Charming (26 page)

Pulling on the tee and hoodie, Haley chewed her lip. She didn’t want to cry. She was so, so tired and sick of shedding tears. But all these people loved her so much more than her own flesh and blood, so much like Mom had loved Haley. “He does.”

Christine gasped. “What? Did you just
agree
with me, Haley-loo-boo? Girl who’s sat back and taken her dad’s shit for years?”

“Yes. I’m not going to let him touch me ever again.”

“Neither am I.”
Chris
.

Christine reacted by shoving the door open, shocked by his sudden appearance.

“Oomph.” Chris fell back from the force of the Porsche hitting his gut, but Richard braced him.

Standing about six-feet tall, broad shouldered and barrel-chested, all muscles and brawn and sexy, Richard was the perfect candidate to prevent Chris’s fall. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing me to a fight, dude.”

“Didn’t know there would be a fight, Harvey.” Chris straightened and limped toward the car.

“Oh, hell, Chris.” Christine jumped out and punched his shoulder. “You scared the beejeezus out of me. There
are
psycho killers on the loose. And you brought this piece of shit?”

“Aww,” Richard said, beaming a brilliant smile, “I love pet names.”

“Ass.”

“Technically, Christine, he brought me. I needed a ride.” Kneeling by the door in his dark-washed jeans and gray Henley, Chris grinned at Haley, a warm, genuine thing that made her stomach flip-flop. “You waited.”

Calm down, heart
. “I waited.”

“I’m glad.”

“You’re alive.”

“I’m alive.” Chris’s smile never faltered, not even for a second. “Just a little flesh wound. Nothing a few stitches wouldn’t take care of.” He reached behind his back. “Harvey, bag.”

Richard passed Chris a plastic bag. “Dude, tell me you didn’t beat the shit out of the girl you’ve been crushin’ on for months?”

Chris growled and glanced over his shoulder. “Do me a favor, Harvey?”

A playful smile stretched across Richard’s face, and he shrugged. “Sure.”

“Shut up. For once, just shut up.” Chris held out the bag for Haley. “I brought you something.”

She peeked inside and laughed. Boots. Chris brought boots like the ones Haley had worn Saturday.

“Thank you.”

He shook his head and locked his blue-eyed gaze on Haley’s lips. Chris wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted—and Haley didn’t mind that one bit.

What would running fingers through his hair feel like? What would his lips taste like? Desire took root in Haley’s belly, desire and heat, and longing she didn’t know how to control.

“Don’t thank me.” Chris wadded up the plastic bag and shoved it in his pocket. “Thank my mom when you see her. I talked to my dad and told him everything, even what happened to Christine, and he wants us to go home to talk to him some more. He said he’ll help you, that this is his fault, his problem to worry about, and you’ve received the brunt of this man’s wrath.”

“Walter Withe,” Haley blurted, breaking the spell Chris cast on her, quelling the desire, the need to find answers to romantic questions she had no right asking.

“Who?”

“Dude’s famous,” Richard said. “If you’re into that sort of thing.”

Scowling at Richard, Christine took a knee next to Chris. “That’s the psycho’s name, Loverboy, and we know where he has Joce and Niles. Haley here thinks she needs to do this without the police, save them and prove her innocence.”

“You know all this, and yet you waited?” Chris took possession of his seat and winced.

“Hardest thing I’ve ever done.” The boots were warm and comfortable and exactly what Haley needed. Now she wouldn’t stand out so much, she could go to Clarksburg and actually get out of the car.

Find Joce and Niles.
Save
Joce and Niles.

“How?”

“Mr. Charming, has your vocabulary been reduced to single-syllable words? What do they teach you in that fancy prep school?”

Richard laughed at Christine’s joke, and she glared at him, shutting him up instantly.

“Look, Haley saw the “Officer’s” car on our way here. We stopped, asked the old lady of the house a bunch of questions, and we now know that crazy old Walter Withe, who painted himself red and ran through town naked after he found his father’s brain on the floor of a closet, has Niles and Joce in a piece of shit house somewhere on Cross Road in Clarksburg. We also know that his dad killed himself because he and Walter were laid off from Berkshires and pretty much gave up on life, right after Haley’s mom died. See the picture? He idolized Haley’s mom, and it seems he’s avenging her death and his father’s.”

