Heaven and Hell (57 page)

“Do me a favor,” she whispered.

“Anything,” I whispered back.

“Make him happy.”

I sighed.

Then I promised, “You got it.”

That was when she sighed and we both fell
silent. Thirty seconds later, Memphis yapped, leaped off my lap and
bounced to the door. Maris and I looked through our seats and
watched Sam approach.

When he arrived, he kissed my upturned lips;
I smelled his aftershave and got even warmer. Then he shifted and
kissed his mother’s upturned cheek. Then he bent down and lifted up
Memphis who tried to kiss his exposed neck. As usual, he managed to
avoid this but Memphis didn’t mind since she was snuggled to his
wide chest with one arm and Sam was scratching her neck with his
other hand.

“You ‘bout ready to go?” Sam asked his
Mom.

“All packed, honey,” she told him then
looked at me. “You sure you don’t want to join us for
breakfast?”

I shook my head. “Thank you but this is
Maris and Sammy time.”

Her face got soft, her eyes got warm, I saw
that look on another face that day and I smiled into it as she
smiled at me and replied, “Thank
you,
honey.”

It was then I suspected my face got soft and
eyes got warm.

Sam handed me Memphis and told his Mom,
“I’ll go up and get your bag.” His eyes came to me. “Be back around
two thirty, baby. But if traffic’s bad, closer to three.”

I nodded.

He bent and touched his mouth to mine again,
this time with his hand at my jaw. He finished the lip touch with
his fingers doing a light, sweet jaw sweep then turned and strode
back into the house.

Maris alighted, I put my coffee cup on the
arm of my chair and Memphis and I came up with her. Then Memphis
and I hugged her.

But it was only me who said, “I’m so glad
you came. Travel safe and let us know when you get home.”

Memphis yapped her farewell.

“Will do, Kia,” Maris replied, gave me
another hug, Memphis a few head pats then she followed her son into
the house.

I looked from the door down to the beach to
see Hap and his muscles jogging up to the walkway. I also saw a
couple of female walkers watching him go. They were at a distance
but even at a distance I could tell both of them were hotties. And
lastly, I saw Hap was oblivious.

Yeesh. If he didn’t pay attention, he’d
never find his fine piece of ass.

I decided while drinking more coffee and
making Hap breakfast, my next item on the morning’s agenda was
informing him of this fact.

Then I nabbed my coffee cup and turned to
walk into…

I stopped.

I studied the house.

Then I smiled huge and walked into
my
home.

* * * * *

Twenty minutes later…

“So they were hot?” Hap, showered, shaved,
sitting at the bar and shoveling in a huge bite of my scrambled
eggs, asked after the girls I told him were checking him out at the
beach.

“Did you not notice them at all?” I asked
back.

He swallowed and grinned at me. “Babe, I’m
the hunter not the hunted.”

I’d heard that before, kind of.

So standing at the other side of the bar to
him, I rolled my eyes then rolled them back and surmised aloud,
“You’re the cat; you want a mouse.”

“Word,” he replied and I stifled a
giggle.

“Word?” I asked through my
self-suffocation.

“Yeah,” he took a huge bite of buttered
toast then said through a full mouth, “word.”

“Does anyone say that anymore?” I asked.

“I just did,” Hap answered.

I was about to tell him he was a goof when I
saw movement on the deck, my eyes went there and I felt them get
wide when I watched Skip stomping across the deck to the door.

Uh-oh.

“Uh… Hap, we have company,” I announced,
beginning to move toward the door that I saw Skip was not going to
knock on.

No.

He was coming right in.

Then he came right in and I was halfway
across the living area when he stopped, sent daggers from his eyes
at Hap, declared, “You do not exist,” then his eyes sliced to me.
“What’s this I hear, you movin’ in with Sam?”

What?

“Uh –” I started.

“Luci called me,” he shared.

There you go.

“Well –” I started again.

“Know about your windfall, so you got money.
Still, Sam’s got a fuckload more money than you.”

I guessed this was true. Though I had no
clue why he’d come to Sam’s and barge right in to inform me of that
fact.

“Yes, that’s –” I tried and failed
again.

“Known each other, what, a month? Who the
fuck moves in together after a month?” Skip demanded to know.

