Breaking the Rules (21 page)

“That’s my brother,” she heard herself saying. “Don’t you goddamn take my brother! He doesn’t want to go with you!”

The man behind the steering wheel could’ve been cast as the grandpa in the same sitcom with the woman. He had the same kind of too-many-cheeseburgers-and-not-enough-vegetables faces, with big bushy brows over eyes that looked pensive and sad.

The woman was frightened, and the man in the backseat who was leaning over into the front was angry, his mouth contorting as he said something Eden couldn’t hear, his eyes dark and burning with hatred as he glared at her. But the man who was driving was neither scared nor angry, so Eden aimed her words at him, imploring him.

“There’s nothing wrong with Ben,” she said. “Please, don’t take him away from me. Please, don’t do this …”

But the man put the car into reverse. And putting his arm up along the back of the seat, he turned and looked out of the rear window and backed away down the street.

Eden ran after them, screaming now, cursing them, but he was going too fast, even backward like that, and he quickly pulled away. He swung the rear of the car into one of the neighbors’ driveways, jerking to a stop before zooming off with a squeal of tires.

Leaving Eden standing alone, still sobbing and gasping for breath, in the middle of the road, watching until the sedan turned the corner, just as the police car had done earlier.

And when she turned back to look at the house, Greg had already gone inside, the door shut tightly behind him.

With a roar, Eden ran for the house, for the open garage, where a collection of broken rakes and garden tools were in a cobwebby corner.
They’d been there all those years ago, when the Gillman/Fortune family had moved in. Eden and Ben had been the only ones to touch them, that first winter, when they’d planted a flower garden in Deshawndra’s honor.

But like Deshawndra, the flowers hadn’t lived for long. As soon as spring arrived, they’d wilted and then dried up in the heat.

There was a pickax lying on the concrete floor—Eden had used it in an attempt to break up the rock-hard ground before they’d given up and bought a window box.

She grabbed it now—screw the deadly spiders who lived in this hellhole—and ran with it to the front of the house.

Where she threw her handbag onto the dusty yard after untangling it from her arm, and hefting the heavy pickax up to her waist, she spun with it once, twice … And then she hurled it, like the discuses she’d thrown in gym back in high school, toward the living-room window.

But it was too heavy and it didn’t travel far enough. Instead of hitting the window with a crash, it landed in the dirt in front of the house with a thud.

She was going to have to use the direct approach, swinging it up and over her head, closing her eyes against the spray of shattering glass. She ran to pick it up and try again.

As Izzy watched Eden throw a freaking pickax toward the living-room window of the house that Dan Gillman’s mother shared with her creepy husband Greg and Dan’s brother Ben, all he could think—aside from
Nice form, but you’re a little too far back
—was that Greg was in there with a weapon.

So he drove the rental right up onto the lawn, and he opened the car door before he even hit the brakes. He had the engine off and was out and sliding over the sizzling-hot hood a heartbeat after that. In another heartbeat, he’d locked his arms around Eden before she’d picked up the ax again, and he pulled her back, behind the shelter of the car.

She fought him—she was unbelievably angry—and he had to keep
her down by lying on top of her in the dust, repeating, “I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m on your side,” over and over until it penetrated.

Until she stopped struggling and looked up at him as if she couldn’t believe her own eyes. “Izzy?”

He could totally relate. This was off the charts in Unexpected-Land, and he, too, was experiencing some serious what-the-fuck. And not just from the visual of being nose-to-nose, but from the physical sensation of having their legs entangled, of using his hips and stomach and chest to pin her down, her wrists in each one of his hands, pulled up over her head.

Last time he’d had this much contact with her, she’d been round and pregnant. Now she was an intriguing mix of soft breasts and solid muscle—she had to be strong to be able to do that routine he’d seen her do earlier today, on that pole in the strip club.

And even though he was done with her, and he’d said his last good-bye mere hours ago in the club where she was paid to get naked, he could feel his body responding to her, especially when she breathed, “Thank God you’re here!”

