Double Trouble (23 page)

Connie dropped her groceries right there on the floor. “Where’s Davy?”

“He’s upstairs,” PJ said, although she stayed right where she was. Connie had a nearly rabid look on her face as she took the stairs two at a time.

Sergei debated half a second, then charged into the kitchen. “Who iz zis?”

Boris answered in Russian, which, from the wide-eyed, then furious look on Sergei’s face, PJ assumed must be vibrantly colorful. She did pick up a few words. Like
gun
. And
shpeon
was easily translatable to “spy.”

Even Boone seemed to be getting the gist of the conversation, because he glanced at PJ with a tight-lipped look. “I had no idea he’d take it this far.”

“Who, Boris or Casey? Because even I remember Ally’s dead body, Boone. Did you think that if Casey found out about Boris, he wouldn’t come after him? and
my family
?” She heard sirens in the distance.

Boone’s jaw tightened. “I’m sorry.”

“Not half as sorry as I am.” As if to punctuate her words, Connie thumped down the stairs, or rather tripped, nearly falling as she wrestled an armload of PJ’s belongings, spewing clothes on her descent. Connie careened toward the door and banged it open, and then, with all the force in her size-four body, flung the pile out into the yard.

As if magnetized to her possessions, PJ drifted toward the door, her breath trapped inside her chest as Connie whirled, shoved past her, and ran again up the stairs.

She nearly took out Davy, who stood on the landing, one whitened hand clutching the railing.

The family behind PJ had gone silent. So had Boone.

“Connie?” PJ started, not sure what she should go after first
 
—her laundry strewn over the front steps and across the rosebushes, or Connie, who thumped around upstairs, probably in PJ’s bedroom.

PJ had just turned toward the stairs when Connie reappeared, this time holding one of her expensive 500-thread-count sheets by the corners, the rest of PJ’s clothing, toiletries, and shoes shoved inside. She didn’t even glance PJ’s way as she linebackered past her and, in an outstanding athletic move
that rivaled an Olympic discus thrower, flung the remainder of PJ’s existence out the door.

PJ tried to breathe, her eyes blurring.

Connie whirled, her chest rising and falling, her long hair wild around her head, her skin blotchy and red. She opened her mouth, and for a long, painful moment, nothing emerged.

PJ lunged for the opening. “Connie, I
 
—”

“Don’t, PJ. Don’t. Speak.” She lifted her gaze to Davy and fixed it there as she said quietly,
too
quietly
 
—so much that it felt like a scalpel, clean and neat and slicing PJ to the bone
 
—“Get out.”

* * *

At least she had a sheet. And her Chuck Taylor sneakers. And at least two pairs of jeans. She might have left a T-shirt in the garden, wedged behind the roses, but by the time she’d fished out all her visible clothing, the sky overhead was glazing dark, only a few stars emerging to watch as she crammed her possessions into the trunk of her Vic.

She still wore her softball uniform and had unearthed a change of clothes before climbing into the backseat, where, under the cover of the creeping darkness, she put on a pair of worn jeans, her flip-flops, and a tank. Virtually the same attire she’d worn when she had slunk back into Kellogg. And probably the same outfit she would wear as she crept out again, hopefully without sirens and red lights neoning in her rearview mirror.

Boone had worn the look of a felon, barely casting an eye at PJ picking up her skivvies from the lawn as he’d toted Casey
down the steps and into a waiting cruiser he’d called to take him to the station. Where Casey would be charged with the murder of Allison Miller, former girlfriend, as well as the attempted murder of Boris and very possibly Davy and Vera.

PJ didn’t blame Connie for kicking her out of the house. Not really. She had practically tempted trouble to Connie’s door, not once but twice in the same summer. She adjusted the front seat, her nose curling at the telltale odor of Boris’s stakeout hours in her car. Nice. She dried her cheeks with the palm of her hand, then motored out into the night, away from the lights leering from Connie’s Craftsman home.

She couldn’t help but look. Nope. No one silhouetted in the door to wave good-bye.

