Breaking the Rules (43 page)

“Wow,” Izzy said, applauding. “If worst-case scenario thinking was a sport, you Gillmans would win the gold.”

“Worst case,” Ben corrected him, “would have her ditching Greg along the way, for someone even more stupid.”

“An ex-con polygamist who’d cook crystal meth in the bathroom,” Eden added.

“While selling grenade launchers out of the trunk of his car,” Dan contributed, and it was weird. Even though the idea of Ivette being so freaking irresponsible royally pissed him off, he and Eden and Ben were all standing there, smiling at each other ruefully, in a rare moment of harmony.

Maybe because it was either smile or cry. And they’d all lived this nightmare long enough to know that crying wouldn’t change anything.

“Even if we don’t find her in time,” Dan told his sister and brother, “it’s going to be okay. One way or the other, we’re going to win this thing.”

But Ben was clearly worried. “Maybe we could get insulin on the street, and—”

“And your picture will end up on a milk carton,” Eden pointed out.

“So I’ll dye my hair,” he countered. “I’ll go surfer blond. I’ve been wanting to make a change—”

“If you really think that’s
all
that would have to change—” Eden started to say.

But Izzy stopped her. “Let’s not escalate this yet,” he said, aiming his words at Ben, too. “We’ve still got time to find her.”

“Did you get the address,” Jenn asked, “where Ivette was working? Maybe we can start there.”

“She’s in Montana,” Izzy told them. “Apparently the old guy knew
he was going to kick, and wanted to spend his last few days at his cabin, outside of Missoula.”

“Missoula, Montana,” Dan repeated. “Fantastic.”

“Would it be useful,” Jenn suggested, “if one of us flew up there and—”

“No.” Dan cut her off a little too sharply, but then reached for her, pulling her up and out of her seat and into his arms. “I’m sorry, baby,” he told her, closing his eyes as she hugged him back. “But it would be a waste of time.”

“Her air travel was negotiated by the client,” Izzy reported. “It’s hard to imagine her agreeing to go up there without having a way to get back home.”

“But it’s not hard to imagine,” Dan said, “Ivette cashing in a plane ticket and buying a much cheaper seat on a bus.” He looked at Jenn. “Which is why it would be a waste of time. She could be anywhere.”

“Including on her way back to Vegas,” Izzy pointed out. “If she lost her cell phone—”

“Abandoned it while making her getaway,” Ben corrected him.

“Lost or abandoned it,” Izzy said. “That explains why she hasn’t called you back.” He looked around the room from Dan to Jenni to Ben to Eden. “I haven’t given up hope. Eden and I left her a message back at the house. We stuck it to the fridge.”

“Assuming Greg doesn’t come home first, see it, and tear it up,” Eden interjected. “Come on, Ben. Get your meter.”

As Ben left the little kitchen, Dan saw that Jenn was watching him.

“This
is
going to work,” she said quietly, so only he could hear, as she hugged him again.

“I’m going to cry like a baby when you leave,” he told her just as softly.

Across the room, Izzy had to be tired—Eden, too. They both were silent, Eden finishing up her apple and Izzy staring almost hypnotically at Eden’s ass, which, in the extremely tight shorts she was wearing, left little to the imagination.

Except maybe Izzy was just taking a quick combat nap with his
eyes open, because when Eden moved to throw her apple core into the trash, he didn’t track her. He just stared into space.

But the SEAL looked up, snapping back to present and alert when Eden quietly asked, “Any luck finding Neesha?”

Dan let Jenn answer. “None,” she told them. “I went to that mall, while Dan stayed with Ben down at Child Services, but I didn’t see her—or anyone who looked like the man who chased you. Ben would still very much like to find her, though. And oh, while I’m thinking about it! I completely forgot last night … Neesha left you a twenty-dollar bill. She asked us to give it to you, Eden. She said that she took it from you—or maybe, Izzy—I guess, the last time she was here?”

Eden shook her head, refusing the bill that Jenn had pulled from the pocket of her jeans. “I’m not missing any money.”

“Twenty bucks?” Izzy asked. “Whoa, that’s great. That’s actually mine. Wow, yeah. It clears up a … big mystery.”

Eden looked at him. “What big mystery?”

