Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (18 page)

“I never figured a grim reaper would be so gullible.”

Screw it. I could get a drink at home. There were few things I hated more than having
my intelligence questioned.

I closed the cabinet door and leaned over him as he sat at the table. “So, you’ve
been to hell, huh?” When he nodded, I offered a candy-coated smile, patted his cheek,
and said, “Sweet dreams.”

10

Facing your fears builds strength.

But running away from them builds hamstrings.

—BUMPER STICKER

I drove home seeing red. Literally. A cop pulled me over and those lights were freaking
bright. I would probably have red blotchy vision for days. After a little flirting
which got me nowhere and a mention of who my uncle was which got me everywhere, I
drove the rest of the way a little calmer and a lot slower. Despite the hostilities,
Swopes’s house was a nice reprieve from my cluttered abode. I examined the area when
I drove up, paying close attention to the sinister shadows and dark corners. I hadn’t
been out this much in weeks. And going out at night, at such a deserted hour, felt
strange. Unsafe.

I locked my doors and headed inside the building only to be struck with the need to
check out every nook and cranny before ascending the stairs to my apartment on the
third floor. I stepped with my back to the wall, constantly checking over my shoulder.
If ever there was a time to carry a flashlight, it would definitely be at night.

After tiptoeing back into my room, trying not to wake Gemma, I opened my top dresser
drawer and took out a picture.
The
picture. The one I’d obtained a few weeks ago and hadn’t looked at since.

I heard the toilet flush, and Cookie peeked into my room. The overhead light from
the kitchen stove drifted around her, allowing me to make out her silhouette.

“Charley, is that you?” she asked, her voice rough and sleepy.

I wondered if she was still drunk. Angling the picture down so I couldn’t actually
see it, I said, “No, I’m Apple, Charley’s evil twin.”

“Can’t you sleep?”

I sat on the edge of my bed. “Not really. I keep getting conflicting intel.”

She sat beside me. “About what?”

After a soft laugh, I said, “Are you going to be able to get up in the morning?”

She smiled. “I’m good. I get over inebriation pretty fast.”

“You were passed out on my kitchen floor.”

After an indelicate snort, she said, “Like that was the first time.”

She had a point.

“So, what’s up?”

“I don’t know what to think about Reyes.”

“Oh, honey, who does? He’s an enigma wrapped up in sensuality padlocked with a dozen
chains of desire and topped off with a razor-sharp ribbon of danger. There are more
layers to him than a billionaire’s wedding cake.”

My brows shot up. “Sensuality?”

“I know. It’s more than the fact that he is the hottest thing ever to walk the face
of the Earth, but that part is just so hard to get past.” She noticed the picture
in my hands. “What’s that?”

I bowed my head. “Do you remember when I went to the building I’d first seen Reyes
in? That abandoned apartment building where that crazy woman was squatting?”

“Yes. She’d been the landlady when Reyes lived there. Back when you were in high school.”

“Exactly. Well, she gave me this.” I passed the picture to her, but held on to one
corner and said, “I have to warn you, it’s really explicit.”

Surprise showed on her face as she took it and held it up to capture every particle
of light the room had to offer. Her brows furrowed at first as she tried to make out
the image; then they narrowed as dawning emerged. Slowly, the image came into focus.
Her lids widened. Her mouth opened in a silent testament to her understanding. Then
her eyes watered and she covered the lower half of her face with her free hand.

As though she were witnessing a car accident, she seemed unable to look away. I didn’t
have to look again to know what horrors the image held. It had been branded into my
brain the minute I laid eyes upon it.

The ropes. The blood. The bruises. The shame.

She finally spoke from behind her hand. “Is this—?” Her breath caught in her chest
and she swallowed before beginning again. “Is this Reyes?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes slammed shut and she slapped the picture against her chest as though trying
to cradle him. To protect him. I noticed a shiny trail spill over her lashes.

“My God, Charley. You told me, but—”

“I know.” I wrapped an arm in hers.

She hugged it to her and patted my hand.

I let her have a minute to absorb what she’d seen. To get her emotions under control.

