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“Your call, then. Pay me for my time and provide chauffeur services to everywhere I need to go, or let me get back to my busy day.”
The everywhere I need to go made red flags fly. Did he mean everywhere he needed to go to discover what had happened to Araceli or did he mean everywhere everywhere he needed to go?
Courtney didn’t ask. Ironically, she probably had less to do with her days than he did. And the only thing she cared about was finding Araceli.
“Getting you where you need to go is no problem,” she said. “I’ll make arrangements for a different vehicle if we need to do a lot of running around.”
“We’ll need to do a lot of running around.”
“No problem.” He was only trying to provoke her. She knew it, but she didn’t want him to think he could push her around. As she faced Marc’s somber expression, she suddenly felt as if her very life depended on standing up to this man.
So she stood there, gaze unwavering, though the effort cost. Her chest grew tight, making her breaths come in shallow bursts, but she refused to look away, refused to blink, even though her neck felt as if it might snap from keeping her head tilted.
“We’re good then.” He was the first to break. “You’ve hired yourself a bounty hunter. For what that’s worth nowadays.”
That said a lot about why Marc had resisted.
“Thank you.” She meant it.
He leaned heavily on his cane and repositioned himself in the springy grass, and Courtney suspected she hadn’t won that little battle of wills at all. Marc had probably only needed to move his injured leg so he didn’t topple over.
His physical limitations were all too evident as he made his way to the car and braced himself with a hand on the door frame to lower himself into the passenger seat. She held the door, watched the muscles bulge in his arm. His jaw tensed as if he fought the pain of bending his knee to wedge his big body into the compact compartment.
She opened her mouth to tell him to use the seat release, but he was already there. The seat jumped back with a metallic spring, and his expression eased.
She didn’t know what to say, so she circled the car, leaving him to pull the door shut himself. She had only meant to consult with this man, to be advised about how to proceed. Now she had her very own bounty hunter, broken though he was, and she had no clue about what came next.
He sat so close, his elbow propped on her console, his hand draped casually on a knee. Somehow he managed to fill up her spacious-for-a-compact-car interior, and she wasn’t sure what to say or do.
Drive...that much was a given.
Cranking the car, she slipped the shift into gear, feeling flustered and off-kilter. Driving away from the curb, Courtney was determined to find her center and regain control. “So what kind of place do you need to work? Let’s start there.”
“Standard office setup. Wi-Fi. Printer. Fax.”
Okay, great. “One office coming up.”
He didn’t reply, just stared ahead, so she drove along in silence, remembering what Mama had said about being an answer to a prayer. What had Mama wished for this son?
Courtney didn’t have a clue. Up until Marc’s protracted visit after his accident, she had seen him only a handful of times through the years. He was quiet, intense, brooding almost, and suddenly seemed to suck up more than his share of air.
CHAPTER FOUR
“HERE IT IS—Beatriz Ortero.” The librarian used the name I had gone by for years now. “I’ve been waiting for you to come in. I wanted to ask about your tutor. She hasn’t been in with you for a while.”
“Her schedule is nuts.” I didn’t sound too sure, even though I had known this question would come up sometime.
Not that I expected some random librarian to notice Debbie was gone. One of the neighbors maybe. Definitely one of the ladies at church if I had ever seen one. But I hadn’t run into any yet—thank God—and I hadn’t been back to our church since Debbie had gotten too sick to make it to services.
“She has conflict with an after-school program, so she makes me work online.” I sounded more certain this time, more casual. “She doesn’t want me to lose the habit of making a time and place to study. She calls it practicing for college.”
Had called it, anyway.
But the librarian was not interested, which made me wonder why she had noticed in the first place. Her gaze darted to the window as some kids passed the glass wall that separated this librarian from the others.
The queen on her throne.
No, that didn’t fit. This librarian in her bland-colored pants with her disapproving expression wasn’t regal as far as I was concerned. She was annoyed. That much I knew. Probably because the security guard hadn’t noticed the kids. He was too busy puffing up his chest at the pretty page who shelved books.
She finally turned back to me. “Will you please let your tutor know the paperwork needs to be renewed if you want to keep using the tutoring room?”
“Does she need to come in or do you want me to bring her the paperwork? She still has a few weeks left of the program.”
The librarian didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned over and searched through a desk drawer.
So I stood there and didn’t say anything, even when she glanced up as that same group of kids got noisy, jockeying to get through the teen room door.
The security guard still didn’t notice. When the librarian looked in his direction, her expression pinched, her angular features converging at an imaginary point in front of her face.
If I were to sketch her, I’d exaggerate her pointy features and add whiskers, turning her into the rat queen. Of course, she probably wouldn’t find anything to laugh about. But I would. And I had not had much laughter in me lately, so one smile might be worth getting stiffed a tip.
