Skin Deep (17 page)

Oh, my God!

He hadn’t been cooking food. He’d been cooking up meth.

The funny smell.

She had to get Emily out of here.
Now.

She walked passed him, praying that he would be too confused to guess what she was doing. If she could only make it to her bedroom, she could lock the door and call—

Bony fingers grabbed her arm.

“You think I’m stupid?” The nauseating stench of his rotting teeth and body odor hit her full in the face. “You’re going downstairs—both you and the kid.”

Megan tried to jerk her arm away. “I have to get my daughter out of here. You’ve been cooking meth in my house! That stuff is toxic! Every second we’re in here, she’s breathing—”

“Shut the fuck up!” A gun appeared in his hand. “Turn off the lights, take the brat, and go downstairs.”

Fear slid like ice into her veins.

If pressed, Donny would use the weapon—of that she had no doubt. He had once attacked Marc with a knife.

“I-I’m taking food.” Megan couldn’t keep the quaver out of her voice. She turned toward the pantry and managed to grab a box of granola bars before Donny shoved her. “She’s hungry. She needs to have her supper.”

“There’s food downstairs.” He flicked off the kitchen lights, leaving the house in darkness. “Now go!”

Megan felt her way to the stairs, swamped by a sense of déjà vu, an all too familiar feeling of despair, of helplessness. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

“Shut up!”

Megan walked down the stairs on unsteady legs, Emily’s face buried in her neck. “It’s going to be okay, sweet pea. Just do exactly what mommy tells you to do, okay?”

She heard Donny close the door behind them, the sound ominous—a trap swinging shut.

The basement was a mess. Plastic bottles of chemicals sat near the stairs, rocks of crystal meth on the coffee table, a bag of potato chips lying discarded on the floor beside a banana peel, empty beer bottles, water bottles, and jackets from dozens of porn DVDs. The television was on, the graphic image of a man’s penis inside a woman’s vagina frozen on its screen.

Of course, there would be porn. Donny had always loved it.

Relieved that Emily hadn’t seen, Megan quickly turned the TV off, then carried her daughter to the play corner and sat on the carpet beside her dollhouse, holding Emily in her lap. “Do you see that stuff on the coffee table, Emily?” she whispered. “It’s poison. It’s very bad. Don’t touch it! Don’t eat it! Do you hear me?”

Emily nodded, tiny tears on her cheeks.

“Hey, did I say you could turn off the TV?”

Megan glared at him. “I won’t let you expose my daughter to that kind of filth, even if you do have a gun.”

He sat down on the couch, his gazed fixed on Emily. “She’s my daughter, too.”

Megan cringed at his words, held Emily tightly against her chest, hoping Emily hadn’t understood. “What do you want? Money to pay off the gangbangers who were after you? They’re in jail.”

He frowned, looked confused.

“You didn’t know? Marc caught them.”

Donny’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

“No, I’m—”

“
Shut up!
” His shout made Emily cry and Megan jump. He bolted to his feet, sweat trickling down his temples. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. Tomorrow morning, you’re going to go to the bank and withdraw every penny you have while I stay here with the kid. When I have the money, I’ll go. But if you take off or you try to come back with your brother or the cops, I’ll shoot the girl. I gave her to you. I can take her away. Got it?”

Megan thought she might throw up. “Yes.”

“Good.” Donny sat again, his body visibly twitching. “We’ll just have ourselves a little night together—a family reunion.”

# # #

Nate parked in front of her house, surprised not to find an unmarked police car on the street. If he’d been Marc Hunter, he wouldn’t have taken his eyes off Megan until that bastard Donny was either dead or behind bars.

Nate got out of his pickup, Megan’s cell phone in his pocket, and walked toward the house. The sidewalk and driveway had been shoveled, but the house was dark, the curtains drawn. There was no sign that anyone was home, apart from the trail of snow her tires had left on the concrete driveway when she’d driven into her garage.

He rang the doorbell.

Nothing.

He waited, rang again.

Nothing.

Damn it!

Nate’s dad had come straight out to get him the moment he’d realized Megan was gone. The old man had known exactly
why
Megan had left so abruptly. Nate had called her right away, hoping to explain, but she hadn’t answered. Only after he’d called from the kitchen and had heard her phone ringing upstairs had he realized why. The cell phone had given him an excuse to follow her. He’d left his father in charge of the situation with Baby Doe and had come after her, but by then she’d been halfway back to Denver.

