Infamous: (A Bad Boy Romantic Suspense) (2 page)

Inside was a lot nicer than Taylor had been expecting, though it certainly wasn’t The the Four Seasons or the Ritz. Or even Holiday Inn. But it was somehow comforting in its plain, small, homespun way. Although she loved the city, where she lived didn’t really feel like home.

Taylor’s apartment was in Queens, and she shared it with two other girls. They didn’t see each other much and they weren’t really friends. They all worked different hours and mainly stayed out of each other’s way. The fridge in particular was like a carefully maintained domain of low-fat yogurts, fruit, green juices, and salads with names written on them in marker. It didn’t make Taylor feel any less lonely, really, sharing a home with two other people. Sometimes they had “girls’ nights” where they sat around and drank some wine and talked about work. Taylor always felt out of place and usually went to her room early, listening the others laugh and watch movies.

Unlike in high school, Taylor didn’t think her roommates were trying to make her feel unwanted or unliked. It was her own issues with trust that kept her distant. Both of her roommates seemed like nice, fun girls. She just couldn’t bring herself to be anything more than distantly pleasant.

Of course, Taylor did have actual friends, but most of them lived across the country in LA or San Francisco and they kept in touch via email or Skype. Which wasn’t really the same. And if she was being fair, she was the one who was usually bad at checking in and making the effort. It was like she was stuck and didn’t know how to ask for help or even perspective sometimes.

She put her suitcase by the single bed and sat down on the edge. It creaked a little, reminding her of the one she’d had as a kid. The bedspread was flowery, cream and roses, and it felt soft under her hands. The curtains were of the same material, with a little lace trim along the bottoms. Dull light filtered in, she could see dust mites dancing in it.

Taylor took out her laptop and logged in to the Wi-Fi. It was slow but serviceable. She was just glad they had any at all. She’d almost been convinced she’d have to use dial-up.

Her email was full, but just the usual boring work email chain stuff. She’d handed in her latest fluff pieces on a new antiaging face cream that promised miracles because of some algae or other. And there was the fall “trend” of berry lipsticks, just like last year. She’d tried to find a way to make it sound, as her boss had said, “fresh and riveting.” Which was a little difficult since dark lipstick was the “new” trend every fall. She was personally quite fond of the look, but it took effort to find some kind of new angle to write about it.

She shut the computer down and took out her makeup bag, toiletries, and hair devices and put them on the small desktop. The lamp had amber glass and looked like it might actually be an antique. There was a large oval mirror between the standing closet and desk, and a small TV with a VCR/DVD player under it. That feeling of having been transported back in time struck her again, a little more forcefully. If there’d been a rotary phone she wouldn’t have been surprised. Thankfully there was a standard wireless on the desk next to the lamp. Although it wasn’t like there was room service or anything to call.

Unzipping her boots, she considered where she should start. Probably at the library—brush up on her history, in particular the murders from ten years ago. Some of it she still remembered but she could use the actual facts again. And then there was the legend, of course, that would need to be included to set the mood properly and give it all the sense of dramatic, tabloid spookiness her boss was after.

Like everyone in Sweethollow, Taylor had grown up hearing the legend of the Deathless Rider. Halloween was its prime time of year, but the schools made it a kind event that lasted the entire fall and even into winter with some teachers. It was Sweethollow’s main claim to fame. Parents used it to keep their kids home at night. The town milked it for whatever tourist dollars it could get, and the kids made fun of it behind everyone’s back. It was a weird kind of symbiotic relationship that existed between everyone in Sweethollow and the legend.

Taylor’s grandmother had always had a tart outlook on it. She used to say, “If Sweethollow didn’t have the legend, it would have to make another one up.” Which had always confused Taylor, since she assumed it was just that: made up. But Grams had had other ideas. Because she’d seen the Deathless Rider as a girl.

It had been the fall of 1922, and her Grams had been somewhere around ten years old. Sweethollow had been smaller then and it took more like half a day to get to the city. Taylor always thought of her grandmother’s stories as being in black and white, as if the world itself had been lacking in color then. She also always thought of her Grams as wearing pigtails and bloomers, though she had no real evidence she ever had. If there had ever been any of those old-fashioned, grim photos of her at one time, they were long gone.

