Bending the Rules (21 page)

His dad’s, more like. Or maybe his mother’s. But, man, she couldn’t even imagine her mom driving something this nice, let alone letting Cory borrow it. She stared at the long stretch of Danny’s back as he rummaged through one of those thingamajigs you Velcroed to the sun visor.

He backed out of his car and handed her a small, flat, black folder. She shot him a puzzled glance before turning her attention to it. Flipping it open, she saw a pale green Department of Licensing certificate and, noting that it was a car registration, focused in to read the entire thing.

Jeeeeez. It was made out to Daniel Gardo and she studied the pertinent parts in awe yet again before slapping the folder closed and handing it back to him.

“This is, like, brand-new. How did you get a brand-new car?” An awful thought occurred to her and she narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t deal drugs, do you?”

“For crap’s sake, Cory,” he snapped. “First you accuse me of stealing the car and now I’m a dealer?”

Her crushin’-on-Danny self demanded she scramble to take back the question, or at least to laugh it off—anything so he wouldn’t be mad at her and retract the invitation. But she stiffened her spine. She would not talk to—let alone get involved with—a gang member or a drug dealer, and she tipped her chin up at him. “You didn’t answer the question, Gardo.”

“Yeah, because it was stupid. I’m not a goddamn drug dealer.” He scowled at her.

Good enough, good enough, good enough, her inner Danny groupie moaned. He’d answered the freakin’ question. At least the second part of it. But something inside of her that no longer accepted anything at face value made her cross her arms over her chest and tap her foot.

He rammed his fingers through his hair and stared at her. Then he said in a low, sullen voice, “My mom’s husband is loaded, okay?”

“Okay.” She went around to the passenger side and climbed in, looking over at him when he got in the driver’s side. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. I wish my mom was loaded.”

But that reminded her of their fight and equal parts anger and guilt, which she’d forgotten for a while, immediately started duking it out in her stomach.

No. Determinedly she pushed them away. She re fused to feel guilty today. She wasn’t the one in the wrong this time. Mom was.

“There are worse things than not having money,” Danny G. said, and his tone was quiet, fervent.

But Cory snorted. “Spoken like someone who’s probably always had plenty.”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say,” he muttered darkly. “Money doesn’t always buy happiness.”

She swiveled as much as her seat belt would allow to look at him. And saw something she couldn’t quite define in his expression. But he looked sad, even if he was projecting an I-don’t-give-a-damn nonchalance. “Well, neither does being poor,” she said quietly. “My mom and I had a fight today.”

“Yeah?” A little of the tension eased from his shoulders. “Over what?”

She told him about it as they drove to the Fremont district, growing passionate about her mom’s blatant unfairness all over again.

“She was wrong,” he said when she concluded and Cory felt a rush of warmth that he understood.

“Still,” he added.

“There’s a still?” She bristled. “Still what?”

“Nothing.” But he immediately pulled himself higher in the driver’s seat and shot her a look that held an edge of hostility. “No, dammit, it’s not nothing. At least your mother sounds like she cares. Like she wants to protect you.”

Well…sure. But that wasn’t the point. The point was—

She blinked, realizing what he was inferring. “Doesn’t yours?”

A bark of humorless laughter escaped him. “Mom cares about keeping her cushy berth with her rich new husband. I come in a poor second. Or maybe third, after her Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon masseuse. She really likes those massages.”

“She has a masseuse?” Cory slapped her own cheek, knowing that was hardly the important issue. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve just never known anyone with one of those.” She studied Danny’s profile. “How long’s she been married to your stepfather?”

“Don’t call him that,” he snapped. “Richie the Rich is no kind of father, step or otherwise. They’ve been married about six months.”

“They’re probably still in the—whatchamacallit—the honeymoon stage. But I’m sure she loves you,” she added, because she truly couldn’t envision a mother who wouldn’t love her kid.

“Are you?” He glanced over at her, then turned his attention back to the road, a small, bitter smile twisting the corner of his mouth. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right.”

But she felt him withdraw and reached out to touch his arm as he pulled up in front of the spectacularly painted building they’d come to see. “I’m sorry,” she said again, rubbing the knotted muscle beneath her fingers. “I’m obviously talking out my butt, since I’ve never even met your mom.”

For a moment he merely gazed at her as if she bewildered him. Then the curtains came down in his eyes. “Forget about it, okay?” Averting his gaze, he looked past her to stare out the side window. “Look at this place! We gotta check this out.”

The narrow lot alongside the building was full, so he took his foot off the brake and drove on. Finding a parking spot a block and a half away a few moments later, he wheeled into it.

Feeling as if she’d somehow failed him, she climbed out of the truck and followed him back to the store or whatever it was. In silence they looked at the graffiti-like mural that covered two sides of its building.

The more Cory studied it, the more enthusiastic she felt. “This. Is. So. Dap! Could we do something like this, you think?”

“I don’t know. Fremont is a lot more laid-back than the neighborhood we’re doing. I don’t think they’d go for a straight graffiti mural, no matter what Ms. C. says.”

“Maybe not like the front part,” she agreed. “But this side, with the mountains and totem and things—I bet we could get away with adding in some graffiti elements if we keep most of it Pacific Northwest–themed. We could do waves and fish and—”

“Incorporate subliminal stuff,” he added, his eyes lighting up. “Subversive stuff within the bigger landscapes, you know?”

“Tiny fairies,” she breathed.

He gave her a wry look. “I was thinking more like little demons and shit.”

“Well, you do your little demons—I’ll do my fairies.”

They looked at each other. Laughed out loud. And exchanged high fives.

“Let’s both draw up something to show Ms. C. with the general PNW theme,” Danny said. “This could maybe work.”

“Yeah.” Excitement coursed through her. “It really could.”

