The Insiders (14 page)

David was furious
. Francie thought smugly that she had never seen Dave quite this mad before. It was good to know she could still make him react to her. She could almost giggle right into his red, angry face as she thought of the look he had worn when she had walked down the stairs wearing just her briefest panties and a T-shirt that did nothing to hide her curves. And she'd made her face up so she looked older. Let David really notice her, for a change.

He'd already dismissed Rick and Lisa, and had banged the door shut. Now he turned back to face her, and she could not help smiling—a smile that mixed defiance and impudence.

"Francie, I don't know what's gotten into you suddenly, but by God, I'm going to show you that you're still young enough for some good, old-fashioned discipline! I'm not going to see you turn into a little tramp, blatandy advertising everything she's got."

Deliberately provoking him further, she ran away from him, stopping to face him defiantly from across the length of the room.

"You'd better not touch me, David!
I
'm too old to be spanked like a baby.
I
'm going to start doing as
I
please.
I
'm almost eighteen now, and you can't stop me."

"Oh, can't I? We'll just see about that, shall we?"

He almost sprang across the room at her in his rage, and she felt him grab her wrists painfully as he dragged her over to a chair and across his knees in the old way. She fought him just hard enough to make it more interesting, and to make him madder.

Then he was doing what she craved—his hand coming down hard and efficiently on her wriggling buttocks while she struggled and yelled and felt her nipples burn as she rubbed them again the arm of the chair.

David was so angry he'd lost control. He hit Francie as hard as he could, even though his palm started to sting. It was only after his head had cleared and his arm was starting to tire that he noticed how her short T-shirt was hiked up above her waist, and that her transparent panties hid nothing. When and why had Francie bought herself anything like that? With a sudden uneasiness he noticed that her buttocks, already red and inflamed-looking, kept jerking almost enticingly, even though the force of his blows had slackened. She had a woman's backside, shapely and well formed—but Christ, he thought, this was his
sister!

He stopped spanking her so abruptly that Francie, on the verge of orgasm, lost her head. Still squirming on his lap, she begged him to go on, not to stop
now.

"You bastard, you bastard!" she sobbed. "Don't you stop now; don't leave me hanging! I was almost there, damn you!"

David felt that this couldn't be happening, this wasn't Francie, he couldn't be hearing right.

With a movement of instinctive revulsion, he let go of her wrists and pushed her away from him. She fell onto the rug and lay there, still squirming and sobbing, her eyes glaring hate at him.

"Go up to your room, Francie.
Now.
My God, you must be— You'll see a psychiatrist tomorrow. Right now, I don't want to look at you!"

David's voice was dull—he wasn't strong any longer;

he was really kind of pitiful, he was so square! He wasn't
her
strong Dave—he was Eve's, Francie thought viciously, still lying there. Eve had made him weak and stupid. She despised him now—he'd never dare spank her again, and they both knew it.

"Make me go, David," she taunted him.
Make
me, why don't you?" She pulled the T-shirt up, putting her hand between her legs. "Since you're not man enough, want to watch me make myself come first?"

He wanted to be sick, looking at her, seeing what she'd started to do to herself.

Like a parent he thought, God, where did I go wrong, when did this happen? He couldn't let her he there doing what she was doing. She must be
sick
—why hadn't he noticed?

"Francie," he said, his voice cold, "either you go to your room this minute, or I'm going to have the juvenile authorities pick you up. Take your choice. Whatever you think you're doing, you can finish it in your room, not here."

Something in the remoteness of his voice stopped her, froze her hand in midstroke, and she stared at him measuringly. Yes, he did mean it
.
She'd driven him too far this time. And she didn't want to be taken away and locked up somewhere, because she had to see Brant, she just had to, now! Maybe she'd better pretend to knuckle under.. ..

She pulled the T-shirt down and scrambled to her feet, her head hanging so Dave couldn't see the calculation in her eyes, her long dark hair hanging like a curtain over her face.