Her grams had been a precocious child, which didn’t surprise Taylor at all. She’d been told not to leave the yard on this day, having gotten into a scrape with one of the neighborhood boys. She’d popped him in the mouth, apparently, and he’d permanently lost a tooth. This part always made Taylor smile. Her grams, incensed at the injustice, had left the yard and walked purposefully into the woods behind. She was planning on running away and had taken fresh muffins, a bottle of milk, and a jar of strawberry jam in a little sack. A little ways into the woods was a small, winding path that had formerly been used mainly by peddlers of dubious wares. One of them had been called The Furman, known for the outfit made entirely of animal skins which he wore all year round. He never spoke to anyone or bothered them, and there were all kinds of stories about why he wandered the countryside without a home.

Eventually the path came to the Windy Bridge, and after that, well, Grams had been somewhat sketchy. She was only a child at the time, completely unaware of the actual distance. In her mind she would be in “the city” after the bridge.

Since it was fall, the days were growing shorter, and much like the actual time it would take to get to the city, her grams hadn’t realized how quickly it would get dark after she started out. She was halfway into the woods, a good few miles from home, when the light dwindled, faded, and then slunk away. At the time, Sweethollow had no electric lights or streetlamps, so when it was dark, it was very dark. She’d stumbled over roots and rocks, brambles and clumps of leaves. The wind had blown through the trees with a soft, moaning sound. She’d heard the rustle of whatever lived in, under, or near the trees. The moon had come out, bright and round. A dog barked mournfully in the distance.

One thing was for sure: her grams had always known how to set a scene.

Her grams had thought about turning back but, like people everywhere when they’ve made a bad decision, figured it was best to keep on making it than stop. She continued in what she hoped was the general direction of the bridge, also hoping that she didn’t find it by missing it and ending up at the bottom of the kill brook. In some parts it was a long way down.

Whether by luck or some “higher power” as her grams liked to call it, she had made it to the bridge in one piece. It had loomed out of the night as though a small barn was simply sitting on air. It was just a simple covered bridge, however, not more than a hundred feet across. To her grams it had looked like miles. But she’d soldiered on because Victoria “Grams” Harlow had a stubborn streak several towns wide.

With her first step onto the bridge, it had creaked ominously, because that’s the sort of thing that happens during a scary retelling of a traumatic childhood event. The next hadn’t, and the ones after—well, Grams had never said if they were creaky or not. She had said that each step had felt heavier the further she went and that, by the time she was halfway across, she was filled with an unspeakable dread.

Then she’d heard the unmistakable sound of hoofbeats getting closer. When she heard them touch wood, she turned back to the entrance of the bridge. Silhouetted against it was a tall rider, too tall, hooded, and the horse’s eyes were glowing red. As she’d stared, feeling rooted to where she stood, the rider had pulled back its hood to reveal a face Grams could not describe. All she would say was that, to her child’s eyes, it had looked misshapen, as though it were constantly melting and attempting to reform. The eyes were black pits into nothing.

Then it screamed.

Grams had, as she’d put it, “run faster than a fart in a hurricane.” The rider had followed, continuing its high-pitched, unearthly scream. When she’d reached the other side, her grams had flung herself to the side and the Rider had sped past, screaming into the night. When Taylor had asked her how scared she was, Grams had said, “Well, I peed my bloomers straight through and down my leg.” Which child Taylor had been awestruck over. In her mind, Grams was strong and fearless, a bastion of courage. It was difficult to think of her as a terrified little girl.

The legend of the Deathless Rider had been around since at least the Revolutionary War era so far as Taylor knew, and the popular belief around town was that it was the spirit of a British soldier, angry at his untimely death, who hunted down the living for sport. This seemed a little too convenient to Taylor, which was why she wanted to find out whatever she could at the library.

The Rider had been linked to all kinds of deaths over the years, from house fires to car wrecks. It had been more common for him to be blamed prior to the 1960s, it seemed, though superstitions often die hard in small towns, no matter the decade.

When Taylor had grown up there, plenty of people in Sweethollow had still believed in the Rider even if they laughed about it publicly. He was just too good a story, and too many people had tales of seeing him for most to shrug him off completely. Although Taylor didn’t strictly believe in him, she believed her grams. The woman had never lied to her granddaughter, even when a lie might have been less painful and kinder than the truth.

