Signs of Life (8 page)

“I think we’re done with this shit, don’t you?”

Kai rubbed his thumb over the back of Loren’s hand, thinking of what had happened, and that led to thoughts of Jeremy and their sordid encounter.

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “We are. It’s starting to feel a little pathetic, to be honest.”

Loren squeezed Kai’s fingers lightly. “I just don’t want to be lonely, you know?”

Kai knew he wasn’t talking about just sex, but about being able to be himself, not having to hide who he was, if only for a little while.

He squeezed Loren’s hand back wordlessly.

Trish scraping her chair back from the table jolted Kai out of his reverie.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friend,” she misquoted with a wry smile, gathering up her bag and getting ready to head back to class.

“Be safe, okay?” Kai saluted her with two fingers, then sat up straight. “Hey, Trish, wait a sec.”

She turned and looked at him expectantly, her arms loaded down.

“Have you ever had any self-defense classes?” Kai asked. “Just in case of—you know.” He waved his hand vaguely, but he’d heard more than one story of teachers, especially female teachers, being assaulted by their students. Trish knew exactly what he was talking about.

“A couple of classes a long time ago, you know, jab your thumb in his eye or elbow his gut, that type of thing.”

“I can teach you a couple of moves,” Kai said earnestly, standing up. “A couple of simple moves to incapacitate someone so you can get the hell away and find help.”

Trish looked dubious. “You mean that ninja shit that you do? I don’t think I could do that. Obviously I’m not that athletic.” Her mouth twisted self-deprecatingly and she waved her hand down her body, indicating the few extra pounds she carried.

“It would be something anyone could do, moves that are simple but effective. Think about it, Trish. A button on a desk doesn’t do you much good if you’re cornered across the room by someone twice your size.”

Trish nodded. “I’ll think about it. It’s probably not a bad idea. Thanks, Kai.” She turned and left, and Kai gathered his own things, heading off to class.

Fifteen minutes later he stood at the front of his afternoon science class, calling off the names on his roster, sighing as he tallied a total of sixteen out of twenty-four present. Most of the faces looking back at him were sullen, disinterested, some outright hostile. At least three of them were over eighteen, adults in a room full of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old kids.

Kai walked amongst them, passing out his beginning-of-the-year quiz, making his silent assessments.

“Dunno why da fuck I gotta be here, man,” one of the older students grumbled, snatching his paper from Kai’s hand.

“You know why, amigo,” Kai said softly. “Probation officer says it’s either school or jail, right?” The kid glared, and Kai raised his voice. “I’ll take attendance again five minutes before class ends, so there won’t be any sneaking out halfway through.” A chorus of groans and muttered “fuck yous” met this pronouncement, and Kai smiled inwardly. He knew all their tricks; he’d perpetrated most if not all of them himself, once upon a time.

“Okay, you all have fifteen minutes to complete the quiz.”

He leaned against his desk and watched as the inevitable phones came out, quiz papers ignored, the scratching of pencils as a few kids did the work. So. Very. Fucking. Typical. Suddenly Kai was weary to his soul, weary of the uphill battle, the utter futility.

“Why do you keep doing it, babe?” Loren asked him once as they sprawled side-by-side in their sleeping bags, the rain dripping from the towering trees above to plink on the roof of their small tent. “I mean, you have a fucking master’s degree. Go teach a lame-ass class at the community college, something you could do with your eyes closed. Collect your paycheck and sleep like a baby every night, man.”

Kai remembered how he’d chuckled and changed the subject, convinced at the time he was making a difference, no matter how small and insignificant it seemed sometimes. Now as he watched a girl insolently hold his eyes as she tore her quiz paper into microscopic pieces and swept them onto the floor, he wasn’t quite so convinced.

“Yo, Teach! I’m cold. Turn that off.” Another girl leaned back in her chair, waving her arm and indicating the window AC unit that was blowing merrily into the room.

“It’s the middle of August, Tanya,” Kai said drily. “If the AC makes you cold, I’d suggest you bring a sweater from now on.”

Tanya sneered at him, then looked around at the other kids before getting up and sauntering to the AC unit, making a big show of switching it off.

