Robin in the Hood (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 1) (7 page)

At that moment, I felt Granny’s lace-covered fingers pat me gently on the hand.

“So tell me, what’s he callin’ himself these days?” Her eyes looked oddly fatigued.

“Who?”

Granny sighed. “Why, your Pa, of course! Let me guess, rhymes with Doyle?”

I gulped hard and nodded. “R-Royle.”

Granny didn’t even blink. “Figured as much. He always did go on about royalty, like their blood runs purple, not red like the rest of us.”

Her gaze fell on the burning candles between us. I had to move my arm to escape the dripping, hot red wax.

“But, how do you know all this—”

My words were abruptly cut short by a loud ringing sound. I glanced up and saw a silver bell, about the size of my palm, hanging along a kind of trip wire near the door. It shook violently.

“C’mon!” The little boy grabbed my hand. “We gotta go. Cops!”

“Operation Groundhog,” Granny sighed, like she was used to it. She shot a glance at the old trunk in her wagon. “Better follow Dooley quick, while I distract ’em. Unless you feel like bein’ arrested tonight.”

“A-Arrested?” The word got caught in my throat.

“Hurry, before it’s too late!” Dooley urged, tugging me now with both hands towards the trunk. He threw open the lid.

Inside, I saw faded quilts, which Dooley promptly pushed aside, and then . . . stairs?

I shook my head for a second to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

The wooden steps led down to a well-lit room, with a sofa and a kitchenette and everything, like someone had managed to bury a trailer underground.

“Git a move on!” Dooley cried, scampering down the steps ahead of me.

I blinked hard, then carefully negotiated my way behind Dooley, allowing the trunk lid to close after me with a thud. When I reached the bottom, I saw puzzles and picture books scattered on the sofa, the kind meant for a child around six years old, which I imagined the boy to be.

“These are mine,” Dooley glowed. “Creek brung ’em for me.”

“Creek,” I tested out the word on my lips, pretty certain we were both talking about Stalker Guy, so I decided to fish a little. “He must be . . . your, um—”

“Brother!” the boy piped up, clearly proud of him. “Wanna see the truck he got me?”

He settled on the couch and picked up a shiny firetruck that lit up like Christmas and squirted water from a hose at me with the mere touch of a finger. I rolled my eyes. If I hadn’t been damp already, I would’ve been thoroughly annoyed. Before he could press a button for the siren, I held up my hand.

“Sh, Dooley,” I said in my loudest whisper. “I think somebody’s with Granny now.”

Sure enough, above us I could hear the murmur of men’s voices in low, demanding tones, like maybe they were questioning her. Then it fell quiet for a minute, until there was a loud thump and rattle, as though someone had pounded on her table.

“No siree!” I heard Granny’s voice boom over our heads. “I ain’t seen no such folk at all ’round here. If you wanna find a loose lawyer, though, I expect you oughta check Rhonda’s strip joint up the road. She attracts ’em like flies.”

Holy Saints in Heaven, it suddenly hit me that Granny Tinker was covering for me and my dad. What, out of the goodness of her heart? Right away, my thoughts turned to my father. The poor guy was all alone, half paralyzed, and he didn’t even know where I was! What if some cop had managed to find our trailer?

At that moment, a small, warm hand slipped onto mine.

“It’s okay,” Dooley said, giving me a squeeze. “They cain’t hear nothin’ down here. And Creek’s got everything taken care of.”

Near as I could tell, his sweet, blue eyes seemed incapable of lying.

“Just like those candles out in the meadow tonight. Creek let me help set ’em up, you know. So you could find yer way home. Warn’t they pretty? Don’t worry, he’ll treat yer Pa right.”

“M-My dad?” I sputtered, aghast that Creek might be anywhere within twenty feet of my father.

“C’mon, I’ll show ya.”

With a tug, Dooley led me through the trailer to a back room that was piled to the rafters with canned goods and boxes, like a warehouse. On a top shelf that rimmed the ceiling was a long row of . . . wigs? Black, red, blonde, silver—one in every shape, color, and style.

“Brandi started chemo a while back,” Dooley said, his big eyes registering my surprise. “She cried and cried when she went bald, so Creek brung her these. They look real nice on her. And Lorraine’s downright crazy about Albers’ grits.” He pointed to a large, red and white case on the floor. “She makes ’em for everybody—even the Attack Geese. I like her cheese ones best. But the TNT Twins, well, Creek don’t get mixed up in their explosions much, so he just hauls in potatoes for ’em.” Dooley’s finger aimed at a burlap sack on the ground.