"David, I'm sorry, I don't know what happened, but

suddenly everything seemed to go dark It's just that

I'm a
woman
now, and you treat me like a kid." She came close to him, and he couldn't help recoiling. For a moment he thought sickly that she might
touch
him, and he didn't think he could stand it

"Francie! Just get out! Go on up to your room and stay there. I'll have supper sent up. And remember, I don't want you leaving your room, and I don't want you talking to the kids or using the telephone—do you understand? Maybe by tomorrow morning we'll both be saner and cool enough to talk."

"Dave, I'm really sorry. Don't stay mad at me! I'll do anything you say. Don't be mad anymore?"

He couldn't respond. His hps tightened, and he turned his head away from her. After a few seconds, he heard her leave the room and run upstairs. But he stayed there a long time, his hands clenched together, until he felt able to walk and move and talk normally again.

Tomorrow morning, things would look different, and he'd know what to do. Tomorrow, he'd come down early, bring Eve with him. Lisa was bound to be upset; she seemed to sense it when things weren't right around the house, and she'd go into one of her silent, autistic moods. Only Eve could talk and love her out of her spells. She'd need Eve when he took Francie away.

But when David came down to Albany with Eve the next day, Francie wasn't there. No one knew what time she'd left, or how. Mrs. Lambert had discovered her room empty, her bed not slept in, just a few minutes before David had arrived.

The woman was almost hysterical; obviously, she'd been fond of Francie.

"I didn't want to wake her too early," she kept repeating. "She always did like to he in bed late of a Saturday morning!"

In the end, after David had sent her to her room to lie down, he'd started to search through Francie's things impatiently, clumsily. There had to be something that might tell him where the litde tramp had gone! Maybe an address book, a diary—did girls still keep diaries? Eve was downstairs with Lisa, keeping her calm. Thank God he'd brought Eve!

Suddenly, David noticed that Rick had come in and was standing silent in the doorway, watching him. He looked up to tell the boy to go away; then he saw Eve behind him, her face worried.

She came in quickly, hardly noticing Rick.

"David, I think we have something—it was Lisa. Suddenly, out of the blue, she announced, 'Francie's gone to
stay
with Brant this time; shell never come back!' Do you know who—"

"He's the guy in the picture—she said he was her boyfriend."

Rick's voice froze them both, and their eyes went to a magazine clipping on Francie's bulletin board—one of many other pictures and clippings, so that no one had really
noticed
until now—following the direction of Rick's pointing finger. The man was blond and sun-bronzed. He was on a yacht, leaning against the mast and holding onto some rigging. His shirt was open to the waist, and one could almost see the bulge in his brief white shorts. He was beautiful and decadent-looking, and Eve knew him at once, with a shock of recognition.

"Oh, God, not
him!
How did Francie ever meet him? He's— Oh, David, he's really
evil.
That's Brant Newcomb!"

Standing there watching the color recede and then flow back into David's familiar, sharply angular face, Eve suddenly felt sick—for him, her love. The story Marti had told her came back, as well as her own unpleasant experience with the man. Obviously, even David had heard things about him—the look on his face told her that. Francie was
seventeen;
in spite of her vicious tongue and sneering eyes, she was just a lad— and David's sister, after alL She wanted to protect him, to hold him....

"Oh, David! What will you do? There must be
something—"

"I know, Eve, I know. I have to
think.
I must be clear-minded and rational about this, as if Francie weren't my sister, as if— We can't have a scandal, something that might get in the newspapers—that much I'm sure about."

"But David, how can you find her unless you tell the police? She could be
anywhere.
We're not even certain she
did
run away to Brant Newcomb."

He made a sudden, impatient gesture that silenced her.

"Eve, you don't understand! If she did—Newcomb's not only a billionaire, he's a client of ours. Howard Hansen handles some of his oil interests—and Howard won't have scandal attached to anyone who works for him. Don't you see? They're even talking about a partnership for me—I just can't afford to have Francie's name,
our
name, dragged through the mud. We have to be sure, we have to find out if she's with him, get her away— to a psychiatrist—"

"David!" Concern for him sharpened Eve's voice. "David, listen. You can't let him get away with it, if she's with him. Please listen to me, he's—he's a terrible man! But he's not above the law, is he? I mean, maybe the police will agree not to make it public. After all, Francie's still a minor—they can't put her name in the papers, can they?"

