Nodding, Michael announced, “I like driving. How much does a car cost if you actually buy one instead of stealing it?”
“Funny. Funny stuff.” I tried to thread fingers through my hair but backed off immediately with a grimace. The curls were matted thick with dried blood. Pulling down the visor, I took a look at myself in the mirror. Jesus. I looked like the the lone survivor of a ketchup factory explosion. I couldn’t check into a motel like this. I’d have to grab a shower at the doctor’s place.
“Are you hungry?” With his hands precisely at ten and two on the wheel, just as the manual said, he glanced over at me. “I still have food from the drugstore.”
My nausea peaked at the thought. “No thanks, kiddo.” It might be a day or two before I could keep anything down. Concussions were good for that. Football had taught me that particular lesson and working under Konstantin had only reinforced it. “Maybe later.”
That didn’t seem to satisfy him and he checked the rearview mirror, then the side mirror, before turning his attention back to me. “Are you sure? You should at least drink something. You’ve lost blood. You need to replenish your fluid volume.”
“Replenish, eh?” Holding my hands up in surrender as he slitted his eyes, I gave in. “Okay. Okay. There’s a bottle of something down here.” I retrieved the half-empty soft-drink bottle from the floorboards and opened it for a lukewarm sip.
Mollified, he let me drink in peace, although I had the suspicion he’d be pushing those snack cakes again in no time. After I finished drinking, I blew softly into the opening of the bottle. The resulting musical note accompanied the bass drum pounding between my ears. “I’m going to be okay, Misha,” I declared lightly, unsure of the best way to approach a delicate subject. “I promise. I won’t leave you all alone out here.”
His hands tightened on the wheel until his knuckles stood in stark relief. Setting his jaw, he denied stiffly, “I’m not afraid to be alone.”
Of course he was afraid to be alone. He’d gone from a tiny fishbowl to the wild blue ocean. And while he may have shared that tank with a piranha, that didn’t mean there weren’t predators out here as well; unknown dangers that lurked around every corner. Everything was strangely surreal, and nothing was quite like it was in the pictures and books he’d been shown. Naturally, he was scared. I’d have pissed my pants in his situation.
“I know you’re not,” I said agreeably. “I’m just saying.” It was one thing to be aware of his perfectly justifiable fear but another thing altogether to shove his nose in it. No teenage boy would be accepting of that, free-range or lab raised.
“That’s not why I came back for you.” Stopped at a light, he studiously looked out his side window. “It’s not.”
I knew it wasn’t, but that didn’t stop the tiny verbal nudge I gave him. “Then why did you?”
“Good question.” The light turned green and he fed the car more gas than was strictly necessary in a move that had nothing to do with inexperience. “That’s a very good question.”
Casa de Vanderburgh turned out to be quite the dump—big surprise. A squat block covered with stucco that was crazed with as many cracks as a two-dollar ceramic pot, it didn’t precisely shout
The twisted shit that stoked his engine couldn’t be found on television, not even satellite, but he was likely making do with what he could get, poor suffering bastard. I choked down the growl that threatened to push its way from my throat and closed the car door. This was business. If I kept that first and foremost in my mind, I might get through the next few hours without resorting to violence. Saul wouldn’t thank me for putting a source in the hospital . . . no matter how much he deserved it. As for paying his debt to society, ten years fell short . . . by about ninety or so.
Resting my hand on the hood of the car, I waited until the dizziness settled and then I headed for the front door. I plodded the ten feet and every step felt mired in the thickest mud. Michael hovered behind close enough to catch me if I fell, but I managed to avoid the embarrassment. Standing on the concrete blocks doubling as a poor man’s verandah, I raised my fist and knocked on the door. As we waited, I commanded, “Stick close while we’re in there. The guy’s a . . .” I stopped and reconsidered. Michael had had a psych course, true enough, but how in depth they would’ve covered child molestation I couldn’t begin to guess. And it was not a concept I particularly wanted to get into while standing on a pedophile’s porch. I settled on an evasive, “He’s a bad guy, and he likes to hurt kids. I want you to be careful, okay? Keep me between you and him at all times.”
Technically, Michael was probably too old for Vanderburgh, but he did look younger than seventeen. He had the self-possession and an intellect older than his years but the appearance and naïveté that could have him passing for fifteen, maybe even fourteen. Worse, he was beautiful. If anyone had said that to me when I was that age, I would’ve squirmed with outrage. Beautiful simply isn’t a word a guy wants applied to him. Good- looking. Hot, if it was a girl saying it . . . sure, no problem, but not beautiful. Unfortunately for Michael, that was the word that suited him the best. He’d outgrow it eventually. In a few years he’d be the model type I’d joked about when I’d cut my hair. But for now he was a young David, pure as shining white marble and incandescent as the sun.
“Why? I can take care of myself, Stefan,” he countered with an obstinate streak that was beginning to show more and more. “If I have to.”
Maybe he could and maybe he couldn’t. From what I’d seen this morning, he was in no hurry to hurt anyone, and that was all to the good in my book. It could be that might change when it came right down to the wire; I couldn’t say. Regardless, I wasn’t about to place him in a situation that required him to use an ability that he was so obviously ambivalent about; not if I could avoid it.
“Against assholes like this guy you shouldn’t have to,” I replied firmly before pounding on the door again. “So stick close.”
“Who is it?”
The wary question was easily heard through the cheap metal of the door. “Friends of Skoczinsky’s,” I answered. “We need a doctor.”
Silence. Then came a voice. “You have money?”
“I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t.” The jamb was scratched and the grain irregular beneath my hand, but it was enough to keep me upright. “Now hurry up and open the door before I give it a new puke paint job.”
There was the metallic chuckle of a lock tripping and the door opened, a rectangle of light in the dusk. Standing there in a dark blue robe over burgundy and white striped pajamas was Santa Claus. His pink scalp peeked through snow-white hair. His short beard was as curly as the cocker spaniel my mom had had before she died, and his eyes, half hidden behind bifocals, were the same limpid brown. Just how goddamn disturbing was this? Forget the better mousetrap; someone had built a better pervert. He was a malignant hook concealed in the bait of pudgy cheer.
Robe straining over the swell of belly, Vanderburgh looked me up and down. Full pink lips curved into a distasteful sneer. “You couldn’t have made yourself more presentable first?”
He had a lot of gall. He hadn’t wasted any spit and polish on the outside of his squalid shack, but he was bitching at me over some dried blood. I can’t say that I was much in the mood to hear it, whether it came directly from old St. Nick’s mouth or not. “And my money’s just as dirty as I am,” I drawled, “but I bet you’ll take it just the same.” Pushing past him without an invitation, I blinked. What he hadn’t wasted on the outside he’d run wild with on the inside. There wasn’t much space in the small living room, but what there was he’d filled with plush furniture, lamps of jeweled glass, and finely woven rugs that covered a dingy tile floor. The television was plasma and hung like a cherished painting in a place of honor on the far wall.
“Nice. I guess you don’t shoot all your cash into a vein.” I wanted nothing more than to sink onto that soft, soft sofa and sleep for days. But even if I’d trusted Vanderburgh enough to shut my eyes, it simply wasn’t in the cards.
“No, a portion I spent on this.” He lifted a pistol from his robe pocket and pointed it at me. It wasn’t anything fancy—your standard .38 available at any pawnshop—but it would do the job as well as the pricier models. Those soft brown eyes had become small, hard stones. “Now, let me see the color of your money. And, gentlemen, credit cards are not accepted.”