“Um,” Izzy said. “Well, I
was
missing some money and … Now I know what happened to it.” He smiled brightly. “Mystery solved. Yay?”

Eden didn’t smile back at him. “You were missing some money,” she repeated.

And Danny knew exactly where this was going, and it wasn’t going to be pretty. He beat a retreat, pulling Jenn with him toward the living room. She didn’t resist—in fact, she hurried him along, and even stopped Ben and pulled him with them, too.

“Show me how that works,” Jenni told Ben, pointing to his blood glucose meter.

It was a valiant attempt at giving his sister and Zanella privacy, but it was completely in vain. This apartment was so small, there was no way someone in the living room could help but overhear a conversation going down in the kitchen.

“First you have to wash your hands,” Ben told Jenn. “And then you take one of these test strips and put it right here …”

“Great,” Dan heard Eden say to Izzy. “My brother only thought I was a prostitute. But you? You thought I was a thief. Thanks
so
much.”

“Then you prick your finger on the side, because it hurts less,” Ben said. “At least that’s what they say. It’s all pretty much the same.”

“Sweetheart …”

“Don’t touch me,” Eden said sharply, and Ben looked up, looked at Dan, clearly ready to go to their sister’s assistance if he needed to.

“It’s okay,” Jenn murmured to Ben, even as she met Dan’s eyes. “He would never hurt her.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Eden asked from the kitchen.
“Hey, Eden, I’m missing some money. Have you seen it?”

“Because it wasn’t that important?” Izzy said, phrasing it as a question, as if hoping it was the right answer.

“Because
you
thought I
stole
it,” she countered.

“Can we talk about this later?” Izzy asked, a tad desperately. “We’re both really tired and—”

“Neesha didn’t take it last night,” Eden said. “It had to be, what? The night before? Which means that all this time, you’ve been willingly—eagerly—sleeping with someone you think would steal money from you.”

“It’s not that simple,” Izzy told her.

“Isn’t it?” she asked. “Because from my end? It’s extremely simple. In fact, I can simplify it down to three little words: go to hell.”

And with that, she marched out of the kitchen, grabbed her handbag, and left the apartment, slamming the door shut behind her.

Zanella, meanwhile, was silent.

They were also silent there in the living room. Ben looked from Dan to Jenni, as if hoping either of them would do something. When they didn’t—Izzy and Eden weren’t the only ones who were exhausted—Ben stood up.

Jenn tried to stop him. “Honey, we should probably just—”

He shook her off, heading for the kitchen as he asked Izzy, “Aren’t you gonna go after her?”

“I don’t know what to say,” Izzy said quietly. “Because … she’s right.”

“Well,
I’m sorry
might be a good way to start,” Ben pointed out. “Are you sorry?”

“More than you can imagine,” Izzy admitted.

“Then tell her that,” Ben said.

There was silence, then somewhere—from the kitchen?—a cell phone began to blast, its ring tone one of the songs from the
South Park
movie.

“Shit!” Izzy swore.

Ben gave voice to the obvious. “She left her phone home.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Izzy said as he clomped his way out of the kitchen and over to the door. “Someone call me if she comes back, all right?”

“We will,” Ben promised as Izzy left, closing the door far more gently than Eden had.

It was obvious the kid was worried, and Dan tried to smile at him reassuringly. “You know, even if things don’t work out between Izzy and Eden,” he told his brother, “we’re still going to be okay. We’ll win custody anyway. We’re going to do whatever it takes.” He looked at Jenni for support, but she was looking at him slightly quizzically—in fact, her expression was a gentler variation of Ben’s
what the hell are you talking about?

“This isn’t about me,” Ben told Dan indignantly. “Not at all. This is about Eden and Izzy. She loves him. She always has—and he thought she
stole
from him. That’s gotta hurt.”

“Well, yeah,” Dan said. “That’s … Yeah. I mean, I’m sure she, you know, loves him in her own way.”

“What other way is there?” Ben asked. He wasn’t being a smart-ass. He was seriously asking.

“Um,” Danny said, and when he glanced at Jenn for help, she was wearing her
yeah, you can be an idiot, but I love you anyway
face. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know Eden very well, either,” his little brother told him, but it wasn’t with judgment, it was matter-of-fact, as he came back to sit
next to Jenni, who was still holding his meter. He pointed to the display. “This number tells me how I’m doing—if my blood sugar’s too high or too low. Either is bad. It’s got to be right in the middle.”

