Protection for Hire (9 page)

Tessa turned and started walking away.

“Hey, what about my twenty?”

“Did you hear me promise you anything? You’re lucky I don’t punch your lights out for what you did.”

“I didn’t do anything, lady,” Jack snarled.

She had been prepared for Jack to try something, but even as she reacted to Jack’s hand reaching out for her, Calypso dove at him like a raven. “He was wounded for our transgressions!” he shouted as a flailing fist caught Jack in the jaw.

“Ow!” Jack stumbled backward, his knees wobbling.

“Nice left hook, Calypso,” Tessa said.

“Expel the wicked from among you,” Calypso said. But he backed away.

Jack leaned against the bus stop, his hands slightly raised in front of him, his eyes unfocused.

“Thanks for helping me,” Tessa said to Calypso. “Can I buy you some hamburgers from McDonalds?”

Calypso suddenly rose to his full height, which brought him
at Tessa’s eye level. His face had become serious, his eyes intent and focused. He again took Tessa’s hands. “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”

His voice was deeper than normal, spoken in a soft voice that rang with reverence, as if he were reading Scripture at a Sunday church service.

Tessa was shocked. What had happened? This was kinda freaky.

Calypso continued, “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. Remember that.”

Calypso then turned and walked away.

T
essa walked into her mom’s house and was attacked by paper cranes.

Actually, she only collided with streamers of paper cranes hung over the doorway, but it sure felt like an attack. Sharp paper beaks jabbed her in the eye, and when she yelled, “Hey!” she inhaled a paper tail into her open mouth.

“Tessa, this is so much fun!” Elizabeth gestured to her to join them in Mom’s living room, where she, Daniel, Alicia, Paisley, and Mom were gathered around the coffee table. Colored squares littered the floor and the table.

“Tessa,” Daniel said, and held out to her a crumpled silver paper that looked vaguely like a rock. With ears.

“Wow, Daniel,” Tessa said, “that’s a great … uh …”

Elizabeth mouthed “frog” to her.

“… frog. In fact, that’s the best frog I’ve ever seen. What’s his name?”

“Her
name is Freddie, and she’s Slasher’s girlfriend,” Elizabeth said with a roll of the eyes. “You can blame your niece for that one.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Paisley said with wide eyes. “The name just popped out.”

“Come join us,” Elizabeth said.

“No,” Alicia said quickly, “this is too girly for Tessa.”

A sensation like cold water trickled over her shoulders, her arms, her stomach. Alicia had said the exact same thing when Tessa was twelve and she’d come home from hanging out with her male cousins to find Mom teaching Alicia to fold paper cranes.

Mom had said, “Oh, that’s true.”

Tessa had left the house and gone to Aunty Kayoko. Uncle Teruo had been out, so he hadn’t witnessed Tessa’s valiant attempts to hide her tears.

Aunty Kayoko had gotten out the best origami paper she owned — large squares thickly strewn with pink and red flowers and highlighted by gold gilt, bought in Kochi Prefecture on a trip to Japan. She made one paper crane for Tessa, but instead of being right side out, she made it with the white underside on the outside.

“Your femininity is inside,” she’d told Tessa, “just like the beautiful pattern is on the inside of this crane. Other people can only see it if they get close enough to touch it and handle it.”

Then she taught Tessa how to make the cranes herself, with the pattern on the outside, on the expensive imported paper. Tessa worked hard and only went through a couple dozen of the beautiful sheets, and Aunty Kayoko had praised her.

Tessa had never told her mom or her sister. She hid the inside-out paper crane in her drawer, and when she’d gone to prison, she had asked Aunty Kayoko to find it and mail it to her. The crane had eventually been tucked into her Bible, where it
remained even now, with a few tear stains from when she’d taken it out on the day of her aunt’s funeral.

At hearing Alicia’s words, Elizabeth’s fine dark brows rose as she looked at Tessa’s sister. “
What
are you talkin’ about?” Her accent had become even thicker and she had slowed down her words, for a change. Her tone made the question sound like a finely veiled insult.

Alicia drew herself up, raising a pointed chin. “Tessa is a tomboy through and through. You can barely get her to wear makeup to a job interview.”

“Tessa doesn’t need makeup. She has flawless skin,” Elizabeth fired back.

