Secrets and Sins: Malachim (A Secrets and Sins Novel) (Entangled Ignite) (3 page)

She glanced at the dashboard. 9:35 p.m.
Damn.
Danielle snatched her hands down and jerked the zipper open on her bag. Quickly, she found the generic, throwaway cell phone she’d bought just that morning and tapped in a number. The ringer trilled in her ear. Once. Twice. Three times. Danielle’s foot set up an agitated tap as she anxiously waited for the person on the other end to answer. Catching her was never guaranteed. It’s why Danielle had set up an appointed day and time when they would speak. 9:30 p.m. every Monday. But since Danielle was five minutes late, she might’ve missed her opportunity.

“Yeah?”

The back of Danielle’s head thumped against the headrest. She exhaled a hard breath.

“Carmen,
es tu hermana.
”
Carmen, it’s your sister.
Danielle automatically fell into Spanish with her older sister, the result of being raised by a Colombian mother and aunt.

Carmen Guerrero sighed. “I know, Elena. You are the only person who calls me at the same time, the same day every week.”

Danielle swallowed an irritated reply. Getting into a sniping match with Carmen would serve no purpose other than hearing the dial tone buzz in her ear sooner rather than later. Since they were girls, her sister’s method of ending an argument had been shutting down and blocking Danielle out. For a younger sibling intent on grabbing her older sister’s attention, the practice had been torturous and effective. Still was.

“You sound tired,” Danielle said. Beneath Carmen’s snappy tone, she caught the weariness dragging at her voice. “Is everything okay at the plant?”

For the last several months, Carmen hadn’t mentioned her job at the local iron manufacturing factory in Birmingham, Alabama. Danielle had assumed the employment situation was fine.

A long pause met her question. “I don’t work there anymore.”

Danielle’s grip tightened around the burner phone, and she straightened in the car seat. “What?” she asked. “Since when?”

“For a month,” Carmen muttered.

“A month?” Danielle shouted.
What the hell?
“Carmen, you never said—”

“Get off my back, El,” her sister growled. “I may check in with these phone calls, but last I remembered, you weren’t my mother. I don’t have to report my every move to you.”

A thunderous silence stretched between them.
Meth
.
Relapse
.
Spiraling
. The words boomed between them, unspoken but deafening. For the past eight years, Carmen had battled a voracious drug addiction. Marijuana, cocaine, and, lately, meth. Her older sister had been a gorgeous aspiring model before the drugs snared her in their vicious grip and refused to let go. Addiction had chipped away at her beauty, leaving a pockmarked, painfully skinny, hollow-eyed shell in the place of her vivacious sister.

A year ago, she had harbored hope when Carmen had entered a rehab program. She’d allowed her optimism to grow when Carmen had started working the first full-time job she’d had in a decade. But now, the irritation, the fatigue, the evasiveness… Dread curdled in her stomach like milk left out on the counter too long.
Jesus
.
Not again
. And she wasn’t there to help, to prevent Carmen from self-destructing.

“Are you okay?” Danielle whispered.
Are you using again?

“Yes.” Carmen huffed out a breath that ended on a tired sigh. “Yes,” she repeated. “I’m fine. But…”

“But?” Danielle prompted, even though the nagging, I-told-you-so voice of experience taunted her.
You know what she’s going to say next. No need to play stupid.

“I need some money.”

Told you so.
Experience cackled in the back of her mind.

“Carmen.” Danielle ground her thumb and forefinger against her eyes, rubbing mercilessly. “Last month, you said you were short.”

“I was. I am.” Rustling sounds reached Danielle’s ear.
Damn. Was Carmen just getting out of bed?
“Listen, I need some to tide me over until I find a new job. Can you lend me fifty? One hundred?”

Danielle stared out the windshield, but instead of the Mercedes parked in front of her, she saw her sister, sitting on a filthy mattress on the floor of a dilapidated house. Through her dark, limp, tangled hair, dark red sores would dot her cheeks and chin. Bruises on her feet and pocked arms would advertise blown veins and recent ports for needles filled with liquid death.

“Elena?”

“I just paid rent,” she mumbled through numb lips. “All I have is fifty.” Her last few dollars until Pat issued her weekly check on Friday. Well, not counting the nest-egg money she religiously squirreled away from every check. Just in case she had to move fast. At the moment, she had three thousand dollars saved—enough for first and last month’s rent as well as well as a small cushion to tide her over for a few weeks. That money was survival…life or death. And she couldn’t—wouldn’t—dip into it.

