Unbreakable (3 page)

And because of that bind, if Faith was willing to talk tonight about the money he needed, because he couldn’t imagine her wanting to talk about fucking him, it might be a good idea to decide where to start spending it rather than jumping into a time-suck of a renovation with no plan. Though, really, talking about the money was easy. Coughing it up was going to be the hard part. The woman was tight with a capital T.

So tight, in fact, he doubted she’d spare a thought to squeezing out the sign he’d told her to give him—even if everything he’d seen in her eyes told him the idea of doing so heated her up. Faith was a prize. More of a prize than he deserved, for certain. That didn’t mean he’d turn her down if she offered, the Dalton Gang’s no-sisters rule be damned.

Still, he couldn’t see the two of them together. He was a broken-down son of a bitch who owned a ranch on the edge of belly up and a house turned over and waiting to be scratched. What he didn’t have was anything to offer a woman like Faith.

Anything, he mused, but his damn fine cock, nearly losing his footing as he stepped over a tree root and into an ankle-deep
hole. Served him right for going there, he supposed, and hell if the inspector hadn’t been telling the truth about the grade of the lot.

’Course since rain wasn’t an issue, neither was standing water, but cleaning the trash from the yard—newspaper, dead leaves and acorns, aluminum cans, cigarette butts, foam cups, and downed limbs—and getting a tractor over here along with a truckload of soil would go a ways toward making the place more picture perfect and less of an eyesore.

Set up a couple of spotlights, and he could get it done in three or four days, an hour or two a night as long as the neighbors didn’t complain about the disturbance to their peace and quiet. Though where he’d come up with a generator and fuel to run it since the electricity to the place had been turned off ages ago…

Why the hell did everything have to depend on money?

He’d made a good bit on the PBR circuit, blown what he didn’t spend on his gear on good times. But when he’d come back to Crow Hill, he’d poured what was left into the ranch’s near-empty bank account. That investment could’ve given him more than a third of the ownership, but when Boone and Dax had pressed the point, he’d told them to make a fist and use it.

The Dalton Gang had always been an all-for-one, one-for-all proposition. As teens, they’d worked the ranch as a group. As adults, they’d inherited the business together. Things should’ve been just peachy. He was doing what he loved best with the guys he loved best.

But a lack of funds was still making a big, fat mess of his life—just as it had every day he’d spent here as a kid. Even after the piece of shit who’d been his old man had split, nothing had changed, he realized, glancing up as he rounded the northeast corner of the house where he’d taken most of his beatings from that man.

And that’s when he saw the dog. Some kind of shaggy mutt, looking about as broken as he was feeling. It hadn’t been here earlier, though with the gate unhinged it would’ve been easy enough for anyone to come through. The question was why? There wasn’t any garbage for it to dig through, and there sure as hell weren’t any enticing smells of home cooking to lure it close.

The animal had a round head, floppy ears, and fur that should’ve been white but was the color of coffee and mud. It lay on the back porch, between the swing hanging from one chain and what was left of the railing, chin resting on its front paws. Its black eyes were the only part of the mutt that moved, following Casper’s every step as he zigzagged closer.

A dog meant dog shit and one more thing he didn’t want to have to clean up. He picked up a stick, aiming to shoo the thing on its way, but had only taken two steps when the back door opened, and there stood a kid, maybe thirteen, fourteen, as unkempt as the mongrel and asking, “Who the hell are you?”

Huh. He was pretty sure that was his line.

“If you’re vandalizing, I’m the guy who’s going to call the cops,” he said, knowing he wouldn’t but watching the kid for a response. He got nothing, no fear, no attitude…just nothing. Had the kid and the dog been inside earlier? Watching while the inspector checked the outside of the house? “If you’re squatting, I’m your landlord, come to collect the rent.”

The boy let go of the screen door. It banged shut behind him as he disappeared into what had been designed as a pantry and mudroom but hadn’t been used for anything but storing trash during Casper’s day. Grumbling, he headed for the steps, stopped by a growl and a baring of teeth. He didn’t retreat. He’d lost a couple rounds today already, and sharp canines or not, he was not backing down from this fight.

“Hey. Kid. Call off the dog or I’ll shoot him dead.” He
wouldn’t do that either. He wasn’t even carrying his piece, but the kid didn’t have to know it.

