His Princess (A Royal Romance) (34 page)

“No, you won’t quit. You’ll wait for me to give you instructions. You’ll feed your client the information I want him to have. Is that clear?”

He swallows and clears his throat.

“Let me make sure you understand. If you don’t do this, somebody, not me, somebody you’ve never seen before, will be paying you a visit, Jared. Somebody who knows everything about you. Somebody who taught me everything I know.”

“I’ll do whatever you say. I swear to God.”

“Don’t swear to God. Swear to me.”

He nods.

I love that swear to me line, it always works.

I heft the knife, making a show of it. It’s light in my fingers, alive. The knife is sharp as hell. I could open his belly or his throat with no more effort than swatting away a bug.

He screams as I swing, but I aim high, miss him, and hit the rope. He drops to the floor in a bubbling, sobbing heap and I cut the bonds around his wrists. He falls back and rubs at the raw marks on his arms.

I toss him a pack of wet wipes. “Clean the piss off my floor. Jared.”

When I’m satisfied, I give him a kick in the ribs. Not hard enough to break anything, but it knocks him on his side.

“Get the fuck out of here, and don’t let anybody see you.”

I open the garage door and he shuffles out, whimpering. I still have his driver’s license.

Once he’s gone I pace the room while the connection tediously loads, then eagerly sit down and use the info Jared gave me about Russel to gather every piece of information about Rose’s ex-husband that I can.

It takes me about four hours to pull everything together.

He’s a scumbag. Easiest thing would be to just plug him, dump him, and proceed to get the fuck out of this place and get out of Rose’s life before I make things worse for her.

Fuck, she needs the money he pays her. Alimony and child support and all that. She’s broke, I checked. Call it overzealous but I had a look at her bank accounts. Paycheck to paycheck doesn’t even begin to describe it. If I off her ex-husband she’ll be up shit creek, and I’d be taking the paddles on my way out.

There’s more than that. He’s still those girls’ dad and I can’t just kill him. Christ almighty, is that how far gone I am? My first reaction to a problem is to murder somebody?

My hands start to tremble. I know why I’m so happy at the thought of teaching Russel a sharp lesson. How dare he? How dare he hurt her this way?

After everything is shut off I get up and pace some more. It’s late now, and that goddamn block party is tomorrow. I can’t leave in the middle of that.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I don’t think I can leave now at all, not until I’m sure they won’t take Rose’s kids away. God, what am I going to do? I can feel Santiago out there somewhere, like a shark in the deep waters always looking up, up, for prey darkened against the sun.

Everything is piling up on me. What next?

Then there’s the other thing. What’s this thumb drive Dale sent me? There’s nothing about it in the note. I weigh it in my fingers, thinking about it. Something about it sets off my instincts, like it’s squirming in my fingers like a bug. I set it on the desk and pace the room some more.

Fatigue slams into me all at once and I almost stumble. I end up sprawled out on the bed in my clothes until about four in the morning, when I crawl into the shower, wash up, and crawl back into bed.

There must be something I can do.

D
amn you
, Russel. Damn you, Quentin.

I’m about to take a beer out of the fridge when I change my mind. I feel guilty about it. I start to take a soda and feel guilty about that, touching my stomach. The caffeine probably isn’t doing me any good either. Sighing, I take a bottle of water, trudge upstairs, and flop on the bed.

Not for long. I still need to make dinner for the kids, and I ate the damned leftovers. It’s a boxed meal tonight. I don’t feel like eating, or doing anything really, but I drag myself back off the bed and downstairs.

“Mom, lay down,” Karen says as she stops me in the hallway.

“I need to cook dinner, honey.”

“I can handle it,” she says cheerily. “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

“Don’t burn the house down.”

“I’m not going to burn the house down.”

I sigh. “Good, don’t. Really.”

As much as I don’t care if the damn thing burns, I can’t deal with it right now. I flop back on the bed and drink half my bottle of water then doze off again. I’m so
tired
.

It’s a fitful half sleep, the kind that leaves you aware of time passing and more groggy than you started. I snap awake when Karen shakes my arm.

“It’s ready, Mom.”

She made Tuna Helper, and she did an okay job. She never let it boil over, it’s not burnt, and it’s not all congealed and nasty. Kelly certainly eats it up. I push mine around the plate, leaning my chin on my hand like a sullen teenager.

There’s no sound except for the faint scraping of forks on plates. Kelly finishes first, burps loudly, and asks to go upstairs and do her homework. I wave her away and she darts up the steps, and her door closes.

Karen sits at the other end of the table, eating almost grudgingly.

“So your father picked you up,” I sigh.

“Yeah. I didn’t want to go with him, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“There was nothing you could do, honey.”

“I know, Mom, but ugh, I can’t stand him and I can’t stand that woman.”

Karen won’t even say Skyler’s name.

“It’s not fair that he makes you look at her.”

I nod. “He brought her here to annoy me, you know that.”

“She tried to act all Mom with us. Kelly just wanted food but it made me sick. She’s not even old enough to be my mom. She could be my sister.”

