Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) (3 page)

“Good as ever.” She pointed above the bed. “There was a class from the middle school here today, doing art projects with some of the other residents. They made Carrie a birthday sign.”

He looked up and saw the sign, big and painted with the kind of paint that puffed up off the paper. It read
Happy Birthday, Miss Carrie!
and was covered with flowers. “That’s nice. She likes flowers.”

“I know she does. You always bring the prettiest. That arrangement is gorgeous. Well, you stop by before you go, okay?”

Rachel was a gossip and a flirt, and often liked to chat with him. It was why he’d never stopped her from calling him Mr. Musinski. He wasn’t about the fuck his sister’s nurse, and hearing himself referred to by that name kept his dick safely in storage. It hadn’t stopped her from batting her eyes at him, though.

But he suspected that today there was more to her request than flirting. The installment payment for Carrie’s care had been due last week, and he’d been dodging the Center’s director until his next club cut. He wasn’t in the mood for that conversation, but he nodded. “I’ll say bye, anyway.”

“Okay. You know where to find me.” She left, pulling the door to.

When his sister’s hair was soft and fluffy, he put the brush away, took out her favorite book, and sat down at her side.

The book was a cheap paperback, and it had been well-worn and repeatedly read when Carrie could still read. In the years since, it had begun to fall apart to the extent that sometimes Muse had to rearrange the pages into their correct order. He’d finished it at his last visit, so he carefully opened it at the beginning and started again.

“
1801.—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.
”

He read until his throat was dry. Then he closed the book, put it away, and sat holding his sister’s clawed, empty hand.

CHAPTER TWO

She was early. She hated to be early to things like this.

“Happy housewarming!” Sidonie hoped the smile on her face looked a lot more natural than it felt. She really had had a shitty day, and being social with the people she’d spent that day with was not on her list of things she wanted to be doing.

“Sid! Come in, come in. Here, let me take that.” Carole Rucker, her boss’s wife, lifted the fancy cake from her hands and then stepped back and let her into the front hall. “Oh, and you brought wine, too? You didn’t need to go to so much trouble!”

Sidonie smiled. “It’s no trouble at all, Carole.” Well, it wouldn’t have been if she’d been able to make it out of the store on her first try. She cast an irritated glanced down at the spray of red dots around the bottoms of her jeans and the tops of her boots. Probably no one could see them but her, though—at least she hoped so. Waving the bottles slightly, she asked, “Where should I put these?”

“Harry’s got a bar set up in the kitchen. Go on back, and I’ll set the cake out.”

Nodding, but without much enthusiasm, Sidonie went in the direction Carole had pointed. She hoped Harry wasn’t alone in the kitchen.

He was, and he grinned widely when she came in. “Hi, Sid. Feeling better?”

Not really. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He was still grinning. That creeped her out.

She’d finished her Master of Social Work degree in the spring. She’d only been working for DCFS for a couple of months, and she’d only been assigned to San Bernardino County for a few weeks. She hadn’t decided that she really liked or really hated any of her coworkers yet. But Harry made her uncomfortable. Her boss. Made her uncomfortable. Yippee.

It wasn’t anything she could identify clearly—not yet, anyway—but things like the way he was grinning now, just a second or two too long, just a shade too intensely, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Maybe he was just socially awkward, or maybe she was just paranoid. Probably both.

But Harry and Carole had both been nothing but nice to her since she’d moved out from Orange County, taking her out to eat, helping her get settled, so she needed to calm the fuck down. She cleared her throat and held out the bottles of cabernet. “Carole said I should bring these to you?”

“Yes! You can set them over there.” He waved toward the end of a counter, where other bottles of wine and a selection of glasses were arranged. Then he followed right behind her, reaching around her as she set the bottles down and picking up one of the others. Just a hair too close. “I assume you’d like a glass?”

His mouth was inches from her ear. Resisting the urge to shudder, Sidonie sidestepped once and turned to smile at him. “Actually, I don’t suppose tequila’s on the spirits list?”