And now she was struggling to get her hands free for another reason entirely—to throw her arms around his neck and hold him even closer.

Which he let her do.

And yeah, his freaking pitiful body was too stupid to recognize that her thankful and grateful reaction to his presence had everything to do with her little brother’s disappearance and nothing to do with her desire to have him drill her, right there, on the rock-hard dust.

He scrambled to sit up, because he knew if he didn’t, she wouldn’t fail to notice—on account of the fact that her thigh was pressed tightly between his legs.

“Sorry,” she said, “sorry,” as he disentangled them, and great. She’d definitely noticed, because now she was embarrassed, too. But then she added, “I didn’t mean to, you know,
attack
you like that …”

“You didn’t,” he said. “And I didn’t mean to, um …”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence, which was a good thing, because he wasn’t sure how to end it.
Get a chubby because you’re so fucking hot? Reveal myself for the shallow loser that you now know me to be, since even after the piss-poor way you’ve treated me, I still get a boner whenever I’m within three yards of you and would obviously shag you, if the opportunity arose, at the drop of a hat?

But he just let his words trail off as she said, “They took Ben,” in a voice that quavered. And as she pulled back, she pushed her hair from her face with a shaking hand. And Izzy realized that she was drenched with perspiration, as if she’d just run a marathon. “I couldn’t stop them.” Her face twisted, like a little kid who was about to cry. “I tried, but I couldn’t, and I’m so
stupid
, because I didn’t get the license-plate number.” She was furious, mostly with herself. But just like the first time they’d met, she was loath to cry in front of him. “I didn’t even look to find out the
state
, and I have no idea who they were or where they took him, but Greg knows, the bastard, and I’m going to make him tell me if it’s the last thing I do!”

She tried to stand up, apparently determined to return to her attempt to put a hole through that window and climb inside to throw down with Greg—regardless of his weaponry and her lack of same. Izzy grabbed hold of the waistband of her jeans and yanked and she plopped back down in the dust beside him.

“I’m not quite up to speed,” he said. “Do you mind slowing down just a little and filling me in on exactly what happened between your phone call with Danny and your Thor, Mighty God of War impression?”

“Did Danny call you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I wasn’t that far out of town, so …”

“You were leaving.” She didn’t ask it as a question. It was a statement that she wanted confirmed.

“I was,” he said. “I mean, I got what I came for. You know, a chance to see you. See for myself that you’re okay.”

She gazed up at him with those eyes that he’d dreamed about,
giving him that look that generally meant she was trying her damnedest to read his mind, but in truth didn’t have a clue as to what he was thinking.

“I’m working as a stripper,” she finally said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I did make note of that, the clues being somewhat obvious.” He cleared his throat. “So what happened? You were here with Ben, but Greg was locked and loaded …?”

“Greg said he’d shoot me if Ben didn’t go into the house,” Eden told him. “And Ben believed him and he went inside. I called Danny, and I should’ve called 9-1-1. I don’t know why I didn’t, I’m so stupid—”

“Whoa,” Izzy said. “You’ll have plenty of time later to beat yourself up over any alleged mistakes. Right now I’m looking for the facts.”

“Fact: I should have called the police, instead I called Danny, and while I was talking to him, my cell phone battery died. There’s something wrong with it. I should’ve taken it back to the store weeks ago, but I didn’t.” Eden was brutal when it came to self-recrimination.

“What did you do after the battery died?” Izzy asked.

“I ran to the convenience store,” she told him. “The closest one burned down, so I had to go almost all the way to the mall, to the Shell Station. They sell things like power cords and chargers that work in a car? It was insanely expensive, and they wouldn’t even let me open it to see if it was going to fit my phone. But I bought it anyway, and ran back. I was gone maybe twenty minutes, but when I got here, there was already a car out front, like Greg had called someone to come get Ben.”

“And you think, whoever they are, they’re from one of these places where they try to convince kids that they’re not really gay?”

