Instant Family (2 page)

Silence.

A thud, scuffling feet, a scraping sound.

Ears straining, he tossed back the sheet. Two strides and he was at
the window, peering carefully through the slats of the vertical blind
at the narrow view of the front garden. Nothing.

Hot. Dark. Still. Deep shadows from the liquidambar tree created
black holes in the night.

Frowning, he let the blind fall into place and groped for the bedside light switch. Better check on Steffie while he was awake. No
real need, just the freely admitted pleasure of having her under his
roof on their fortnightly weekend together. Short snatches of time to
delight in his daughter.

Alex padded across the passageway to the spare room, where the
elephant-shaped night-light cast a soft yellow glow. One of Steffie's
softly rounded hands rested on the pillow. A tumble of dark, silky hair
obscured her face. A smile stretched his lips as he touched fingers to
his mouth and blew her a kiss from the doorway.

Crash!

What the-? At the side. Glass breaking. Steffie stirred, rolled
over, settled back into sleep.

Alex darted for the family room and the sliding door. The outside
sensor light hadn't come on, but the quarter-moon cast enough of a
silvery glow to show dark, fleeing figures, maybe three.

Precious moments lost fumbling with the lock, a muttered curse,
the door finally dragged open. Alex sprinted across the tiled terrace, leaped the low hedge of ornamental lavender and thyme, landed on
grass, prickly and dry underfoot. Ran.

The catch on the side gate slowed the intruders and gave him time
for a desperate lunge amid swearing and panicked cries of, "I can't
open the gate!" "Hurry! He'll get us!" Kids.

The gate swung wide, and the dark mass of bodies moved. Alex's
fingers clutched cloth and hung on.

Briing-briing. Briing-briing. Briing-briing.

Chloe stretched out a leaden arm, flopped it about in search of the
phone, made contact, somehow managed to find the button, and silenced the unbearable shrieking.

"Hello," she croaked, eyes closed.

"Constable Brent Burrows from the City Watch House. Sorry to
disturb you. Is this Chloe Gardiner?"

"Yes." Chloe's brain and body sprang to alert. Her pulse rate trebled in an instant, and the hand holding the phone began to tremble.
Cold sweat beaded her face and body. A suddenly closed throat choked
her words. "Has something happened? An accident?"

Unbearable, unthinkable, that such crushing disaster could happen again.

Her mind ran frantically through the possibilities in the second
it took the officer to respond. Katy. Asleep. Julian and Seb. Asleep.
Grandmother Simone. Definitely at home at ... Chloe's fearful gaze
shot to the red numbers on the bedside clock: 3:15. She switched
the reading light on, blinking painfully at the sudden onslaught of
vision.

"Not an accident, Miss Gardiner. We have your brother Sebastian
here. He was caught trespassing, and there's been some vandalism.
We'd like you to come to the station, please."

Chloe sprang out of bed, her body stiff with indignation. "That's
impossible. He's at home, asleep."

"Would you check, please, miss?" Patient almost to the point of
boredom.

But Chloe was already charging along the corridor to Seb's room.
The hall light came on, and Julian stood there yawning and rubbing
his eyes, straw-colored hair amok.

"What's up? Who's on the phone?"

"The police think Seb's a vandal." Chloe pushed the bedroom
door open. "I told them he's asleep."

But her voice faded on the last word, because Seb wasn't asleep.
He wasn't in bed at all. He wasn't in the room. She raised the phone
slowly to her ear, hand trembling. "He's not here"

"I know," replied Constable Burrows. "He's here."

"I can't come," she said, floundering in the waves of disbelief. "I
have children-eleven and fourteen-in the house." She stared at
Julian. What did he know about this?

"We'll be all right. Go, please, Chloe." Julian's eyes brimmed
with tears. He jammed his fists into his eyes, blinked, sniffed.

"I'll be there as soon as I can." She disconnected. "Did you
know, Julian?" A surge of rage overtook the fear. "Did Seb tell
you he was sneaking out? How often does he do that? What did he
say to you?"

He shook his head. Too quickly. Her eyes narrowed. Julian didn't
tell lies. Neither did Seb....

"Anything?"

"No."

