“Well I’m here now, so let’s go.”
Vanessa smiled apologetically. “I can’t. I really have to learn this.”
Sandy had not acknowledged Carl’s presence and wasn’t going to accept Vanessa’s protestations.
“Come on, Van, it’s Friday night. The gang’s waiting.”
Vanessa’s smile disappeared. “I’m studying, Sandy. I am not going out tonight.”
“Bullshit,” Sandy said. He flipped her book closed and grabbed her arm.
Carl’s father had walked out on Evelyn Rice when Carl was five. Carl still had nightmares about his father’s rages and his mother’s cries of pain. Burned into his memory were images of the vivid purple bruises that darkened his mother’s swollen face.
“Let go of Vanessa,” Carl said. He sounded frightened, which was to be expected under the circumstances. Carl was wiry, muscular, and in excellent shape, but the two football players were several inches taller and each boy outweighed him by fifty pounds.
Sandy did not release Vanessa’s arm. He stared at Carl the way he might regard dog dirt that had attached itself to his shoe.
“Stick your nose back in your book, dork, or I’ll break it.”
As Sandy turned his attention back to Vanessa, Carl buried his fist in the football player’s solar plexus, leaving him breathless. Then he grabbed the tie that all St. Martin’s boys were required to wear and jerked his head down. Sandy’s chin cracked against the edge of the table, stunning him.
Mike Manchester had been too shocked to react, but the sound of his friend’s chin hitting the table snapped him out of his trance. He swung a roundhouse punch, and Carl thrust his thick calculus textbook forward. Manchester’s knuckle broke with a crack that sounded like a gunshot. As he recoiled in pain, Carl swung his book like a baseball bat, catching Mike in the back of the head and driving him to his knees. Carl stepped behind Manchester and applied a choke hold, cutting off Mike’s air.
“I don’t want to fight. Will you call it quits?” Carl asked the struggling boy.
Mike tried to pull Carl’s arm away, and Carl tightened his hold. By now Sandy Rhodes had regained his wits and was struggling to his feet. Carl cut off Mike’s air and dropped the unconscious boy to the floor before drop- kicking Rhodes in the jaw. Sandy collapsed beside his buddy.
“Holy shit!” Vanessa said as she leaped to her feet. “You have to get out of here. They’ll be furious when they come to.”
“I don’t have a car,” Carl admitted, embarrassed to tell Vanessa that his mother picked him up at school.
“I do. Grab your stuff,” she said as she gathered up her books. Carl hesitated. Mike Manchester moaned. Vanessa grabbed Carl’s arm. “Come on.”
“Won’t Sandy be pissed that you’re helping me?”
“Sandy is a pig. We’ve only gone out three times and he thinks he owns me. I’m glad you kicked his ass.”
Minutes later, Carl was seated in the passenger seat of Vanessa Wingate’s Corvette and they were roaring down the coast highway.
“That was awesome,” Vanessa said. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
Carl didn’t feel good about the beating he’d administered, and he was ashamed of the pleasure he felt from defeating the two boys with Vanessa looking on, but he could not abide any man inflicting pain on a woman, because of the way his father had treated his mother.
“I’ve been practicing karate since I was little. I go to a dojo every day after school.”
Vanessa turned toward him. The top of the car was down and the wind was whipping her long blond hair and bringing color to her cheeks.
“There’s more to you than meets the eye, Carl Rice,” she said before turning back to the road.
Carl blushed. “Where are we going?” he asked to cover his embarrassment.
“My house.”
They drove in silence for a while. Carl sneaked glances at Vanessa while pretending to watch the ocean. She was so beautiful. He couldn’t believe that he was by her side in this amazing car.
“You’re on scholarship, right?” Vanessa asked.
Carl colored again and nodded. Evelyn Rice was highly intelligent, but her husband had never permitted her to work or finish school. As soon as Carl’s father walked out of their lives, his mother had enrolled in a community college. She earned an AA degree in accounting and was hired as a receptionist at the local branch of a national accounting firm. Eventually, she finished her bachelor’s degree and moved up to the position of office manager. One of the firm’s partners was an alumnus of St. Martin’s and had used his contacts to get Carl a scholarship.
“I envy you,” Vanessa said.
“Why would you envy me?” he asked incredulously. Almost every other student at St. Martin’s was wealthy, and his poverty made him feel small. He couldn’t imagine why anyone like Vanessa would be interested in, much less envious of, someone like him.
“No one handed you everything,” she replied. “You’ve earned what you have with your brains and drive.”
“I’ve had to because I’m poor, Vanessa. Believe me, it’s not romantic.”
“Neither is living with my father.”
“At least you’ve got one. Mine walked out on us when I was five.”
“He didn’t murder your mother, did he?”
“What?” Carl wondered if she was joking. “What are you talking about?”
“My mother died in a car crash when I was thirteen. I’m certain it wasn’t an accident.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“They didn’t believe me. Neither did the insurance investigators. I don’t blame them. I don’t have any proof. I just know the way that bastard operates. He thinks he’s above the law. I’ll tell you this, he definitely knows people who can make a death appear to be an accident.”
Carl didn’t know what to say. “Have you told the FBI?”
Vanessa laughed bitterly. “Ten minutes after I walked out of their office someone called my father. The General took me into the library and told me that he would have me committed to a mental hospital if I didn’t stop spreading vicious rumors. He said he’d have me sedated and put in a straitjacket and I would stay locked up for the rest of my life.”
“Your father’s a general?”
Vanessa nodded.
“He couldn’t get away with that, could he, locking you away for no reason?”
“You don’t have any idea of how powerful my father is. So I gave up and he stopped paying any attention to me. He’s not home that much anyway. He spends most of his time in Washington, and he leaves me here to do whatever I want, as long as it doesn’t embarrass or annoy him.”
Vanessa turned off the main road and punched in a code on a keypad that stood in front of a high electrified gate. The road from the gate twisted through a meadow that was bounded by woods until it crested at a viewpoint that revealed the Pacific Ocean and an immense Spanish-style villa with a red tile roof. Carl had never been this close to a house like the one that stood before him. It was white as snow and looked larger than his entire apartment complex. Terraces brightened by fresh cut flowers fronted the windows on the second and third floors. There was a stable off to the right. Carl had daydreamed about being rich, but he’d never imagined anything like this.
“You live here,” he asked, awestruck. “This is yours?”
“Home sweet home,” Vanessa answered as she turned onto a circular drive and parked in front of a huge carved wooden door that was shaded by a portico. As she pulled up, the door opened and a man dressed in a white jacket and black slacks came out to greet them. Vanessa tossed him the keys.
“I’m through for the night, Enrique,” she said, leading Carl inside. The door closed, cutting off the powerful sound the Corvette’s engine made as Enrique drove it to the garage.
“Can I use your phone? My mom is going to worry if I don’t call.”
There was a phone on an inlaid table in the cavernous entryway. Carl called his mother’s office and caught her just before she was about to leave. Vanessa listened as he explained that he was at a friend’s house and would get a ride home. Vanessa tapped him on the arm. He told his mother to hold on for a second and broke out into a