The picture was, I believed, a trophy. According to Reyes’s sister, Kim, Earl Walker
would take explicit photos of Reyes, then hide them in the walls everywhere they lived.
And they were on the move constantly, so that could have been dozens of places. She
said the pictures were blackmail, meant to keep Reyes in line. That could be, though
I tended to think they’d be more like souvenirs. Keepsakes from his exploits. But
why he would put them in the walls baffled me. If they really were trophies, wouldn’t
he take them? Why leave them where they could be found—and had been, in Ms. Faye’s
case—and used against him?

Then I realized that Earl probably wasn’t in any of those photos. They were all of
Reyes.

In the picture Ms. Faye had given me, Earl seemed to purposely shame Reyes. That was
the worst part of it. He’d tied him up and blindfolded him, though I’d had no trouble
recognizing Reyes’s perfect form. His mussed dark hair. His full mouth. The smooth,
fluidly mechanical tattoos along his shoulders and arms. The rope bit into his flesh.
It reopened wounds that appeared to have been healing. He looked about sixteen in
the picture, his face turned away, his lips pressed together in humiliation. Huge
patches of black bruises marred his neck and ribs. Long garish cuts, some fresh, some
half healed, streaked along his arms and torso.

I could never erase the image from my mind, though I’d considered trying electroshock
therapy just to give it a try. It would have been worth it. And yet I kept the picture.
To this day, I had no idea why I didn’t burn it the minute I got it.

“I can’t imagine what his life was like,” Cookie said, staring off into space.

“Me neither. He saved mine tonight. He fought off a demon that was hell-bent on ripping
my throat out.”

She tensed in alarm. “Charley, are you serious?”

“Yes. I’ve been so angry with him, but all he’s ever done is save my life. Again and
again growing up. I’m not sure I have the right to be angry with him.”

“Maybe you’re not.”

“What do you mean?”

She bit down, hesitated, then said, “I know you, Charley, and I don’t think you’re
really mad at anyone but yourself.”

I straightened. “Why would I be mad at myself?”

She offered me a compassionate smile. “Exactly. Why would you be? And yet here you
are. As always. Angry with yourself for … for what? Because Earl Walker broke into
your apartment? Because you were attacked? Because you couldn’t fend him off?”

I frowned. “You’re wrong. I’m not mad at myself. I’m great. I’m full of awesome sauce.
Have you seen my ass?”

She threw an arm over my shoulders and squeezed. “Sorry, kiddo. You’re not fooling
anyone except maybe yourself. So, what do you think about this guy who goes by the
title of son of Satan? Any hope for him?”

She slipped me the picture back, facedown. I kept it that way. “There might just be.
The jury’s still out.”

“Well, tell it to hurry. That guy needs to come around more often. He’s like a Brazilian
supermodel drenched in sin.”

“That’s a good description.”

“I think so. But I have to ask: Why Apple?”

*   *   *

It was odd. Sleeping with Gemma and having Aunt Lil, even passed out in the belief
that she’d gotten stone-faced drunk, in the other room did prove comforting. Not terribly,
especially when Gemma started whimpering in her sleep or when she slapped me for being
a pirate—that girl had issues—but enough to help me get some rest.

I still woke up pretty early, though. Partly because construction workers started
their days earlier than God. But mostly because Gemma was rushing around, trying to
find her pants. She was wearing them when I herded her to the bed, so I wasn’t even
going there. But she kept running into things. Thank goodness I wasn’t terribly attached
to that macaroni statue of Abraham Lincoln. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was
still wasted, and I could hardly wait to see what Cookie looked like.

I hopped in the shower again, more as an icebreaker to the day than anything. Disturbing
images kept dancing around my head: Garrett in hell. Reyes fighting the demon from
yesterday. Cookie trying her hand at pole dancing. It might have worked had there
been an actual pole, but I gave her extra points for her ability to mime it.

After dressing in jeans, a chocolate brown cowl-neck sweater, and old, faded boots
that gathered at the ankles, I stepped out of my room to face another day outside
my humble abode. It was too bad, really. These days, I liked the innards of my humble
abode much better that its outtards. But there were cases to solve and people to bug
the ever-lovin’ crap out of. I figured I’d start with Harper’s infamous stepbrother,
see how bad he wanted her gone. Or to drive her insane. That possibility had been
at the back of my mind for a while. He would definitely benefit with Harper out of
the way. At the very least, his inheritance would double.

