Beyond the Rules (14 page)

Maybe it wasn’t coincidence that Harrison let her go shortly afterward.

Back to Hunter, as required. But first…she reeked of sweat and the lingering stink of the tear gas, and she had a whole bottle of eye drops waiting for her at home. Not to mention she ached to talk to—

Rio.

Who wasn’t there.

Who might not come back.

Get used to it.
Rules were rules, and she knew better than to forget the most important.
The only one who’ll take care of you is you.

R
io picked his mother right up off her feet just as he’d always done since that year he’d grown four inches. And as always, she hugged him back just as hard even as she remonstrated him. She used to say, “Have some respect!” Now she said, “You’ll hurt your back, Ryobe!” And of course he only held her more tightly for an instant before gently touching her to the ground.

Kimmer didn’t do that, he suddenly realized. She understood his injury; she adjusted to it in many unspoken ways. But she trusted that he knew what he could and couldn’t do, and left him to make those decisions without second-guessing or fuss.

Meiko Carlsen took a step back to inspect him, her black eyes sharp. Next to Rio, or his brother Ari or his father Lars, she barely cast a shadow. But she still ruled the household, and Rio warmed to her smile. “See?” he said. “I didn’t starve to death. I haven’t even been existing entirely on fast food.”

His mother gently poked his side. “You could use some padding.”

“I’m fine,” Rio told her, just as gently. “I’m here because I’m concerned about you, so don’t try to distract me.”

Now
she said it. “Have some respect.”

Rio gave her the slightest of bows. “Always.” He picked up his bags and stepped into the familiar living room, leaving his sneakers behind in the mudroom. He’d come prepared; he pulled a pair of thong sandals from the weekender bag and dropped them to the floor, forcing his socks to stretch around the thong itself. From the other bag, a fancy mall bag, he pulled a beautifully wrapped box of his mother’s favorite English toffee, and presented it to her with a small bow.

“Ryobe!” she said. “You’re family, not a guest.” But she took the package, pleasure and anticipation lighting her face—a face with angles more severe than his, slightly flattened Asian features barely affected by her paternal Danish heritage. “Such a beautiful wrapping.”

“It’s not much,” he said. “I hope it pleases you.”

“Domo,”
she murmured, and set the package aside on the small, gleaming wood table in the corner of the room that always seemed to hold some special object—a careful flower arrangement, a casual pile of perfectly arranged rocks and a feather or, as today, a small blown-glass decorative vase. She’d open it later, so as not to seem too eager. “I have a room ready for you.”

He let her lead him through the living room with its sparse, precisely chosen furniture—most of it in clean, organic Danish lines—and to the guest room, a place he’d never again thought he’d stay. He’d had his own house here not so long ago. A rental, to be sure, but near enough to being his.

Rio dropped his bags on the bed and sat down, putting his
mother closer to eye level. “Tell me,” he said. “How is she? How are you?”

The direct questioning caught his mother by surprise. She twisted her hands together, realized she’d done it and stopped. Always poised, that was Meiko Carlsen. Always well dressed—as she was today in a flowing tunic and pant combination. Always well coiffed. Her drop earrings matched her outfit and her minimal makeup brought out her beautifully almond eyes and her small rosebud mouth.

Except today he caught a hint of tremble in those earrings. And her black hair held more gray than he thought he’d remembered from even half a year earlier. The strain of Sobo’s illness showed in her face…and in the way she once more twisted her hands. “I’m well,” she said, and he supposed that to be the truth.
Well—under the circumstances
. “Your sobo…” She hesitated, shaking her head. “She is a most determined person, as she ever was. The doctors believe she should be in assisted living.”

Rio offered up a skeptical expression. She laughed, a light sound. “Exactly so. Your father and I have been investigating those places, but I don’t think anything will come of it. I think—” and she stopped, suddenly, biting her lip and continuing only with the same determination she’d attributed to her mother, “I think she would rather be here when she goes, even if it means she goes sooner.”

Quick panic flashed through him. “Is that a worry? Now?”

His mother waved away the question with a graceful hand. “No. Not like that. But perhaps…soon.”

“I would have come,” Rio said. “I’ve
wanted
to come.”

Meiko straightened slightly at that. “We’ve handled things in the way we thought best,” she said. “We have a social worker from the hospital also working on Sobo’s behalf.”