Taylor looked out her window, which faced the main part of town, less than half a mile away. She could see church steeples, the big pine tree in the square’s top, which currently had a giant smiling jack-o’-lantern on it she could actually see from that distance. Houses marched on behind and around it for a few miles before dwindling. Not many people lived that far outside town; Sweethollow had never had a suburban “sprawl” moment. No condo developments, no large industries to bring in more folks to build for. Everything was small and “local,” to an almost suspicious degree.

The kindest thing she could think of to say about it was that it was very pretty. On the outside. The inside of the town, to Taylor, had always seemed like an apple that still looks good on the surface because the inner rot hasn’t broken the shiny red skin yet. But it always does. Eventually.

She shook herself, tired of these morbid, self-indulgent thoughts. They weren’t going to write her piece, and she wanted to maintain something that could pass for objectivity whenever possible.

Taylor decided it was as good a time as any to get a drink. She’d driven by the Horned Owl on her way into town, and it had looked like the perfect blend of seedy and homey. They probably had some passable food, too. She’d get a drink (or a few), eat, and people-watch. It would be good for her piece to get the local gossip sure to be floating around a place like the Owl. And it would help remind her that her past was her past—it couldn’t hurt her now.

She was, unfortunately, completely wrong about that.

A few blocks away from the inn was the part of Sweethollow people liked to avoid because it wasn’t as scenic or cheerful as the town council preferred to present to tourists. No signs for the upcoming festival were tacked up here, for instance, and many other signs made sure anyone visiting would never even come to close to this neighborhood, with helpful arrows pointing away. Still, someone in this “bad” part of town was having a bit of an existential crisis like Taylor’s, and would have been very curious to know she was back home.

Of course, this person might not recognize Taylor as she was now. He had only known the awkward know-it-all with the braces she had been. But very few days had gone by in the last ten years when he hadn’t thought about her, or the All Hallows’ Eve prom night he’d very much like to forget.

On the outside, Anton Quinn hadn’t changed much in the decade since Taylor had last seen him. He had a few gray hairs around the temples, but mostly his hair was still glossy and black and swung straight and full to his chin. In high school it had been down his back. He still wore all black, including his jeans and the same pair of motorcycle boots. His black leather riding jacket was newer, with more modern detailing around the ridged sleeves and shoulders.

On the inside, Anton had changed quite a bit over the years. Not that anyone in Sweethollow seemed to notice. He didn’t care, mostly. The Quinns were a family with a reputation, and in a small town like Sweethollow, you could never really get out from under something like the kind of troublemaking he’d once been known for. It didn’t matter that Anton hadn’t caused any issues of any kind since that now-infamous night. He was a “bad boy” and always would be.

So why didn’t he leave? He couldn’t really answer that and didn’t much want to think about it. He was comfortable with his life; it was easy and no one expected much from him. And if he sometimes worried he’d wake up one day, old and alone? Well, he squashed that kind of thinking with some whiskey and a hard ride on his bike. When the wind was in his face (minus the bugs), the road beneath him, and Sweethollow in the distance? He felt free.

It never lasted. He always had to come back, face the reality that he was never getting out. His father hadn’t, nor his grandfather, nor even his great-grandfather. Quinns didn’t leave Sweethollow; they were that family and always would be.

Well, at least that part he could do something about. He was the last Quinn, and since he was never getting married or having kids, he could stop at least that particular legacy. It was the least he could do, make sure the sins of his father were never, ever repeated or passed down to any other generation. If the Quinn curse died with Anton, so much the better.

He sat with his boots propped up on his desk, watching George working on a bike. Anton owned the best repair shop in town, handed down from dear old dad, the only decent thing the son of a bitch had ever done for him. Though Anton was good at fixing bikes, it wasn’t his passion.

“Almost done, Anton. Want to get a beer later?” George asked, wiping grease from his fingers and walking over to the office.

“Not sure, I might have plans,” Anton said, wondering if the energetic Mrs. Elloy might be up for a little side action that night. He wasn’t sure he was up for it, though. Lately, he’d been feeling kind of down. Generally meaningless sex was fun, but recently it had just seemed…hollow.

