Guarding Lacey: A Smokey Dalton Story (3 page)

“Go away!” some guy yells from inside. I
never heard the old guy talk, so I don’t know if it’s him or not.

I don’t breathe. I want to surprise him,
because otherwise he’ll hurt me.

Then I hear Lace say, “I thought there
was supposed to be agency people here.”

“There will be,” the guy says. “Take off
your clothes and let’s see what you got.”

“No,” Lace says.

I’m not strong enough to kick the door
in, but I do know how to get a door open. I learned picking almost before I
learned to walk. The easiest is just to take off the knob, and that’s what I
decide to do because it looks loose already.

I take out the screwdriver. My hands are
shaking so bad I almost drop it. I look down the hall, but no one’s coming, not
even Keith, so I figure we’re okay.

“Listen, cunt,” the guy says, “you’ll do
what I say.”

“No!” Lace says, and then there’s an
awful crash.

My hands stop shaking, but I can’t
swallow.

Lace screams and there’s another thud,
and a bang, and it’s like I’m back in our apartment in the kitchen where I’m
not supposed to leave while Thug is there showing Mom what’s what.

I concentrate and force the screwdriver
onto the screw and start turning. I make myself focus on the work instead of
the thuds and whimpers inside. I’m trying to pretend it’s Mom and not Lace, who
has no idea what’s happening, Lace who I promised Smoke I’d protect,
Lace—

The knob falls away and I have to catch
it before it hits the floor. I set it down real quiet, keep the screwdriver in
my left hand, and pull the door open with my right.

First
, Mom would say,
you get the money. Then you worry about the guy.

That was when she knew the guy had more
money than he was willing to give her, and she wanted it anyway, sometimes for
weed, sometimes for rent, sometimes for food.

I ease inside. The place is dark and
smells of sweat and Lace’s perfume. She’s on her back on the bed and she’s
pushing on the guy who’s on top of her, and she’s kicking her feet, but it’s
not doing no good because he’s between her legs with his pants down.

She don’t see me, which is just as good.
I keep a grip on that screwdriver, but first, I get behind the guy and slide
his wallet out of his pants just like Mom taught me. I put it in my pocket,
then I grab the guy by the belt and yank up.

It shouldn’ta worked. It wouldn’ta worked
in Memphis. But I’m spitting mad and it makes me strong. I pull him off. Lace
lets out an awful scream and starts kicking him and I whale on the back of his
head with the screwdriver.

“Jesus,” he says, covering his head with
his hands. Lace keeps kicking and I keep hitting and he grabs his pants,
pulling them up as he runs out of the room.

I go to the door, but he’s running down
the hall, holding his pants up. Blood’s dripping off his greasy head and I
think that’s not enough. If I had Smoke’s gun, he wouldn’t be moving at all.
If—

“Jim?”

Lace don’t sound like Lace. She sounds
like a baby, her voice shaking. The bed’s covered with blood and she’s shoved
against the wall, her shirt ripped and her bra busted open and her tits hanging
out. Her skirt’s up to her hips.

“We gots to get you outta here.” I take
off my coat and wrap it around her.

“No,” she says, but she don’t fight me. I
seen this before too.

“Come on.” I help her up. I tug down her
skirt as best I can and I pull my jacket tight over her front. She’s got a
bruise on the side of her face that’s gonna swell real bad, and her mascara’s
run, leaving streaks down the side of her face. One of her eyelashes is falling
off, and her hair is coated with some of the guy’s blood—at least, I hope
it’s his.

It takes forever for me to get her to the
door, and even longer to get her down the hall. She keeps falling off her boots.
I’d make her take them off, but we have to go outside.

“Jim?” she says every few feet, like she
can’t believe it’s me.

I get her to the stairs, and we go down
slow, and then I see Keith, who comes running up.

“What happened? Lacey? Are you okay?” and
then he screams at the guy at the desk to call the cops.

“Shut up,” I say as mean as I can. “A
place like this, they won’t call the cops.”

“You don’t know that,” Keith says.

“I do,” I say. “Shut up, or they’ll hurt
us too.”