I sigh. “Your weekend with them is coming up.”

“I don’t want to go. They’ll make us do some stupid shit like go to Dutch Wonderland again.”

“Language.”

She rolls her eyes. “Mom, come on.”

“You never talked like that when you were younger. You picked it up from one of those dirty books you read.”

She blushes faintly.

“I read one,” I add. “Really, Karen.”

She squirms in her seat. “It’s just make believe.”

I laugh. “I know, but you’re a little young for that. You’re still supposed to be in your princess phase.”

“I grew out of that in a hurry,” she says mournfully, and carries her and Kelly’s plates to the sink.

“Do you think Quentin will come back?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, hon. Probably not.”

“He seemed nice.”

“They usually do.”

“He said something weird when he was leaving.”

I look up at her. “What?”

“Something about how being nice to us doesn’t make up for ‘it’, but he didn’t say what ‘it’ was.”

She shrugs. “He was just being mysterious, I guess. Boys like to be mysterious. They think we like it.”

I quirk my eyebrow and stare at her. She shrugs and goes back to scrubbing the dishes.

“I can handle cleaning up. Lay down, Mom.”

“Thanks, honey. You don’t have to.”

“I want to. You don’t get any time,” she sighs. “Except when we’re not here. What do you do while we’re gone?”

Drink and cry, mostly.

“Just putter around the house.”

She can read my lie, they always can.

“Go lay down.”

I rise from the table and carry my plate to her, but that is the limit of the help she will accept. I feel better, at least enough to take an orange soda up with me. I lie back on my bed, turn on my TV and fall asleep to a
Storage Wars
marathon.

That show has to be rigged. Nobody just leaves a Matisse in a storage locker.

I wake a few times in the middle of the night and look out my windows. There are lights on in Quentin’s house, on the top floor, the garage, and in the basement. I see a brief flicker of a shadow cast across the backyard. Somebody is still in there.

In the distance I hear a faint sound, almost a voice, but it must be my imagination.

I roll back on the bed and sleep through until morning. When I wake up and go to the window I’m confronted by the earliest stages of the block party. At the end of the street there’s music equipment and a disk jockey setting up. Farther down the street there’s a bouncy castle and portable basketball hoops.

I haven’t prepared anything or done anything.

I lie back on the bed sideways and yawn. I just want to sleep. Is that so wrong?

There’s a knock at the door.

I open it and Karen is standing outside, already dressed.

“Mom, can we go?”

“Yeah, honey. Let me get dressed.”

I throw on shorts and sneakers and a loose t-shirt, snap on my sunglasses, and follow them outside.

I start to follow my girls into the street but step back. I sit on the porch while they run with the other kids. I wonder if Karen realizes why at least two of the neighborhood boys are following her around. It fills me with a subtle dread at the same time that I can’t help but smile.

She’s still in that weird phase between the end of childhood innocence and the awakening of adult feelings, and I don’t want her getting dragged into it too fast. The boys seem innocent enough, the same way. They know they should pay attention to girls now but they’re a little clueless as to why, and when they get together they still act like kids, running and playing, excited.

Kelly dives into the bouncy castle. She’ll probably devour an entire cow tonight to replace all those calories.

I’m not the only parent hanging back. We sort of fade into a collective responsibility, giving our kids a little freedom from afar. I sit on the porch and watch, sipping water as the day slides by and starts to get hot, too hot for September. It’s almost October now. It should be cool in the day but it’ll hit eighty, I’m sure of it.

Sweat trickles down my back and I glance over at Quentin’s house.

No signs of life.

What did Kelly mean, about what he said? Being nice to us couldn’t make up for something?

What does he need to make up for?

Here I am again, mooning over him like a ditzy teenager with a crush. I wanted to think it was more than that, more than just physical attraction. I’m sort of past my prime anyway.I can’t believe somebody would be into me just for my looks anymore.

I down the rest of the water and head over to his house, looking back at Kelly and Karen to make sure they’re okay. They’re just fine. I can relax a little. The music is starting up. There will be hot dogs soon. I hope Kelly leaves some for the rest of the block.

There’s no answer when I knock at the door. Typical. I just want to talk to him. I want an answer. I don’t want to be brushed off.

I stand there as long as I dare, before somebody might notice, then start back.

I stop at the end of the front walk and glance at the backyard. Past the garage, I walk around the back as my heart beats a little faster. The house is the same pattern as mine, so I’m familiar with the layout. There are two sliding windows on either side of a basement door with its own set of steps.

You shouldn’t be doing this, Rose.

I check the basement door. Locked.

I check one of the windows. Locked.

The other window slides open silently.

I look at it for a half minute, my heart pounding in my chest. What do I do? Quentin probably didn’t bother checking or locking it, figuring that no one could get in through it.

Well, a grown man couldn’t, but I can if I skinny through.

God, this is stupid, Rose. What the hell are you doing?