“You know, screwing married women is going to get you into serious trouble, kid,” Carlos said, popping his head up from behind a bike. He was young but probably the most natural mechanic Anton had ever met. He was considering leaving the business to him when he retired, if he lived that long. Anton wasn’t sure he was the Get Old and Gray type.

“Trouble is where I live,” Anton responded.

“Yeah, and it’s where you’ll die,” George said, looking at Anton with a worried expression. They’d known each other a long time. George had worked for Quinn senior. He knew what Anton had been through and what a shit his old man had been. After the old bastard had finally kicked it, George had sort of taken Anton under his wing and shown him what a decent man was really like. He had three kids of his own, all boys, and he was gruff but fair. Anton had wished many times he’d grown up with someone like him instead. Maybe he would have turned out differently.

“Maybe. But I’ll die happy, “ Anton said with a smile.

“I doubt it. Happiness is not how many women you sleep with or how many fights you get in. And one of these days you’re going to find a really pissed off husband at your door,” George said. He wasn’t joking.

“George, I know you want me to be settled but it not going to happen. I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine,” Anton said.

“So you say, “ George shook his head.

“Go home to that sweet wife and your kids, George. You’ve got a good life. Don’t worry about mine, “ Anton said.

“One day, you’re going to wish you’d found a good woman of your own. There’s nothing like coming home to a family,” George said. Anton smiled and saluted. The idea of him having a family was about as alien as the idea that people in Sweethollow would stop thinking of him as “bad”.

The Quinn household had been anything but happy, though Anton had loved his mother fiercely. She’d tried to balance out his father’s cruelty, but she wasn’t strong, and there wasn’t much she could do when he went into one of his rages. It felt to Anton like he’d always hated his father; the man was a monster with no kindness or love in him anywhere. And he’d tried to keep his son from having any, either. Especially when it came to what he really wanted to do: draw.

Growing up, Anton had always loved art. But his father had made sure he beat that particular “weakness” out of him. At least where he could see it. Anton had drawn in secret, hiding everything beneath a loose floorboard in his room. He’d had to take art classes in secret, after school, and tell his father he was getting in extra time in shop instead.

He’d had one teacher, Mrs. Amberson, who’d really encouraged him. She’d wanted him to attend school in the city, but Anton had known his father would have never allowed it. And back then he wouldn’t have been able to get away no matter how much he wanted to. He’d really hated his father for that, ruining something before he could even try it.

Now that that old bastard was dead, Anton went to museums as often as he could. No one in Sweethollow knew, but his favorites were the Expressionists. In particular he loved the works of Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, and Dorothea Tanning, who was also a Surrealist. The raw, visceral, emotional combativeness of the movement appealed to him. He’d go to the Met and simply stare at Munch’s piece, Vampire. Then go home.

By contrast, he also loved the softer works of John Singer Sargent. The light colors of his portraits, the delicacy of the skin tone, the beauty of the faces and sweeping fabrics appealed to a part of Anton he rarely acknowledged. It was a side that, growing up, he couldn’t afford to have if he wanted to live. There was nothing his father hated more than “softness.”

His own work was largely ink work, often with brushes, with an underlying darkness, anger, and sadness he tried to pretend he didn’t really feel. Art has a way of showing you what you really are, however, and it came through anyway. Not that he showed his work to anyone. Not his private stuff. He wasn’t sure he could ever show that to anyone. The trust it would take was unfathomable to him.

But at least these days he did have more of a creative outlet, with tattoos. Whether he was inking someone else or having something etched into his own skin, Anton found it incredibly satisfying. He had two full sleeves, a chest plate, and he was in the process of having his back done. They were all of his own design.

For Anton, tattoos were body art. Which seemed to go without saying, but he’d seen enough drunken mistake ink jobs or just straight-up terrible tattoos to know that often wasn’t the case. In his opinion, not enough people really considered the parts of the body they were getting decorated. What the shape of the design should do to enhance the arm it was on or how the negative space of skin could balance the black or colored lines.

When he was tattooing someone, it was a powerful experience. They were trusting him with their body. Everyone knew they hurt, but they were also sensual. The needle marking the skin, potentially forever. The pain as part of the process of metamorphosis. A person’s tattoos expressed who they were in a way nothing else really could, because it became a part of them. Their bodies were a canvas to the ultimate art.