“Fuck you, bitch! Turn that back on!”

With another sigh Kai waded into the fray. Twenty minutes and a call to security later, Tanya was ejected and marched off to suspension. By the time Kai calmed the other kids down and regained control of the room, there were all of fifteen instructional minutes left. Once again the kids who might have wanted to actually
learn
something were highly shortchanged.

As they filed out, Kai fought with all his strength not to pack up his things and follow them out the front door, never to return. He scrubbed his hands over his face roughly, and when he pulled them away, he was startled to see a girl standing next to his desk.

“You remember me, Mr. D?” The girl was petite, slender, with light brown skin, hair a riotous mass of curls around her face.

“Of course I do, Shauna. How’s Dante?” Shauna’s face broke into a smile at the mention of her eleven-month-old son, the reason she had to drop out of Kai’s class midyear the previous school term. She was bright and clever, had been one of his best students, and he was glad to see her back.

“He fine, Mr. D, thanks for askin’,” she said shyly. “I’m glad I be back in your class this year.”

“Me too,” Kai said gently. “If you do the work, you shouldn’t have any problem catching up with the credits you missed last year.”

“I’m gonna finish this time, and graduate. I wanna get a scholarship for nursing school. Ms. Holbrook told me I prob’ly could.”

“Ms. Holbrook would know, wouldn’t she?” Kai agreed. “She’s not the best guidance counselor here at school for nothing.”

“She said it would look good on a scholarship application if I did some extra-credit stuff, like helped a teacher or somethin’.”

Kai grinned at her, and was amused to see her blush. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? I could definitely use a smart assistant in this class.”

“Can I start helping today? My mama has Dante ’til four, and I could—”

“I think I have some copying and laminating you could help with. I’ll leave a stack in the office with instructions, so just get to it when you can, okay? And I’ll let Ms. Holbrook know you’re my assistant so she can keep track of your hours for that scholarship app.”

Shauna’s smile lit up the room, her eyes bright with intelligence and determination, and Kai knew he wouldn’t be going anywhere.

LOUD RAP
music broke into Jeremy’s concentration, his steady rhythm faltering. He ground his teeth and cursed under his breath, resisting the urge to childishly shake his fist at the rapidly disappearing car. It was the second time it had happened on this run, the first time when the rattletrap car full of punks was going the
other
way on the typically quiet backwoods road. Jeremy was sixteen miles into his habitual twenty, and while he wasn’t usually distracted so easily, there was nothing he hated worse than rap music. All the mental peace and quiet he had achieved vanished in an instant as annoyance once again swept through him. He breathed deeply through his nose and out his mouth, letting the soothing rhythm of his feet slapping the pavement calm him. He rolled his neck and loosened the tension in his shoulders, swinging his arms easily by his side.

After a few minutes, his rhythm steadied once again and he felt the focus, the calm return as the endorphins flooding his body quieted the noise in his head. Today Jeremy had really needed the tranquility his runs brought him, temporary though it was, as the next day he was scheduled to take the Oregon bar exam. It was another step in his coming-back-to-life plan, and already he was feeling the effects of the stress and anxiety.

It wasn’t like he was worried about the exam itself, but more simply what it represented. It was tempting to just go back into seclusion from the world at large, keep doing what he’d been doing for the past year, which was long-distance consulting with his two former firms in Florida and California, plus a sprinkling of pro bono work here and there, mostly contract review and brief drafting. He didn’t fool himself that he was any sort of hotshot. Despite his impressively high-priced education, he was relatively inexperienced by legal standards, only five years out of law school by the time Brent died. Jeremy knew full well if he didn’t have the father he did, he’d still be toiling away in some assembly-line law firm and trying to distinguish himself from the ranks of the other newbies.

