Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) (2 page)

As best as I’d been able to gather, the infamous flash fire had started at the now-abandoned brick chemical plant three blocks north. The fire spread
down Edgewater Street, where I worked, and spilled across the docks and tanks into the harbor. The fire probably stopped at the stone pier and burned-out warehouses half a mile south near the bay. I didn’t know everything, just enough to know better than to live down here.

I hit speed dial on my cell phone to tell Max I was running late and might miss the bus. Seeing Officer Leibowitz on the far side of the nearly empty street, I slipped into the shade of an overhang. Thanks to the Middle Eastern part of my heritage, I’m small, dark, and blend well with shadows. I had no hope of running from danger with my uneven stride, but I’d devised any number of alternatives. Hiding in plain sight was a good one.

Leibowitz was tall, heavy, wore a walrus mustache, and sported a permanent sunburn from patrolling on foot. Even if thieves would have let cars keep their wheels in this neighborhood, the rubber was likely to melt to the blacktop if they cruised the chemical-laden street too often. The city rightfully refused to pay for equipment to be operated in the Zone. Given his size, Leibowitz could have afforded to lose a few dozen pounds walking his beat.

I’ve had a grudge against the law ever since I was unfairly arrested for starting a riot on campus. Admittedly, I started the riot. But if I hadn’t, no one would have listened to our protests about the corruption in the university provost’s office. The Pennsylvania school held a grudge as well as I did, which
was why I was attending classes in Baltimore and avoiding officers of the law these days.

My call actually reached Max’s voice mail. In the Zone, that wasn’t always possible. Other days, I’d used the same number and gotten a pizza joint in Brooklyn and a McDonald’s in Juneau, Alaska. Apparently the Zone got hungry. Limping quickly down the street, I left a message for him to pick me up at the bank.

The buses only ran once an hour after five. If I didn’t catch the five, I’d be here as the steel plants emptied and the bars lit up. Max had my car, since I refused to park my only reliable means of transportation in the Zone. I didn’t ask what he did with the Escort all afternoon as long as he kept the tank filled. My boss might have had a sophisticated bad-boy look happening, but Max had him topped by three inches, twenty pounds, and a cosmic blue-collar attitude. Andre didn’t dare hit on me if he wanted to live, not that he’d ever noticed me beyond recognizing I was female, and therefore flirtworthy.

Nervously, I was aware that Leibowitz had crossed the street and followed a block behind me. To save wear and tear on my damaged leg muscles, I usually took shortcuts. Rather than jaywalk with a cop nearby, I waited for the light at the intersection like a good citizen, even though the light was currently pink, and I’d have to guess blue meant go if it was having one of those days.

The bank was on the edge of a lower-middle-class
neighborhood several blocks from the harbor. Despite the cash I carried, I felt reasonably safe walking the deposit to the teller. Before my leg got trashed by cops, in channeling my frustrations against the bullies of the world I’d taken lessons in every form of martial arts known to mankind. And even now, when my uneven gait messed with my balance, I could still whack boards with my hand.

Still, I wasn’t naïve enough to believe I had a chance against a bullet. I kept a wary eye on my surroundings. The light turned purple, and I crossed the street, leaving the Zone.

The five o’clock bus rumbled to a stop in front of the bank. I swore under my breath. Even if I could run to catch it, I still had to make the deposit. I’d be stuck here for another hour if Max didn’t pick up my call, and I really needed to sit down on something softer than concrete.

Max had become more and more unreliable lately. I was irritated that he couldn’t be bothered to pick me up regularly when he had free use of my car in return. We’d only been together about six months, but we used to go out on his bike and have a good time in the evenings. Lately, he was too tired and didn’t come over at all, or he just wanted me to fix him a free meal and help him get his rocks off. I didn’t object to the sex. He was good in bed, and a girl like me couldn’t be too choosy.

Okay, despite that errant thought, and my current policy of keeping my mouth shut, I didn’t actually have
self-esteem issues. Like the spunky movie heroines, I knew that I deserved better than a man who took me for granted, one who could at least be listening for my call on a Friday night.

Still aware of Leibowitz trailing me, I didn’t cross diagonally to the bank like I usually did. Since I had to wait for another light change—a normal one this time—before reaching the bank, I watched the passengers unloading from the bus. The usual gang of teenagers returning home from ball practice or glee club climbed off, jostling one another and throwing insults as they spread out in different directions.

As the light turned to let the kids cross, a long sleek black car peeled out of the bank drive-up lane with a loud screech, fishtailing on the curb of the narrow side street. Hopping backward in case the driver lost control, I bumped into a newspaper box. Someone stepping out of an air-conditioned doorway roughly shoved my shoulder. Already off-balance, I stumbled forward on my bad leg, hitting the sidewalk with my knees. The limo completed the turn without bouncing off me and sped toward the bus corner.

I screamed a warning when I realized he meant to run the red while the kids were crossing.
Too late
.

I watched in horror as backpacks, laptops, and kids went flying.

The limo didn’t even stop.

Shouting obscenities, I lurched to my feet and started hobbling for the corner, only to realize my bank deposit bag was no longer attached to the shackle
on my wrist. I swung around, but it was nowhere to be seen. Neither was whoever had knocked me from behind.

Leibowitz was jogging, belly bouncing, in the direction of the corner where kids were now shouting, crying, retrieving their crushed belongings, and helping each other up. He had his phone out, calling in the mishap. If he’d seen whoever had robbed me, he wasn’t giving any indication.

Cursing, torn between retrieving my money and helping those terrified kids, I opened the glass door that had been at my back and glanced into an enormous empty lobby. No security guard, nothing but open elevator doors on the far wall.

