In Safe Hands (40 page)

It took her a second to realize he meant the attic, rather than the old globe. She'd already mentally assigned the room to Ty and Tio, since they'd always refused to be put in separate rooms and she wasn't sure if there was a room on the second floor that would fit both of them. A single glance at Sam's tight expression and clenched fists was enough to immediately change her mind. “Okay.”

For a long moment, he watched her warily, studying her face as if to make sure she was serious. Eventually, his shoulders relaxed slightly. “Thanks.”

“It's going to be freezing in the winter and broiling in the summer, you know,” she warned.

His almost-there smile was back. “I kn-know.”

“I have no idea how we'll get a mattress up those steps.” The thought reminded her of all the things they would need to get that day. Thunder, louder than before, crashed, sounding as if it was right above them. In the crackling silence following the boom, there was the tinny sound of a doorbell.

They all froze, none of them moving—or even breathing—until lightning lit up her siblings' faces, the stark light emphasizing the terror in their expressions. The sight reminded Jules that she was the responsible one now, the one who had to pretend not to be scared out of her mind that the cops were at the door, ready to break in and grab the kids, to drop them back into Courtney's clutches.

The horror of that thought snapped Jules out of her temporary paralysis. “Everyone, stay up here. No, wait.” There were no exits on the third floor. Jules made a frantic mental note to install some way to escape from the attic in the near future.

If she was getting hauled off to jail right now, though, that wouldn't be necessary.

Wrestling her panicked thoughts back under control, she took a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering exhale. “Okay. Head for the kitchen and out the back door to the barn. Y'all can hide in there—or behind there, if it looks like it's going to fall down on your heads.” She met Sam's frantic gaze and tried to force a smile. “Maybe it's just the welcome wagon.”

The doorbell rang again, longer and more insistently that time, and Jules started down the narrow stairs, her heartbeat hammering in her ears. The kids followed her, their tentative footsteps a heartbreaking contrast to the pounding joy they'd shown running up them just minutes earlier.

Did I do the wrong thing?
Jules wondered, as her teeth found a raw spot on the inside of her lip. The sting wasn't as painful as the rush of guilt, though. She'd taken her siblings from a life of affluence and, in exchange, forced them to live in fear, always hiding, always having to look over their shoulders.

“I don't want to go back,” Dez said in a tiny voice as they descended the stairs to the main level.

“You won't.” The resolute way Sam said the words, without a stutter, erased Jules's doubts. Courtney might've been able to give them material things, but they'd have a better life with Jules, even if it was a life on the run.

At the base of the stairs, Jules turned toward the front door and then paused, looking sternly over her shoulder at the scared-looking group. “Whatever happens, you stay hidden. Got it?”

The younger three nodded, looking worried, but Sam sent her a tight-lipped frown that promised nothing. The doorbell rang for the third time, and she waved them toward the kitchen. Only when they disappeared through the doorway did she start to walk toward the front door, each step slower than the one before it.

The dirty stained-glass panel running the height of the door just revealed the vaguest of outlines. Jules could tell that whoever was out there was big, however—very, very big. She hoped the dim interior of the house hid her from whatever giant lurked on the porch, waiting for her to answer.

She took a deep breath and let it out as she stretched up onto her tiptoes so she could see out of the peephole. Jules blinked, her lashes brushing the door, and the figure on the porch came into wide-angle focus.

She stopped breathing, stopped thinking. All she could do was stare. The cops were there. She'd barely gotten the kids to their new home, and she'd already failed them. Her knees went watery and her vision was strange, putting a gray film over everything, including the officer's nightmarish face, distorted by the peephole glass.

The world rocked a little, and she had to take a step back to catch her balance, cutting off her view of the cop.

This is it
, she thought. Nausea flooded her and she swallowed hard. Her brain spun with images of jail and the kids going back to Courtney.

No.
The complete unacceptability of the idea cleared Jules's mind. There was no way she was going to allow that.

A heavy fist landed on the wood of the door, pounding several times, startling Jules and sending her skittering backward. Her heels hit the bottom stair, knocking her off balance so that she sat heavily on one of the steps. As her heart pounded in her ears, Jules gripped the banister spools and tried to think.

Should she reveal herself, walk outside and accept her fate, allowing Sam and the kids time to escape? Or should she not answer, delaying the inevitable? If she was arrested, Jules doubted that the kids would run. Well, they probably
would
run—right toward her, trying to defend their sister.

She'd keep quiet then, ignoring the knocking and the doorbell. It might not give them much time, but maybe Dennis could find them somewhere else, somewhere that was actually safe, somewhere the cops weren't at her door within minutes of her and the kids' arrival.