“It’s been more than a month,” I informed
him.

“Yeah?” he asked belligerently. “How much
more?”

I paused to calculate it which was a
mistake.

“Skip, dude, this is hardly your –” Hap
started, Skip’s eyes cut to him and he clipped, “I said, you
do
not
exist.”

Oh man.

“Skip,” I called his attention back to me
but that was as far as I got.

“This is a gold diggin’ operation, you fail,
you answer
to me.
”

Oh my
God!

Cantankerous character was one thing but
rude and offensive was another.

“Skip,” Hap growled, leaving his seat. “That
was out of line. What the fuck?”

Skip looked back at Hap and asked, “What’d I
say?”

“Your crab shack, your rules,” Hap shot
back. “But right now, like it or not, you’re standin’ in
Kia’s
house. I exist here and I’m tellin’ you to stand the
fuck
down.
”

Skip assumed a battle stance which was to
say hands up in fists, one foot behind the other, body turned to
Hap and he invited, “Make me.”

Seriously?

I moved in between them saying, “Skip, Hap,
really. There’s no –”

I didn’t finish. This was because I saw more
movement on the deck and that movement was Celeste running, yes,
running
toward the door.

I was picking her up and wasn’t supposed to
be at Luci’s place for another hour and a half. I didn’t even know
how she got there since Luci was driving her everywhere and Celeste
didn’t have a car. It was my understanding that Luci lived in a
beach house down from Sam’s but it was a trek, at least a mile of
beach and more if you took the winding coastal road.

What I did know was her running and the look
on her face when she got inside did not bode happy tidings.

Memphis felt it instantly and yapped.

“Celeste –” I started but she cut me
off.

“Luci’s disappeared.”

My chest depressed.

“What?” Hap asked and Celeste looked to
him.

“This morning, she said she was going for a
walk on the beach. That was three hours ago. She hasn’t come back.
I’ve been up and down the beach. No sign and no one I asked has
seen her.” Her eyes came to me. “I called you four times. You
didn’t answer. I found the keys to her car and came here.”

My phone was upstairs in my purse in the
bedroom.

Shit!

“She take her phone with her?” Hap asked, on
the move to his bag which was sitting in a corner of the living
room.

Celeste shook her head. “Left it on the
kitchen counter.”

“Oh God,” I whispered.

“What’s goin’ on?” Skip asked, looking
around the lot of us, eyes stopping on Celeste. “And who’re
you?”

“I’m –” Celeste started but I bolted into
action.

Darting toward the front door, my eyes on
Hap who was pulling his cell out of the jeans he wore the night
before, I said, “Gordo.”

“Yeah,” Hap said to me.

“Gordo what?” Skip put in.

I ignored him, shoved my feet into the
flip-flops I left by the front door and asked Hap, “Where would she
go?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his
head, flipping open his phone. “This isn’t my place, babe. I come
down. I crash at Sam or Luci’s. I hang but I don’t know their
gigs.”

I turned to Skip. “Where would she go?”

“What in the sam hill is goin’ on?” Skip
fired back.

“Luci’s not good,” I told him.

“Sam, Hap,” Hap said into his phone.

“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know,” Skip said
to me.

“Celeste is here. Says Luci went for a walk
three hours ago, didn’t come back,” Hap kept talking into his
phone.

“Luci’s more not good than the normal not
good, Skip, we have to find her,” I said to Skip, watched his
leathery face pale and I finished, “Fast.”

“Would she go to his grave?” Celeste asked
quietly.

“He’s buried in Arlington,” Skip
muttered.

“Well that’s out,” I whispered and my eyes
went to Hap.

“Right, we’re there,” Hap said into his
phone, flipped it shut and looked at me even as he started striding
to the front door. “Sam says Luci and Gordo used to spend time in
Ruler Bay. It was their spot.”

“Let’s go,” I replied.

“Kia,
ma belle,
you’re in your robe,”
Celeste reminded me.

“I’m covered,” I murmured, following Hap out
the door.

“Darling, it’ll only take –” Celeste’s voice
followed me, I stopped, Skip almost ran into me but my eyes went
straight to Celeste.

“I’m fine. Let’s go,” I stated then turned
and rushed behind Hap.

