Rock Chick 03 Redemption (18 page)

I told you Annette was a nut.

“I’m coming home, as soon as I get my tires fixed,” I said, skirting the issue of Hank.

“When’s that gonna be?”

“Uncle Tex has a friend who’s picking up the car tomorrow. It can’t take that long to change four tires. I figure I’l be on the road tomorrow night. Then, I’l pick my stuff up from your place and if you and Jason can come with me to the loft, just to make sure it’s safe, I’l close it up. Then I’m going to Mexico.”

“Fuck that shit,” Annette said. “Jason and I were going on a long weekend camping in Michigan. We’l make it a longer weekend and bring your shit to Colorado. We’l leave tomorrow. What do you want from the loft?”

“Annette,” I said low. “I’ve made up my mind.” She ignored my warning tone.

“Wel , I’m un-making it up.”

“You can’t come out to Colorado! What about Head?”

“I have to beg my staff to leave at the end of the day. I got no problems with Head coasting along. I could join a commune for six months and they wouldn’t even know I was gone.”

This was true. Annette’s staff was like the staff in Nick Hornby’s
High Fidelity
. Their whole life was Head. If someone threw a live grenade into Head, they’d fight each other for the opportunity to throw themselves on it. It was scary.

“You aren’t talking me out of this,” I told her.

“Sure I am. That’s what friends do when their friends turn into idiots and make stupid decisions on the fly,” she retorted. Then she shouted, “Road trip!” and disconnected before I could say another word.

I flipped my phone shut and stared at the ceiling.

I realized I lived on a smal island of sanity while al else around me was bedlam.

I was about to torture myself with “Both Sides Now” or real y go for the gusto and switch to Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” when a knock came at the door.

“Yeah?” I cal ed.

“Dinner’s ready,” Uncle Tex boomed.

I set aside my MP3, rol ed off the bed and headed out of the room.

* * * * *

Uncle Tex and I had eaten our blanketed pigs and macaroni and cheese. Later, we had some cookies and cream ice cream. Even later, after-dinner drinks of Uncle Tex’s moonshine.

We finished watching Letterman and I got up from the couch and said, “I’m going to bed.”

I looked down at Uncle Tex. He had the phone (a rotary phone, by the way, its cord strung across the living room) sitting on his lap and he was glaring at it so hard I thought laser beams were going to shoot from his eyes and burn it to cinders.

“‘Night,” I said when he didn’t answer.

He looked up at me.

“He’s gonna cal .”

I smiled at him. Even I knew it was a sad smile.

I’d had a short conversation with Nancy, but I figured she’d soon be family, so she’d be safe. Eddie had cal ed again, so had Indy. I didn’t talk to either of them.

Hank had not cal ed.

I knew what it meant. I’d known it even before I went on my date with him.

It was dark in my room, he couldn’t see me last night, battered face, bruised body, but he knew. He could smel it on me. He dealt with people like Bil y every day. I was Bil y’s girl, even if it was once upon a time.

Hank didn’t want that stink in his bed.

I bent down and kissed the top of Uncle Tex’s head again.

“He’s gonna fuckin’ cal ,” Uncle Tex growled.

I touched his shoulder and walked away.

I got into the bed and lay there for a while.

Then I got out my MP3 player and found the song.

I listened to “Because the Night” from Springsteen’s Live 1975/85 box set.

Then I listened to it again.

On the third time around, I started crying. Not huge wracking sobs, even with the paper-thin wal s, Uncle Tex would never hear me.

Then I shut off my player, wiped my face on my pil ow and went to sleep.

I rol ed out of bed feeling better than I had the day before, the aches and pains were subsiding.

The mirror in the bathroom showed me another gruesome concoction of bruising colors on my face but at least they were fading. The marks around my neck, arms and wrists were stil visible but not nearly as angry.

I wandered into the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee and saw Uncle Tex’s note saying that he’d gone to work and would be home around one.