I don’t know if that’s true, but I want
out of here fast.

“You get ahold of Smoke?”

“He was at home. He’s coming now. I told
him here.” Keith’s hands are fluttering near Lace’s face but he don’t touch her
like he’s afraid he’ll hurt her. I’m not even sure Lace sees him.

“Help me,” I say, and together we get her
the rest of the way downstairs.

We’re almost through the lobby when the
door busts open. It’s Smoke. He’s wearing his coat and it flaps around him and
his eyes are wild and he’s holding his gun. He musta drove like mad to get here
so fast.

He sees us and stares for a minute. Then
he sticks his gun in the holster he keeps under his coat and comes toward us.

“Lacey,” he says in a real gentle voice.

“Some guy hurt her, Uncle Bill.” Keith is
really mad. He’s talking loud. “We gotta call the cops. We gotta—”

“Not now,” Smoke says. He reaches for
Lace, but his eyes meet mine.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I
didn’t—”

“Jim saved me, Uncle Bill.” Lace says.
It’s like seeing Smoke made her strong. “He beat the guy up and sent him away.
Jim saved me.”

Smoke put his arm around her and she
leans against him. Her boots aren’t white no more. They’re blackish red with
blood.

“Uncle Bill,” Keith says like he’s gonna
whine about the police, but Smoke shushes him. Then Smoke lifts Lacey up and
carries her out the door, and we follow, like ducklings, all the way to the
car.

***

It’s not until we’ve been in the hospital
awhile and Aunt Althea’s come and our neighbor, Marvella, who does women stuff
and knows how to take care of people who been through what Lace’s been through,
that Smoke sits down next to me.

“You did great,” he says.

“She still got hurt,” I say. “If I’d been
faster, I could’ve stopped him.”

“You might have been killed,” he says.
Then he put a hand on my shoulder. “When we’re done, I’m going back to the
hotel and see if I can get the clerk to tell me this jerk’s name.”

I reach into the pocket of my pants, and
with two fingers, I pull out the wallet. I hand it to Smoke.

He frowns at me for a minute, then he
opens it, and lets out a small laugh. “This is the guy?”

I nod.

“You got his wallet?”

I don’t say Mom taught me how to do that.
I don’t even say I planned it. I’ll let Smoke think it was an accident.

“Son of a bitch,” Smoke says, and pulls
me close. “You’re one incredible kid, you know that?”

I just lean against him. I don’t feel
incredible. I didn’t get there fast enough, and now Lace’ll be hurt forever,
even though Smoke says she’ll get help from the family and stuff.

At least I got the wallet so Smoke can
see who the guy is. Because I know what Keith don’t. No cop’ll arrest a guy
like that creep. That guy’s probably paying protection. He was prepping Lace to
live like my mom. He’s got connections.

Smoke don’t care about connections.
Smoke’ll shut him down. Smoke’s done it before.

And even though I wasn’t able to stop
that guy from hurting Lace, at least she won’t grow up to be like my mom. If we
wasn’t here, Lace would’ve disappeared into that hotel and no one would’ve
known what happened.

But I didn’t save her. Not really. I wish
I’d gotten that guy before he hurt Lace.

I ain’t Smoke.

At least, not yet.

About the Author

Kris
Nelscott is an open pen name used by award-winning bestselling writer Kristine
Kathryn Rusch, which she uses for historical mysteries.

The
first Smokey Dalton novel,
A
Dangerous Road
, won the Herodotus Award
for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best
Novel; the second,
Smoke-Filled Rooms
,
was a PNBA Book Award finalist; and the third,
Thin Walls
, was one of the
Chicago Tribune
’s best mysteries of the year.
Kirkus
chose
Days of Rage
as one of the top ten mysteries of the year.

Entertainment Weekly
says her equals are Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler.
Booklist
calls the Smokey Dalton books “a high-class
crime series” and
Salon
says “Kris
Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being
written by an American author.”

If you liked “Guarding
Lacey,” you might enjoy these Kris Nelscott works:

Clinic

Dangerous Road

Family Affair

Smoke-Filled Rooms

Thin Walls