Harry laughed. “A girl after my heart—straight for the hard stuff. Well, since we’re off tomorrow, I suppose that’ll be fine. You can stay in our guest room if you lose your head.” He winked.

Whether she was paranoid or not, Harry was creeping her out extra tonight. So, no, she didn’t think she’d be losing her head. But she would be starting off with a shot.

California was going through one of its recurring fiscal crises, and employees of the state were on furlough, working four-day weeks. Departments of what had been deemed ‘essential’ services—mainly fire and police—did rolling furloughs, with employees taking different days throughout the week. DCFS had not made the list of essential services. Kids in crisis Friday through Sunday got help from the police until DCFS was back on the clock on Monday.

Thinking about the kid in crisis she’d spent most of the day sorting out, Sidonie accepted a generously-poured shot of tequila from Harry and tossed it down before he could hand her a slice of lime. She handed him the empty glass.

“Another?” Harry cocked his head and made an impressed face.

Another would definitely help. Then she’d move to beer or something. “Yeah. Please.”

He poured and handed it to her, but when she tried to take it, he pulled it back a couple of inches. “They won’t all be like that, Sid. Some will be worse, but most won’t be so bad. We have happy stories, too.”

Today had been her first day out in the field with her own cases. Her third home visit had been a horror that had taken up most of the rest of her day and probably her mind for the foreseeable.

“I know.” She pulled the shot glass out of his hand and tossed it back. “Okay, I’m good. Beer, maybe?”

With a chuckle, her boss pointed to the refrigerator. “Help yourself. If you’re drinking Corona, I’ve got the limes sliced right here.”

Carole came in then, carrying an armload of six-packs of fancy beer. Harry went to help her, and Sidonie was on her own. She got a Corona from the fridge, popped the cap, pushed a lime into the neck, and went out to the relative safety of the living room.

There weren’t many people around yet, but thankfully, Dina was one of them. If she’d been asked to name someone in the office she thought she definitely liked already, it would be Dina she’d name. Another caseworker, only a few years more senior than Sidonie, and a year or so younger, Dina had a sharp sense of humor but not a hard edge. A lot of the people they worked with seemed to be going through the motions, but Dina still worked like their job had meaning, like they had a mission to do good in the world and were succeeding at it.

It was why Sidonie had wanted this career, and the blasé attitudes some of the caseworkers had scared her. She understood needing to build up some armor so that she could get through days like today without tequila as a palliative, but she never wanted to forget that there were human beings on all sides of her cases.

Even if they were big, terrifying, tattooed human beings who threw furniture at her.

Dina was standing at the food table, and when Sidonie came up to her, she smiled broadly and clinked bottles. “Hey, Sid. Long time, no see.”

“Yeah—two whole hours. Seems weird to throw a bash like this on a Thursday. Even if it is the start of our weekend.”

Dina shrugged. “I think Carole keeps them pretty busy on the weekends. She’s a home improvement addict, and now she has this whole new home to improve. Anyway, if you ask me, I’d rather get the obligation party out of the way.” She nodded at Sidonie’s bottle. Which had somehow become empty already. “You driving?”

Sidonie thought about that. She had driven, yes. And she intended to drive home. But her knees already had the telltale tingle that said she was rolling past buzzed down the hill to drunk. “I…guess.”

“Unless that was your last beer, maybe we should drive you home tonight. You can leave that funkadelic thing you drive here.”

She didn’t want it to be her last beer; she was finally feeling like her nerves would stay inside her skin after all. “Are you sure? Don’t you live the opposite direction from me?”

Dina smirked. “We do, but”—she nodded toward her husband, Ron, who was talking with Rex, one of the other caseworkers—“he’s my designated driver, so what do I care?”

Ron looked their way, smiled, and waved. Sidonie waved back. “Okay, thanks. Harry said I could sleep in their guest room if I got too drunk, but that seems weird.”

Dina frowned. “Yeah…don’t do that.”

Her tone made it sound like there was something more than just the awkwardness of passing out at one’s boss’s house in her advice, maybe something like that weird creepy feeling she got from Harry. “Is there something weird…?”