“And what does this particular number mean?” Jenn asked.

“It means I’m doing great, which also means it’s okay if I have some carbs, like pizza for an afternoon snack. Hint, hint.”

As Jenn laughed, Dan left them there, talking about Ben’s diabetes, knowing that he’d need to take a crash refresher course himself, but far too tired to do it now. Of course, knowing Jenni, she’d be an expert in a matter of hours, and would be able to teach Dan everything he needed to know.

“So you can eat pizza?” he heard her ask his brother as Danny went into the bedroom and lowered himself carefully onto the bed.

He lay there, staring at the ceiling as they talked about carbs and insulin adjustments and their favorite pizza toppings, as Jenni made Ben laugh, as they called for a pizza to be delivered, as they went back into the kitchen because Ben wanted to check something on Facebook, on Jenn’s computer, and she was happy to help him.

This was what having a family was supposed to sound like—it was what he’d always imagined it would sound like. And Dan closed his eyes and let their words and laughter wash over him as he relaxed enough to fall fast asleep.

After taking a too-long hike through the mall where he and Eden had been fired upon last night and coming up cold, Izzy finally went downtown. He more than half expected to find Eden at D’Amato’s working one of the poles.

It was where
he
would have gone—if he were her, and he wanted to give himself the biggest
fuck you
he could possibly deliver.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be a
fuck you
.

She thought her stripping didn’t bother him. Because he’d told her as much. Except, at the time that he’d said it? He’d pretty much meant it.

Damn, maybe her truthiness-in-the-heat-of-the-moment-itis was contagious, because this was totally her MO. Say something and mean it at the time, but then feel something completely different when a new day dawned and a new situation arose.

A situation such as Izzy’s walking into this place and fearing that he was going to see her up on that stage with a crowd of drooling men around her—all those eyes on her, all those reaching, grasping fingers …

As Izzy went into the club, he stopped just inside the door, letting his eyes adjust to the cool darkness. He looked down at the stage through his eyelashes, as if he were watching a particularly gruesome horror movie, but he didn’t see Eden and he didn’t see her, and nope, she definitely wasn’t there.

Which didn’t mean she wasn’t in the dressing room, taking a break.

In theory, he wanted to be in agreement that Eden had the prerogative to do what she wanted, to make her own choices, to live her life the way she deemed best. In theory, he could understand the whole seemingly neo-feminist viewpoint that a body was a body, and if people wanted to pay outrageous sums to see her unclad, so be it, and more power to her.

But in practice?

It was a totally different animal.

Either that, or something had changed between today and the night they’d discussed Eden’s career as an exotic dancer. Something was different. Some switch had been flipped in Izzy’s brain that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck at the mere thought of Eden smiling into other men’s eyes, and letting them touch her—just enough to slip their money into her panties, but touch her just the same.

That bill roll she’d showed him only seemed impressive as long as he didn’t think about what it meant. Each of those bills came from a hand, which was attached to a man, who’d probably gotten at least a little hard from watching Eden dance.

And no, Izzy didn’t like that. At all.

But he hadn’t communicated that fact to Eden, so if she
had
come to work, maybe it was just her way of being practical and efficient and earning the most money that she possibly could, while she still could.

Maybe she was going to take his advice so that she wouldn’t have to lie to the social worker about where she worked, at tomorrow’s meeting. Maybe she’d come here so she could quit—right after she left the stage tonight.

The bouncer with the Marine tattoo was back by the bar, and Izzy nodded to him as he ordered a coffee from the bartender.

“We’re out,” the man told him, without an apology.

“Seriously?” Izzy asked, because damn, he was tired. A beer was out of the question, and the burst of energy he’d get from a cola would rapidly decay into a sugar crash, leaving him even more fatigued. And to him, diet soda tasted like tea made from metal shards.

“Kitchen’s closed tonight.”

“Last time I checked,” Izzy pointed out, “coffee wasn’t food.”

“There’s a Starbucks three blocks down, across from the McDonald’s—for when you’re heading home.”

That
was a solution? “But I want coffee now,” Izzy argued, even though he knew it wasn’t going to make a cup magically appear.