“Can I have the fifty?” Carmen demanded.

Danielle should’ve said no. She should’ve told Carmen she was on her own, that she refused to support her drug habit. But the rebuke snagged in her throat. Trapped by guilt and responsibility. Her sister might be an addict, erratic, and unreliable, but when Danielle had needed her most, Carmen had been there. In the terror-filled time after she’d reported her husband to the police, her sister had stood by her, silently lending her support and love.

And then…then she and Carmen had never known their father, had lost their mother, and years later, their aunt. Yes, their relationship was often strained and more like that of a parent/child rather than older sister/younger sister. And yes, their phone calls were usually brusque rather than affectionate. But each was the only family the other had left. Though logic argued zero contact was probably the best safety option for both of them, part of Danielle believed the short weekly call let Carmen know she was loved, that someone cared whether she stayed off the drugs and lived. Just because Danielle had abandoned her old life didn’t mean she would throw her sister away, as well.

“Yes. I’ll send it out tomorrow morning. Give me your P.O. Box address,” she said, opening her bag and pulling out a pen and scrap of paper.

“Thanks, El. I really appreciate it.” A door squeaked as she recited the information. Seconds later, water gushed to life. “Listen, I gotta go. Talk to you same time next week.”

She wanted to ask why Carmen was just showering at almost ten o’clock at night and where she was headed. But she didn’t. She was afraid of the answer.

“Wait,” Danielle said. She hesitated, knowing the longer she held Carmen up, the more agitated her sister would become. But Danielle couldn’t let her hang up. Not just yet. Panic crawled up the back of her throat and trickled onto her tongue. The taste was bitter, shaming. “Has Alex tried to contact you?”

A long pause echoed down the line. “No. How could he?”

Danielle closed her eyes, but when screenshots of fists and blood spooled across her mind, she snapped them open. “He was released from jail two weeks ago.”

One year, five months, and three days for beating the hell out of her. Including the time he’d spent in jail prior to his plea agreement. She smiled, but not even a trace of humor filled her chest. The assistant district attorney had made it clear that Danielle should be glad he’d even received that much time. That she should agree to the plea bargain and consider herself lucky.

“No, I haven’t heard from him,” Carmen said, and the surprisingly gentle tone brought stinging tears to Danielle’s eyes. Worry slowly opened the talons that had curled around her heart.
Damn.
She scrubbed a palm down her face. Enough tears. They didn’t solve a thing. If anyone understood their futileness, she did. “And even if he did get in touch with me, I’m not saying a thing, little sister.”

She knew Carmen wouldn’t voluntarily expose their weekly phone calls. But Carmen was a drug addict. God only knew what she would give up if desperate enough for a hit.

Therefore, Danielle had never revealed her current location to Carmen, had never revealed the name she now went by. At the beginning of every week, she visited a store—switching locations around the city so she didn’t frequent one store more than three times—and purchased a new prepaid. On Carmen’s caller ID, a different phone number showed up for each call. She made it a point to request varying area codes so even if by some chance Carmen’s phone was confiscated, received calls from around the States would show up in her log.

After her husband—now ex-husband since the divorce had been finalized before she left Birmingham—had accepted a plea bargain and had begun his too-short jail sentence, one of the domestic abuse advocates who’d visited her in the hospital and had stayed in contact with her afterward had secretly passed her a phone number. When Danielle had called, the person on the other end had instructed her on how to disappear.

Not long afterward, Elena Rainier had ceased to exist, and Danielle Warren had been born with a birth certificate, driver’s license, Social Security card, and even documentation certifying successful completion of a Certified Legal Assistant examination from an ABA-approved online college program. Danielle owed that advocate and underground network her life—her new life.

Her contact had warned her that the identification wouldn’t withstand Alex’s vast search net forever—a couple of years at best. But if she held out long enough, she could save enough money to abandon Danielle Warren, move again, and live off grid, picking up low-skill, cash-only jobs when needed.

And maybe, just maybe, enough time would pass where she could secretly bring Carmen to wherever she landed without drawing Alex’s attention. It was a dream, a nebulous plan for the future. As of now, though, she couldn’t sacrifice the efforts of the people who’d helped her or her fresh start. Not even for the sister she loved.