Okay, maybe he got a little bit weird about tattoos. He supposed it was because everyone in Sweethollow saw him as nothing more than a stupid gearhead who, as a teenager, had gotten into some trouble. Well, a lot of trouble. But still. It had been over a decade since the last time he’d done anything even mildly outside the law. And yet the local cops still stopped him frequently to check his bags and his bike. They still came looking for him anytime something went wrong in town.

It didn’t help that several of the current policemen of Sweethollow were the past bullies of Sweethollow. A few were fine, but like anywhere there’s power, some just had to abuse it. Anton did his best to stay off their radar, but it wasn’t easy. A car so much as backfired and it felt like they were poking around him.

The latest “accidental” deaths, as the paper had reported it, has caused things to go from just a little annoying to outright shitty. Officers had gone through his trash every day the week after, like if he’d killed those guys he’d have been stupid enough to just toss out his weapons with the recycling and the pizza boxes from the weekend.

When he’d tried to get them to stop, they’d pulled the usual, “Just making sure we check out all possibilities and persons of interest.” Which Anton had found interesting, given the official spin had been that the deaths weren’t homicides. Just like they hadn’t been ten years ago. Or the ones years before that. In fact, Sweethollow had this weird trend of deaths happening every decade or so, like some kind of morbid clockwork. Most of them were called accidents, but Anton didn’t think anyone in town really believed that. They probably were, but too many coincidences lead to superstitions.

He looked out at the street from his office, the clang and bang of tools fading a little behind him. The work day was winding down. They had maybe two more oil changes and a tune-up and then he could go on upstairs to his studio and do what he really wanted. He’d been sketching something new, doodling it over and over, really, and thought it was about time he committed it to good paper.

What Anton really wanted was not a run-down, though certainly successful, repair shop. What he wanted was his own tattoo parlor, somewhere that was not Sweethollow, where he could concentrate on the ink and nothing else. He’d been slowly saving over the years but it wasn’t ever enough. He worked on jobs when he could, a town over in Deer Ridge, at a little shop called the Skunk. It was mostly your garden variety tramp stamps and tacky sports team stuff, but he had some clients who paid for the kind of thing only Anton could do. The owner, Crosby, was okay but older and set in his ways. Anton would never convince him to change up his roster or his look. He needed his own place. His own outlet.

He wondered what it was like to work every day doing something you loved. That you really and truly couldn’t wait to do. Not just something you were good at, but that you just had to do. That you had such a drive and passion for, nothing and no one could keep you from it.

For some reason, as he was thinking about that, a face sprang to mind. With braces and frizzy hair, tears running down flushed cheeks, eyes on fire with anger and hate. Taylor Jane Harlow. Why the hell was he thinking about her?

Because, his brain whispered, you still feel guilty. And this time of year always reminds you of what a complete asshole you were.

He sighed, got up, and took a beer out of the office fridge. He knocked the top off on the edge of the desk and drank deep.

“I hate you,” he heard her say, voice low and shaking but somehow sure and powerful at the same time. “You’re always going to be nothing, just like they say you are,” she’d said then, her face full of utter contempt and loathing. It had been like being stabbed in the gut with an icicle. Because he had known she was right, especially after what he’d done. He couldn’t blame her for hating him. For thinking he was scum. Because he was.

Anton had learned that night that there are some things, some choices in life, that you just can’t take back no matter how sorry you are. Because sorry won’t make up for it.

Of course, he’d never actually told her he was sorry. He’d just let her walk away, back straight, pain in every line of her body, knowing he was everything his father had ever told him was and worse. Knowing he was everything everyone in town thought he was: a loser and a bastard and worthless trash. Because he’d just hurt the only person in that entire shitty town who’d ever known him and treated him like a person. And for what?

To this day Anton wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to it. He’d known it was wrong. He’d known it would hurt Taylor. He knew she hadn’t done anything to anyone to deserve it, even if she could be a bit of a pain in the ass, and that it was a cruel and vicious prank.

Yet he’d done it anyway.

“Ready to go?” Carlos asked, interrupting his train of thought.

“I’ll meet you guys later. I’ve got some stuff to do, “ Anton said. Carlos waved and then Anton locked up after the rest. He looked around the shop, quiet now, full of nothing but the smell of sweat and gasoline.