She glanced over at a black SUV that was cruising at a snail’s pace down the other side of Fremont Avenue. Even as she noticed it, the dark tinted driver’s-side window slowly lowered. “Hey, kids!” the man inside leaned out to say.

Oh, shit, oh, shit. Her heart thundered and her legs momentarily froze. She knew that face; it had inhabited her nightmares since that night in the U district. She gripped Danny G.’s arm. “We gotta go,” she said quietly.

“Huh?” He gave her a puzzled look.

“Yo, you two!” Bruno Arturo called impatiently. “I’m talking to you. C’mere!”

Adrenaline hit like an electric prod and Cory transferred her grip to Danny’s hand. “Move!” she snapped. “You don’t want to have a run-in with that guy.” She gave his hand a hard jerk. “Danny, come on!”

She could only imagine what her expression reflected. Whatever was on her face, Danny took one good hard look and without exchanging another word, they both took off at top speed in the opposite direction from that in which Arturo’s car was pointed.

Weaving their way through the streets in a circuitous route, they made their way back to Danny’s car. When he’d driven them out of the district via the Fremont bridge, he glanced over at her. “Man, you can run. Wanna tell me what the hell that was all about?”

Oh, she did. She really wanted to unload her fear, to just dump it all at his feet.

And yet…

It wasn’t safe. Not for her, not for him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “So sorry I got you involved. Sorry I can’t talk about it.”

He pulled his attention away from the rearview mirror to look at her again. Then he shrugged.

“When you change your mind, you know where I am.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Twist-your-guts teen pathos and Jason. It was a freaking four-star day. Okay, so it actually turned out pretty good. But why does everything have to be so complicated?

S
ONOFABITCH
! Bruno drove the streets of Fremont for another twenty minutes. But the two kids had vanished.

He kept shaking his head as if he’d taken a sucker punch to the temple. The boy he’d been hunting was a she? Who the hell would have guessed the kid was a mofo’n girl?

Hell, he’d only rolled down the window to talk to her and the other kid in the first place because they’d been gawking at that bullshit graffiti building like it was the holy-fuckin’-grail or something. So he’d thought, Hey, good, maybe they know some of the local taggers and graffiti freaks. The fact that he’d been addressing the very person he’d been rousting every artsy-fartsy street kid he could find over, breaking a finger or two on the ones he’d thought were withholding information on the boy—girl!—never once occurred to him.

There was no mistaking the way that kid ran, though. She had a way of picking up her knees and streaking from zero to sixty like some hopped-up horse out of the gate at Emerald Downs. The boy with her’d had longer legs, a longer reach and more muscle mass. Yet he’d barely kept up when she’d taken off, never mind come anywhere near passing her to take the lead.

Giving up the search, Bruno wheeled out of the neighborhood and headed back to his own part of town. He didn’t know what the hell to do now. It shouldn’t matter that she was a girl—she was still the witness who could sink him with a single misplaced sentence.

Yet…

It did. He would rip the johnson offa anyone with the stones to actually say so to his face, but it mattered. He had a niece about that girl’s age, and now that he knew his witness’s gender, he could hardly believe he hadn’t cottoned to the fact sooner. Yes, the all-arms-and-legs gawkiness that he’d ascribed to youth was a characteristic that could be attributed strictly to a tender age—no doubt about it. But now that he knew what the hell he was looking at, recognition of the coltish stage little girls went through as they changed into young women nearly blinded him.

Shit.

Well, he’d hunt the kid down. Dig up as much information as he could.

Then he’d figure out what the hell to do about her.

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK
, Jase left the Harborview trauma center, where he’d been checking on the man who’d been shot in the jewelry-store robbery in the U district. The victim was still in a coma, and the doctors weren’t seeing imminent signs of recovery. Not exactly the news with which Jase had hoped to start his Saturday morning.

Arriving at his SUV, he climbed in and consulted his notes for a second before putting the vehicle in gear and pulling out into the street. He was cruising down Yesler moments later when he saw an informant he’d been trying to track down for the past several days. He swerved his CR-V over to the curb half a block from where the mope was shuffling down the street.

He had no sooner shoved the car into Park and was opening the door to go grab his snitch for a talk, however, when his cell phone rang.

What was this, some cosmic conspiracy trying to prevent him from hooking up with this guy? Because this was the third time this week that something had come along to interfere.

He glanced down at the phone’s screen. Seeing Poppy’s name, he scowled at the way his pulse immediately went ape shit.

But he hadn’t spent a lifetime staying on top of his emotions for nothing. Wresting back control, lowering his heart rate by sheer willpower, he hit the talk button. Barked, “What?”

“Jason?” she said, her voice a stroke that went straight to his—

Uh-uh. No, sir. Straightening in his seat, he grasped the fabric near the crotch of his slacks and adjusted it with a yank. What was he—seventeen? Dammit, he had to get out, go to a bar, one of these nights. He didn’t know why he kept putting it off. It had been way too long since he’d been with a woman.

Other than her, that is. And since that hadn’t had a real satisfactory conclusion—“What do you want?”

“A civil greeting would be a start,” she murmured. “Or, barring that, you keeping your word. But I guess avoiding me these days takes up all your time.”

She had that right. Not the keeping-his-word part—he’d more than honored his part of a bargain he’d been coerced into making in the first place. But avoiding her? Oh, yeah. “This is probably gonna come as a shock to you, sweetheart, but I’ve got this job that the taxpayers actually expect me to perform to justify the paycheck the city cuts me every other Friday.”

“You’ve got a commitment to these kids, too,” she snapped. Then her tone softened. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” She sighed. “Believe it or not, I didn’t call to bust your chops. If you really don’t want to be part of the project any longer, I’m through fighting you over it. But Henry didn’t show up this morning and I’m worried.”