Sometimes the duplicity scraped raw. Not being able to trust her sister grieved her. But when weighed against her safety and continued freedom, she sucked it up.

“Thanks, Carmen.” She glanced at the dashboard clock again. Almost ten o’clock. She swore softly. Small wonder Pat wasn’t blowing her phone up demanding to know what’d happened. Not that the older man cared about the car he’d let her borrow. He would be worried about
her
. Somewhere along the line, her soon-to-be-ex-employer had evolved into her self-appointed guardian. “Hey, I have to go. I’ll get the fifty out to you tomorrow. Talk to you later.”

“Same bat-time, same bat-station,” Carmen drawled.

Danielle smiled. Carmen had definitely inherited the sarcasm gene in the family. She tapped the
end call
button and dropped the phone in her bag. Her sister’s voice, weary yet edgy, replayed in Danielle’s head. She remembered that tone. The voice of a junkie in between highs.
Jesus
. If Carmen had started using drugs again…

She squeezed her eyes shut. Rage welled inside her like a sudden spewing of a geyser, unexpected, hot, and strong. Carmen had been doing so well. So fucking well. The cool, oily slick of shame doused the fire in her stomach.

Rainier Rule #6:
Coarse language denotes a lack of adequate vocabulary and breeding.

“Rainier Rules,” she rasped. “Fuck the rules. I don’t live by them anymore. They don’t control me.” The desperation in the words tasted like bitter fruit.
Who are you trying to convince?
a slippery whisper taunted.

“I’m free,” she said, opening her eyes. “I’m free.”

She looked forward to the day she could state those two words with conviction. And believe them.

Chapter Four

The first clue of disaster was the swirl of blue and red lights.

The second tip-off was the clusters of people gathered in and along the perimeter of the dark parking lot.

The lights alone could have meant a traffic stop, but the people… Yeah, dead giveaway. In a neighborhood where people tended to mind their own business, only tragedy and gossip would’ve brought them outside to huddle in the cold, dark night. And since gossip was more comfortable conducted inside with heat and coffee, only one option remained.

Tragedy.

Danielle’s heart lodged in her throat, the frantic pulse allowing shallow, panicked gasps. Pat’s Diner. Dragging her bag across the passenger seat, she climbed from the car. A terrible dread fueled her steps as she hurried across the asphalt toward the first police cruiser. Several were scattered across the lot like haphazardly thrown dice. She skirted another car but was brought up short as she rounded the tail of the white and blue car. A tall police officer appeared, blocking her path. Frantically, she shifted to the side and peered over his shoulder. Where was Pat? Julie, his wife? What had happened?

“Sorry, ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to move back,” the young cop stated in a polite but firm voice that brooked no argument.

“I work here,” she said, twisting the strap of her bag. She swallowed, attempting to moisten the desert landscape her mouth had become. Attempted to put aside her aversion to the police and be polite. “Please, let me pass.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that.”

Rationally, she understood the officer probably encountered nosy rubberneckers, hysterical family members, and annoying reporters often. He was just doing his job. But damn logic. The two people who had taken her in and offered her a semblance of normalcy might be hurt…or worse. Officer I-Am-the-Law could take his protocol and shove—

“Dani.”

Relief tackled her behind the knees at the sound of her name, and she would’ve crumpled to the ground if not for the support of the police car next to her. She leaned on the trunk, her gaze veering past the cop to land on Patrick Duncan. The emergency lights danced a macabre reel over his features, deepening the lines and crags of his sixty-something face. He seemed…tired.

“Let her through, boyo,” he ordered in his faint Irish brogue.

The officer briefly hesitated but moved to the side, silently granting her access to a scene straight out of
Law & Order
. The only thing missing was the distinct
dum-dum
of the gavel. At least ten uniformed cops and four plain-clothes detectives stood outside the diner’s glass front or spoke in low tones too gravelly for her to decipher. Off to one side, a small group was corralled and partially surrounded by law enforcement with notepads. She recognized several of the faces: Mr. Kinsey, Mrs. Lambert and her daughter Marie, Walt. Regulars of Pat’s.

“Pat.” She rushed forward. “What happened? Is Julie…?”

“Julie’s fine,” he said gruffly, patting her arm. She tensed beneath the affectionate gesture but didn’t pull away. The touch of a man, even her employer’s, set her teeth on edge and sent a helix of panic twisting through her veins.

“We were held up.”