The image in my head smoothed away some of the worry. I just hoped this unhappy woman wouldn’t take out her unhappiness on me since I was around the same age as the noisy kids.
She withdrew the papers and handed them over. I smiled and said, “Thank you,” very politely, hoping to prove myself different than everyone else my age.
If I lost this tutoring room, I couldn’t get another. Not without an adult. I didn’t need a quiet place to study—my whole life was quiet without Debbie—but I would have trouble when I needed to present for one of my online classes. I needed some place to videotape, and I couldn’t invite anyone home. That would be breaking our most important rule.
Never ever let anyone know where we live.
Debbie had made me swear before she died never to break that rule. Not until I was eighteen. Not until I could make my own decisions, so I didn’t get caught in the legal system again.
Debbie trusted me to care for myself far more than she did the government, and had done everything possible to set up life so it would continue without her. She had bought four boxes of checks and had signed every single one so I could pay the rent and utility bill on time. She had set up auto-deposit on her trust fund, so it would continue to deposit monthly payments until someone figured out she had died.
“It’s not a lot,” she had said, “but it will be enough to cover the rent and that’s something.”
As always, Debbie had delivered even the most dismal news with a smile and jingly laughter. An angel. That’s how I always sketched her. With wings and a halo. My angel.
The memory made me ache. Even after all these months, the pain was still so big it stole my breath.
Most days I pretended Debbie was out on a church errand or running to the bank whenever her old uncle would surprise her with a check. Or that she’d been tired from the chemotherapy and had gone to bed before me. But little things, like this paper that needed a signature, got me every time. So I stood there waiting for the rat queen to find her keys, with my chest so tight I ached.
“Here we are.” She stood and led me from around her glass castle with quick steps.
The security guard straightened up as she passed, puffing his chest some more so the shiny buttons on his uniform glinted importantly, but the kids behind the windows of the teen room didn’t notice her. There was more laughter, still too loud, but she didn’t slow down until we reached the tutoring room.
After unlocking the door, she flipped on the light. I thanked her and unloaded my backpack. I only had the tutoring room for one hour and my presentation would take forty minutes. Every minute under, and I would be docked five points off my overall grade. My GPA was my most valuable asset, second only to my talent, so I wasn’t about to screw it up without good reason. I would never get scholarships otherwise. And I would need lots of scholarships to pay for the Art Institute of Chicago.
Setting the dry-erase markers on the whiteboard, I checked the time.
4:06.
The paperwork and key search had chewed into my hour. Sometimes the librarians would let me run over time if the room wasn’t booked. Not the rat queen. She would be waiting outside the door and counting the seconds until my hour was up.
Slipping out the door again, I walked around the back of the audiobook section to the quiet study room, hoping to avoid notice. This is where the smart kids were, the ones with more to do than check their social media. The only thing we all had in common was that we couldn’t afford our own technology. I had a tutoring room, so the rat queen should have known what kind of person I was.
A person with a plan.
A plan that was in big trouble when I looked around the quiet study room.
“Where’s Peter?” I hissed beneath my breath, careful not to disturb the adults who were seated at the various study carrels.
The last thing I needed was more trouble.
“Don’t know,” Faffi whispered from her seat nearest the printer. Beside her, Sylvia shrugged.
Faffi was another person with a plan. I called her the screaming liberal. She had political aspirations and already served as an intern on a local councilman’s campaign. She would love my presentation about immigration policies today. I argued both sides, but personally leaned left.
“Was he at school today?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him.” Sylvia’s plan wasn’t as specific as mine or Faffi’s, but it didn’t have to be. She wanted to be a doctor, which meant she had to rock her International Baccalaureate program to get scholarships to a good university. She was another one who would need lots and lots of scholarships to pay for school. Good thing she was brilliant.
“Are you talking about that kid on the skateboard?” Rohan tugged an earbud from his ear.
“Yeah, the one with the hair like that gay guy from American Idol.”
Rohan laughed, loud enough to make me glance around to see if we were annoying the room’s other occupants. Adults in a library liked nothing better than to narc on kids who weren’t obeying the quiet rule. Rohan didn’t seem to care. Maybe he didn’t have to because he had such a cool name. Who knew they watched The Lord of the Rings in Bangladesh? “I saw him on the public bus this morning, but he wasn’t at first lunch.”
“I didn’t see him, either,” Faffi told me.
I sighed. Nothing was ever going to be easy, was it? I had to record four people, so the virtual teacher knew I’d actually presented to an audience. Peter had agreed to sit in so long as I paid him in cigarettes.
