Robin in the Hood (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 1) (2 page)

And now my dad expects me to save his butt?

I couldn’t help myself—I yanked back my hand like I’d been bitten, vigorously rubbing my fingers to remove any lingering hospital stink. Then I leaned down beside him.

“Do you have any idea,” I whispered angrily, motioning to the cluster of men and women in suits, “how fun it would be for me to watch you
f
r
y
?
”

I thought surely my dad’s eyes would widen in horror. Or at the very least, that he might bury his head into his hands and moan at the perfect, cosmic justice of it all.

But he didn’t.

My dad simply gazed at the floor. He took a long, deep breath, as if summoning all of his strength, and opened his mouth at an awkward angle. For a while he released a steady stream of drool that pooled into the lap of his hospital gown. Then he struggled to lift his chin to my ear.

“Ayyyy . . . yuvvv . . . yooo . . . enny wey,” he mumbled with extraordinary effort.

At once my heart climbed into my throat.

Did I hear him right? My very own father saying
I
—
l
o
v
e
—
y
o
u
—
A
N
Y
W
A
Y
?

Of all the lowdown, dirty, rotten tricks.

I shook my head. For a man whose brain was supposed to be reduced to the IQ of a rabbit, he sure as hell knew how to get to me. Instantly, I felt my heart waffle.

Okay, so the guy’s a known crook.

And he did exile me to girl-prison and oh-so-happily threw away the key.

But he’s still my dad.

So if ever I wanted to check off that whole, goopy “father-daughter-loving-bond” box in life, this was probably my last shot. Besides, I could always dump his body in the Ohio River if he’s flat-out lying to me.

But what really cinched my decision was the prying case worker who’d just slipped into the room and lip-synched the word “foster home” to a nurse when she thought I wasn’t looking.

Holy crap. Even I could do the math:

Dad—

Or foster home—

Dad—

Or foster home—

Suddenly, a vision flashed into my mind of bunking down with a dozen skanky kids at night in a crackhouse while our so-called foster mom smokes a joint and performs phone sex in the next room. Like a bolt of lightning, the path to my future had become excruciatingly clear.

Make a run for it. Now—

With that, I seized the handles of my dad’s wheelchair and gave him a bold shove toward the door.

“Excuse us for a second,” I said abruptly to the nurse, “we’re just going to mosey down the hall for a minute.”

Immediately, I made a hard right and picked up speed down the hallway. “Hang on, Dad, we’re gonna play by my rules now!” I declared as his wheels squeaked against the linoleum floor, my legs stretching into long strides beneath me. Gaining momentum, and feeling a little cocky, I made another hard right and swerved past an orderly, barely missing a patient on a gurney, when all of a sudden I was confronted by a large figure in black whose shoulders nearly filled the entire hallway.

Heaven help me!

It was none other than Darth Vader.

The Lady in Black.

The most feared entity ever to set foot on the grounds at Pinnacle. Our dreaded Mother Superior—all six feet of her—in a heavy black habit with only her crooked nose and beady eyes peeking out to silently condemn me.

I’d only seen her a couple of times since I’d started high school, on those rare occasions when she descended from her stone office tower beside the chapel to make an appearance on campus. But I knew her reputation for being “The Enforcer”, the one who squeezed every last dime from our parents when tuition came due, or the school needed new computers, or she wanted to fund a new wing to show off her Medieval artifacts collection, which was rumored to contain instruments of torture. With a few whacks of her gnarled mahogany cane, Mother Superior could put the fear of God into any Pinnacle girl who dared to even think about boys, or tattoos, or drugs, or—heaven forbid—altering our hideous blue and white uniforms in the slightest way. Many a Pinnacle girl had been sent to her office for a seemingly minor infraction, never to be heard from on campus—or Cincinnati, for that matter—again. And now, here she was, towering over me with a creepy smile on her face like the Grim Reaper, more than thrilled to have cornered a new victim.

