Crash Into Me

“Yeah, right. And Rhoda’s a virgin.”

They fell into companionable silence, James drinking his beer like it was medicine. “I did it to her.”

Stephen straightened. “You went down on her in the theater? No wonder you had her panties in your pocket.” He laughed, tipping his bottle up in salutation. “That’s classic, man. Totally classic.”

“I didn’t go down on her,” James said. “I just, you know, used my hand.” He stared at his self-inflicted injury for a moment. “Fuck,” he groaned, as something else occurred to him.

“What?”

“I can’t even jack off now,” he muttered.

Stephen laughed again, knowing his brother’s problem all too well. “Sure you can. Just use your left.”

James considered his left hand, wrapped around the neck of the bottle. “That works?”

“Yeah. It might take longer, but it’s better than nothing.”

“How do you know?”

“Remember that time a thresher latched onto my thumb? Motherfucker throbbed for weeks.” He flexed his right hand, counting pale scars crisscrossing sun-dark skin.

“What about Rhoda? You guys don’t-”

Stephen interrupted bitterly. “Oh, we do. I avoid her as much as possible, but she catches me sometimes. Afterwards, I feel as wrung out as one of Dad’s hookers.”

James closed his eyes, probably trying to dispel that mental image. “It’s better to make a clean break. She’d hate me if she knew…”

“What Dad did?” Stephen finished for him.

He licked his lips nervously. “Yeah.”

“She knows about Mom, right? You can’t get any worse than that.”

“That’s just it, Stephen. Our father killed our mother. Threw her body in the backyard and poured concrete over it. I signed the grave! I fucking autographed it. How stupid could I be?”

Stephen could feel his brother’s eyes on his face, and he struggled to keep the dirty, ugly truth buried inside him, where it had festered the past five years.

“You knew,” James said, his voice faint with wonder.

Making a raw, feral sound, Stephen stood and threw his empty bottle at the house. It shattered into a thousand pieces.

James grabbed him by the front of the shirt. “You knew all along, and didn’t do anything about it? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Shame coursed through him. Stephen had never hated himself more, but he lashed out at James, pushing him away with more force than necessary. James tripped over the rubble and fell to the ground, staring up at him, the agony of betrayal apparent in his eyes.

“I was sixteen, James. What was I supposed to do? Report it?” He dropped his voice and held his fist to his ear, as if placing a call. “‘Yes, Mr. Police Officer, I’d like you to check for my mom’s body under the slab in the backyard, but don’t tell my dad, because he’ll kill me and my little brother.’ Is that what I should have done?”

“Fuck you, you pussy,” James spat, lifting himself off the ground and brushing the dirt off his clothes. “I would have killed him. I should kill you.”

“I was trying to protect you, you ungrateful little shit. Now I’m the pussy?” His gut twisted with resentment. “You’re the one too scared to fuck your girlfriend.”

James paled. “Shut up,” he whispered.

Stephen clenched his jaw, instantly regretting his words. He ached to get high, to feel the chemical burn in his nostrils, the bitter taste in his mouth. “I’m sorry. I hate to see you give her up because you think you’re not good enough for her.”

James sank down in front of the fire again. “I’m not. God, I’m a mess, Stephen. I’ll just mess her up, too.”

“How? You going to tell her to drop out of school? Do drugs? Get pregnant?”

“No,” he conceded. “But I can’t keep my hands off her.”

“Doesn’t sound like she wants you to.”

“Yeah, but she’s only sixteen. And unlike Rhoda, she is a virgin.”

Stephen smiled, relieved that they were talking about their troubles instead of pounding the hell out of each other. “Quit beating yourself up about it. You’re not twisting her arm, pressuring her into anything. Are you?”

“Hell, no. She’s pressuring me.”

What a delicious conundrum, Stephen thought, to agonize over deflowering a sweet young thing with the face of an angel and a body that could tempt a saint. Most guys wouldn’t think twice. He shook his head, finding James more principled than a seventeen-year-old boy ought to be. Of course, his little brother wasn’t a typical teenager.

The age difference between Carly and James was minimal. Measuring in life experience, they were worlds apart. “There’s no reason you can’t be friends.”

James gulped. “Friends?”

Stephen took the beer bottle from his brother’s hands. “Sure. You can control yourself from jumping on her, right? So just be friends.”

Stephen knew James didn’t have any friends. He couldn’t bring anyone over to the house, for obvious reasons, and Arlen had never let him go anywhere.

“Friends,” he nodded, sounding pleased with the idea.

Stephen raised the bottle to his mouth, hiding a smile.

“About Mom,” James began, after they were quiet a few moments, “I didn’t mean what I said. I suspected him, too, especially after Lisette. If only I’d stood up to him, maybe some of those girls would still be alive. If only I had-”

Stephen hooked his left arm around James’ neck. “No,” he said, pulling his brother close in an embrace that was part headlock. “You couldn’t have done anything but get killed, too. And you did stand up to him, in your own way. You told those cops everything, and that took a lot of guts. More than I had. Mom would’ve…” He cleared his throat, all but choking out the words. “Mom would’ve been proud.”

It was all he could say. So he planted a hard kiss on top of James’ head and kept him there, face pressed to his dirty T-shirt, while his shoulders shook with pent-up emotion.

The next morning, Sonny woke up with a tension headache and a knot in her stomach, exhausted after another restless night.

It was imperative that she find a break in the investigation. Grant had given her one last chance to redeem herself, and she didn’t want to go back to Quantico empty-handed. She couldn’t stand before a panel of stern faces at Internal Affairs with nothing. They could strip her title and make her a civilian. They might even bring her up on charges.

If she closed this case, her career would be in jeopardy. If she didn’t, it would be over.

Groaning, she dragged herself out of bed and into the small bathroom, grimacing at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair looked like a tangled mass of scorched honey. Although it needed professional help in the worst way, she made do with another home dye job, this time choosing a nice, semi-permanent mahogany brown.

Lisette’s wake would be an informal affair, so Sonny decided on a pair of tailored wool trousers and a soft blue sweater set. She knew she looked relentless, and too much like FBI, in head-to-toe black. For a touch of flair, she wore her sexiest shoes, a pair of sleek black heels, and underneath her clothes, her finest silk lingerie.

Not that anyone would see it.

She brushed her hair away from her face, securing it with a black velvet headband, and applied some makeup, using the tips Carly taught her. She took more time with her appearance than she ever had before, justifying that no one would believe a scrub like her could catch the eye of Ben Fortune. When she was satisfied that people wouldn’t run from her screaming, she stepped back and studied her reflection.

She hardly recognized herself.

With black hair, she knew she’d looked a little scary, for the color had exaggerated her sharp cheekbones and strange blue eyes. As a blonde, she was attractive in an edgy sort of way. Being a brunette didn’t exactly make her soft and sweet, but it did give her a certain girl-next-door prettiness that was completely at odds with her personality.