"No, Eve! No police. No. I have to find her, but I can't use the police. God, if I only knew someone who
knows
the man...."

A sudden recollection made Eve put her hand on David's arm, stopping him in mid-sentence.

"I just thought—David, he's giving some land of a party tonight. Tony Gonsalves was in to do a commercial yesterday, and he was talking about it. In fact, Tony wanted me to go with him to be his front for the evening because he's gay, you know. But I was thinking, maybe
you
could go? You could mix with the guests— no one ever checks on who's invited and who's not at parties like that—you could look for Francie—"

"No, no, I couldn't, baby. I can't get mixed up in this thing because if Francie were there and I saw this guy, I'd—God, I'd probably want to kill him! I don't have that much self-control that I could stop myself from throwing a punch at him. There has to be some other way; there has to be." Slowly, his words dragging, then pausing, he turned away from the picture he'd been staring at so blankly, his eyes widening as they looked into Eve's. She somehow knew, before he even started to speak again, what he wanted her to do, and her hands came up in a warding-off gesture. "No, David! No, don't ask me. I won't do itl" It was exactly as if he hadn't heard her. "You're the only one who could do it, Eve. The only person I can trust. If this gets out, you know how bad it would be for me, for Francie, for all of us. They'd say she was neglected, that I didn't have sufficient control over her. It would look very bad." He caught her hands, held them tightly as he looked into her face. "Baby, can't you see? You're the only person who can help me. You could go to that party as a guest, not as a gatecrasher. You could find Francie if she's there, reason with her. She'd never listen to me in the mood she's in! And if you had to, you could talk to
him,
tell him her real age—I'm sure she's lied about it. Sweetheart, you've got to do this, please!"

Oh, she thought helplessly, letting him pull her close, oh, what a treacherous, underhanded bastard he was! He was taking advantage of her, of the way he knew she felt about him. Damn him, damn him! She felt his hands move up her arms, heard his voice become tender, cajoling.

"Eve, you'll do it, won't you? Because it's so damned important to me, because there's no one else I can turn to, and you're my girl. Honey? I know Francie's been a little hellion and she hasn't always been nice to you— I can see that now—but she's just a
kid,
dammit, and she needs help. I'm asking you to share with me the responsibility of seeing that she gets it."

She leaned against him, shaking her head.

"Oh, stop it! You don't know what you're asking me to do, David! I met Brant Newcomb once at a party, and—" She bit her lip quickly, knowing how David reacted to her mentioning the names of other men she'd met at parties. He thought she'd been to bed with all of them.

And now, predictably, she felt him release her and take a step backward.

"You
know
him? And all this time you didn't even mention it? Why, Eve? Was he one of the guys?"

"David, please! No, he wasn't. I—I was introduced to him and I didn't like him, and that was all. Please don't keep tearing me down just because I did a lot of stupid, foolish things to get back at you. I
love
you, David!"

There, she had said it again—it was as if she couldn't stop herself from saying that to him, from betraying herself. But at least it had made him soften, and when he held her close to him again, she trembled inside with relief.

Without shame, without pride, she let his arms enfold her, melt her inside their warm, charmed circle. Her knees became familiarly weak as he pressed her against him, his mouth so sweet, so tender on hers that she knew she would give him anything, do anything at all for him, just to have him go on kissing her this way, as if his tongue would scoop out her very soul. Her hands clung to him for balance, and her thighs, with their own kind of radar, parted slightly as he started to swell against them. He moved his mouth to her ear.

"God, Eve! I want you. Whenever you're this close to me, I can't help it You're still my girl, aren't you? All mine, only mine. Say it, baby. I want you to say it!"

This was David the way she loved him most—part satyr, part little boy needing reassurance.

"I'm your girl, David. You know that already. I love you so much, I hurt sometimes because of it!"