Right now Nate wasn’t sure whose ass he wanted to kick more—his own for rushing things, for pushing Megan too far, too fast; his father’s for allowing Chuck to wag his tongue with Megan in the other room; or Chuck’s for getting involved in something that was none of his damned business. Yeah, Chuck meant well. He’d been with the Cimarron since Nate was a kid. But that didn’t mean he could offer his two cents on Nate’s love life. At the end of the day, he was an employee, and he needed to remember that.

Nate stared at the closed door.

Maybe she’s not answering because she doesn’t want to see you.

The thought put a fist-sized hole through his chest.

He found it hard to believe she would let him stand here on her front steps after last night. He could understand her being hurt and upset by what she’d heard Chuck say. He could even understand her packing up and leaving. She probably thought she was doing them a favor, getting out of the house to spare them shame or some damned thing.

But to ignore him? No, he couldn’t understand that.

Megan, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do this to us.

It shouldn’t matter to her what Chuck or anyone else thought. What mattered was what she and Nate felt.

Seconds ticked by.

Then it occurred to him that she might have come here and then left to stay at her brother’s house. That would explain the lack of a surveillance unit on the street—and why the house was dark.

He turned to go, hesitating on her front steps. Something about the situation didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. He glanced around, his senses trained on the darkness.

Nothing.

He walked back toward his truck, climbed in, and headed down the street, wondering how her brother would feel about him dropping by.

# # #

“You hear that? Whoever it was, they just drove away.” Donny chuckled, bent down until he was looking into Megan’s eyes, his grin exposing missing and blackened teeth, the foul reek of his mouth overpowering. “With the lights out upstairs, nobody knows you’re here.”

What little hope Megan had evaporated, fear churning in her stomach. When she’d heard the doorbell, she’d thought for certain it must be Nate or Marc coming to check on her. She’d felt sure that if they saw the lights out they would know something was wrong. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would think she wasn’t home.

Donny walked back to the couch, sat, and picked up his pipe, dropping a blue-white rock of meth into the bowl and reaching for his lighter.

“No! Please don’t smoke any more of that in front us.” She’d watched him binge on meth for the past hour, his actions toward her growing more and more aggressive. “I don’t want Emily breathing the fumes.”

He turned to look at her, his gaze dropping briefly to Emily, who sat silently in Megan’s lap, clutching her toy pony. “It won’t hurt her. Besides, I’ve
got
to have it.”

Megan had never done meth, but she remembered feeling that way, her veins hollow and screaming, her head pounding, her body aching for that next fix of heroin. Helpless to stop him, she turned Emily away from the smoke, a faint chemical smell like burning plastic in the air. “Why don’t you play over here, sweet pea? Mommy doesn’t want you breathing that—”

Donny groaned. “Fuck! Fuck, yes! Aaah, yeah!”

Megan covered Emily’s ears, looked over, saw a euphoric expression on Donny’s face and felt chills slide down her spine as his gaze shifted—and locked with hers.

He grinned. “Either you need to let me turn this TV back on, or you need to get over here and give my dick what it really wants.”

“No! There is a four-year-old child here.”
Four years old.
That’s the age Megan had been the night her life fell apart. “You’re just going to have to go upstairs if you want to do
that
with yourself. There’s another TV in the living room.”

Wired from the drug, Donny fidgeted, his gaze still on her. “Do you remember how I used to take care of you, Megan? I took you in. I fed you. I got you whatever you needed—clothes, drugs, makeup. Do you remember that? Now you think you’re too good for me, don’t you? You’re not. You might have a house and a car and a brother who’s a cop, but you’re still the same little smack whore.”

Megan felt heat rush to her face, rage chasing her fear way. “You
used
me. You gave me drugs, and you used—”

In the blink of an eye, he was on his feet and moving toward her.

Megan put Emily behind her. “Hide, Emily.”

Donny fisted his hands in Megan’s hair, jerked her to her feet, pointed the gun in her face. “After all I did for you, you owe me.”

Not this. Not rape again!

