The Trouble with Fate (13 page)

I couldn’t take my eyes off his hand. Could he still strum the guitar with a thumb
and two fingers? I used to watch him, almost every night. He had a spot under the
tree on his ridge; I had a spot behind the bushes on mine. He’d play the guitar, pausing
every so often to take a sip of his drink or study the night sky, a brooding expression
on his face. It used to bother me, that sad look.

Back then the cool girls had called him Bridge.

Heartless bastard had noticed my interest. He was glaring at me in a very unfriendly
way as he tilted his jaw to the side, and reached into his ear and pulled out a small
tube of pink foam. It landed in a clink on the soap dish. An earplug, the sneaky sod.
He flipped his head to the other side to forage beneath his mane of curls for its
twin. He really needed to shave. His heavy stubble ended in a rough line under his
chin.

He stepped back out of my range of sight. A second later his vomit-coated briefs landed
in the sink. I reached for one of the earplugs and squished it between my fingers.
There was a cylinder of something dense inside the foam.

“Don’t touch those.” Now that he could hear himself, his natural voice was lower,
quieter. Melodic. Bit of a rumble beneath the clipped sentences. Butter over what?

He inhaled. “God, what is that smell?”

“Febreze, booze, cigarettes, sweat,” I said to the wall, my own sour breath bouncing
back at me. “Unwashed man—”

“Shut up.” He rubbed his hand over his stomach, frowning. “It’s coffee. You smell
like puke and coffee. And not much else.”

My gaze dipped to his crotch.

“Into the tub,” he commanded.

The cold water was pit-pattering against the acrylic tub enclosure. “Uh-uh,” I said.

“I’m not asking, buttercup. Get into the shower.” He reached for my hair again and
then growled when I swatted at his hand. “Kid, I’m an inch away from taking your head
off.”

Losing my head sounded painful. I put a reluctant foot in and immediately wished I
hadn’t. It would have been warmer taking a dip in the Atlantic in January.

“No you don’t,” said Trowbridge when I tried to scurry out. He pushed me back in.
Then, leaning away from the cold water, he forced my head under the shower’s spray
and kept me there, spluttering under its frigid deluge, until he was satisfied I was
rinsed, if not clean.

I shrieked and skittered for the tub’s other end as he twisted the dial to warm and
got in with me.

“Relax,” he said, letting the hot water cascade over his chest. He picked up the soap.
“I only do teenage hookers on Tuesdays.”

*   *   *

“Who sent you?”

“I thought we’d already established that I’m working alone.” I was trying to wipe
my face dry with his sheets. He’d taken the only towel, and dried himself off while
I stood dripping and shivering in the tub. “Look, I made a mistake. You were drunk.
I thought you were an easy mark. Either call the police or let me go.” He’d never
call the police. And somehow, even though he spent a lot of time growling at me, I
didn’t feel like he was going to kill me anymore. Fool. I was going to steal that
amulet and
both
cell phones.

“What are you?” Trowbridge shrugged into his jeans commando, eyes steady and hard
on me. He jammed his foot into one old boot, and then took the time to put his white
sock on his bare foot before picking up the next boot. He picked up his shirt, and
thrust an arm through the sleeve. “You don’t have much of a scent, Tinker Bell.”

I swear it was a cue. A car alarm went off in the parking lot. “What now?” he spat,
whipping around to pull the curtains aside. I made quick like a bunny to the dresser,
pocketed the alarm and Scawens’s cell phone. Then I sidled toward the door. Unfortunately,
it’s next to impossible to move quietly in wet pants and squelching shoes.

He caught my arm and pulled me beside him at the window. He craned his neck to the
left, flattening his cheek to the glass. “Not the van,” he muttered.

“I can’t see,” I whispered.

He looked down at me as if he’d forgotten I was there, and tightened his grip, wrapping
an arm around my ribs again, and lifting me up in the process. There was nothing loverlike
in his cinch hold.

“Do you want to live?” he asked me, his eyebrows pulled into a scowl. I nodded with
as much vehemence as you can when your feet are dangling above the floor. “I don’t
like liars. Think carefully before you answer this question: Are you with those guys
by my van?”