"Don't cover for him." Her voice rose on a crest of anger. "It
won't do him any good. Who was he with?"

"I don't know." Almost a wail.

Chloe didn't know either. The boys had lives she knew nothing
about, and the realization came with the shock of a sandbag to the
chest. They weren't frightened nine-year-olds any more, clinging to
her, trusting her as their lifeline for survival in a world turned completely and cataclysmically upside down.

"But you can guess, can't you?"

His clear blue eyes skated away from hers, and his mouth
took on a very familiar, stubborn line. He scratched his elbow
absentmindedly, a nervous reaction. The stalling tactic fueled her
rage.

"Come on, Julian. You're twins. You share everything-you always have."

"I don't know," he insisted with a rare flash of anger.

"Think about it while I get dressed." She turned away with a pounding heart stealing her breath and a deep sense of dread sitting
malevolently in her belly.

Chloe entered the neon brightness of the police station foyer on
legs trembling with delayed shock. A square jawed constable listened
to her query through a narrow space in the security-glass panels that
separated them. "Take a seat." He'd already returned his attention to
papers on the desk.

The straight-backed chairs had hard, uncomfortable seats, even
more noticeable because she had been dragged from the comfort
and oblivion of sleep in her own bed. Chloe sat clutching her black
and red Chinese bag on her denim-clad lap, her clammy right hand
running constantly over the smooth, shiny surface.

Her wandering gaze landed on her T-shirt front-rumpled. A red
tomato stain glared at her from the mint green fabric-the same
shirt she'd worn yesterday, the first garment at hand. Should have
had a shower, grabbed clean clothes, pulled her hair back into a pony
tail, and brushed her teeth, but at three-thirty in the morning she
wasn't thinking much beyond Seb and what he might have done.
And that he needed her. And that she was, in some way she couldn't
fathom, responsible.

A tall, gangly, dark-haired man in uniform appeared through one
of the doors leading from the reception area. He glanced about with
weary eyes in a pale, angular face and walked straight to Chloe.

"Miss Gardiner? Brent Burrows."

Chloe jumped to her feet and shook the proffered hand, warm and
dry in her unpleasantly damp palm. The Chinese bag slipped to the
floor, spilling her keys with a clatter onto the gray tiles. She scooped
them up hastily while he waited with an expressionless face. He ushered her through a door, up some stairs, and along a pastel gray corridor to a small interview room, where he indicated she should sit on
a chair only marginally more comfortable than the ones downstairs.
Then he perched himself casually on the edge of the desk.

"Is Seb all right?" She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry,
her voice rasped. Surely this constable could hear the thumping of
her heart. She wanted to scream at him to get on with it and tell her,
don't spare her feelings, don't be tactful.

"He's scared stiff." A tiny, swift smile darted across his mouth and lightened his tired face. His front teeth overlapped, and the slight
imperfection made him seem friendly, approachable. "Has he been in
trouble before?"

Chloe shook her head vehemently. "Never."

"That's what we thought." He paused and licked his lips thoughtfully. "He said you're his guardian-he's your half brother. That your
parents-"

"Yes," interrupted Chloe. She glared at him, daring him to suggest that this escapade was her fault. Due to her negligence or lack
of care. "What exactly did he do? Is he being charged with something? Was he alone?"

The idea that Seb would creep out at night by himself and vandalize someone's property was incredible. Why would he do such a
thing? And without Julian. They were inseparable. Weren't they?

"He was caught running from a backyard."

"Where?"

"Aranda. Nungara Street." Their own suburb but the far side. "The
householder thinks there were three, but he only managed to catch
Sebastian. Your brother won't give us names. There's been vandalism
in the area, but we're not sure if they're responsible for all of it. Letter boxes smashed, cars scratched, graffiti, stuff like that. Common in
summer. Hot nights, bored kids. Broke the sensor lights in the front
and back garden. That's what woke the householder."

"But nothing was stolen?"

"No. Not from that house."

Hot blood scorched through her veins. This was all wrong. Not Seb.
It couldn't be. She sprang to her feet. Sitting down, she was dwarfed.
He had her at a disadvantage, staring down at her like that. "What do
you mean? They'd been on a crime spree? Did he have anything on
him? Any evidence?"

"No.