Eden nodded, her eyes filling with tears that she fiercely blinked back. “They knocked him out. I don’t know if they drugged him or hit him, but they carried him to the car—the two men did. There were two men and a woman. And he was all floppy. He wouldn’t’ve gone with them. Not willingly. God, he could be anywhere by now …”

“But the people who took him,” Izzy pointed out, “are probably
from somewhere nearby. They got here pretty quickly. Did they say anything to you?”

She shook her head no. “They just put Ben in their car and left. I couldn’t stop them.”

“And Greg’s still inside?” Izzy asked.

She nodded, a murderous light in her eyes. “He knows where Ben is.”

“He’s also armed and probably drunk. Not a good combination. I mean, armed and an asshole is bad enough.”

“I don’t care. I want Ben back.”

“We’ll get him back,” Izzy promised her. “Let’s just do it without Greg shooting you, okay?”

“I don’t care if he shoots me,” Eden said, and this time she couldn’t fight back and her tears overflowed. “I want Ben back, and I want him safe, and I want it
now.
”

This was about more than Ben, who was a smart, resilient kid, and Izzy didn’t know what to say, what to do. But he did know what
not
to do—as in help Eden commit the crime of home invasion and risk arrest—assuming they survived Greg’s legally allowed self-defense of his property.

Instead, he put his arms around Eden, held her tightly, and just let her cry.

H
e got there, Eden’s safe,” Dan reported to Jenn as he hung up from Izzy’s very brief phone call.

“Thank God,” she said, glancing up from the laptop where she was writing letters to help a local veterans’ homeless shelter find the funding it needed to reopen after a fire. “You okay?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess. I’m just … I’m starting to think it might be better for me to go to Vegas by myself. I mean, you’re busy. It’s been weeks since you’ve been home …”

“I can take the time,” she told him.

“I hate that I’m pulling you away from things like the shelter. It’s important. More important than holding my hand through the relentless and endless bullshit that is my life.”

Jenn closed her computer, setting it aside and giving him her full attention. She didn’t say anything, she just gazed at him until he shrugged.

“It is,” he insisted.

“What do you think is going to happen,” she asked, “that I haven’t seen before in my own dysfunctional family?”

And Jesus, she’d hit the nail directly on the head, so Dan stopped pretending. “Believe me, my family makes
your
family look like the Brady Bunch.”

“You don’t know that,” Jenn pointed out. “You
can’t
know that.”

“Yeah, I can. It’s going to get ugly,” he admitted. “And now that Greg owns a gun …? How do I know, even if I gain possession of his weapon, which I will damn sure do before entering that house—but even then, how do I know he’s only got the one? And
that’s
just the firearms violence factor—which is a new one for us. Or an old one—I thought it went away when my father moved out. Jenni, I don’t want you near that, and yeah, there’s more. I’m … embarrassed that you’re going to see …” Jesus, this was hard to say. “Me,” he managed. “Saying and doing things that … Will make you think less of me.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said.

“I can’t spend any time with them without thinking considerably less of myself,” Dan confessed. “When you meet Ivette … You’re going to look at her and think,
Shit, Danny left his sister and brother with
this
nightmare
? And I did. I abandoned them. I just walked away.”

“You were, what? Seventeen when you left to join the Navy?” Jenn asked. “Give yourself a break. And you might want to look up the definition for
abandon
—I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve sending money home every month or flying to Las Vegas on a moment’s notice because your brother and sister need you.”

She was absolute in her support of him.

“It feels like it’s too little, too late,” Dan confessed.

“It’s not,” she told him.

And when she leaned in to kiss him, he could almost believe her.

The plan was to wait for Eden’s mother to get home.

There was no point in talking to Greg without Ivette on the premises, so the plan was to sit in Izzy’s rental car and watch the house until she returned from work.

Wherever that was.

Eden honestly didn’t know. But even if she
had
known, she could well have not actually known—because Ivette got fired as quickly as she got hired with her still-pretty face and Grand Canyon cleavage.