She gasped. “What?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Smart buggers, too. Two of ’em barged in after the dinner rush, but before I made the night deposit drop.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

He flicked a hand behind him, indicating one of the ambulances. “Just some college kid idiot who thought it’d be cool to play hero for the girl he was with. Damn fool.” He shook his head. “Getting laid ain’t worth a bullet.”

The words were classic Pat—blunt, crusty—but beneath… She shivered and crossed her arms. Beneath, she detected worry and a hint of fear. The emotion echoed in her chest. There had been a rash of convenience store robberies in the area, but those had been in the early morning hours and never at a restaurant. The risk seemed foolhardy. As the college student had proven, maintaining control would be more difficult, more uncertain.

One of the ambulances pulled out of the lot, expertly maneuvering a path among the cop cars and gawkers. She stared after it. Was the kid in there?
God
. She closed her eyes. Shivered. It could’ve been so much worse.

“How bad is it?”

“He was hit in the shoulder. Nothing life-threatening, but it spooked the thieves. They rushed out of there, forgetting about the register.” He squinted into the darkness, staring after the rapidly disappearing ambulance. The lines around his eyes seemed more pronounced, as if the night’s events had etched their presence on his face. “In a way, I guess I owe that kid. But damn, I wish those bastards had just gotten the money and no one would’ve been hurt.”

“Did you recognize either of them? Do you think they were from this neighborhood?”

He shrugged. “They wore masks. And they didn’t say much except to demand the money. I did tell the police both had accents though—they talked slower, like drawls. But—” again he lifted a shoulder. “Around here, that could mean anything.”

True,
she conceded. Boston was mixture of races, cultures, and immigrants—both foreign and domestic. Many people from different points of the world and the United States migrated to the historical city and put down roots. Still…she crossed her arms, not to ward off the chill from the brisk December air, but the hint of frost slicking across her soul.
A drawl.
The word shouldn’t have crawled down her spine, but it did. It shouldn’t have made her think of Alex—but it did.

God, how many times was she going to bring him up tonight? With Carmen, and then now? So the thieves might have had southern accents. Linking Alex to a random robbery skipped too close to paranoia.

“Pat, I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

“Thirty years I’ve been in this neighborhood. Nothing like this has ever happened.” He fell silent, and they stood together, studying the organized chaos of the crime scene. His sadness lowered between them, a heavy cloak that did nothing to block out the winter wind. Though the till hadn’t been stolen, Pat had lost something else this night, something more important—his security and confidence in a community he’d served for over two decades. Danielle clenched her fingers until the blunt nails bit into her palm. She inhaled a deep breath, released it. Slowly, she raised her arm, watching it as if it were a floating body part from
The Walking Dead
. Her hand hovered above Pat’s broad shoulder for several long seconds before settling on the ropy muscle.

He started, his gaze jerking to hers. Surprise flared within his eyes, rounding them. The small touch was the first she’d initiated. The softening in his blue gaze acknowledged her sacrifice and what it cost her. For even now, discomfort raced over her skin, thumped in her heart, slickened her palms. Pat studied her face another quiet moment before patting the back of her hand and gently lowering it from him.

She couldn’t contain the soft sigh of relief.

“Hey, Danielle. Pat.” Both of them turned around and met the solemn gaze of Walter Adam Lawrence the Third. Or Tres, as Danielle had christened him not long after meeting the quiet, slightly nerdy graduate student who had been a regular at Pat’s since before Danielle had started working there.

“Hi, Tres,” she said. “How’re you doing? Are you okay?”

The shy smile he usually gifted her with at the sound of the nickname was noticeably absent. He dragged a trembling hand through his thick brown hair, shoving the heavy strands off his forehead. Inevitably, they tumbled back in his eyes.

She admittedly harbored a soft spot for him. Though she was only four years his senior at thirty, with his lanky form, quiet manner, and ever-present book bag, he seemed younger than twenty-six. Or maybe she just felt old as Methuselah. At times it seemed as if everything she’d endured in the past five years had aged her until she and Moses could have been BFFs.

“Okay. Just shaken,” Walt admitted, rubbing his palms down the front of his khakis. “It all happened so fast. One moment, I’m eating, and the next, someone’s screaming at me to ‘get down’ and my face is pressed to the floor.”

