t have been more different.

DC’s mother coiled the phone cord around a finger, listening to the voice on the other end.

“Just call me next time. I’ll come home early. It’s just not safe to leave him alone. Okay?”

She apparently received her answer and hung up without saying good-bye. DC stayed where he was, listening to her fuss in the kitchen. Except for James upstairs playing his music, she seemed to be the only one home, but he wanted to be sure.

* * *

Inside the kitchen, she replaced the phone and stared at it. Lately every conversation she had with her husband was centered in a conflict that revolved around James. Stopping a sigh before it reached her lips and tipped her over the edge of melancholy into depression, she looked up to find James watching her with cold, hostile eyes.

“Was that Dad?” he asked.

“Yes, it was.”

“Why didn’t he pick me up from school?”

“There was a problem with one of his patients—”

James made a sound of disgust. “Figures.”

“Have you had dinner yet?” she asked, pretending to smile.

“Cut the shit, Mom. I can feed myself.”

“I don’t doubt that, James. I simply asked because I’m going to make myself a tuna sandwich. Would you like one?”

“A good home-cooked meal? No thanks, I’ll just do drugs like I usually do.”

“James!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Dad or any of your friends.”

“That’s not what—”

“Save it, Mom. I don’t do drugs. I don’t need to. I’m fucked up enough as it is.”

Staring at her son, she felt swamped with the hopelessness of her situation. No matter how badly she wanted to, she just couldn’t communicate with either her husband or her son. She knew James was trying to get a rise out of her, so she tamped down the surge of frustration that made her want to scream.

“James, I wanted to apologize for yelling at you this evening when I got home,” she said, trying to sound reasonable, even though his freezing glare told her it was no use. “It wasn’t your fault that your father was unable to pick you up—”

“Like you care. It’s too late, Mom.”

He grabbed a soda and left before she could think of anything to say. Sighing, she put her head in her hands, her appetite nearly gone.

Feeling older than she should, she took a can of tuna from the cupboard anyway. Setting it on the counter, she turned around to find DC sitting in her kitchen with his feet propped on the table. DC.

NO!
she wanted to scream.

He looked like an alien imposter peering at her through DC’s eyes. But she knew that smile no matter how she wished she didn’t. And the scratches on his cheek were a glaring indication that he hadn’t changed inside.

He watched her reactions with smug satisfaction. Surprise attacks were his MO and he took pride in his unpredictability. He always had.

“What happened to your face?” she asked.

“Looks good, huh?”

“Not to me. I’d hoped to have seen the last of you,” she said, opening the tuna as if it didn’t bother her in the least to have him there.

“I knew you’d be thrilled.”

“What do you want?”

“What are you having?”

She glared at him. “Tuna fish.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“I wasn’t offering.”

“Of course not. I heard you and James. Has the little prince upset the palace?”

DC stood and sauntered to the refrigerator. He opened it and grabbed a Heineken from the bottom shelf. Water condensed on the bottle, dribbling down the sides and moistening his fingers. When he pushed the door shut, he left a bright red print on the shiny white surface of her no-smudge refrigerator. It looked out of place in the sparkling relief of the glittering kitchen. Feeling sick, she grabbed a paper towel.

“Yours?” she asked, pointing at the blood.

“I doubt it.”

“Whose?”

A light blond stubble shadowed his cheeks, glinting in the muted light. It made his smile look wicked and wild, the scratches mean and ominous. He shook his head and laughed into his beer bottle, watching her. With a shiver she wiped the bloody print away.

“Some pad you got, Mommy.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your mommy.”

He laughed again, enjoying himself. “Hurry up with that sandwich. I’m hungry.”

Her vicious glare only made him laugh harder. Deliberately, he sat and propped his feet back up. How could she get rid of him before her husband got home?

Standing indecisively before him, she watched as he looked around the bright kitchen, craning his neck to peer at the rooms beyond. His casual glance felt like an armed invasion.

“Real nice place,” he said. “Not like the old days, huh?”

“I’ve worked hard for what I’ve got.”

“I know, Mommy. No one has sacrificed as much as you.”

His sarcasm earned him another glare. Inside, she shook with anger. How dare he come back?

“I know I didn’t sacrifice that much,” he mocked. “No sir, living with Grandma and Grandpa was just fine with me.”

He tilted his head back and downed his beer. His throat muscles convulsed and droplets leaked out of the corners of his mouth. He glugged the last swallow and wiped his mouth with a sleeve that was black with dried blood.