Wondering where Aunt Lil had gotten off to, I grabbed my bag and sunglasses and headed
for the door. Unfortunately, someone beat me to it. A tap sounded a heartbeat before
I reached the knob. I opened the door and found the last person on the planet I would
expect to see gracing my doorstep.

Undeterred, I slipped my sunglasses on. “I was just leaving,” I said to Denise, the
stepmother from hell. Then a thought hit me: Maybe Garrett never went to hell. Maybe
he ended up in my parents’ house by mistake. That would explain the screams and the
moans of agony.

“Can I talk to you?” she asked. “It won’t take long.”

Denise was one of those women that other people thought was sweet. She had a nice
smile and a great sense of theatrics. But she was about as sweet as a starving pit
viper in a basket of rats. At least to me, the step-fruit of her loins.

We’d never really gotten along. She’d started openly disliking me when I kept bugging
her to tell me stories about her childhood, what it was like to run with the dinosaurs.
After that, she’d give me these glares made of liquid nitrogen that could instantly
freeze the best of intentions. I’d learned my most effective glares from that woman.
That was something to be thankful for, I supposed.

With a long, taxed exhalation, I stepped to the side and invited her in with a gesture.
She stopped short when she saw the condition of my apartment, and I secretly begged
her to say something. Anything. Any excuse to kick her ass out of my apartment. I
had to put up with her at family functions, and I did so willingly around Dad and
Gemma, but not here. Not in my sacred space. She could bite me if she thought I was
going to grin and bear her condescending glances under my own rented roof.

She seemed to recognize this fact. Her survival instincts kicked in. She recovered
with a blink and eased farther inside, sidestepping a box and a pair of khakis.

Trying not to wonder how Gemma was faring without her pants, I led Denise to my living
area—about five steps from the door—sat down, and offered her my best scowl. “What
can I do for you, Denise?”

She sat cattycorner to me and squared her shoulders. “I just wanted to ask you a couple
of questions.”

“And your phone isn’t working?”

She bristled under my sharp tone. It wasn’t like her to endure my attitude without
a fight. Demureness was not in her blood. She must really be desperate. “You aren’t
accepting my calls,” she reminded me.

“Oh, right. I forgot. So, what can I do for you?”

She took a tissue from her bag, took off her sunglasses, and made a show of cleaning
them.

Finally, and with great care, I opened. I let myself feel the emotions coursing through
her. Most of the time, I kept myself closed off. There was simply too much out there.
I’d learned to control what and how much I absorbed when I was in high school. Before
that, life had been … challenging. Especially around the step-beast.

Emotion rushed through her in spades, the worst of it like a lightning strike, knocking
the breath from my lungs. Fear. Doubt. Grief.

Someone had died. Or someone was going to die. Those feelings were way too strong
to be associated with anything other than death.

“First, I want you to know that I believe in you. In what you can do.”

So the woman who made my childhood—my abilities—a living hell now believed in them.
Oh, yeah. Someone was going to die. Maybe it would be her, but I didn’t want to get
my hopes up.

“Awesome!” I said, faking enthusiasm. “Now we can be besties.”

She ignored me. “I’ve known for a long time, Charlotte.”

She’d always refused to use my nickname. The gesture would make us seem close, and
we couldn’t let that happen. Her friends might look down their noses at her.

“You have to understand that it was hard raising you.”

I couldn’t help it. I snorted. Loud. Then laughed. “Raising me? Is that what you call
it? What you did to me?”

She ignored me my entire childhood. Unless I’d embarrassed her in front of her friends
or was bleeding profusely, I was of no consequence to her whatsoever. I was nobody.
Invisible. I was dust beneath her feet.

Not that I was bitter or anything.

“You don’t have children, so I don’t expect you to understand.”

I decided to share an anecdote with her to help her better grasp the situation. “Anyone
with children should know, sometimes when you ask little Charley who broke the lamp
and she says she doesn’t know, what she’s actually saying is, ‘It was a guy with pale,
see-through skin and bad hair who may have died from the blunt force trauma to the
head but more likely bit the dirt from the multiple gunshot wounds to his chest.’
But that could just be me projecting.”