“I wasn’t questioning your decisions,” Rio said, his voice quiet with understanding. But he also shook his head, knowing this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have right now, not the first thing he did upon arriving home. “Anyway, I’m here. And I can pick up some of the extras for a while.”

“That would be helpful,” his mother allowed, and that alone was enough to tell Rio how strained they’d been. “Perhaps you’d like to see her? She’s usually awake at this hour and she knows we’re expecting you.”

“Of course I want to see her. And after we’ve visited a while—” he glanced at his watch “—I’ll fix her some tea. Unless she’s no longer into her late afternoon tea, but if that were the case I’m pretty sure the shock waves would have reached me even down at the Finger Lakes.”

“Come, then.” His mother held out a hand to him in invitation. “But Rio…be prepared for some changes.”

Changes. No kidding
. Rio’s fingers tightened on the gift he’d brought his grandmother—her very favorite See’s chocolates, elaborately wrapped. Sobo had called for them to enter her little domain instead of coming to the half-open door on which his mother had knocked. Now she regarded him from her small recliner, a tiny old woman with her eyes almost hidden in their wrinkled folds but her face lit from within nonetheless. “Ryobe!”

Rio bowed, more deeply than he offered anyone else, more deliberate than the quick acknowledgments he sprinkled through his life without even thinking about it. He glanced at his mother; Meiko nodded, and, with her own little bow, wordlessly retreated. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.” He crossed the room in a few long strides, finding it pretty much as he’d last seen it—sparsely furnished with lacquered fur
niture once brought from her homeland with great care, along with several hand-painted watercolors. The recliner he knelt by…pure Furniture City. The quilt over her lap made by a cousin, and the pillow behind her head a truly childish concoction, definitely not square. Carolyne had made it in her Brownie days. Rio presented her with the chocolates, and smiled at Sobo’s only partially concealed delight. She knew as well as he did what lay beneath that silvered wrapping paper and the many-tiered bow.

She was, of course, much too proper to open the gift immediately. She murmured
Domo
and set it aside for later, then gathered his hands up in her gnarled fingers. “There was no need to disrupt your new life.”

“
I
had a need to disrupt my new life,” Rio said. “Only out of respect for your wishes did I stay away.” Then he cocked his head and admitted, “Well…until I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“And your Kimmer Reed…does she understand?”

Damn. Sobo had always been able to do that. And Rio wanted to be able to say
yes, of course she does
—but he wasn’t sure. All he knew for sure was what he’d told Sobo. “She tries.” He sat back on his heels, leaving his hands under her warm, papery touch. “Kimmer…her life has been so different from ours.”

“Her family.” Sobo nodded. Rio had told her of Kimmer, of what he’d known before he left. Now he knew more.

“I met her brother,” he said, and shook his head. “I think I understand a lot better now. And at the same time, I’m not sure I can ever truly understand at all.”

And when Sobo nodded again, Rio thought he caught a glimmer of wistfulness on her face.
What an idiot I am
. Of course Sobo would grasp Kimmer’s situation, perhaps much
better than anyone else in the family, even without knowing what Rio knew. Without ever having seen that look on Kimmer’s face when the past caught up to her, sometimes struck out through her. His grandmother, too, had once been caught between two worlds.

“Do you think,” Rio asked, hesitating on the border of becoming more personal than would be polite, “it will ever be easier for her?”

Sobo was silent a long moment, long enough that Rio took a breath, ready to apologize for the question. But he closed his mouth quickly enough when she spoke. And he wasn’t expecting her to say, “That depends on you, Rio-san.” She smiled at the look on his face, a quiet smile, and she nodded ever so slightly in his direction. The faintest hint of a bow. “Your grandfather is the one who made my life possible, in so many ways. Certainly I could not have made the transition between our worlds without him. I loved my own too dearly, and would have returned to it at the first opportunity.”

“I wouldn’t say Kimmer loves her past.” Rio’s words came out more dryly than he meant them to.

“But she is tied to it nonetheless. She needs a strong present if she is to pull away from what she knows.” Sobo patted his hands. “She will never be as you’re used to, Rio-san. But look around this room. Do you think I was without these things when your grandfather was still alive?”

Rio didn’t have to look. “I think you’ve always had them.”