“Miss McArthur,” she trilled in a strange tone, as melodic as a lute despite the deep grooves in her ashy, sagging face, “it has come to my attention that your tuition payments are looong overdue. That means you are perilously close to expulsion, my dear. I must have a word with your father—”

“Oh my gosh, really?” I interrupted, pretending surprise. My Geisha skills always came in handy at moments like this. “Um, you want to speak to my dad? Well you’re in luck. Because, uh, here he is!”

Wham—

Just like that.

A well-aimed kick to the back of my dad’s wheelchair, and he rolled into her like a battering ram, toppling the witch over in seconds flat.

Sometimes, it’s that easy.

And I’ll probably spend a millennium in Purgatory for that little maneuver!

Of course, she was left sputtering and flailing her arms like an overturned turtle. And if I wasn’t mistaken, I thought for sure I heard my dad giggling. You know, in that cotton-mouthed, stroke-victim kind of way. He turned to look back at me with a mischievous half-grin.

“Attah gurrrl,” he slurred.

He even clutched his belly and let out a full-blown chortle. Followed by a snort.

And by this time, I’d started giggling, too.

In fact, I doubled over and laughed so hard, I thought the hospital had begun to shake.

Oh my God.

Near as I could tell, this was the first “happy family moment” I’d ever experienced in my whole life.

All right, so maybe my dad and I didn’t bond over normal father-daughter things. Like eating hot dogs while watching the Cincinnati Reds, or polishing off black-raspberry chip ice cream at Graeter’s. We’re McArthurs, after all, so there’s got to be some bad behavior to keep us going. But I have to say, in that instant, nothing could’ve stopped me from running over to my dad and giving him the biggest squeeze ever.

Don’t get me wrong.

It didn’t last long—

“CODE BLACK,” the hospital P.A. system broadcast so loudly it hurt my ears. “All security personnel to the exits immediately. CODE BLACK. Prepare for extreme measures—”

What the hell?

My dad looked up, wide-eyed, like he’d heard a trumpet from on high.

Even Darth Vader stopped thrashing for a second and sat up on her elbows, her mouth hung open.

I shot a glance at my dad, dumbfounded, when I saw two burly men appear at the end of the hallway in gray uniforms. Attached to their belts were holsters—Holy Moses—as in, real guns.

“Daddy!” I gasped.

“Wuun Wobbbbinnnn,” he lisped.

“What?” I panicked.

“Wun!”

Oh, run! Yep, that would be the smart thing to do. I grabbed my dad’s wheelchair handles and whipped him around, heading for the green glow of the elevator this time. Thank God I could see the doors sliding open in front of us. So I put my dad on coast, riding the back of his wheelchair until we were inside, where I slammed on the brake. My dad jostled a bit—but miracle-beyond-miracles—the poor guy didn’t fall out. And I could hear him laughing! When I turned him around and looked into his face, his eyes and cheeks were crinkled with pride. I felt so happy I wanted to cry.

“Guuud gurrlll,” he smiled as the doors sealed shut. He pointed at the elevator controls.

“Floor two?” I offered. But then I saw the words
M
a
t
e
r
n
i
t
y
printed next to it. Floor three was
N
e
u
r
o
s
u
r
g
e
r
y
, floor four was
D
i
a
l
y
s
i
s
—and every other floor had another specialty in bold letters. Impulsively, I hit the “B” button for the basement, and gave my dad a shrug. Surely there’d be a convenient exit there, right? The elevator dropped to the bottom of the hospital like a stone, and when the doors opened, I spun my dad around. All we could see was black.

Maybe an underground tunnel?

Okay by me, as long as we could get the hell out. But all of a sudden, the air felt cold and clammy, and there was that terrible smell . . .

Hesitantly, I wheeled my dad into the darkness, taking a couple of strides, when I heard a metal crash.

“Fwuuuck!” my dad yelped.

Wrong move. Guess the tunnel wasn’t empty after all.

“Sorry,” I whispered, patting my dad’s head. I reached out and ran my fingers against a wall, fumbling until I found a light switch, and flicked it on.

Ow . . .

The fluorescent lights were so bright, I felt like they’d seared my eyeballs. I blinked at the shiny metal drawers that lined the room, resting my gaze on a steel table in front of us. It held a body.