Unfastening the handcuff so I didn’t look like an escaped convict, I went back outside and checked for an alley where the thief could have hidden, but unless he was in a Dumpster spilling over with boxes and trash bags, he was gone. And so was Andre’s deposit. I was so screwed.

I couldn’t panic and trash an alley in search of filthy lucre while kids were crying and hurt. Abandoning my fruitless hunt, I tucked the handcuffs into my bag and hurried up the street to prevent Leibowitz from forcing a girl with a crumpled leg to her feet.

“Her leg could be broken, numbnuts! Block off the intersection until the ambulance gets here.” Ignoring the twinge of pain, I kneeled down and cradled her head on my lap while her friends gathered around, cursing and sobbing.

“You.” I looked pointedly at the guys in their team
shirts. “Get out there and help the officer stop traffic. Did anyone get a look at the license plate? Write it down while you can still remember it.”

“That was Dara’s new computer,” the injured girl whispered. “She babysat monsters for two years to buy that.”

A once-shiny laptop now bearing a tire track lay crumpled beside a weeping girl holding the hand of the limo’s victim. Knowing how hard it was for anyone in this neighborhood to raise that kind of cash, how proud she must have been to have her own computer, I felt her pain. Even I couldn’t afford a nice setup like that one had been, and I had ten years on these kids.

“We’ll get the bastards,” I muttered, more to myself than to them. I’d seen enough of the license plate to know where to start. The Zone was an hour’s drive and a gargantuan psychological distance from D.C., but those were government plates I’d glimpsed while on my knees.

I saw disbelief in the kids’ eyes, but they politely refrained from arguing—rightfully so. They knew no one cared what happened to people who lived in a blighted area so poor that the inhabitants couldn’t escape their unmarketable homes. And I looked more like a bronzed garden gnome with limp hair than a champion of justice.

I could hear the ambulance siren wailing in the distance. I prayed the buzzing in my pocket was Max texting me that he was on his way. “Leibowitz, did you catch the license plate number?” I shouted.

Standing in the intersection, directing traffic around
him, he shot me a disgruntled look. “You want me to lose my job reporting a
senator
? You really think I’m that stupid?”

Yeah, I did. “That’s what you get paid to do! They’re not above the law!” I yelled back, but maybe I was the one who was stupid, expecting justice in the face of all evidence otherwise. “Did you see who ripped off my deposit bag?”

This time, he stared in disbelief. “Did the bus hit you in the head? Don’t go blaming me for theft if Legrande accuses you of stealing. There wasn’t nobody back there but us.”

Visions of unemployment and homelessness danced in my head. Andre would be furious. I’d had a lot of bad days in my twenty-six years, but this one was promising to rank right up there with the day I got arrested and had my leg crushed.

T
he ambulance arrived. Leibowitz took names. I took the partial license plate one of the kids had written down.

Seething with repressed rage at failing in my responsibility to Andre, frustrated at my inability to help innocent kids, and exhausted from overexerting my bad leg, I checked my cell phone for Max’s message. There was none. The buzz had been a wrong number.

The very bad awful day threatened to escalate.

My knees ached from where I’d scraped them on
the sidewalk. That’s what I got for trying to look professional by wearing a skirt when jeans would do.

I also did it to annoy Andre, who’d learned his lesson about believing anything in a skirt was available. That didn’t make my scraped knees feel better or reduce my guilt over losing the deposit. If Andre docked my next month’s pay for his lost cash, I couldn’t pay rent or buy groceries. I’d have to drop out of school within weeks of finals. Or study in the streets.

With medics and cops to care for the kids, I sat dejectedly on the bus stop bench and tried Max’s number, again. No answer.

What in hell had I ever seen in him in the first place? Yeah, he was a sexy bad boy who made my heart go pitter-pat when he grinned, but grins and hot sex didn’t make a relationship.

Facing my uncertain future, I finally understood that I couldn’t afford his chronic irresponsibility. I’d never really had someone I could count on, but repeating the mistakes of the past was not a sign of intelligence. I’d been a sex-starved idiot. Six months of neglect was more than enough to prove that he would never change—especially now that he wasn’t taking my calls. I knew I wasn’t any prize and that Max could have any woman he wanted. I could either get mad or get depressed. I chose the former.

Buoyed by self-righteous rage, I tried to reach him one more time. This time, when all I got was his cheery “Enjoying life. Later!” I shouted, “We’re finished! Done! Kaput! Bring me my car and get the hell out of my life, Maxim MacNeill!”

I wasn’t so good at laying it on the line in person.

I don’t know why I’d put up with Max and his bad habits for this long. Because my mother would hate him, was my best guess. But my mother was in Bolivia with the Peace Corps and hadn’t been home in years. Dee Clancy had barely been able to wait for me to leave for college before taking off. Motherly, she was not.

Which was no explanation but an excuse.

I was still sitting on the bench long after the ambulances and police cars had departed, furious to the point of tears. I was making up lists of all the things I would say to Max should I ever speak to him again, when a weak, prolonged blare of horn rattled my already overstimulated nerves. I sought the source, but the semi pulling into the intersection blocked the view of the hill behind.

Cursing the limp hair falling in my face, I brushed it out of my eyes and stood up to see around the semi as its trailer cleared the intersection. Behind it, coming down the hill, I recognized the rusting hood of my old red Escort.

From the way he was hitting the gas, Max must have received my message. Fine. Let him be mad. He couldn’t be any angrier than I was. And I had far more reason.

Wishing I had enough hair to pin the limp strands out of my face so I didn’t look so pathetic, I stepped up to the curb. I blinked in astonishment when the Escort didn’t slow down.

He wasn’t stopping.

The Escort was accelerating like a rocket launcher
—right at me.

I froze so long that I could see Max’s eyes narrowed in fury and his fingers clenched white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

My boyfriend was trying to kill me!