Something about the skin on the boy’s forearm caught my eye, and it wasn’t simply the black snake tattoo. Below his elbow, I noticed he had a string of round, brownish dots, like maybe he’d had chicken pox? Yet when I squinted, I realized that they were more like scars—as in, burn marks—from somebody’s cigarette. Shocked, I seized his arm.

“Dooley! What on earth happened—who would do this to you? Granny? Creek? Did Creek hurt you?”

“No!” The boy squirmed like mad, his eyes the picture of horror, but I held onto him with all my might.

“Tell me the truth, Dooley,” I insisted. “What kind of sick, horrible human being would deliberately—”

“Time to come up. NOW.” Granny Tinker had opened the hatch and bellowed in an iron tone that I swear could have leveled a building. Not since Mother Superior had I heard so much mettle in a woman’s voice. “Our visitors done skedaddled.”

Dooley slipped out of my hand like he was made of liquid and rushed up the stairs.

Shaking my head, I slowly climbed the steps, only to find Granny sitting at her small table with two steaming cups in front of her. Dooley was nowhere in sight.

“Sit down,” she said.

I didn’t get the impression I had a choice. “B-But I have to get back to my dad,” I pointed out, “he’s all alone, and probably scared—”

Granny’s eyes narrowed, unrelenting, and she shoved a teacup towards me. She glared until I picked it up. Nervous, I lifted the warm liquid to my lips, praying to God it didn’t have any lizard’s feet or magic ’shrooms in it, and I took a careful sip. To my surprise, it tasted wonderful—like raspberries with cream and honey.

Granny folded her arms and smiled.

“No need to fret, child. Yer Pa’s perfectly safe in his bunker—with Creek. He built one for all the trailers in Turtle Shores, just like my wagon. The Colonel and the TNT Twins blasted out the bunker holes with their explosives, and then Creek finished the rest. It was all his idea.”

I could tell her eyes had picked up on my fear of Stalker Guy. She shook her head.

“Honey, Creek would rather die than hurt that little boy. Matter of fact, if it weren’t for him, Dooley wouldn’t be alive right now.” She squinted at me, leaning closer. “And neither would yer Pa. Thems weren’t cops that were just here. We can buy them off easy any day of the week. They was the mob. Said some high-falutin’ guy hired ’em to flush out yer Pa. Like he owes him or somethin’.”

All of a sudden, I felt the tea cup rattle in my hand.

“Doyle’s got himself up shit creek this time, ain’t he?”

“Royle!” I said adamantly. “Y-you’ve got him confused with somebody else—”

“Suit yourself,” Granny Tinker nodded. “But I tell you this,” she picked up her cigar from an ashtray and pulled out a pearl-handled switchblade, clicking open a long, shiny knife to cut off the cigar tip. “I ain’t seen those mob boys up here for quite a spell. Surprised Doyle came back to Bender Lake to try and hide.”

“It wasn’t his idea—it was mine! And what do you mean came back?”

“He ain’t never told you?”

Granny lit a match and leaned against her chair, puffing her cigar till it glowed. I could feel her studying me, her timberwolf eyes tracing the contours of my cheeks and nose, the waviness of my long, chestnut hair that never went completely straight, even with a hot iron. Then her gaze met mine, as if she were reading my dark brown eyes.

“Yep, you look just like her.”

“Who?”

Granny let out a cackle that could have stirred the dead. “Why, the one that got away, darlin’. Must’ve been eatin’ at him his whole life—”

“Who on this planet are you talking about?”

Granny’s gaze rested on the candles between us, as if she could somehow see the past or the future in the flames. She watched them dance for a second, then cleared her throat.

“Well, I reckon a mirror can fetch ya a better answer than I can,” she said softly, confusing me all the more. “And speakin’ a mothers, a few years back, Dooley and Creek’s Ma got herself mixed up with the meanest, son-of-a-bitch boyfriend this side of the Mississippi. You can blame him for puttin’ those burn scars on their arms—and in their hearts. One night he knocked Creek’s Ma around so bad she didn’t live to see the morning. If it weren’t for the way Creek hides Dooley, and the rest of us when we need it, those boys would’ve become wards of the state long ago. And half this trailer park would probably be in the loony bin. See, Creek’s our angel. So long as we keep our traps shut.”