With no trouble, she could envision the scene he described. Walt perched on the second stool with his customary hamburger with no lettuce, light tomatoes, mayo, and extra ketchup, fries, and root beer. Being involved in a hold-up would have been a harrowing experience for anyone, but probably even more so for Walt.

To the regulars at Pat’s Diner, he was Walt, the geeky, quiet graduate student who showed up like clockwork Monday through Saturday for the burger and fries and the meatloaf special on Sunday. But she knew he was also heir to one of the largest wealth management firms in the Boston Metro area. Even though he rented an apartment not too far from the diner and taught computer classes at the local community center, his sheltered upbringing wouldn’t have prepared him for the evening’s turmoil.

“I really am sorry, Walt,” Pat rumbled.

Before the younger man could respond, Danielle slashed a hand through the air. “It’s not your fault, Pat. The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the thugs who tried to steal from you.”

Pat didn’t say anything, but the air of weariness didn’t fall from his taut frame.

“I’m just glad you weren’t there, Danielle,” Walt murmured. “That’s something to be thankful for.” Even in the dark, she glimpsed the tinge of red dashed across his cheekbones, and she recalled Pat’s joking about the younger man’s crush on Danielle. True, Tres did talk to her more than the other diners, but she’d chalked his verbosity with her up to the fact that she didn’t treat him like an oddity.

“I forgot all about your errand.” Pat’s gaze narrowed. “Did you drop off that résumé like I told you to?”

She nodded, her delight in landing a job with Malachim’s firm briefly raising its head. “Well, you did have more important matters on your mind,” she said dryly. When he arched an eyebrow, she smiled. “Not only did I deliver the résumé, but you are looking at the newest employee with Jerrod & Associates, L.P.”

For the first time that evening, Pat’s eyes lit up. A broad grin stretched across his face, his joy unmistakable. “You’re kidding? Hell, how did you manage that?”

“The owner of the firm happened to be there, and he interviewed me on the spot. And offered me the job.”

“I told you,” Pat crowed. “Didn’t I tell you? Just have faith, and everything will work out fine.”

Faith had been on her endangered species list for some time now, but she had to admit, Pat’s unflagging confidence had pushed her to apply with Malachim’s office.

“Nice to see you don’t believe in ‘I told you so,’” she drawled.

Pat scoffed. “People who don’t say ‘I told you so’ never had confidence in their beliefs to begin with. So when do you start?”

“I’m supposed to go in Wednesday. But,” she scanned the parking lot again and frowned. “I can call and postpone my start date. I don’t want to leave you in the middle of all this.”

“Don’t you dare,” he growled. “This’ll keep. We’ll still be here. You’re going to that job on Wednesday, and that’s final.”

“Yes, sir.” She snapped out a sharp salute. At his grumbled “smart-ass,” she chuckled.

“Congratulations on your new job, Danielle.”

She returned her attention to Walt, having forgotten he still stood there, witness to her announcement.

“Thanks, Tres,” she said. “Don’t think I’ll forget I have you to thank for sending me in the right direction.” When he’d discovered she was searching for another job and had a paralegal certification, he had dragged his laptop out and pulled up several employment ads online. One of them had been from Malachim’s firm.

Walt shrugged, but a small smile tugged the corners of his mouth.

She glanced over her shoulder at the diner. Even washed in emergency lights, the sight of the building yanked at her heart. “I have to admit, I’m going to miss being here with you guys every day.”

“Like I said, we’re not going anywhere,” Pat told her. “And the apartment is yours for as long as you need it. There’s no hurry to abandon us altogether.”

The prick of tears startled her. Up until that moment, she hadn’t even admitted to herself the kernel of fear that had slipped beneath her joy and hid like a stone in an old shoe. Yes, she was thrilled at moving forward with her future, at easing her toe back into the world of law she loved with a passion. But still…the thought of leaping without a safety net scared her. Returning to the diner, the aroma of frying meat, the clang of dishes, and her small apartment would provide that soft, safe nest after a day of spreading her wings and flying.

“Thanks, Pat,” she whispered. Clearing her throat, she turned away from the two men, willing the threatening tears back. “But in the meantime, you’re not rid of me until Tuesday night. Just tell me what I need to do.”

“That’s not necessary, Dani…”

She turned back to look at the man who was still her boss for another day. “Yes, it is. That’s what…” she paused. Cleared her throat once more. “That’s what family does.”

A long beat of silence passed.

“Yes,” came his gruff reply. “That is what we do.”