Still he
did
have the high-priced education and impressive grade-point average to go with it, and he found it kept certain doors open for him, especially since he was willing to do the sort of grunt paperwork a lot of lawyers were too busy to do. It kept his mind sharp and his knowledge up-to-date. Plus it was something he could do at home, and it had allowed him to isolate himself and keep his interactions with people to a minimum. That part of it needed to change, and after his epiphany the morning after the gay club, Jeremy was determined to take baby steps toward reclaiming his life, and becoming licensed to practice law in the State of Oregon was one of many such carefully planned steps. And about the only one he was able to bring himself to do so far, even a few months later.
One day at a time, shithead
, he reminded himself yet again.
You’re in a better place than you were six months ago, so cut yourself some fucking slack.

Jeremy used the small towel tucked into the waistband of his running shorts to wipe the sweat from his eyes, then took a sip of water from the bottle that hung from the belt around his waist. It was mid-August, a hot and humid day, though the towering trees from the national forest provided periodic shade that made the heat tolerable. Still heat and humidity wouldn’t stop Jeremy from running, like rain and sleet didn’t, like bitter cold didn’t.

Jeremy needed to run like he needed to breathe.

He exited the national forest boundary and soon reached the paved road that led to his cabin on his private property. It was almost exactly a mile from the main forest road to his house, and Jeremy had it perfectly timed, speeding up into a sprint and slowing down right as the road curved and led into his driveway. As he walked around the circular drive, his arms above his head, letting his breathing deepen and his heart rate slow, he registered that something felt… off.

He did his cooldown stretches and then paced the length of his driveway, scanning the house, not seeing anything out of place. His black Land Rover was safely in the garage, and the garage itself didn’t look tampered with. Jeremy thrust away the uneasy feeling and headed for the front door of the cabin, fishing the key out of the zippered pocket on his belt. His first priority was to hydrate and replenish what his run took out of him, and then he’d do a little more investigating, see if he could figure out what was disturbing him.

Stripping off his belt and tossing it onto the small table just inside the front door, Jeremy toed off his running shoes and grabbed a bottle of room-temperature water he had set on the counter before heading out several hours earlier. Small sips gave way to gulps as his body adjusted to the introduction of the water, and he scrubbed his hand across his mouth, breaking off a small piece of a high-protein bar and chewing it slowly.

He threw his sweaty shorts and the small towel into the downstairs hamper, then, stark naked, climbed the stairs to his master bedroom and got into a lukewarm shower, rinsing away the sweat and grime from his long run. Finally dressed in worn, comfortable jeans and a loose T-shirt, Jeremy thrust his feet into a pair of leather slides and headed back outside for another look around.

While he’d been inside the sun had moved and the shadows that previously fell across the driveway were gone, revealing clear tire tracks on the asphalt. Jeremy had a landscaping service that usually came in and did the leaf-blowing and raking, but their scheduled day wasn’t until the weekend, three days away. As a result, the dirt and debris had accumulated, and those tire tracks hadn’t been there when Jeremy left for his run. Why would they be? Jeremy hadn’t had a visitor in a week, and that was only his cleaning lady, who was scheduled to arrive on the same day as the landscapers to minimize the disruption to Jeremy’s routine.

He had a PO Box in town, so there wouldn’t be any mail delivery, and a quick scan of his front porch didn’t reveal a UPS or FedEx package waiting for him. Someone had been here, someone who had had no right to be. Jeremy had clearly posted No Trespassing signs at the entrance to his driveway, and the county-maintained road ended not far past his property line, turning into an unpaved rutted mess of a trail, impassable to a regular vehicle, even an SUV. If someone took a wrong turn off the main highway and blundered up to Jeremy’s driveway, they would have turned around at the end of it to go back the way they came, not come so close to the house.

Rattled and unnerved, Jeremy made a circuit of the cabin, then two, still not noticing anything out of the ordinary. Finally deciding it was just some idiot who came up too far onto his property before turning around, and shaking his head in wry amusement at his paranoia, Jeremy headed back toward the front steps, intending to make a light supper and study his bar exam materials for a couple of hours before turning in early.

He suddenly tripped over something, nearly falling to his knees before catching himself on the side of the cabin. Snorting with disgust, he leaned down and picked up his snow shovel from where it was almost buried in the leaves. Every time he’d been out here chopping firewood over the last several months, he’d intended to stick the shovel in the garage but kept forgetting about it. This time he would—