“Michael Withe,” Chris said, nodding. “I remember him. He worked in marketing and always said how proud he was of his son for how far he’d made it in life despite his disabilities.”

“Well, how are people supposed to pay for meds when they don’t have insurance?” Christine hummed the
Twilight Zone
theme song. “I’ve heard rumors that Walter reenacts the suicide.”

“I think you’re having one of those lapses in judgment right now.” Haley opened the door and stepped into the chilly evening air, closing her eyes but still seeing images of brains on floors, of blood on walls, of Walter. Walter visited the cemetery almost as often as Haley, not as a groundskeeper, but as a mourner, as someone out for revenge. He told her not to let anyone hurt her, control her life, or steal her happiness with ‘callous decisions.’

Walter must have thought he helped by taking away a dad who beat her and a sister who just didn’t understand. But his help hurt more than anything Mr. Charming ever did—and that was not intentional. Business. Just business.

This? What Walter did?

Haley had to find him, show him that no one would ever hurt her again, especially not him.

Not going to be a victim
.

“What are you thinking about?” Chris draped his arms on Haley’s shoulders and stared down.

Not now. Not here
.

“About how Walter is crazy, sad, but crazy.” Haley met Chris’s eyes and melted into him, wrapped her arms around his waist and soaked in his warmth, his protection, his… feelings? What did he feel? “And I’m thinking I need to prove to him I’m not a victim.”

“You’re not.”

“I’ve acted like it.” For far too long.

“What do you want, Haley?”

What did Haley want? She wanted to get out of this hiding spot, to leave, to be a hero and not a battered child. Haley wanted to live, to take back everything she’d given up. “I want to go to Clarksburg.”

“Then we’ll go to Clarksburg.”

“You’re not as hard to like as you think you are, Chris.”

He smiled, big and warm and enchanting. “And you? Am I as bad as you thought I was?”

Haley stood on tiptoes and whispered, “Not at all.”

Richard cleared his throat. “So, uh, heard you blew up your house this morning, Haley.”

Chris ran at his friend and threw a punch, but Richard ducked, and Chris rammed his fist into the Porsche. He grunted, kicked instead and made contact with the jerk’s gut, made him double over with laughter.

And Christine couldn’t help herself, either. “Oh, boys. Do it again. I love watching testosterone on a playing field. You’re an asshole, by the way, Richard.”

“He is,” Chris said. “I filled him in on the ride here, so all this insensitivity is for fun. Big ass doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut.”

Richard leaned back on the hood of the car and crossed his legs at his ankles. “Someone’s got his panties in a wad today.”

“Not in the mood, Dick.” Chris flashed a tight smile over his shoulder and pressed his hand against his side. “Sorry. He had it coming.”

Were males incapable of remaining calm? Of keeping their hands to themselves even when they were mortally wounded—or close to it? “Fine.”

“Won’t happen again… for at least an hour.” Chris returned to Haley’s side and pulled her closer to Richard. “Think you can give us a ride to Clarksburg?”

“I just love how males can go from fighting to civilized in three seconds flat. Maybe scientists should study their brains and hormones to search for clues that would lead to better treatments for Bi-Polar disorders?” Christine sat next to Richard and crossed her arms and ankles. “And by the way, whose judgment should be called into question now? Haley, there’s no need to go all gung-ho and try to save the world.”

“You told me this morning that I’d need a lawyer, that my sister’s note would ruin me. My house is gone. My dad is gone. My
life
is gone. You don’t want me to be a victim? Well, I don’t want to be one. I don’t want to sit around and wait for help. What if he kills Joce before the police arrive? What if he decides this is all too dangerous, that I’m the liability—that’s what he called me—he figured me to be, and he’s done. What if he took things from my house? Things that would make it so hard to believe my innocence that no jury could possibly stand and deliver a ‘not guilty’ verdict? You saw him going in and out of my window, not me. But he was there. He was there all the time.”

Chris tensed, his posture straight and tall and his fists clenched at his sides. “He was in your room?”

“Is him being in her room somehow worse than, oh, I don’t know, him kidnapping Joce and her dad and cutting off fingers?” Christine turned toward Haley and sighed. “Let me think.”

“About what?” Haley screamed.

“About whether I’m willing to die today.”