I sit in the grass, poke my feet through, and start shimmying my way into the opening. I have to put my hands on my chest and press myself flat and suck in a breath to fit, and dangle in space with my feet kicking in empty air before I feel something cool and metal with my toes. The dryer, probably. I grab the windowsill and slip in, and end up falling on my butt on top of his dryer with a squeak.

God, Rose. Are you insane? Get out now.

I could just climb back out but I don’t.I lower my feet to the floor. It’s dark down here, the lights are out, but the windows are uncovered and cut two rays of bright light across the basement, and cast a hazy gloom everywhere else.

I yelp and yank my hand back as a hairy spider skitters along the block wall behind me. I take a deep breath and look around.

It’s…a basement.

I already know the floor plan. All of the electrical and utility junk is by the window I just climbed through. There’s not going to be much else in the basement unless it’s finished, which it is not.

I make my way through the room, slowly. There’s a lot of stuff down here. At the far end is some gym equipment, a bench and barbells and big metal weights all on a rubber pad, and what must be a place for him to grab onto and do pullups. The rest of the room is full of boxes and boxes, and crates, actual crates made of wood.

One of them is as big as a coffin. Curious, I tug at the lid, and it rattles a little but doesn’t move. It must be nailed down.I shouldn’t touch it.

No, there are latches, heavy-duty latches like some kind of footlocker. I smear some dust away with my hand and find something written on the side in Cyrillic.

Uh
, what?

I can’t help myself. I flip the latches and raise the lid. Inside is all padded foam, covered by a thin layer of the same material. I push the lid all the way back.

Under the foam blanket is a skinny tube, maybe five feet in length, with one flared end and the other straight. Sitting in little niches are conical objects a bit smaller than a football, with tubular ends that look like they slot into the big tube.

Gingerly I lower the lid back in place and latch it shut. There’s another crate. The lid is nailed down, but I don’t need to open it. On the side, stenciled, it reads,
DANGER: HIGH EXPLOSIVES
.

“What the
fuck?”
I whisper.

I make my way through the boxes, breathing harder now. High explosives? Why high explosives? What does Quentin need with high explosives?

Construction? No, that makes no sense, if he used them for construction he wouldn’t keep them in the basement, and that other thing was some kind of a weapon.

I think it was a grenade launcher.

I should leave. Now. Get out, Rose. This is too weird.

The stairs creak under my foot and I freeze, listening. There’s no sound but the happiness of children outside, faint music, and cheering. I take another few steps up, watching each step as I put my foot on it. They’re bare wood bolted together, like the stairs in my basement. There are two staircases, one at either end. One goes to the kitchen.

This one goes to the garage.

I push the door open lightly and watch for movement, expecting to see him inside waxing his car or something, but the big Impala sits there alone, dominating a full half of the garage.

Creeping out into the garage proper, I take a look around. There are two big, heavy safes, each taller than I am. More like vaults, really. It dawns on me as I touch them that I don’t need to open them to know what’s inside. These are gun safes.

I should leave. I should leave right now. I should not open the garage door and walk up into the kitchen.

I open the door and walk up into the kitchen.

It’s empty. I’m not sure what I’m expecting. What will Quentin do if he catches me in here? I can feel the walls closing in around me.

The kitchen is empty, I mean
empty
. Bare cupboards, no pots or pans, just a pile of canned food on the counter and a fridge with nothing inside but beer, bottles of bourbon, and what appears to be a half-eaten key lime pie.

As I close the fridge I hear something, a movement upstairs. It must be him. I should go. Really, I should get out right now, the way I came. I take a step toward the staircase and pull back.

Go home, Rose. There’s something going on here and it’s a lot bigger than you.

I creep back down into the garage, stopping to slow my breath. I can feel my heart pounding in my neck. I tug on the basement door, but it doesn’t budge.

Oh God.

It’s stuck or locked. I don’t know, but I need to get out. I head for the garage door. It’ll make a racket but it’s a door, and I can go.

Except, I can’t. The car is locked. I can see the remote inside, but that’s no use to me. There’s a switch on the wall but there’s a clear plastic panel over it, with a padlock. I don’t even know where to begin to look for the key.

What am I even doing here?

It doesn’t matter now. I can kick myself in the butt later. Having no other choice, I slip back into the kitchen, walking lightly, testing my footing so I don’t make a noise or let out a creak. The living room is still empty.

I make my way across. When I glance over my shoulder there’s no one behind me. I’ll just go through the front door, lock it, and pull it shut. No harm, no foul. Mrs. Campbell will probably see me coming out of the house, but to hell with her.

As I touch the doorknob, powerful arms snap closed around me, trapping mine against my sides. A hand closes roughly over my mouth, fingers digging into my cheek and jaw.

Quentin growls in my ear.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Mmmph!”

Gingerly he lets his hand off my mouth and grazes his thumb along my jaw.

“Answer me.”

“I was just… I don’t know. Let me go.”

His breath is hot on my neck. I feel his lips, then his teeth. He moves up and pinches my earlobe between his teeth. I jerk in his arms and squeak.