I was wandering back to my bedroom, having visions of a morning spent performing more musical self-torture, when I glanced sideways out the picture window in Uncle Tex’s living room, and stopped dead at what I saw, coffee cup arrested halfway to my lips.

I huge truck was stopped in the middle the street and, hovering in the sky, dangling from what looked like a crane, was my car in straps.

Regardless of the fact that I was wearing nothing but a pair of pajamas (strawberry colored bottoms with cute powder blue and turquoise retro stars printed on them and a strawberry camisole with turquoise lace), I threw open the door and ran, barefoot, to the sidewalk.

“Hey!” I shouted at a big, black guy in dirty blue coveral s who was at the truck’s levers. “That’s my car!”

“Taking it in to change the tires,” he said, not stopping from his maneuvering of my car, which was floating precariously in the air over the flatbed truck.

“Can’t you change the tires here?” I yel ed over the noise.

“Tex wants me to do it in the shop, told me to give it a tune up and detail while I got it.”

I was going to
kill
Uncle Tex.

“It doesn’t need a tune up. I had it serviced before I drove out here.”

He shrugged.

I scowled at him.

He ignored me.

I saw a car approaching and turned to watch as Hank’s 4Runner rol ed up the street.

I forgot about my no-longer earthbound car and stood frozen watching Hank park.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Hank got out, his eyes on my car in mid-air, and walked to me.

He looked good.

He wore jeans, boots and a wine-colored henley. There was a gun and badge attached to his belt. Al that was missing was the white hat.

He stopped next to me, eyes stil on my car. “What’s goin’ on?” he asked, not looking at me.

I realized, belatedly, that it was warm as a summer’s day outside. Stil , I was standing on the sidewalk in my pajamas and I hadn’t done anything with my hair.

Shit.

“That’s my car,” I said.

Hank looked down at me and I just caught myself from holding my breath.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Uncle Tex slashed my tires.”

Hank stared at me.

“He didn’t want me to leave,” I explained.

Hank stared at me another beat, then his eyes moved on my face, then to my throat, my arms and my wrists, taking in the bruises. I almost bit my lip but forced myself to stay stil under his scrutiny. Then his eyes moved to mine. “We have to talk,” he said.

Damn tootin’, we had to talk.

He turned and walked to the porch.

I fol owed him.

He stopped at the porch, not attempting to go inside. I found this odd but I stopped with him.

“You want coffee?” I asked.

“I’m not stayin’ that long.”

I blinked at him, confused.

Then it hit me.

His eyes were al wrong. They weren’t sexy-lazy or alert.

They were distant and disinterested.

I felt my breath start to come faster, like I’d run a race before I’d run the race. And, the fact was, I wanted to run, run as fast as I could, as far away as I could get.

“What’s up?” I tried to act like I didn’t feel like I wanted to curl up and die.

“You’ve been dodgin’ Eddie,” he said.

I blinked, confused again, but he went on.

“You can’t protect Flynn, Roxanne. I’ve already filed. He broke into my house and trashed it.”

“Protect?” I said, unable to form a ful sentence.

“Eddie’s comin’ by this morning to take you to the station so you can give your statement, file charges if you want, or not. Your choice. But even if you go home, I’m stil fol owing through. And since we found out Flynn is wanted in Boston, Pensacola and Charleston, once we find him and deal with him here, he’s gonna be a busy guy.”

I couldn’t speak.

I wasn’t surprised that Bil y was wanted in three different cities, four counting Denver, even though it was news to me.

No, the reason I couldn’t speak was because Hank thought I was protecting Bil y.

“Hank –”

He interrupted me.

“I found your scarf at my house, Indy’s got it.” Automatical y (and inanely) I said, “It’s Tod’s.”

“Indy has it,” he repeated, looking away and watched the crane settle back into position, my car in the flat bed. Then he looked at me, eyes blank, like Eddie’s were the first time he saw me.