Haley couldn’t protest and clamped her mouth closed. Was she asking Chris, Richard, and Christine to die for her cause today? If they went along, of course she was.

Christine lit a joint and drew two quick puffs, three long, then coughed. Richard chewed at his thumbnail, staring at Christine, then finally took the joint and sucked in a hit.

Chris squeezed Haley’s fingers.

“Are you with me?” she asked her best friend in the whole world.

“Always.” Christine nodded and flicked her joint on the asphalt, then stomped out the cherry. “I’m always with ya, babe. I just hope it’s not the last time I’m with you. I wish this was easier.”

“What did you say about wishes pretty much never coming true?”

“Touché.”

“I’m in, too. If you haven’t noticed, I bore easily. Let’s go.” Richard clutched his keys and ran for his late-model pickup truck parked twenty feet away from the Porsche. The inside of his truck smelled of dry-rotting foam, old leather, and some hideous pine-scented air freshener. All four of them sat in the same row. Haley and Christine shared the middle, Haley with legs as close to Chris on the passenger’s side as she could get, Christine with legs as close to Haley as she could get.

“So, really, Haley, I’ve heard rumors—and Chris’s version—but did your dad really do that to your face?” Richard asked.

Telling Chris was one thing, but being honest with the whole world?
Not ready. Not ready at all
. Haley stared at the trees as they passed, at people still milling around town and gossiping about the goings-on.

Warmth radiated from Chris, replacing her fear and cold and panic and inability to breathe with comfort and caring and safety. He captured Haley’s gaze, held it, spoke volumes of needed things to her with those blue eyes, with the slight curve of his lips. Chris held promise, a promise Haley’d subconsciously desired for years.

“Don’t make her talk about it, Richard,” he said. Chris was every bit his father and every bit his mother. He was kind and intelligent, genuine and honest. If only she’d let him in sooner.

Maybe in some sick, twisted way Walter really had helped Haley.

Definitely sick and twisted.

“As long as I don’t have to kick someone’s ass for a black eye and—”

“Don’t worry about it, Richard. My dad won’t ever touch me again. But… thanks.” Haley found a spare smile and gave it to Chris, and even in a cramped truck, she felt as if they were alone.

“Good. I’ll kill your dad if he ever tries this again.” Richard swiped dark blond hair from his forehead, then returned his hand to the wheel, quiet, contemplative.

They sat in silence and drove on winding roads through flatlands with large pristine farms: two-story houses with wrap around porches at the end of long driveways; big red barns overflowing with hay set off a short distance from each house; mountains set far behind it all, climbing up, up, up. Guardrails replaced the empty space next to the road, steep hills carved out by jagged rocks, pine trees everywhere. Yet they kept driving, the rocks climbing higher, the space between them and the guardrails growing narrower until the land leveled out, the trees cleared, then the process started all over again.

An hour later, they drove up and down Cross Road in Clarksburg. Haley leaned across Chris and pressed her nose to the glass. She searched for any house she deemed fixer-upper. There were so many potential places Walter could have hidden Joce and Niles, but nothing she was sure about.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Chris asked as Richard pulled a u-ey on River Road and paced the same path, wound along the same narrow two-lane highway. “Clarksburg isn’t all that large, and we’ve been down this street five times.”

Blood. An S.O.S. on the side of a house. A sign. “I don’t know.”

Pulling onto the shoulder next to a Bungalow-style home with gray siding and red shutters, Richard put to words what Haley already knew, but in slightly more ridiculous ways. “This is like searching for Waldo. I’ve always hated that stupid game.”

“Yeah. What moron said.” Christine stretched her legs and cracked her knees. “We’re not going to find Crazy Old Walter this way, not without badgering his poor mom for information.”

“What if we just sit here and watch every car that passes?”

“Are you suggesting we stalk the whole town?” Chris asked.

“You said it yourself: Clarksburg’s not that large.”

“Don’t think I have enough battery left for that.” He tapped the screen on his phone. “If we do find Walter, we’re going to need to call someone for help.”

A narrow, rocky driveway sat near the Bungalow and lead to a small house with navy-blue siding. Boards rested unevenly, falling off in several places, and the grass looked as though it hadn’t been cut since last spring. “We could knock on a few doors and ask if anyone knows Walter. Start here?”