She nodded. “And he loved me for what I was.” Then she pulled her hands back and rested them in her lap.

Rio was quite certain she had more to say than that, and just as certain she’d leave him to think about it himself. “Thank you, Sobo.”

“You’re a good boy, Rio. You’ll be fine. Now come back later, and I might have a chocolate to share with you.”

Rio grinned. “It’s a deal.” He leaned over to kiss her wrinkled cheek as he rose to his feet, and left the room with a vivid image of Sobo unwrapping the chocolates so carefully, so precisely. He was still smiling when he reached the living room, where his mother put him to work setting the table.

Home again, all right.

Returning home felt different. Hollow. It didn’t matter how many times Kimmer reminded herself that she’d very happily lived this way for quite a long time, or that she’d always known better than to count on someone else. It was what it was. And it didn’t matter that she expected to spend only a few moments at home—a quick shower, a quick sandwich—before heading back to Hunter and to the Pittsburgh mug shots.

She turned down her street at early dusk, her mind on that sandwich and most determinedly not on the empty house. So, okay, there was a cat there. Rio’s cat, if anyone could be said to own a cat. Kimmer was doing litterbox duty and if she neglected it she’d sure enough know the house wasn’t empty.

And a glance down the street showed her she might well not be alone this evening after all. Upon spotting the sedan parked at the curb, Kimmer eased off the accelerator, taking an instant to narrow her eyes and sort through the possibilities. Not Rio’s. Not Owen’s antique pickup truck. Not a squad car. In fact…it looked surprisingly like a certain Malibu, its color gone black in the poor light.

If Pigeon Man came to visit, would he leave his car at the curb?

But the closer she got, the more certain she became. And
when she was only one yard away, she spotted Pigeon Man on the porch steps before her partially open door. He stood, sent a nasty leer in her direction, and thumbed a lighter, the little flame flickering clearly in the dusk. He held it to several indistinct objects tucked between his fingers, and just before the flicker bloomed into true glaring fire, Kimmer understood.

Molotov cocktail.

She stomped the accelerator, burning rubber and building speed before she hit the brake just as hard, cranking the Miata around to block Pigeon Man’s escape. By then he’d stepped onto the porch and flung the first of the cocktails into the house, creating an instant glare of fire. Another through the window as Kimmer leaped from the car, and then he smashed the last bottle on the porch itself, oil and gas spreading over the wood boards to block entry to the house. At that he ran off to the side, hovering, and while Kimmer first assumed that he waited for her to run to the house and clear his way to the sedan, she quickly saw it was a taunt. A choice.
Are you coming after me, or will you try to save your house?

Kimmer wouldn’t think about the house.

She wouldn’t.

She dove back in the car for the S&W in the glove box, grabbed the quick reloader that went with it, and snatched up her war club from the front seat. A few quick strides and she’d jammed the gun up against the Malibu’s front tire and pulled the trigger; the explosive decompression of the tire was as loud as the gun shot. With her eyes on Pigeon Man, she jumped up on the hood. Ooh, she’d made him mad.

Good.

The door to the Morrows’ house opened. Kimmer pointed the revolver straight down and emptied it into the Malibu’s
engine. Steam hissed from the holes. The door slammed again.
Bring it on, 911
. Nothing more she could do—the house had been beyond her scope by the time that first Molotov cocktail landed in her hallway.

Later. Think about it later.

In the failing light, Kimmer pinned Pigeon Man with her gaze, replacing the revolver load without looking.
What now, goonboy?

Pigeon Man backed a few steps. He’d expected her to go for the house, to try to beat out the flames, to rush in and grab her most cherished belongings—or perhaps to call 911 herself and sit in her car and cry until they came. He hadn’t expected Kimmer defiant, destroying his car and glaring at him from the steaming hood.

He backed a step…then another. Then he turned on his heel and ran.

Gotcha.

He hadn’t been expecting to run. He wasn’t dressed for anything more than a short sprint. He truly didn’t have anywhere to go—no back alleys into which he could duck, no twisty streets.

Kimmer leaped from the hood and hit the ground running. He gained good ground initially, darting along the front lawns of her street, but she’d expected that. She slid into her miler’s pace—good, strong, smooth strides. One hand curled around the S&W in a safe grip—around the trigger guard, so there’d be no accidental discharge should she stumble in the dusk—and the other around her war club.