She should just keep driving. Head west, back to California, or maybe east this time, start over in New York City. She couldn’t return to Dally’s
 
—not with a real-life stalker waiting to hunt her down, now that Missy and Sammy were no longer suspects.

Truly, now she would have to sleep in the Vic. Talk about foresight.

She crawled down Main Street, braking as she passed the beach and then suddenly turning in.

Parking and getting out, she kicked off her flip-flops and barefooted her way across the cool, forgiving sand. Under the moonlight, the sailboats sliced the night like cutlery, the gentle lap of the lake licking against their hulls. Her stomach leaped at the bewitching smells from Hal’s Pizzeria and the hickory off the grills down at Sunsets. But food would only dull her pain.

Going to the play area, she sat on the merry-go-round, pushing it with one foot.

Round and round.

Always ending in the same place.

In the distance across the grassy park, she spied movement and after a while recognized the hobo of Kellogg, a bum who lived under the Maximilian Bay Bridge down the road. He peered in garbage cans, searching for morsels. PJ dug into her pocket. She had a couple bucks left from the twenty Jeremy had given her for donuts nearly two weeks ago. One homeless person should look out for the next.

How did one become homeless, exactly?

Perhaps in her case it was easy to pinpoint
 
—she’d become homeless because she’d alienated everyone in her world. Connie and her mother. Boone, whose heart she’d handled with all the sensitivity of a bulldozer, not realizing how easily it might crumble in her grip. Maybe it had always been that fragile. She had just never realized her own power.

Even Jeremy hadn’t called her in nearly three days.

She stopped the merry-go-round
 
—her stomach had taken on the disposition of a beached lake trout
 
—and pushed off, slinking down into the soft sand. She scooped up a handful, let it run between her fingers, wincing at the memory of Davy’s wide eyes as Casey held a gun on him.

Dear Lord, what have I done?

She buried her face in her arms folded across her updrawn knees and closed her eyes, seeing Boone’s wounded expression as she’d left the car. As she’d told him no, even without words.

In the lot behind her, a car pulled in. For a wild moment, she hoped it might be Boone coming to look for her. But the car circled and drove away, ignoring the sobbing of the woman marooned on the Kellogg city beach.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

She turned at the voice, gentler than she’d expect from someone with his attire
 
—a pair of ragged jeans and an Army jacket.

The Kellogg hobo stared at her, concern in his eyes. “You’re bleeding.” He pointed to her forehead.

Huh? She lifted her hand to her head. Rubbed it. Sure enough, it came away red. Only . . . “No, it’s just paint.” Her tears had moistened the skin on her arm and smeared her body art bloodred. She stared at it, dark and oily on her hand. What had Stacey said about Dally’s motto?
“Every day the choices you make tell you who and what you are.”

Her choices had told her that she was a troublemaker. A woman who lived from one mistake to the next. Who messed up the lives of the people she loved. So much for being a new, different person, one who didn’t litter mistakes in her wake. Maybe Boone was right: she’d always be the girl from the past.

“You sure you’re okay?” The hobo was still standing over her. He appeared younger than she’d thought
 
—maybe in his early sixties, although his eyes seemed ancient.

“I . . . uh, yeah.” She dug into her pocket, held out the cash. “This is for you.”

He frowned at her.

“Please. I wish I had more.”

He nodded, and for a second she thought his gaze glistened in the moonlight.

“Thank you.” He took the money, considering her for a long moment. Then he pulled out a wadded handkerchief from his pocket. He barely looked at her as he handed it over. “To wash off the blood.”

She took it, feeling a sort of pity
 
—she wasn’t sure for whom
 
—as he shuffled away.

Maybe she didn’t want to wash it off. Maybe she wanted the reminder, just like Dally, of her mistakes. She stared at the painted mess on her arm. Another beautiful thing she’d destroyed.

“But it isn’t without struggle, hence the blood, despite the beauty.”

She shook her head, laying her head again into her hands, not caring that, thanks to the red and green paint, she’d probably end up looking bruised.

At least her outside would match her inside.

The wind shivered through the trees and prickled her skin as the lake turned inky.