“Kevin,” came the boy’s voice from inside the house. The dog quieted, returned to watching Casper with those big dark eyes.

Kevin? Seriously? Casper climbed the steps slowly, his eyes sticking to the dog as he pulled open the door. Blowing out an audible breath, he passed through the garbage dump into the kitchen. The dog followed him, catching the screen with his snout before it banged closed.

Even without shades hanging over the windows, it was dark inside, the film of dirt on the glass shutting out what light the trees didn’t block, both keeping the room cooler than he would’ve expected to find. The floor tiles, never as white as originally billed, were now as brown as the yard.

Dishes were scattered from the kitchen island to the stovetop to the acreage of counters. Cereal bowls. A pan his old lady had used to heat Chef Boyardee and Campbell’s Chicken Noodle. Beer cans. Aluminum TV dinner trays. Empty bottles of Jose Cuervo and Jack.

A box of Frosted Flakes had been knocked from the top of the fridge and torn open by varmints. Claw and teeth marks showed on the shredded cardboard and Tony the Tiger’s head. And it was quiet. Quiet like a crypt, consuming memories and breathable air and dirty little secrets. A time capsule best left unopened.

Or as he liked to call it, home sweet home.

The smells kept him from getting totally maudlin. Mold and rot and urine and things once living that had to be dead. He shook it off—he’d deal when the time came—and followed Kevin, who seemed to know where he was going, from the kitchen down the long first-floor hallway to what would’ve been the front parlor had the Jaynes had use for such a thing.

There he found the kid sprawled on a sleeping bag, a paperback thriller in one hand, a backpack for a pillow. Some of the odor was coming from in here. The boy could use a bath. Tough to manage with the water off, but otherwise…

Casper looked around. The kid had certainly made himself at home. Matches, a candle, a flashlight. Crumpled foil and soda bottles and takeout containers that looked an awful lot like they’d come from a restaurant Dumpster.

He’d been here a while. And with no water. Which brought to mind the question of what he was doing about a toilet, and that was an answer Casper wasn’t exactly excited to hear.

He pushed up on the brim of his hat, his hands moving to his hips. “Let’s try this again. What are you doing here?”

“Trying to read,” the boy said, his face hidden behind the book. “Do you mind?”

“And you’re doing it in my house why?”

All he got in response was silence, so he moved closer, kicked at the worn sole of the kid’s tennis shoe. “You answer me or you answer Sheriff Orleans.”

The boy slammed the book shut. “That’s uncool, dude, calling the man.”

“I’m the man you need to worry about,” Casper said, shaking off the idea of being the very authority figure he’d had his own skirmishes with back in the day.

“I found the house,” he said, rolling up to sit, legs crossed, shoulders hunched. “It was empty. I needed a place to crash, okay?”

A fourteen-year-old should not need a place to crash. Casper might not know much, but he knew that. “You got a home? Family?”

“Would I be here if I did?”

Yeah. That’s what he’d thought. “You got a name at least?”

The boy hesitated before offering, “Clay. Whitman.”

Whitman. Casper blinked, frowned. “Do I know you?”

“You just asked me my name, dude.”

Fucking smart-ass. “Okay, then. One more time. What are you doing here?”

The boy held Casper’s gaze as he gained his feet. He was all gangly limbs, awkward, but a solid five foot eight. Still growing. Still figuring things out, finding his place. On his way to being a man.

“I came looking for you,” he said, tossing off the bullshit for a man’s honesty.

This couldn’t be good. Casper was thirty-three. If the boy was fourteen…“What do you mean, you came looking for me? I just asked if I knew you.”

“But you didn’t ask if I knew you.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. Or I did. About six years ago.”

Six years ago…God, how many places had he been? He recalled a good dozen. And then he remembered Albuquerque. That was where he’d met one of the bulls to nearly do him in.

He’d also met a couple of buckle bunnies who enjoyed tag-teaming their cowboys. One of their names, he was pretty sure, had been Whitman, though he’d been drunk a lot of that time.

“Are you from Albuquerque?”

Clay nodded, his face drawn and sober.

“You’re Angie’s kid?”

Another nod.

“She’s not here, is she?”

“She’s dead.”