"Are you positive it's my brother?" she cried in a last vain attempt
to return some sense to the situation. But Constable Burrows remained
unmoved, sitting casually with arms folded. He nodded with determined firmness.

Chloe subsided onto the chair under the inescapable truth. "Does
he need a lawyer?"

"We'd prefer a family conference, but the victim may press charges against your brother. The damage was considerable-broken letter
box and sensor lights, spray-painting on the driveway. They seem to
have gone along the street doing the same thing at random."

"I'm positive Seb has never done any of that before. Positive."

"That's what most parents say." Burrows tilted his head with a
skeptical little closemouthed smile.

"Will the man press charges or go for the conference?" Family conferencing must mean talking, coming to a mutually agreeable conclusion. No court appearance.

"He's very angry at the moment. His six-year-old daughter was
asleep in the house at the time. Can't blame him. The whole area's
been suffering from the problem. They've had enough. So have we."

Chloe's face crumpled. Her eyes filled with tears. "I'm sorry." She
groped in her jeans pocket for a tissue. A sweet-faced six-year-old
asleep in her bed. "Seb's a good boy at heart. I know he is. He
wouldn't hurt anyone and never a little girl. He loves his little sister.
Katy's eleven." She blew her nose and sniffed while Constable Burrows watched calmly. "Can I talk to him?"

"Sure." He stood up. "We think your brother was led into something that got out of his control. In this case you're probably right that
he'd never done it before. He's very scared, and we'd like to keep
him that way for a while." The tired smile appeared again at Chloe's
outraged gasp. "So he learns a lesson he won't forget. We'd like
to know who the others were, if you can help us find out. He won't
tell us."

Chloe followed him out the door. A female officer accompanied
by a stern-faced man with dark-stubbled chin and cheeks appeared
from a room farther along the short corridor, headed for the stairs.
An incredibly good-looking man. The physical reaction came from
nowhere, sudden as a body blow, a cricket bat to the knees. Chloe's
step faltered as her brain scrambled under the overload of buzzing
hormones and thudding heart. But Burrows was surging on ahead.
She forced her legs to move, knowing she'd been staring, knowing
the most attractive man she'd ever seen would pass her by, barely
registering her presence.

But piercing blue eyes raked her uncomfortably from head to toe
as she neared the pair. He had a natural air of authority, radiated an instinctive assumption that his way was right. The best. The only
way.

Some sort of high-ranking officer? A detective? He'd think she
was scum, a criminal, brought in off the streets for interrogation. Her
rumpled jeans and T-shirt virtually developed rips, and the tomato
stain grew larger and more grotesque as he stared.

By stark contrast his khaki slacks and white open-necked shirt
hung crisply and neatly from broad shoulders and narrow hips. Closeclipped hair didn't dare stray out of line. The unshaven chin gave the
only indication of the bizarre time of night.

The female officer and Burrows exchanged a meaningful glance,
but they didn't speak. Chloe stood aside as the constable passed, but
the man stopped, his face and body rigid with anger, she realized
with an astonishment that drew her out of the whirlwind of her
thoughts.

"You're here for that young hooligan, aren't you?" The eyes
bored into her like lasers. Chloe recoiled from the venom, shrinking
against the wall. "The Gardiner boy."

He almost spat the name into her face.

Chloe nodded while Burrows placed a placating hand on the
man's arm, restraining gently. "Now then, sir."

"I'm sorry," Chloe managed to say. "I had no idea."

"People like you never do, do they? You have no idea what your
kids get up to. Running around the streets in the middle of the night,
terrorizing the neighborhood. People like you should be banned from
having children."

"That's enough." Burrows rapped out the words. He took Chloe's
arm and propelled her down the corridor while the other officer said,
"Insulting Ms. Gardiner won't serve any useful purpose, sir."

His voice followed her down the corridor like a cloud of toxic
gas. "Completely irresponsible. She must've been a teenager herself
when she gave birth."

Chloe wrenched her arm from Constable Burrow's grasp. Spinning around, she yelled, "He's not my son. He's my brother, and he's
a good boy. I'm sorry for what he did, and I'm positive he's sorry too.
Haven't you ever made a mistake or done something stupid? Are you
so perfect?"