He opened the door. Ben sat there facing him, desk under the security monitors, glaring. They stepped through the door and into bright light and stood blinking for a moment after the dim tunnels. Gary didn't see a gun on the desk, but that didn't mean much. He couldn't see his father's right hand, either.
Ben shook his head, still glaring under lowered brows. "You damned fool, bringing that girl here . . ."
"Shut up. Two things to say. Then we're leaving, unless you get a brain." Gary unclenched his fists and took another deep breath.
"First thing, she's staying in the Haskell House, under the protection of the House. Aunt Alice knows we're here. If anything happens to Jane, here or anywhere else, Aunt Alice says she'll find you."
And Alice Haskell was probably the one person on God's green earth who could stop Ben Morgan in his tracks. Gary saw it in Ben's face.
"Second thing, you mess with us one more time, any way at all, no more Gary Morgan." He tossed his dragon on the desk. "I haven't worn that for a week. I can live without it, and I can live without your Morgan money. Ellie and Mouse and Caroline can live without it; they're already more Haskell than Morgan. If you don't want a thousand years of Morgans to end right here, back off!"
Ben had turned pale when Gary mentioned Aunt Alice. Now his face was red again, his lips thin and eyes narrowed down to slits. Too used to being boss. He swallowed, took a deep breath, chewed on nothing, and swallowed again. Probably choosing words and rejecting them. He glared at Jane.
"I'm trying to protect you. You saw her files."
Gary leaned forward, hands on the desk to each side of his discarded dragon. "I saw them. She's seen them. She says she killed the Sweeneys. You never asked why." He stood up again and turned to Jane. "Show him why you don't shave your armpits."
He'd expected her to roll up the sleeves of her sweatshirt, three sizes too big, baggy enough to clear her shoulders. Instead, she reached down to the hem at her waist and pulled it up, pulled it over her head, pulled her arms free, dropped the shirt on the floor. She stood there, no bra, small breasts tight in the cool air, and lifted her right arm. She had shaved, over at Aunt Alice's, and the skin still glowed pink from the scraping.
A line of white shiny puckered scars, round and the size of a cigarette tip, traced the rear edge of her armpit. She turned and showed him her left arm, showed a matching line. "They got drunk now and then. Said we misbehaved. Too noisy, one burn. Drop a plate or glass, one burn. Bad language, one burn."
She glanced over at Gary with a wry smile. "Gary wonders how I can live with this stud in my nose. Do you want to see what's under it? I talked back. Any idea how long a cigarette will burn when it's shoved inside the nostril? Those damned things won't go out. Any idea how much that hurts? They were both drunk that day. Do you want to know what they wanted to do to Cindy? How Mrs. Sweeney wanted to punish Cindy when she first got her period and bled on her pajamas and bed? That's when we ran away."
Ben looked sick. He shook his head. His right hand joined the left on the desktop, clenched in a fist, empty.
Don't let him off easy. "Tell him why you couldn't call the DHS people."
"He made us do it. Made me smoke a cigarette and burn Cindy, made her burn me. Told us they could pass a lie detector, and we'd end up taking the blame. Mental ward or jail. Might not be true, but we believed them. We were kids, they were grownups."
One thing she hadn't said, talking to him or to Aunt Alice where he could hear. Gary wondered. "What happened to Cindy?"
"Took her part of the loot and bought drugs. OD'd, dead within a week."
She was shaking again, either cold or memories. He picked up her sweatshirt and handed it to her, but she didn't put it on, just stood there half-naked. She'd sold her body, surviving on the streets, told him, no secret. Another pair of male eyes didn't matter. Besides, she seemed to be somewhere else.
Ben stared down at his hands, lying clenched on the desk. A minute passed, and then another. Finally he spoke, almost to his fists rather than to her. "I think maybe I ought to kill someone at DHS. I'm sorry. I don't say that often. I'm not going to ask you to forgive me, or forget. I stood in the shadows for eighteen years, never able to meet Gary, never could admit I was his father. I wanted to protect my son. Make up for all the things I hadn't done for him."
He looked up, at Gary rather than at her, as if the Biblical taboo about looking on naked relatives already applied. "Dan didn't have anything to do with this. It was all me. He told me I was crazy, but I wouldn't let him stop me. I hope you can forgive him."
Ben shook his head with a rueful chuckle. "He told me I didn't know a damn thing about raising kids. Said it looked like I was taking the exact best course to push you two together, rather than splitting you apart. Guess he was right."
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kate sat in her truck and studied the house in front of her. She understood houses, read their character a lot better than she read people. Most houses didn't lie. Hell, even Alice's House wouldn't lie to Kate.
Middle-aged white house, owned by a middle-aged white couple. Square two-story plan, square windows, square chimney set foursquare in the center peak of the square roof, square asbestos shingle siding, square white