“Oh, my God.”

“Just fine with me,” he continued. “I thought Grandpa was a damned good screw, even if I was ten.”

“Shut up!”

He chuckled again. “Get me another beer.”

“You can’t stay. My husband is going to be home soon.”

“Sounds like you got a problem. I’m hungry.”

“If I give you something to eat, will you leave?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m looking forward to meeting your husband after all this time. Maybe I want to talk to my
brother,
too.”

“He’s not your brother, you animal.”

Her vicious words only brought a smile to his face. On shaking legs, she turned and began pulling things from the refrigerator. What time would her husband be home? What if James came back downstairs?

DC ate everything she put before him and drank three more beers before leaning back and patting his stomach.

“Now will you tell me why you’re here?” she asked.

“Business, Mommy. I’m here on business.”

She felt her heart straining against the paralyzing terror that his words evoked.

“We don’t have any business,” she said in a hoarse voice. She cleared her throat. “We never will again.”

“Oh, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. We’ve got a lot of business. Shit, we just opened up shop.”

He laughed without humor, his eyes glacial.

She could see herself, framed in the glass door by the darkness pressing against it from the other side. She looked defeated even in reflection. DC appeared commanding and in control.

Outside, a mockingbird twittered to the moon and a dog barked in response. She winced at the sound and noticed DC doing the same. He’d inherited her fear of dogs, it seemed. She tilted her head back, looking at the etched globes glowing beneath the antique ceiling fan. Taking a deep breath, she caught the scent of the honeysuckle growing around the patio, perfuming the night with a scent as light as mist. The stench inside had no odor, only the texture of futility.

“Whose blood are you wearing, DC?”

He opened his shirt and showed her a gash on his ribs. Worried, she eyed the chair he sat on and the carpet underneath him for traces of red, but his shirt was stiff and the wound had long since dried. She felt shaky with relief. How would she have explained blood to her husband?

“Your concern’s touching,” DC said. “I figured you’d want to doctor me up.”

Without a word she went to the bathroom off the kitchen and grabbed the first aid kit from the cupboard. Back in the kitchen, she dropped to her knees and eased DC’s shirt up over the gash in his side. His skin felt hot and it puckered around the wound. She didn’t want to touch him, and he knew it.

“It’s not too bad,” she said.

She wet a towel with cold water and roughly wiped the blood away from the cut, her nostrils filling with the sourness of blood mixed with sweat. While she cleaned and bandaged, her mind seemed to disassociate itself from the action of her hands. Sweat trickled down the side of her face to pool in the hollow of her throat. She stuck a last bandage to his skin.

“I’m done.”

DC nodded.

She took his shirt and the bloody towel to the laundry room, returning seconds later with a clean button-down clutched in her hand.

“You can have this and I’ll give you one hundred dollars. But you’ll have to leave.”

“A hundred bucks isn’t going to do. You should know better than that. We’ve got business. I’ve got a cargo.”

“I’m not in the cargo business,” she said with false bravado. Inside, she felt sick and weak. This couldn’t be happening. This chapter was supposed to be over.

“Oh, I think you are. I think you still got a lot to do with cargo. Don’t think you can jerk me around, either.” He glared her down, licking his lips. “Those sure are ugly uniforms they make them wear at James’s school. Must be private.”

She spun on her heel, staring at him openmouthed. “You keep away from my son.”

“Such loyalty. I’m impressed.” He gave her a measuring look. “Where’s Mary Jane?”

“She’s dead.”

He paled. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“It’s true.”

DC shook his head from side to side, shock shadowing his features. She thought she glimpsed tears in his eyes but didn’t believe for a moment that they were genuine. DC cared for no one but himself.

“When?” he asked, the word sounding small and strained.

“Right after you left. I guess she couldn’t deal with it.”

“She knew I’d be back.”

“That’s what I meant.”

His face hardened and the trace of remorse vanished. His expression became unreadable.

“How did she die?” he asked.

“Suicide. No note,” she lied.

Again he looked away from her, shielding his feelings behind a blanked mask. “And the house?” he asked in a husky voice.

“How would I know?” she said, taking satisfaction from his shock. The bastard. “What do you want, DC?”

“I need a place to stay. Me and my cargo.”

“I told you. I’m not in that business anymore.”

“Well, I suggest you get in the business. Or else I might decide to get in the business of talking. I bet your husband would be interested in what I have to say. Your
son,
too.”