I opened my eyes as wide as I could and gave the smallest nope-not-me shake of my
head. His beard covered up most of his mouth. All I could see of it was a lower lip.
It didn’t look like a happy lip.

Someone’s voice—a human’s, judging from the high fear in it—yelled. “You better get
out of here, I’ve called the cops!” Trowbridge’s gaze returned to the window. He bent
his head to see through the crack in the curtains.

“Oh, you bastards, you’re going to pay for that,” he said in a low voice.

Pay for what? I tilted my head to look.

His attention returned to me. “I’m finding it hard to believe that you being here
is a coincidence.” The thumb and pointer finger on the hand clamped down over my mouth
came up and pinched my nose shut. What was it with the smothering? I lashed out with
my legs, catching him on his shin. He didn’t even grunt. Instead he waited.

My eyes started to burn.

“See how easy it is for me to take you out?” He let go of my nose. “It’s that easy.
Now, we’re going out this door, together. You’re not going to make any noise. You’re
not going to fight me. If you do, I’ll snap your neck like a…”

Like what?
I wondered, as he backed me up and opened the door. Trowbridge covered my mouth with
his hand, and eased us over the threshold.

There was a drama going on by unit 1. The room’s door was hanging on its hinge, its
frame splintered. Light from the rental’s ceiling fixture spilled through the open
doorway, providing ample illumination to the vandalism occurring in the parking lot.
A guy was crouched inside Trowbridge’s van, tossing the contents out onto the pitted
asphalt—mostly clothing, bedding, and books from what I could see.

Another Were—short, dark-haired with one of those spiky, emo haircuts—stood beside
the van’s open door, his expression glum, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of
the black hoodie he wore over a graphic T-shirt. Closer to thirty than twenty, he
was one of those oddballs who favored sneakers over runners, and green laces over
white ones. He wasn’t doing much in the way of helping, though he did wince when an
acoustic guitar went shooting over his head and made a hard landing.

Trowbridge kept me pressed to the front of him as he silently backed us away from
the danger. And we might have made it, had my foot not caught one of the white plastic
chairs positioned outside unit 10.

It made a hell of a racket as it fell on its side.

“Shit,” said Trowbridge, soft in my ear.

The van trasher’s head popped out of the open van’s door. He was a little older than
me, with a wide jaw, and small narrowed eyes. The type of face that spoke of hockey
rinks and beer. Light glistened off the pointed tips of his dyed yellow hair
. Eric.

“He’s here!” Eric pointed to us. Rocker-Were swiveled to follow his finger.

“Shit,” said Trowbridge again. Then everything moved at fast-forward: I saw a girl
step out of unit 1, just as Trowbridge spun me around and pushed me into a run down
the motel’s covered walkway. We came to the end, veered right at the Laundromat, and
pelted down the service road between the motel and strip mall. Another left, and then
he was shoving me ahead of him, toward the end of the short unlit back alley.

Which of course, because God hates me, turned out to be a dead end.

Chapter Seven

Trowbridge grunted in frustration and changed directions. The back door to the Laundromat
was ajar, propped open by a milk crate. He pushed me in, then kicked the milk crate
into the alley. The fire door closed behind us with a thick metal clunk.

The noise of the place hit me, the almost deafening tumble of clothes as they rolled
around the metal dryer cylinders, the angry thrash as they were pummeled by the washers’
agitator; it all mixed into a wall of sound that hurt my already tender ears. The
place should have been empty, but it wasn’t. There was a blond girl behind a narrow
service desk to the right of the front door. Standing by the long table that split
the Laundromat in two was a tired woman in purple pants holding a bottle of spot remover.
Trowbridge motored us around her as smoothly as a speedboat around a buoy. “Hey,”
she spluttered in our wake.

Trowbridge’s head swiveled as he made for the front of the Laundromat. In the three
seconds it took for him to push and pull me down the length of the room, I watched
him evaluate everything. The blonde by the door, the woman with the spray bottle,
her laundry basket, the cash register, the video camera mounted on the wall, and the
chairs. I case a room like that when I feel the urge to steal—he was casing it for
survival.