Before she could get further in her question, Dina shook her head abruptly and changed the subject. “You ready to talk about what happened today? Not the scene in the office, but before? That little guy was a mess.”

Yeah, he was. Sidonie had finished her day writing out a full report about the state she’d found little Tucker Van Buren in. Writing it down had etched the memory permanently in her brain and made her realize that every horror she’d ever witness in this job would have to be recorded in that kind of detail and thus forever be a part of her head. And she’d heard some stories making it clear that what she’d experienced today might someday, maybe even soon, be a tiny mark on a vast canvas.

“It was…bad. I thought it was bad. I just…I don’t know. I hate that there was no family and he had to go to strangers.”

“You need to get tougher about that, honey. The Alberts are good people. They’ve been fosters for almost twenty years, and they have a whole file of success stories. That little boy—Tucker?”—Sidonie nodded—“I’m sure he’s having a good night. Better than he would have had at home. It’s easier with the little ones, because they don’t carry their parents’ baggage with them for long.” Dina squeezed her arm. “You did the right thing, Sid. Not that you had much of a choice. That case was tagged for a removal, and the mom knew that she was out of chances.”

Sidonie thought of the furious desperation on the father’s dark-red face and the way he’d just given up and gone pale after he’d blown a fuse. He’d terrified her, but he’d looked terrified, too. And nothing in that thick file indicated that he had ever hurt Tucker or mistreated him in any way. He’d once beaten the mother, though. Badly. And he had been charged with or convicted of about a dozen other nasty, violent crimes.

She’d done the right thing. She had. With a sigh, she glared down at her empty Corona bottle. She needed more liquid forgetfulness.

Dina slid her arm around Sidonie’s. “C’mon. We’ll get drunk and make you forget your shitty first field day. Ron’ll make sure we don’t do anything stupid, and he’ll get us both safely home.”

~oOo~

Three hours and…some…beers later, Ron helped Sidonie up to her front porch. As she fumbled through her keys, he took the ring from her, picked one, tried it, and unlocked her door. As he helped her up the step, he asked, “You got it from here, Sid Vicious?”

He was so nice. “I toooootally do. You’re a nice guy, Ron. A good driver, too.” She patted him on the shoulder—or tried to. She kind of missed, somehow.

He chuckled. “Yeah, okay. Thanks. Do me a favor and have a glass of water before you hit the hay, alright?”

“You betcha. Water. Yep.” That made her think of the water cooler at work, and that made her think about the scary guy who’d thrown it, and that made her think of little Tucker, and she felt pretty sick all of a sudden. “Gotta go. Bye!” She slammed the door and ran to the bathroom. Kind of ran. Caromed, really. But she made it.

When she felt fairly certain that she was finished, and slightly less inebriated, she dragged herself back up to her feet, flushed, brushed her teeth, and slid down the hallway wall to her little kitchen. Without turning on a light, she made her way to the refrigerator and grabbed her filtered pitcher. Maybe a big glass of water right at this very moment wasn’t the best idea on the planet, but it sure sounded nice.

She drank it down and then stood at the sink, deciding how sure she was it would stay down. Pretty sure. Okay. Off to bed, then.

As she sat on the side of her bed, she saw that the message light on her landline phone was flashing. That meant that her father had left her a message—no, two messages. He never called her cell. He was probably the last man on the planet who was afraid of mobile phones. She basically had a landline at all only for him. Groaning, she leaned over and pushed the button. Her father’s musical, slightly accented voice came through the speaker.

Hello,
nanu
! How are you tonight? How did your field day go? Did you save many babies?
He chuckled, thinking he’d made a joke of some sort.
Call me and tell me all about your day. I’m thinking of you! Love you!

After the time stamp and beep, his voice returned.
Oh! I forgot! There is a new show on the television that I want to watch, but I don’t remember how to do the thing that makes it record when I’m not home. Can you come this weekend?

He knew full well how to work all of his home electronics. He wasn’t a moron. He used complicated electronic equipment every day in his work. He just wanted her to drive all the way to Huntington Beach to spend the day. He could have just asked, but in his mind he had to have a reason, trumped up though it might be.