“Gotta get back to work,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”

At his dismissing words, I moved suddenly. It was involuntary but I jerked back, just at the middle, like he punched me in the stomach.

Immediately, his hand came out to grab my arm and his brows drew together. “Are you okay?” he asked.

I stared at him then nodded my head. “Fine,” I lied.

He watched me a beat, then two. It was my time to say something but I couldn’t think of what to say.

“Talk to Eddie,” he said.

I just stared at him and didn’t say a word.

Then I watched as his eyes grew hard and he let go of my arm.

“Suit yourself.”

Then he walked away.

I watched him go, watched the flatbed truck go and watched the street for a good long while before I turned and walked into the house.

I set my cup on the coffee table and stood in the living room.

Petunia, the ginger and white cat, rubbed my legs.

I sat down on the floor, the better position to pet her.

Then I curled up on the floor, on my side, my knees to my chest. Petunia walked on top of me and sat on my hip. Then she cleaned her foot.

This is how Eddie found me when he opened the door.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

I rol ed to my back and Petunia scampered.

I stayed flat on the floor and looked up at Eddie.

“Hi,” I greeted him.

“You okay?”

No.

No, I was not okay. I was anything but okay. I was so far away from okay that okay was in another dimension.

“Peachy,” I said.

“Why are you lyin’ on the floor?” he asked.

Because the best guy I’d ever met thought I was some
stupid, idiot woman who would protect an outlaw even after
he’d beaten me and kidnapped me and dragged me
through three states. Because that same guy was about
goodness and justice and wanted nothing to do with a
woman like me. Because that fact broke my heart and
pissed me off and I wasn’t sure which one I felt more.
I thought.

“I felt like having a rest,” I answered.

Eddie took a second to process this, then he said, “Did you talk to Hank?”

I nodded my head.

“I’m here to take you down to the station to file charges against Flynn.”

“Okeydoke,” I replied, rol ed over and careful y got up, holding my ribs.

When I was up and looked at him, he was staring at me with undisguised surprise.

“Sorry?” he asked.

“I said ‘okeydoke’. Can you hang on while I get ready?” He kept staring at me, then, slowly, he nodded.

“It takes awhile for me to get ready. Maybe you want to come back.”

His eyes went guarded.

“I’l wait.”

“That’s cool. Coffee’s in the kitchen,” I told him and then went to the shower.

* * * * *

I took a shower. I blow dried then parted my hair deep on the side and smoothed it into a severe ponytail secured at the nape of my neck. I caked on the makeup to try and hide the bruising (this, for your information, didn’t work). I wore a skintight, camel-colored, pencil skirt that came down to just below the knee and had a slit up the back, topped with a red, jersey t-shirt and, on my feet, sexy, red, spike-heeled sling backs. Final y, I tied a jaunty scarf around my neck.

I looked like Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie in
Bonnie and
Clyde
, but without the beret or shotgun and with a little more flair for color.

I walked out and Eddie was on the sofa, drinking coffee and watching a bal game.

“Ready,” I announced and went to the TV. “You want me to turn this off?”

Uncle Tex’s TV had to be thirty years old; it had no remote. It was likely considered a priceless antique in some circles. It definitely belonged in a museum.

I turned and looked at Eddie. He was giving me the once-over.

“Eddie?” I cal ed when he didn’t answer.

His eyes had kind of glazed over, but he came to and looked at me.

“Let’s rol ,” he said.

I almost didn’t get up into his fancy, red truck because my skirt was so tight but I made it.

We drove to the station in complete silence.

He parked and I twisted gingerly to undo my seatbelt. He stopped me from twisting back around to get out when he put a hand on my arm.

“You should know somethin’ about what’s happenin’ with your boyfriend,” he said, looking me in the eyes.

I blinked at him.

“Boyfriend?” I asked.

“Flynn,” he replied.

My back went up. “That would be my ex-boyfriend,” I informed him.

He stared at me, then ignored what I said and went on.