The thumps on the door stopped, and Jules held her breath. Was the cop leaving, or was he just going to get reinforcements? The shadow behind the glass shrank and then disappeared altogether. Jules stayed frozen, waiting for the next step—more footsteps on the porch, a voice from a megaphone telling her to surrender, the door splintering after a hit from a battering ram.

Instead, there was silence. For several long, long moments, all Jules could hear was the rasp of her anxious breaths. Then, there was the rough roar of a diesel engine turning over.

Confusion knotted her eyebrows. That didn't sound like a squad car, or even a squad SUV. That was a truck—a big one. Pushing off the stairs, she took quiet, cautious steps to the door. The figure was gone, but a large object remained on the porch. Squinting, she tried to make it out, but the peephole didn't give her a good enough view.

Biting the inside of her lip, she slowly, soundlessly turned the lock and opened the door a crack. Jules peered out just in time to see the rear of a florist's box truck trundling down the driveway. Her gaze dropped to the object on the porch. It was a potted plant, wrapped in a bow with a card attached.

Her laugh rang out, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to mute the sound. Flowers. What she'd thought was a cop had actually been a delivery driver, complete with dark-blue uniform. Her heart drummed against her ribs with residual adrenaline, and she couldn't stop laughing into her muffling hand.

The delivery truck rounded a bend and disappeared from view. Still feeling spooked, Jules opened the door just wide enough to grab the pot. Once she'd secured the front door behind her, she brought the plant into the kitchen and opened the attached card with shaking fingers. Irrationally, she half-expected the flowers to be from Courtney, a sort of
I've-got-you
kind of mind game. When she saw the inscription, Jules's lungs finally relaxed enough for her to take a breath.

Welcome to your new life. —Dennis

Present Day

Theo was staring at his bedroom ceiling when the howling started.

It was a low whine at first, barely catching his notice. As usual, Theo was spending the hour between two and three a.m. rerunning the last few days before Don's death. Sometimes he'd play the what-if game—what if Theo had said this? Or what if he'd done that? Tonight, though, he was just replaying the hours and minutes, catching every single clue he'd missed now that it was too late to do any good.

The high-pitched sound increased in volume, and Theo raised his head before letting it thump back onto the pillow.

“Stupid dog. Useless dog,” he muttered, but guilt and his innate sense of fairness wouldn't let that stand. “Stupid
me
. Fucking useless
me
.” As galling as it had been to hear, his LT had been right. Viggy had been a great dog and a great officer when he'd worked with Don. Theo was ruining him. He wasn't just useless; he was destructive. It was sheer luck that no one had been seriously injured in the explosion at Gordon Schwartz's house. Everyone would be better off if Officer Theodore Bosco wasn't around.

The whine amped up to a full howl, as if Viggy was providing a soundtrack to Theo's self-loathing. The neighbors would be calling dispatch soon, and then Otto would be making a house call. Before, Theo would've just gotten a cranky phone call, but the guys had been worried about him since Don died. Although the rational part of Theo's brain understood why Hugh and Otto had been acting like anxious mother hens for the past couple of months, he still felt smothered. Every “Are you okay?” made him want to punch someone…hard and repeatedly.

He didn't know what to do with that kind of anger.

The howl switched pitches and increased in volume. With a huff of mingled annoyance and concern, Theo got out of bed, yanking on track pants before heading to the back door, turning on the porch light on his way. The second he stepped outside, the howling stopped, as suddenly as if someone had flicked a switch.

Theo peered through the gloom to see Viggy slip into his shelter, tail tucked. Feeling like he was suffocating on his pity and hopelessness, Theo headed back to his bedroom. He wasn't even through the kitchen before the mournful howl began again.

Shoving the heels of his hands against his eyes, he sucked in an audible breath before dropping his hands. He reversed his path and returned to the back door, not bothering to turn on the porch light this time. Again, Viggy went silent, darting back into his shelter as soon as Theo came into view. As he stood on the porch, the cool air of the now-silent night brushing over his bare skin, Theo's annoyance trickled away, leaving only guilt and sadness in its wake.

He picked his way toward the fenced enclosure, careful not to step on anything prickly with his bare feet. For a long time, he stared at the dark entrance to Viggy's shelter. Theo was suddenly exhausted, more tired than he'd ever felt, and he sank down to sit on the rough grass next to the chain link.

“I'm sorry, Vig,” he said, his words sounding loud in the quiet darkness. “I should've done something. Not sure what, exactly, but there had to've been something I could've said or done or…something. I'm sorry for being an oblivious asshole and not seeing when Don was hurting so bad he thought dead was the better option.”