Tessa was speechless. She’d never before had a girlfriend stand up for her to her family. When working for Uncle Teruo, and even in prison, she’d always had to fight her own battles. It was what she’d needed to do within the yakuza, where women weren’t often respected, and again in prison. While she’d argued with Alicia countless times, it was completely different to have a stranger tell Alicia about Tessa.

And Alicia didn’t like it either, apparent from her flushed cheeks and prim mouth. “All I’m saying is that
throughout our childhood together
, Tessa has never been interested in feminine things.” Meaning,
I’ve had many more years of observing my wild woman sister than you have, Scarlett.

Elizabeth casually looked away with the air of a woman humoring a crazy person. “Well, I’m sure you’d know, since even with your own
girly
friends, you would have been so
close
to your tomboy sister. She must have spent so much time with you.”

Tessa gaped at Elizabeth. She met Mom’s eyes, which were also wide with surprise. Mom strode into the breach. “Er … Tessa, you don’t know how to fold paper cranes, do you? Why
don’t we teach you too? It’s a good thing for a Japanese girl to learn.”

“I already know,” Tessa replied.

“You do?” Alicia asked. “Who taught you?”

She hesitated. It would be embarrassing to them, and as much as Alicia criticized her and Mom neglected her, she didn’t want to do that to them, not in front of Elizabeth. “One of the aunties.”

“Who?” Alicia demanded.

Well, she asked for it. “Aunty Kayoko.” The yakuza
oyabun’s
wife. It was like having the First Lady teach a niece how to do laundry — implying something lacking in that niece’s family. And the
oyabun
would know it.

Alicia stiffened and her face grew pale, but she shut her mouth and said no more. Mom’s eyes fell to the crane on the table in front of her.

Oblivious to the embarrassment of Tessa’s family, Elizabeth held up a crane. “This is the most lovely paper. And folding cranes is so soothing.”

“Japanese believe that if you fold a thousand cranes, your wish will come true,” Tessa said.

“Sit down and have some tea.” Elizabeth pointed to a teapot on the table. “Unless you’re too
girly
to sit with us girls.” She slid a pointed glance to Alicia, whose lips disappeared in her face, but didn’t reply. “So what did you do today?” Elizabeth asked.

Tessa told her about finding out how Heath discovered her, but she didn’t tell them about the disturbing Bible verse Calypso had quoted to her. “I bought a couple Happy Meals for Calpyso, and also some crackers and peanut butter, but when I went back to his street corner to give them to him, he didn’t seem to recognize me, even though he’d beaten a guy up for me only twenty minutes before. But he did thank me.”

“Disturbed man,” Mom said, shaking her head. “The kind of people you interact with, Tessa.”

“I didn’t seek him out because I want to marry him, Mom,” Tessa said.

Mom shuddered at the thought.

“I also laid a few false trails in San Francisco for you,” Tessa said to Elizabeth.

“False trails?” She rubbed the top of Daniel’s head, and he jerked his head to get her to stop.

“It was actually kind of fun.” Tessa ticked them off on her fingers. “I opened an account for you with Wide World Travel Agency, and gave them your information so they could pull up all your frequent flyer points for all the different airlines you’ve flown. I gave them a bogus address at a motel in San Francisco.”

“But Heath will go to that motel like last time, ding dong,” Alicia said.

“The clerk will have no idea what he’s talking about, and Heath will either think the guy’s clueless or well bribed. He can’t bust down every door in the motel, ding dong.”

Alicia made a conceding gesture.

“I also called Pacific Real Estate to get them to run credit checks on you in Canada and Mexico.”

“But I don’t want to go to Canada or Mexico.”

“But Heath doesn’t know that. I started processes to open a bank account for you in Vancouver, and I got the Barnes and Noble cashier to pull up your membership card number for me when I was at the store today and bought a book on living in Canada.”

“They just did it for you?” Alicia was appalled. “You didn’t have to show any ID?”

“I was very charming to the cashier, and made a big deal
of searching through my wallet for my card and not being able to find it, and he was happy to search on the computer for me when I gave him ‘my’ name. Oh, and I also bought a DVD on Canada too.”

“With what money?” Mom demanded.

Tessa felt her face flame. “Sorry, Mom, I’ll pay you back as soon as I get in touch with Ichiro.”

“No, I’ll pay you back,” Elizabeth insisted, “as soon as Charles gets my money for me.”

Mom gave Elizabeth a warm smile. “Oh, no, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind at all.”

