Crescendo

I strode down the alley toward Imperial Street, with Vee jogging close behind. I checked for traffic, then crossed to the Jeep. I tried the door latch. Locked.

“Nobody’s home,” Vee said, cupping her hands around her eyes to peer inside. “I think we should walk away. Come on, Nora. Back away from the Jeep.”

“We need a ride. We’re stranded.”

“We still have two legs, leftie and rightie. Mine are in the mood for exercise. They feel like a nice long walk—Are you crazy?” she shrieked.

I was standing with the tip of the beach umbrella aimed at the driver’s-side window. “What?” I said. “We have to get in.”

“Put the umbrella down! You’re going to draw a lot of negative attention if you smash out the window. What’s gotten into you?” she said, watching me, wild-eyed.

A vision flashed across my mind. I saw Patch standing over my dad, gun in hand. The sound of a shot ripped the silence.

I braced my hands on my knees and leaned over, feeling tears sting behind my eyes. The ground lurched into a nauseating spin. Sweat curved trails down the sides of my face. I was being smothered, as if all oxygen had suddenly evaporated from the air. The more I tried to draw air, the more paralyzed my lungs became. Vee was shouting at me, but it came from far away, an underwater sound.

All of a sudden the ground halted. I took three sharp breaths. Vee was ordering me to sit, yelling something about heat exhaustion. I pulled free from her grip.

“I’m okay,” I said, holding up a hand when she came for me again. “I’m okay.”

To show her I was fine, I bent to pick up my tote, which I must have dropped, and it was then that I saw the spare key to the Jeep gleaming gold in the bottom. The one I’d stolen from Marcie’s bedroom the night of her party.

“I have a key to the Jeep,” I said, the words surprising even me.

A frown mark stretched across Vee’s forehead. “Patch never asked for it back?”

“He never gave it to me. I found it in Marcie’s room Tuesday night.”

“Whoa.”

I shoved the key in the lock, climbed in, and sat in the driver’s seat. Then I adjusted the seat forward, cranked the ignition, and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Despite the heat, my hands were cold and jittery.

“You’re not thinking about doing more damage than just driving this thing home, are you?” Vee asked, buckling herself into shotgun. “Because the vein in your temple is throbbing, and the last time I saw it do that was right before you clipped Marcie in the jaw at the Devil’s Handbag.”

I licked my lips, which felt sandpapery and rubbery at the same time. “He gave Marcie a spare to the Jeep —I should park this thing in the ocean, twenty feet under.”

“Maybe he had a really good reason,” Vee said nervously.

I gave a high slight laugh. “I won’t do anything to it until after I drop you off.” I cranked the wheel to the left and peeled onto the street.

“You swear to add that disclaimer when you try explaining to Patch why you stole his Jeep?”

“I’m not stealing it. We’re stranded. This is called borrowing.”

“This is called you’re crazy.” I could feel Vee’s bewilderment at my anger. I could see irrational in the way she stared at me. Maybe I was irrational. Maybe I’d pushed things over the edge. Two people can have the same nickname, I thought, trying to convince myself. They could. They could, they could, they could. I hoped the more I said it, the more I’d come to believe it, but the place that I reserved in my heart for trust felt hollow.

“Let’s get out of here,” Vee said, using a wary, frightened voice she never used with me. “We have lemonade at my place. After that we could watch TV. Maybe take a nap. Don’t you have to work tonight?”

I was about to tell her that Roberta hadn’t scheduled me tonight, when I tapped the brake. “What’s that?”

Vee followed my gaze. She bent forward, pulling a scrap of pink fabric off the dash. She dangled the French bikini top between us.

We looked at each other, and we were both thinking the same thing.

Marcie.

No doubt about it, she was here with Patch. Right now. On the beach. Lying on the sand. Doing who knows what else.

A violent, traitorous surge of hate spiked through me. I hated him. And I hated myself for adding my name to the list of girls he’d seduced, then betrayed. A raw desire to rectify my ignorance gripped me. I wasn’t going to be just another girl. He couldn’t make me disappear. If he was the Black Hand, I would find out. And if he’d had anything to do with my dad’s death, I would make him pay.

“He can find his own ride home,” I said through a quivering jaw. I punched the gas, laying down a stretch of rubber on the street.

Hours later, I stood in front of the fridge, door open, surveying the contents, looking for something that could pass as dinner. When nothing popped out at me, I moved to the narrow pantry kitty-corner to the fridge and did the same thing. I settled on a box of bow-tie pasta and a jar of sausage spaghetti sauce.

When the stove timer beeped, I drained the pasta, poured myself a bowl, and stuck the sauce in the microwave. We were out of Parmesan, so I grated cheddar and called it good. The microwave chimed, and I spooned layers of sauce and cheese on top of the pasta. As I turned to carry everything to the table, I found Patch leaning against it. The bowl of pasta nearly slipped through my fingers.

“How did you get in?” I asked.

“Might want to keep the door locked. Especially when you’re home alone.”

His stance was relaxed, but his eyes were not. The color of black marble, they cut right through me. I had no doubt he knew I’d stolen the Jeep. Hard not to, since it was parked in the driveway. There were only so many places to hide a Jeep at a house surrounded by open fields on one side, and impenetrable woodlands on the other. I hadn’t been thinking about hiding when I’d pulled the Jeep into the driveway; I’d been consumed by sickening abhorrence and shock. Everything had come into sharp focus: his smooth words, his black, glinting eyes, his broad experience with lies, seduction, women. I’d fallen in love with the devil.

“You took the Jeep,” Patch said. Calm but not happy.

“Vee parked in an illegal zone and they put a boot on her car. We had to get home, and that’s when we saw the Jeep across the street.” My palms touched with sweat, but I didn’t dare wipe them dry. Not in front of Patch. He looked different tonight. More severe, hardened. The wan glow of the kitchen lights traced the cut of his cheekbones, and his black hair, tousled from a day at the beach, hung low across his forehead, nearly touching his obscenely long eyelashes. His mouth, which I’d always thought of as sensual, was turned up cynically on one side. It wasn’t a warm smile.

“You couldn’t call and give me a heads-up?” he asked.

“I didn’t have my phone.”

“And Vee?”

“She doesn’t have your number on her phone. And I couldn’t remember your new number anyway. We didn’t have a way to reach you.”

“You don’t have a key to the Jeep. How’d you get in?”

It was all I could do not to give him a traitorous look. “Your spare.”

I saw him trying to calculate where I was going with this. We both knew he’d never given me a spare. I watched him closely for any sign that he knew I was referring to Marcie’s key, but the light of understanding never lit his eyes. Everything about him was controlled, impenetrable, unreadable.

“Which spare?” he asked.

This only made me angrier, because I’d expected him to know exactly which key I was talking about. How many spares did he have? How many other girls had a key to the Jeep stowed in their purses? “Your girlfriend,” I said. “Or is that not enough of a clarification?”

“Let me see if I’ve got this. You stole the Jeep to get back at me for giving a spare to Marcie?”

“I stole the Jeep because Vee and I needed it,” I said coolly. “There was a time when you were always