Viggy's muzzle poked out of the shelter, followed by the rest of his shape, silhouetted dark against darker. When he was several feet away from Theo, the dog sat and watched him.

“And now you're fucked up, and I'm fucked up, and I don't know how to fix it.” Leaning forward, Theo felt the cool chain link press into his forehead. “Don't really see the point in fixing it.”

With a low, almost soundless whine, Viggy lowered his front end to the ground and rested his head on his paws. The silence stretched, filled only by the low whistle of the almost constant wind, and it almost felt like he and Viggy were the only living things in the world. Loneliness hollowed him out, and he tried to think of something, anything, else.

Jules popped into his mind, and he relaxed fractionally. As messed up as he was, there couldn't be anything between them, but at least she was a mystery for him to solve. It gave him an excuse to talk to her, too. He found himself actually looking forward to going to the diner, and it had been a while since he'd looked forward to anything.

And he was back to thinking about Don. Viggy shifted and whined, as if sensing that Theo's mood had dimmed.

“I know you miss him.” His voice came out rough, almost hoarse. “I do, too.”

They sat together quietly until the sun turned the sky orange and the neighborhood began to wake. Only then did Theo stand and stiffly walk toward the house to get ready for another shift.

* * *

“This is a bad idea.”

Viggy didn't respond from his spot in the back of the SUV. Not that Theo needed confirmation that this was indeed a very, very bad idea. It had been a long, frustrating shift, and he needed to go home. Despite knowing this, he couldn't stop himself from turning onto the rutted driveway leading to the old Garmitt place—the one currently occupied by a squirrelly, yet extremely hot, waitress.

As he rounded the final bend, he saw the smoke billowing from the open front door. A curl of tension tightened his stomach, and he reached for his radio as his gaze scanned the house, searching for Jules. Her SUV was parked in the front, so she was probably home. The door was open, but she wasn't outside.

He brought the radio to his mouth, ready to call in the fire, but then he hesitated as he stopped his Blazer abruptly, right next to the front porch. This close, the smoke was much less alarming than it had appeared at first glance. In fact, the haze coming from the house was rapidly dissipating, thinning to almost nothing. Theo decided to check things out before he brought Fire and Med and everyone else running to what might be a false alarm. Stepping out of his SUV, he hooked the radio to his belt, sending a quick glance toward Viggy. The squad car he used for work had a fan installed in the backseat window. Before they'd left the station, Theo had rolled the passenger window most of the way down to give the dog some air. Although it was a warm day, the house and surrounding trees shaded the vehicle. With the window lowered, Viggy wouldn't overheat in the few minutes it would take for Theo to figure out what was going on at the squirrelly waitress's house and quickly leave. Assured of Viggy's safety, Theo turned away from his Blazer and climbed the front steps.

The porch was old, and each riser gave an alarming, high-pitched creak as it took his weight. It was eerily quiet, especially considering the wide-open door and the smoke. Theo had second thoughts about not calling in the fire. Both times at the diner, Jules had acted scared. What if whatever—or
whomever
—she was trying to escape had caught up with her? Jules could've been attacked or injured or taken—

Theo firmly cut off his escalating thoughts, shoving out any what-ifs and firmly blanking not only his mind, but his emotions. He'd gotten pretty good at that over the past few months. His cool shell was firmly reassembled as he stepped over the threshold, quickly checking right then left before entering the house.

What a pit.
Theo couldn't believe someone lived there. It'd been empty for at least five years—and looked it. The previous owners hadn't done much in the way of maintenance, either, and the final result was a house that needed to have a date with a bulldozer.

“Police!” he called into the open, still smoky hallway. “Anyone here?”

There was no response, so he took a couple of steps inside. The remaining smoke tickled his throat and gave the old place an eerie cast. Theo held back a cough. He walked down the hallway, checking in each room he passed, but, except for a few items—a bright green bean bag in the living room, an old chest in the library, a cheap drinking glass with awkwardly cut flowers mashed into it on the windowsill in the dining room—the house was empty. Empty and smoky and wrong. With Jules's SUV out front and the door open, she should be here. He automatically unsnapped the top of his holster, resting his hand on the butt of his gun. He felt his muscles tighten with each new empty room he saw.

The smoke was lightening, but a haze still lingered, dimming the light struggling to find its way through the windows. There was an almost-closed door on his left, and he pushed it open. The hinges protested with a squeal, but the door reluctantly swung open to reveal an empty, old-fashioned bathroom. He continued down the hall, his imagination going wild again with thoughts of what could've happened. Had Jules's past caught up to her?

