Claire stared at Austin in astonishment. “This is the second time she’s left the loot on a bus?”
“If I understood her correctly—and between the sobbing and the gum she wasn’t very coherent—the last time she left it in the women’s washroom at a fast food restaurant but essentially the same scenario, yes.”
“She’s afraid of her boyfriend?” Dean growled. Behind his glasses, his eyes narrowed to a line of blazing blue. “Oh, I get it; first off, he forces her into a life of crime and then, when she can’t perform to his satisfaction, he beats her.”
“She walked into a door,” Austin protested.
“Sure. This time. But what’ll happen when she gets home? She’s terrified of him, or she wouldn’t have been out all night, forced to throw herself on the kindness of strangers.”
Claire sighed. She’d just discovered two things about Dean. The first, which was hardly unexpected considering the rest of his personality, involved taking the side of the weak against the strong. The second, that at some point in his scholastic career he’d been forced to read A Streetcar Named Desire. “You don’t know any of that for certain.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “I know what I see in front of my face.”
“I don’t know how you can see anything with your eyes slitted closed like that.”
“It’s obvious what happened!” His jaw thrust slightly forward.
“It’s never that obvious.” Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she asked Austin if he’d got a look at Faith’s home address when he snagged her ID. When he admitted that he had, she headed for the phone.
Hurriedly picking up the empty cereal bowl and putting it in the sink, Dean followed. “What are you doing?”
“Calling Faith’s apartment and telling the boyfriend where she is. Once he’s here, I can protect her, but until I hear the whole story, I can’t help her.”
“You’re after helping her right into the hospital!” Rushing forward, Dean put himself between Claire and the phone. “Look, you can put yourself into whatever weird relationships you want, but you can’t make those kind of choices for Faith.”
“Weird relationships?”
“Uh, oh.” Ears close to his head, Austin ducked under the desk.
Claire’s nostrils flared. “I thought you said you were okay with it?”
“Well, what else was I supposed to say? You’re the Keeper; you always know what you’re doing, and you never listen to me. I can’t even get you to put your dirty dishes in the sink!”
He was right about the dishes. Claire took a deep breath and forced it out through clenched teeth. “Move away from the phone, Dean. I know what I’m doing.”
“And I don’t?”
“I didn’t say that”
“But you’re always implying it. After all, I’m just the bystander and all this lineage stuff is way over my head. Okay. Maybe it is. But this,” he stabbed a finger toward room three, “this is people stuff, and I know people stuff better than you.”
“The moment Faith entered this hotel, she became lineage stuff.”
They locked eyes for a long moment. Finally, Dean jerked away from the phone. “Okay. Fine. If you’re not after listening to me, I’ll go and do the dishes. That seems to be all I’m good for around here.”
“Dean…”
“You know where to find me if you want something unimportant taken care of.” Heels denting the floor, he stomped back to the kitchen.
“I told you so,” Austin muttered, still safely hidden under the desk.
“Told me what?” Claire asked, fingers white around the receiver.
“That Dean’s all bent out of shape about you pounding the mattress with Jacques.”
“Jacques wasn’t even mentioned!”
He stuck his head out and stared up at her in disbelief. “You really aren’t any good at this people stuff, are you?”
Just after ten, Professor Jackson checked out. He paid in cash and, although a number of smaller things had been broken the night before, he made no mention of them. Since, technically, Claire had broken them, she let it slide.
“I’ll just go up and clean the room, then, shall I, Boss?”
Claire’d been trying to think of a way to apologize—although in spite of a nagging feeling that she was in the wrong, she wasn’t sure for what—but Dean’s emphasis on that Boss changed her mind. She’d wait until he decided to stop being so childish.
At eleven, she tried Faith’s home number again. She’d left two previous messages on the answering machine, and when the same annoying little song came on telling her to not make a peep till the sound of the beep, she decided not to leave a third.
When Dean came downstairs at eleven-forty carrying a waste-basket full of broken lamp, the office was empty, but a thin man in a Thousand Islands baseball cap and jean jacket that looked two sizes too large was limping across the lobby. “Can I help you?”
He jerked around to face the stairs. Pale lips, under a sparsely settled mustache, lifted in what could have been a smile but was probably a twitch. “Hi. Yeah. I’m here for Faith.”
“Faith?”
“Yeah. I’m Fred.” The tip of his nose was an abraded pink that vibrated slightly with every word. “She’s not gone?”
“No.” Dean descended the last three steps and was disappointed to see that he still towered over Faith’s boyfriend. He’d been hoping for a big man, one he could flatten without guilt. “What happened to your foot?”
“My foot?” Eyes wide, Fred stared down as though amazed to see a foot on the end of his leg. “Oh. That foot. I had an accident, eh.” He laughed nervously. “Dropped a cash register on it. Hurts like hell.”
NOT QUITE. BUT IT COULD.
Dean set down the wastebasket and jiggled his baby finger in his right ear, anger momentarily swamped by confusion. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Nothing.”
DON’T YOU JUST WISH YOU COULD WIPE