“You got a car?” Trowbridge asked me as we came abreast of the blond girl sitting
at the service desk. Her mouth fell open, exposing a wad of gum sitting on her back
molars as she took in Trowbridge’s unbuttoned shirt, my gaping wet blouse and rattailed
hair. Something heavy thudded against the emergency back door. Fist, foot, or body,
I wasn’t sure. But it was loud enough to make the blonde squeak.

“Station wagon,” I replied. “There.” I pointed to it through the glass. The Taurus
looked gray under the weak light.

“Good.” He pushed open the door, turning to me. “Keys?”

“In the ignition.”

“Aren’t you worried someone’s going to steal it?” he asked with a twisted smile. He
paused with his hand spread on the door, and gazed down at me. The shower had turned
his hair into a mass of fat, loose, corkscrewing curls. I could have threaded my finger
through the center of one and it would have been lost, covered with dark wet silk.
Something crossed his face—not regret, not anger. It softened his mouth, and gentled
his eyes. Then it was gone, replaced by a look of decision that thinned his lips.
He opened his mouth and said, “Kid, this is where—”

I’ll never be sure what he was going to say, though I can guess. Both our heads turned
at a squeal of tires: a red racing Honda peeled into the parking lot, its rear end
fishtailing as the driver braked hard. It skidded to a smoking stop a few yards from
the Laundromat. Stuart Scawens had evidently detached himself from the radiator. He
sat behind the wheel, and even through the windshield I could see his eyes burning,
promising me a new lesson in payback pain.

“Shit, they’re multiplying,” Trowbridge said, pulling the door closed. “Just how many
friends have you got, kid?”

“They’re not my friends.”

His head snapped to the left as Eric came thudding out of the alley. “Son of a bitch,”
hissed Trowbridge, turning the lock. “How many more?”

“I have no idea.”

Eric didn’t even see the red Honda. He ran straight for the door, grabbed the handle
and pulled. The door shuddered and my stomach plunged when it seemed like the handle
would give way. Trowbridge stood his ground, not moving a muscle. Impassively, he
stared the younger Were down through the plate glass. When Eric finally broke eye
contact, Trowbridge jerked a thumb to the video camera mounted on the wall. “Think
about it, champ.”

“Eric, over here,” called Scawens through his car window.

Eric whirled around. “Trowbridge’s in there.”

“So’s the bitch with the amulet,” said Scawens. “Come here. You got a phone?”

“Kids. They’re sending kids after me now,” Trowbridge muttered.

Even through the glass, Scawens heard that. “Come on out, pops,” he yelled. “We have
to talk. You don’t want to do that in front of the others.”

“No, I think I’ll stay in here.” Trowbridge folded his arms.

“They’ve probably called the cops already.” Rocker-Were came ambling out of the alley.
“We should leave before we pick up an audience. He can’t run that far now that we
know where he is.”

“When I want your opinion, Biggs, I’ll ring your fucking bell, okay?” Scawens fixed
Rocker-Were with a withering glare. “Now, shut up.”

I didn’t like the way they were eyeing the front of the Laundromat. “They’re going
to come right through that door.”

“Depends.” Trowbridge stared steadily at the three Weres.

“On what?”

“How fast they think police will respond to the 911 call the woman at the back of
the Laundromat is making right now. How brave they think they are. How much force
they think they’ll need to expend. But most importantly, it depends on what they’ve
been told to do.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “So, my little thief, you want to
tell me what they want?”

I took a step closer toward the back door. “I don’t know.”

“You’re lying again.”

“You can take them, right?” My stomach wasn’t happy at all.

“They’re kids. They don’t have the juice.” Trowbridge’s eyes flicked briefly in the
direction of the blonde sitting at the narrow service desk. A couple of feet past
the front door, she was positioned to greet the customers, and keep an eye on the
clientele as they fluffed and folded. It was dead center in the kill zone. The blonde
must have come to the same conclusion, because her baby blues were so wide that her
thickly mascaraed lashes fringed them like clumpy exclamation points.

“Does that thing work?” he asked.

Her forehead creased in confusion. He surged sideways toward her, and she gave another
mouse squeak as she scuttled into the corner. Trowbridge pointed above her head. “I
asked, does that thing work?” Her eyes rolled up to the video camera mounted near
the ceiling.

“Uh-huh,” she said, with a vigorous nod. She cringed into the corner as he leaned
forward.