The thought of something happening to Jules made his stomach clench, and he moved more quickly. As Theo got closer to the final door on the right, the one he was fairly sure was the kitchen, he finally heard people. Multiple loud voices piled on top of each other, making it difficult for Theo to hear what anyone was saying. Pausing next to the entryway, keeping his body hidden from the people in the kitchen, he listened, trying to pick out individual words.

“…if he comes back!” a child's voice wailed, rising above the babble of the others. Theo's muscles tightened. Who was “he,” and why was the kid so upset at the thought of this man's return?

“…long gone…” Theo barely made out a few words from Jules, but he was certain it was her speaking. The rest of what she had to say disappeared into the cacophony of sound, and the short phrases Theo was able to pick out only confused him more. Someone mentioned an ignition point, and the child shrieked something about making someone homeless, and another person stuttered in a deep, male voice about clean-up. Theo frowned, the term “clean-up” leading him to think about corpses. All of his earlier fears for Jules rushed back, and he couldn't hesitate any longer.

Drawing his weapon, Theo surged into the kitchen.

A small crowd of people—
young
people—huddled around the ancient stove, ignoring the light stream of smoke that still drifted from it. No one was looking at Theo, and he immediately lowered his gun and held it casually behind his right hip. The sight of all the kids made him feel a little sheepish for overreacting.

“What's going on?”

The entire group jumped as if he'd given them an electric shock, all of them turning to stare at him with expressions that ranged from fear to wariness. Upon closer observation, he confirmed that they were kids, ranging in age from ten or so to late teens—the oldest being none other than his squirrelly waitress. Her hair was caught in two braids, and a smear of black ran across her right cheek. Even smudgy, she was hot.

Not liking the prickle of emotion that she woke in him, he looked at the stove.

“Is the fire out?” he asked, when it appeared that no one was going to answer his initial question. When they still didn't say anything—instead staring at him, stock still and wordless—Theo shifted his weight impatiently and reached toward his radio with the hand not holding his gun. “Do I need to call in the fire department?”

“No!” several of the kids, including Jules, chorused in unison. He kept hold of his radio, since the threat of Fire seemed to have brought everyone back to life. Theo could sympathize with their reluctance. Sometimes—a lot of times—firefighters could be a pain in the ass.

“It's out,” Jules said, taking a step toward him and positioning her body between Theo and the kids. Her slight figure wasn't much of a barrier, but there was something in the way she held herself that reminded him of a fierce mama bear. “There wasn't really a fire. It was more…” She trailed off, waving a hand toward the stove as if what had happened was written on its ancient surface.

“It was more of an explosion,” one of the younger boys offered, but his brother—a twin, Theo assumed by their almost identical size and appearance—cleared his throat.

“It wasn't actually an explosion,” the second one explained earnestly. “The debris just ignited extremely quickly, mimicking an explosion. A small one.”

Theo wasn't any more enlightened than when he'd first seen the smoke. “Debris?”

Jules cringed. “An old packrat nest.” A visible shudder rippled through her.

“The rat wasn't hurt,” the smallest of the group, a girl who looked like a smaller, younger Jules, said solemnly. “He left a long time ago. We're hoping he doesn't come back, because it would be very upsetting if he did and found out his home had burned.”

“Didn't you check inside the oven before you turned it on?” Theo asked, holstering his gun discreetly before stepping closer to the stove so he could look inside. Unfortunately, that move brought him very close to Jules. Under a layer of smoke, she smelled really nice, like vanilla and sugar and baking things.

Her mouthwatering scent was overlaid by the stench of charred rodent, however, which refocused him. What was wrong with him, that he was sniffing squirrelly waitresses? He reached for the numbness, but, for the first time, it eluded him, and he was stuck with feeling the irritated fascination Jules inspired in him.

“No.” She glared up at him, her gaze hotter than he thought blue eyes could be. “I normally do
not
look inside an oven before I turn it on, because who would ever think that a huge
rat
would build a house inside an appliance? An appliance in which we cook food. Food that we eat!” Her voice had risen to a decibel that made Theo's ears hurt, but he found himself fighting the beginnings of a smile. Jules was just so outraged that a rat dared take up residence in her stove. Judging by the condition of the house, though—especially the rough state of the kitchen—Theo was not even a little surprised that a rodent had made its home there. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if one ran across the floor in front of them. Theo almost hoped one would, so he could play the hero and Jules could thank him in that sweet, Southern accent of hers.