Would the rat queen sit in if I offered her the three packs of Camels in my backpack? I’d bet money the security guard would. If I had any money to bet. I didn’t because I’d already spent what I had on three packs of Camels. Not to mention the time I’d wasted finding a convenience store to sell them to me without identification because I was underage.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll figure out something.”
I glanced at the clock on the way out. Six whole minutes to come up with a plan. Great. I got everyone quietly inside the tutoring room. Then I saw him.
He walked past the window, looking as noticeable as he had the first time I’d noticed him. Which was sort of strange really, since there wasn’t anything that noticeable about him.
Except for the guitar slung over his back, he might have been any student from the high school. A senior, definitely. I wasn’t surprised to find him here since we were only a few blocks away from where I’d first seen him.
He had been playing on the street corner across from the Western wear store where I usually set up my pitch. The lady who owned the store liked me. I was quiet compared to all the street musicians who played in the District, and I always chalked a brilliant design on her sidewalk space that made tourists slow down long enough to notice her store.
Whenever tourists sat for a caricature, they stared at her window displays. I always threw a cowboy hat or some boots and fringe into my sketches to get folks in the country mood.
We were a match made in heaven.
Maybe this guitar guy went to school, maybe not. But I remembered him. And his music. Not the usual country that every musician in town played. He stuck out in the streets the way I did with my art.
No, this guy’s music was more varied, some folksy, some rock, some alternative. Definitely original. He had a raspy voice that managed to be smooth and clear. I liked listening to him. Yeah, that was why I had noticed him.
I didn’t have time to think, so I acted.
He sidestepped the opening door with a quick move and a steadying hand on his guitar.
“Excuse me.” For some reason, I sounded breathless, as if I had run to catch him.
He turned and stared down at me with eyes as dark as his hair. There was something Hispanic in him. No question.
Those dark eyes got curious, and I realized he was waiting for me to say something.
“Do you have forty minutes I could borrow?” I blurted. “Like right now.”
A grin appeared as he stared at me, visibly deciding what to make of my random proposition.
“I have to tape a presentation for my online class, and I need four in my audience. Had a no-show.”
I hadn’t realized how cute he was, but it was impossible to ignore up close. He had these crazy high cheekbones and caramel skin. He was buff, too. The muscles in his thighs stretched his jeans like he was one of those cross-country runners who trained around the neighborhood.
“I’ll pay you ten bucks.” Same thing I paid everyone else. Except Faffi, who extracted payment whenever she needed me to do something for her. A budding politician. I would vote for her. “Or three packs of Camels.”
That grin turned into a full-out smile. He had a dimple. “I’ll take the Camels.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MARC HAD BEEN enjoying his escape for the first ten minutes of the ride. Courtney didn’t know what to make of him, had no clue what she’d signed on for. But she put on a good show. He respected that. Maybe because he sensed how uncertain she was, bouncing back and forth between appreciating his presence in her car but being worried about the way he’d gotten here.
Even he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t exactly been accommodating, and his guess was she considered him the family wild card. Anthony would never have given her a hard time.
But any enjoyment Marc felt about escaping the prison his life had become ended when Courtney steered her overpriced toy car out of his neighborhood and headed into hers. He shouldn’t be surprised that manicured lawns stretched back from the streets or that chain-link and weather-battered wooden fences yielded to expensive brickwork and ornate iron gates.
By the time she wheeled off a side street and pulled into a driveway, Marc remembered why he hadn’t thought much of this woman’s family. The Garden District mansion in front of him, all pitched eaves and wraparound gallery, looked like a house kids might tour on school field-trip day.
“So this is home.” Not a question, but a stupid comment he should have kept to himself. The irony of all the stairs must be wearing on his impulse control. Stairs leading to the front porch. Stairs inside leading to one, two, three floors. Unless that top floor was an attic? He could hope.
Courtney nodded, silky hair threading over her shoulders with the gesture, drawing his gaze once again to her slender neck and the delicate curve of her jaw. “Well, half of this is home anyway. House was split into two residences.”
“So you rent?” Okay, he wasn’t really interested, but his lack of impulse control had started this conversation. Couldn’t blame her for that.
“No, I own my side. Like a co-op.”
Mortgage on half a place this size must be a small fortune that she surely couldn’t be swinging on her social worker’s salary. He knew what real estate went for in New Orleans because Nic had been hunting for a place to move his family into after the wedding. Especially in this part of town. Cheaper to pay a mortgage in this economy, which was why Marc owned two properties himself.
“Who owns the other half?”
“Admiral Patton and his wife.”
No response was necessary, which was good since Marc didn’t have much to say. Not anything that would be considered a constructive start to their working relationship.