“Coastal road, Hap, Kia’s with me,
Frenchie’s with you,” Skip ordered as we all rushed down the
walkway.

“Sam’s on his way,” Hap said to the walkway,
not even looking back as his legs moved with wide strides down to
the drive.

We hit the vehicles, Celeste moving directly
to the passenger side of Sam’s SUV, me going straight to the
passenger side of a decrepit pickup in which Skip was already at
the wheel. I was still swinging in when Skip turned the ignition
and was still closing my door when he started reversing with scary
speed, narrowly missing Luci’s Corvette in the drive. He cut the
wheel severely when he hit road and my body swayed nearly to the
seat. He righted the truck, took off, I righted myself and clicked
my seatbelt in place.

“Tell me what more than the normal not good
is,” Skip ordered on a bark.

“She loves Sam, she likes me, she wants us
together and even meddled a little to make that so. Still, Sam and
I getting tight, Luci seeing it, Celeste thinks it’s making what
she lost, already a constant reminder, more intense. She says Luci
has dark moments where she can’t hide her despair. And Luci told me
herself that one day everything is great and the next everything
can turn black. So she already wasn’t good, Skip, but now she’s
more than normally not good.”

He took a hair raising turn out to the main
road then gunned it as I turned to look at him.

“You know her,” I said softly. “Will she do
anything crazy?”

“Never seen a love like that, not in my
life,” Skip replied, my stomach clenched and my heart started
hurting.

Still.

“That’s not an answer, Skip,” I
whispered.

His eyes flicked to me and the old pickup
increased speed.

Then, to the windshield, he whispered back,
“Yep.”

That was what I was afraid he was going to
say.

“Shit, shit,
fuck,
” I hissed. Then I
asked, “What’s Ruler Bay?”

“Can walk it from Gordo and Luci’s place but
it’s a ways. On foot, takin’ your time, maybe half an hour. Thing
is, you gotta climb some rocks and then descend into it. Got a
trail, it’s not treacherous but enough so it’s pretty private.
Gordo was home, he ran it nearly every day. He loved it there. Took
Luci there all the time. She loved it there too. Far’s I know, she
hasn’t been back, not since he died.”

“Is this the only place they’d go?”

“Fuck if I know. Served ‘em fries and crab
sandwiches. Got drunk with ‘em. They didn’t whisper their secrets
to me.”

“What I’m saying is, maybe we should
diversify our search,” I explained.

“And what I’ll say is, if anyone knows where
she’d go, it’s Sam. First, he and Gordo were like brothers. Nope,
strike that, what they had was bigger than blood. Sam stepped in
with her when Gordo bit it and when I say that I mean big time.
They were close before, Sam and Luci, but now they’re really
friggin’ close. Anyone knows where she’d go, it’s Sam. So that’s
where we’re goin’.”

“Right,” I whispered my thoughts on Luci and
his words.

What they had was bigger than blood.

Two brothers Sam lost.

Two.

Shit!

I fell silent.

Skip drove like a demon.

Finally, Skip said, “Nothin’ there.”

I craned my neck and scanned the coastline,
asking, “Can you see the bay?”

“No, woman, what I’m tellin’ you is, Sam and
Luci are thick as thieves but not that way. Not the way he was with
you at the Shack. Fact is, ‘fore you, he never brought a woman to
the Shack.”

Oh wow.

That was news.

My eyes shot to him. “Really?”

“Just don’t get fool shit in your head ‘bout
them. That’s all I’m sayin’.” He jerked his chin to something and
stated, “There’s the bay.”

I looked back to the coastline to see a
short outcropping of rock. It wasn’t tall and it was covered with
green. You could see the trail running from a small parking
lot-slash-pit stop on the road.

Skip swung in as I undid my seatbelt. He
barely came to a halt before my door was open and I was out.

“Shit woman!” Skip shouted but I took off
toward the trailhead, my robe flying out behind me.

About a minute later, I was thinking it was
time to join Sam in some kind of workout regime because I had a
stitch in my side.

Two minutes after that, I was thanking my
lucky stars that the trail was relatively well-used and definitely
well-maintained for I was traversing it easily even on
flip-flops.

Thirty seconds after that, I was heading
down and I could see the bay.