“But my baby girl—”

“Tell her to close her eyes if you don’t want her to watch.” Donny dragged Megan to the couch, pressed the gun to her face and pushed her back onto the sofa, one hand dropping to the zipper of her jeans.

Emily started to cry. “Mommy! Mommy!”

“Mommy’s okay, sweet—”

“Tell her to shut the fuck up!” Donny turned, pointed the gun at Emily, who cried harder. His hands were shaking, his finger on the trigger. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut
up
!”

Oh, God Emily!

“No!” Megan grabbed him, tried to turn the gun away from her daughter. “Please, no! Don’t—”

BAM! BAM!

Megan’s heart seemed to stop, fractured images filtering to her mind through a haze of adrenaline.

Donny jerking out of her grasp, pitching headfirst over the back of the couch.

His gun falling.

Blood spattering her shirt, the couch, the wall.

And then Nate was there.

He touched a reassuring hand to Megan’s shoulder, then hurried over to Emily, scooped her into his arms, and carried her back to Megan. “Everything’s going to be okay, sweetie. It’s over. Here’s your mommy.”

Megan reached up, took Emily from Nate’s arms, held her tightly, her body shaking with relief. “Oh, Emily! Oh, my sweet girl! It’s okay, sweet pea. It’s okay.”

Nate’s strong arm went around Megan’s shoulder. He drew her to her feet. “Can you walk? Can you carry her?”

Megan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Let’s get the two of you out of here.”

# # #

“How’d you know something was wrong?” Darcangelo asked.

Nate walked across the hospital parking lot with Hunter and Darcangelo, the two of them having helped him retrieve his pickup truck from Megan’s house. He’d already spent at least two hours being debriefed by homicide detectives—who had confiscated the SIG for forensic purposes, leaving him down yet another firearm—and now he wanted to see Megan and Emily with his own eyes, make sure they were okay.

“All the lights were out—not just the lights inside the house, but also the outdoor security lights. I knew Megan wouldn’t turn them off.” He’d been halfway down the block, looking at her house in his rearview mirror when it had hit him. “I stopped, went back, found tracks in the snow leading up to the entrance for the crawl space and signs of forced entry. So I called you—and went in.”

Hunter clapped him on the back. “I told you to wait, but I’m damned glad you didn’t.”

So was Nate.

He’d seen a lot of twisted shit in his life, but nothing that had shaken him as much as seeing Donny point that S&W .38 special at Megan’s face—and then turn it on Emily. He’d hoped to get them out of there without bloodshed, but in that moment, he’d known he had no choice but to fire, five pounds of pressure and a 9 mm hollow-point round ending Donny’s wasted, meaningless life.

Hunter stopped outside the ER entrance. “Did you disobey orders like that in the Marines?”

Nate chuckled. “No, but Hunter?”

“Yeah?”

“Just to be clear,
you
don’t give me orders.” Nate reached for the door handle.

Darcangelo chuckled. “I think you’ve been handed your ass, Hunter.”

“Shut up, Dickangelo.”

Nate ignored the bickering newlyweds and walked quickly through the ER, the bright fluorescent lights a sharp contrast to the darkness outside. With the help of Hunter’s wife, Sophie, a pretty strawberry-blonde, he convinced the nurse he was Megan’s partner, and was led to an exam room where Megan was resting and awaiting discharge, Emily asleep in her arms.

“Hey.” Megan was wearing hospital scrubs, her clothing either taken as evidence or confiscated due to exposure to hazardous chemicals from the meth. There was an adhesive bandage in the bend of her arm where they’d apparently drawn blood. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying, but she smiled when she saw him, reaching for him with her free hand. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

That was nice to hear.

He took her hand, kissed it. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine … now.” She looked down at her daughter, stroked Emily’s hair. “And Emily is going to be okay, too. They don’t think we were there long enough for the chemicals to have done any lasting damage.”

“I’m relieved to hear that.”

Megan looked up at him, tears welling up in her eyes. “Thank you. If you hadn’t showed up when you did, Donny would have…”

“I know.” Nate moved to her side, drew her head against his chest, kissed her hair, the feel of her precious in his arms. “I know.”

He held her while she wept, wishing he could erase all memory of the past five hours for her and for Emily. But he couldn’t.