some assistance from the boss, never.”
“I didn’t peg you for a quitter.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Right now, I’m sleeping,” Kim said. “Roscoe comes in, you can charm the answers out of her. Maybe this stuff will make more sense later. It can’t get a lot worse.”
She picked up her laptop, gathered her scattered possessions and moved to the guest room. Ten minutes later, she’d sunk into blissful oblivion.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
She was submerged in deep slow-wave sleep, like a dolphin, maintaining only enough consciousness to remain wary of predators. She bobbed gently, down and up, each soft bounce tugging her higher until at one apex her eyelids fluttered. An orange glow inches from her nose showed 12:45 a.m. She’d been asleep three hours.
But now she was awake.
Because: there was hushed shouting in the house. Echolocation placed two women safely distant. One older, one younger, both angry. She recognized Roscoe’s voice.
Roscoe’s guest room was cozy. The temperature was perfect. Quilted goose down enveloped in fine cotton created a warm cocoon. She snuggled deeper, drifted lightly on sleep’s surface, still aware. She sighed.
Return to nirvana demanded a glass of water and a pee. She listened, heard no silenced screaming, concluded quick stealth was now possible. Where was the bathroom? Down the hall, she thought, near the kitchen.
Vision limited through eyelids too heavy to lift, she moved toward the door, turned left, and shuffled along the carpet. A computer screen’s soft night-light glow guided her progress. There were warm aromas she couldn’t identify. Wood smoke, maybe? And something sweeter.
She reached the archway and stepped into cold open space. She recalled the kitchen on the left, a den on the right, the guest bath straight ahead.
Then the whole room lit up. Instant blindness. Kim’s forearm flew up to shield her eyes. A tall, slender blonde girl had opened the refrigerator door. That was the light. The girl was holding a bottle of beer. She turned, saw Kim, and cocked her wrist, ready to throw the bottle.
“Who are you?” she asked. “And what are you doing in my house?”
The girl was very pretty. She was dressed in ragged jeans and a sloppy sweater and heavy mud-covered boots. She was backlit by the refrigerator. She was a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than Kim, and she looked very capable. Kim figured the bottle would hit her dead center in the head, if the kid got around to throwing it.
Then from the shadows on Kim’s right, Roscoe said, “Cut the drama, Jack. Does she look like a home invader? Bare feet? Red silk pajamas?”
The girl didn’t stand down even a smidge.
Kim prepared to run rather than hurt the girl.
Roscoe said, “Kim, this is my daughter Jacqueline, known to all as Jack for short, which as you can see, she isn’t.'
'Jack, this is my friend, Kim. But you’d know that already if you’d met your curfew.”
Still Jack didn’t stand down.
Roscoe said, “I’m sorry we woke you, Kim. We don’t normally assault our houseguests. Jack apologizes as well. Don’t you, Jack?”
The girl relaxed, loosened up, shrugged, and put the beer back on the shelf.
“Whatever,” she said, like a fifteen year-old.
She closed the refrigerator door.
Darkness.
Instant blindness.
“Another friend is sleeping upstairs,” Roscoe said. “Don’t wake him. Or your brother.”
The girl said nothing.
Roscoe said, “Goodnight, Jack.”
The girl walked upstairs with a heavy tread, grinding mud into the carpet. Roscoe must have been too exhausted to notice.
A door opened. A door closed.
The house went quiet again.
Kim shivered. High-tech microfiber pajamas packed flat for travel, but were not warm enough for November in Georgia.
“Hot chocolate?” Roscoe asked.
“I’m fine,” Kim said.
“Translation: You’ve got questions and I can’t sleep.”
“I’m dead on my feet. I won’t be very good company.”
“Archie Leach wants to question you. I held him off tonight, but I had to tell him where you were. I’ve had other calls, too. This may be the last chance we get.”
Kim dropped into an oversized chair and tucked her bare feet beside her on the seat. Roscoe handed her a mug. Kim recognized the sweet aroma unidentified during her somnolent wandering. Sipping chocolate, spiked with something stronger. Whiskey, she thought.
“Jack’s a pretty girl,” she said, after the silence stretched a while.
Roscoe smiled. “You didn’t see the sign out front flashing ‘smoking hot girl inside, bad boys wanted?’”
Kim smiled too. “My dad threatened a ten foot fence around our property to keep the boys away when my sister was about Jack’s age.”
“Did it work?” Roscoe sounded hopeful.
Kim sipped the warm chocolate, laid her head back against the chair. “Keeping the boys out wasn’t the problem, actually. The problem was keeping my sister in.”
“Exactly,” Roscoe said. “She misses her curfews. She doesn’t return my calls. She texts until all hours. She won’t get up for school. Her grades are a mess.” She ran splayed fingers through her hair cut. “And now she’s sneaking out in the middle of the night.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could lock her in a closet until she’s twenty-one. You could hire a crone to bring her bread and water.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. When Jack was born, every moment away from her was torture. And now, after five minutes in the same room I want to slap her. But what would I do if she hit me back?”
“Shoot straight?”
Roscoe laughed.
Kim said, “Makes you want to call your mother and apologize, doesn’t it?”
“Every single day.”
“You know it’s a phase, Beverly. A necessary rite of passage.” She sighed. “If I’d gone through the bad boy thing at fifteen instead of twenty, my life would have been a lot different. I wouldn’t be sitting here now, at the very least.”
“Did he straighten up? Your bad boy?”