Um, a particularly gray body.

Sweet Mother of God—

A
c
o
r
p
s
e
.

“Blood-curdling” doesn’t even begin to describe the scream that left my lungs.

My dad started hollering something in gibberish, while I instinctively made a sign of the cross. It really didn’t help matters that my cell phone went off at the exact same time, nearly making me jump out of my skin.

Wow, there’s nothing like getting a text for fifty-percent-off at Macy’s in Fountain Square when you really should be running for your life—

“Dumpf itt!” my dad barked.

“Yeah, dammit!” I agreed. “I could be getting spring sandals right now for a song—”

Before I could finish, my dad grabbed my cell with his only good hand and dumped it into a beaker of fluid. Tears slipped down my cheeks as I watched my pink, diamond-studded cell phone give off sparks and bubble slowly into what must’ve been formaldehyde.

“Daaad, that’s Sparkle!” I hyperventilated—the pet name I’d given my only friend in high school who didn’t get all clicky and turn nasty on me, even if she did bill me for the service.

“No won kan trathse uths,” my dad said defiantly.

N
o
o
n
e
c
a
n
t
r
a
c
e
u
s
—

Oh my gosh, he was right. Swallowing hard, I nodded at his logic and blew my sweet Sparkle a kiss goodbye, still sniffling. My dad pointed to a bag on the floor.

“Thstreet kloaths.”

“Street clothes? You gotta be kidding me. You want to put on stuff from a dead guy?”

Just then, the hospital P.A. system crackled and began bleating like a goat.

“All security personnel. Check building extremities. Now.”

“Good God—okay, Dad, let me help you up.” I hurried to lift him from his wheelchair and onto his feet. Since he hadn’t consumed much more than cigarettes and stimulants lately, he was remarkably light. Nevertheless, my heart drummed as I bent down to open the plastic bag he’d pointed out, only to find a truly unfortunate wad of polyester.

“Oh Daddy, I’m sooo sorry.” I shook my head, pulling out a bright orange suit and a purple paisley shirt. “There’s no two ways about it. You’re gonna look like a pimp.”

Stifling a giggle, I swung the shirt over his hospital gown and stuffed his arms inside, doing the same thing with the jacket and buttoning him up. Then I picked up his feet one by one and guided them into the obnoxious pants. For the life of me, he looked like a neon tangerine nightmare—by a junky on acid. And he was still barefoot, the way the Beatles appeared on that freaky
A
b
b
e
y
R
o
a
d
album.

“Royle . . . is . . . dead,” I moaned like that Satanic 1960s recording I’d heard played backwards on a dare on YouTube, watching my dad smirk at the joke. Creepy, yes, but this twisted outfit was the best we could do.

A lucky thing, it turned out, since I could hear people scuffling beyond the door.

“Hold on, Dad.” I dashed to lock the door of the morgue. “You ready?”

My dad took a deep breath and nodded. Wrapping my arm around his waist, I helped him limp slowly to the exit at the opposite end of the room, and swung the door open wide.

There she was, like a vision stretched before us. My dream come true . . .

A shiny Miata convertible with the top down, her bright cherry finish sparkling in the afternoon sun.

No driver, no passengers—

Just the gentle purr of her idling engine, like she’d been
w
a
i
t
i
n
g
for me.

Forget all those religious education classes. Now I know that heaven really does exist!

“Angel,” I whispered.

Okay, so she was a screaming red instead of a sunshine yellow. And she had to belong to some doctor who’d sprinted into the hospital for a second to pick up notes. But who were we to be picky? As far as I was concerned, this heavenly beauty was
m
i
n
e
.

“Coming, darling!” I called out. My dad looked at me like I was crazy, but he didn’t argue when I led him to the passenger’s side and settled him into the soft, buttery leather seat, then trotted around and plopped myself behind the steering wheel.

She was an automatic, thank God. Considering I still hadn’t gotten my learner’s permit yet and only had a few lessons from our chauffeur, it was no small miracle.

“This is it, Dad,” I said, shifting awkwardly into drive. “All we need now is some cash. Got any tips for knocking over a bank?”