Granny ran her black-laced finger along the steel of her switchblade and held it up to the candlelight, admiring its shine and brutally sharp edge. She stared me dead in the eyes.

“We got an understandin’?”

I nodded, grasping the stakes now. Maybe there were no guns at Turtle Shores, but that didn’t mean Granny Tinker wasn’t extremely well armed.

“S-So what ever happened to that s-super mean boyfriend?” I managed to spit out.

Granny inhaled a long, deep breath, releasing it slowly.

“Let’s just say Creek made sure he won’t never bother us no more.”

With that, she sliced her switchblade across the candelabra so fast that the upper halves of each candle landed perfectly on her table, their small flames still flickering.

And I froze.

Suddenly, I felt cold to the bone, and not just from my wet clothes anymore. I think my mouth fell open, but I’d completely forgotten how to speak.

Trembling, I couldn’t make up my mind what scared me more: The fact that Creek might have offed that guy, or the fact that if Granny had pushed her knife any closer, I’d be dead.

You know, a sane girl might’ve taken this moment to turn over Granny’s table and give her an expert karate chop to the head.

But since I never took karate, and I’d pretty much maxed out
a
l
l
of my Geisha skills for one day, I simply sat there quaking like an idiot who didn’t even have the good sense to run screaming out into the dark. Instead, I muttered something that I never dreamed would come out of my mouth to a total stranger.

“I—I really want to go home to my daddy right now. P-P-Please?”

Without another word, Granny got up and walked over to the trunk in her wagon. I watched her open it, hoping she wasn’t reaching for another knife, crook, or some other secret weapon. Instead, she pulled out an old quilt. Returning to the table, she wrapped it around my shoulders and helped me to stand to my feet.

“C’mon honey,” she said gently, slipping her arm around my waist to bolster me up. “Let’s get you back to yer trailer. It’ll be right nice to say hello once again to my good ol’ cousin Doyle.”

My gondola floated serenely through a canal in Venice while I admired the crumbling, Old World buildings and blue sky. I leaned back, listening to a group of musicians along the bank, their violin notes dancing lightly on air. Then my eye caught the sight of a nun strolling by the water, who glanced up with a sad yet wistful look, as if she might know me. Her face was beautiful, and in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard, she called out “Mia bella!”

I gave the pretty nun a kind wave, then swept my hand over my ivory dress that made me look just like that chick singer in the NeoRomantix’ latest video. Holding up a goblet for a toast, I nodded at the hunky gondolier and took my first ever a sip of champagne—all bubbly with a hint of sweetness!—and offered him a shy smile. This is the
l
i
f
e
,
I mused, happier than I could ever remember. His eyes twinkled at me, and just as he leaned down to steal a kiss, a bomb exploded right in front of us and toppled our boat.

I screamed and bolted upright.

Only to discover that I wasn’t covered in balmy, Mediterranean water, but rather, in a faded, army-issue blanket.

Good God—

I glanced around, realizing I was inside a rusty, old trailer.

So it hadn’t all been a weird nightmare.

I really
w
a
s
in a trailer park, with only my dad and three-hundred-and-fifty bucks of bingo money to my name.

Brushing back the hair from my face, I vaguely remembered Granny Tinker walking me home the night before, where we found my dad asleep on the couch. Granny had wrapped my quilt around him to keep him warm, and then she helped me out of my wet clothes and tucked me into the back bed.

Another blast shook our trailer and echoed outside.

Cautiously, I peeked out the window just in time to catch a man in a boulder costume hurling through the air, his arms and legs flailing. Thank God he was wearing a helmet—

“JUSTIN! JASPER!” I heard Brandi’s voice holler. “Now cut that out. The Colonel done told you not to launch each other from the trebuchet. Besides, yer cannons are gonna wake the new neighbors.”

“But it’s already noon!” one of the TNT Twins whined.

Astonished, I reached into my pocket for Sparkle to check the time, only to recall that we’d dumped her all the way back in Cincy. Oh yeah, and I had no pockets—I was still in my underwear.

Sighing, I leaned my hand to the floor to feel for my damp Pinnacle uniform, but instead, my fingers detected a dry stack of clothing and the rustle of . . . paper?

Beautifully thin bills of paper, as in
c
a
s
h
?

What the—