Tessa actually felt like the color green — a slimy, scaly, sickly green. Mom was just being hospitable, teaching Elizabeth to fold paper cranes and not begrudging her the money Tessa had spent. She gave herself a shake both mentally and physically to get it to go away, but a sharp talon still pierced something soft in her chest.

“So now, if Heath searches for you or hires a P.I., they’ll find you planning to jump ship to Canada. They’ll keep their eyes on World Wide Travel, waiting for you to make your plane ticket.”

“While I’m holed up here in San Jose,” Elizabeth said. “You’re so clever!”

While doing all this, Tessa had thought to herself that she was being rather clever, but now, with Alicia and Mom barely looking up at her, it didn’t seem as brilliant as she’d first thought. “Well, it’ll buy you a few days. I’m going to be looking for a safe house for you.”

“Oh, you can stay as long as you like,” Mom gushed to Elizabeth.

“You’re so kind to us,” Elizabeth said.

That green, nasty feeling washed over Tessa again.

“I’m sorry the sunroom is so small and so bright in the mornings,” Mom said. “I thought about taking the room-darkening shades from Tessa’s room, but it wouldn’t be enough to cover all the windows.”

She should be used to this, being last in her mother’s thoughts. She had caused her mother a world of pain and humiliation when she went to prison. She had embarrassed her sister and caused a tarnish on her niece’s reputation at school to have a convict for an aunt.

But it still didn’t make it hurt less.

“If Tessa moved out, we could put you in her room,” Alicia said.

“If Tessa moved out,” Tessa snapped, “it would be because Elizabeth didn’t need a bodyguard anymore, which also means she wouldn’t need to hide here with the three of you.”

As soon as she said it, she heard how petulant and ugly it sounded, but she couldn’t take the words back.

Alicia didn’t notice — obviously because anyone living with her would have no cause for complaint. Mom looked vaguely sad, maybe at the prospect of losing such a nice houseguest.

But Paisley flinched and looked back down at the crane she was folding.

Tessa felt contaminated. She needed to get away from her sister, from her mom, from the patterns of behavior she had with them that she still fell into even though she was supposed to be a new creation in Christ. They would all be better off without each other.

If she was supposed to be so different, why was it more and more apparent that she was still the same person?

The irony was killing her.

An ex-convict — no, even better, an ex-yakuza, asking a lawyer for money.

Well, technically it was his client asking for the money, but since Elizabeth was pretty much under house arrest, it would be Tessa spending all of Charles Britton’s borrowed cash.

They took light-rail to the train station and headed to San Francisco. While they were on the train, Tessa remembered the Toyota Corolla. Karissa had texted her to tell her she got a ride home that Sunday, but the car was still parked outside Wings.

They got off at the San Francisco train station and Tessa called her cousin Ichiro at a pay phone.

“Hello?”

“Itchy, it’s Tessa.”

“Are you done with my car?”

“Like you’re even using it. I need another favor.”

“Oh, so paying insurance on a car I’m not even driving so that my cousin can ride around the Bay Area isn’t enough?”

“Do you have another set of keys for the car?”

“No. Aw, man, did you lock yourself out?”

“No, I didn’t. It’s good you don’t have a spare set of keys because I want you to break into the car.”

“What?”

“Pretend like you’re casing the cars on the street and then steal your car. It’s being watched and I want it to seem like a random theft.”

“Like anybody’s going to believe I’m going to voluntarily steal a 1981 Toyota Corolla?”

“Well … pretend like you’re a vintage car buff.”

“If I’m a vintage car buff, I would have enough money not to need to steal a car.”

Itchy was being unreasonably logical. “I don’t care what you do, just steal the car. And if you’re followed, lose them. Don’t let them track you back to your house.”

“Tessa, who did you tick off?”

“Nobody —”

“’Cause I kind of like my head where it is, you know?”

“They’re not going to chop off your head —”

“And I like having all my fingers and toes.”

“They won’t cut off your fingers —”

“If they’re not dangerous, then why do I need to steal my own car?”

“It’s a guy who beat up his wife, and I kind of helped her, and so he might be watching my car.”

“
My
car.”

“Your car. Whatever. Can you do it for me?”

He sighed. “What if I get caught?”

“Your name’s on the vehicle registration and insurance, so how is that a problem?”

“Oh.”

Tessa could almost hear Itchy thinking.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “You better hope I even remember how to boost a car.”