Fuck me. Fuck…me.
“I’m sorry, man.”

Clay shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his filthy jeans and shrugged. “Okay.”

“What happened?”

“She died.”

Casper bit his tongue. Angering the boy wasn’t going to get him any answers. “How did you get here?”

“Walked. Hitchhiked.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t really. I knew this was where you were from. My mom used to caw like a crow when she talked about you. I couldn’t think of any other place to go.”

That didn’t make a lick of sense. Casper barely remembered the eight-year-old Clay. It wasn’t like he’d been the boy’s father figure…And Angie making like a crow? What the hell? “What about social services? They didn’t find you a family to stay with?”

Clay turned away, nudged his foot against his backpack. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You talk, or I talk.” And then for some reason he added, “To the sheriff.”

“I don’t know why I thought you’d be cool about this,” Clay said, the sentence ending on a break Casper did his best to ignore.

“Cool? About a kid I barely knew for a couple of months hunting me down?”

“Yeah. Like I said.”

And way to be a dick.
He yanked off his hat, worried the brim around and around as he weighed Clay’s bravado with a narrowed gaze. “Are you hungry?”

It took a minute for Clay to answer, hunger warring with pride and with being pissed off and more than likely with his being a little bit scared. No doubt a pretty hefty level of sadness was mixed up in there, too. “I could eat.”

Casper nodded. “C’mon, then. I’ll buy you a burger.”

Clay gave a snort. “And then drop me at the sheriff’s office? No thanks.”

Jesus. It was a wonder people kept having kids. “I won’t drop you at the sheriff’s office.”

“You’ll bring me back here?”

Casper considered his options. “No, but I’ll take you to the ranch.”

“What ranch?”

“Where I live. Where I work.”

“This isn’t your house?”

Casper made a scoffing noise. Did the kid really think he lived here? And why in the hell had he ever mentioned this place to Angie? Had he been showing off? Drunk bragging about growing up in a Crow Hill mansion? “It is, but it’s not fit for man or…Kevin.”

“He can come, too?” Clay asked, the question cracking as if he was only
just
holding himself together, and the smallest act of kindest would be the end of that.

“Sure. He can bunk with Bing and Bob.” At Clay’s frown, Casper explained, “The ranch’s border collies.”

“Then what?”

“Then what, what?”

“After you take me to the ranch. What’re you going to do?”

That he did not know. There was a lot of legal stuff going on here and he was getting in over his head. He needed time and he needed advice. “I’ll figure something out.”

But Casper’s non-answer had Clay backing up. “I’d rather stay here.”

Jesus H. “You can’t stay here. This place is a dump.”

“I’ve seen worse.” He dropped to his sleeping bag, digging in. “I can clean it up. You could pay me.”

He could, if he had money, if the boy was of legal age, or even
an emancipated minor. And if the house wasn’t the size of the Crow Hill Country Club, requiring a crew of Clays to clean it. Casper shook off those thoughts for the one that mattered.

Where had Clay seen worse that made bunking in this hellhole an option? “You can’t stay here, Clay.”

“Then me and Kevin’ll split,” he said, shoving the book he’d been reading into his backpack, rolling up the sleeping bag and tying it to the frame. His face was blank as he regained his feet. Then he shouldered his way forcefully by Casper, calling for the dog as he headed for the back door.

Hands at his hips, Casper hung his head, shook it, called out, “Wait.”

He listened for the echo of the screen door’s hinges, but heard only the reverberation of Kevin’s claws clicking to a stop on the floor. He waited, but that was it, the cavernous house sounding of still air and old wood emptiness and hate and despair. He pulled in a deep breath and all the patience he had and returned to the other room.

Clay stood looking out, Kevin sitting at his side. Sunlight turned them into silhouettes, a boy and his dog, alone, the world theirs for the taking. And yet they’d chosen this piece of shit house to stay in. And they’d chosen him to come to.

The weight of that responsibility made the ranch and the house feel like feathers. Casper wasn’t sure he liked being the voice of reason. What did he even know about reason? He’d measured a good chunk of his life in eight-second segments from the back of a ton of raw meat.

Jesus H. Christ. Okay. Basics. The beginning. He’d go from there and see what happened. Because, shit, what else could he do? “Let me go get us both something to eat.”