Why was it so hard to get it right? Why did she have to end every day staring at the ceiling, cataloging her failures? Why did she always feel . . . less?

In her pocket, her cell phone vibrated. She fished it out and debated a long moment before she opened it. Her voice sounded more tired than she meant. “Hi, Jeremy.”

“Where are you?” His tone came out brisk, worried.

“Watching ducks waddle across the beach.”

Silence. “Lee called. Said you hadn’t been at the house for a while. He was worried.”

Lee was worried. At least someone cared if she ended up in the trunk of a car. She watched as the family of ducks meandered near, picking at the debris of the beach. They crossed into the limelight, then slipped into the watery trail of luminescence. The moon hovered just above the horizon, a brilliant orange ball shooting out a trail of light like a golden carpet, undeterred by the hiccups and ripples of the black terrain.

Beckoning.

“You okay, Sugar?”

“I don’t think I can do this, Jeremy.”

She closed her eyes, not sure how the words had edged out, but now that they had, feeling with them a sort of release. A comfortableness. Failure had become so safe, honed over years of quitting and moving on.

“What are you talking about?”

She drew a finger across the sand. “I think I need to leave.”

“PJ
 
—”

“No, listen, Jeremy. Two more days and Dally will testify. Even if someone figures out she’s gone, they won’t find you.
I
 don’t even know where you are.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I can’t do this job. I make mistakes everywhere I turn, accusing people, getting people into trouble. Boone’s right. I’m nothing but trouble.”

She heard him swallow on the other end. “Don’t do it, Princess.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not? That’s how I see you. I don’t know why you can’t accept it.”

“Because you don’t know me.”

“I don’t know the donut-throwing, karate-wannabe, former-accused-arsonist you? What you can’t accept is that I
do
know you. And I like you not
anyway
but
because
of the crazy you. And I believe in you, Sugar.”

She wiped her cheeks, probably smearing red paint down her face. “You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, yes I do.”

“You shouldn’t.”

Silence. “Tell me what happened.”

She stared out into the darkness, at the waves clawing the shore. It reminded her of the dream she’d had
 
—had it been over a week ago? How she’d been at the helm of the car, gunning after herself.

“Boris worked undercover for Boone, trying to solve that car-theft ring, and Casey found out and came after him, and he held up my family. Davy, at the end of a gun, again.”

Jeremy made a little noise that matched the pain in her heart.

“So Connie threw me out.”

“Oh, PJ, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you call me?”

She wrapped her hand around her ankle like the rope in the dream tethering her from her escape. “I was embarrassed. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure that Missy or Sammy didn’t kidnap me, which means there’s someone else after Dally
 
—in fact, it might even be her boyfriend, a guy named Roy or Guy. Gabby said she saw him a couple days ago. But . . . well, who knows, really, because Gabby could be dreaming the whole thing.”

“Dreaming it? What, is there something wrong with Gabby?”

“I think so. She thinks she lives in a movie.”

“Depends on which movie.”

“Jeremy . . .”

“Okay, so we’re sticking with depression. No humor for you.”

“Depression’s all I got. Why can’t I get this right? What is wrong with me?”

“Nothing. And everything. You’re human. And if you didn’t make a few mistakes, you wouldn’t need God, would you?”

She’d forgotten that Jeremy shared more than her profession and penchant for trouble. He also knew about forgiveness and what it felt like to be a person changed by grace, longing to live every moment for Christ. “Jeremy, how long have you been a Christian?”

“Long enough to know that whenever I think I’ve got it right, then I need to watch out. That’s usually a couple steps before I fall on my face.”

“And . . . then what?” Off in the distance, she made out the form of the hobo digging through the Dumpster next to Sunsets.

“Then you crawl on your knees to the throne of grace, because God loves you and wants to save you.”

She caught her breath. “Gabby said almost the same thing to me. ‘Draw with confidence to the throne of grace, because I promise you’ll find mercy.’ Only . . . why would God keep on bailing me out? Over and over and over. He’s got to be tired of me by now.”

Jeremy drew in a long breath. “God is totally
other
, PJ. He’s different from anything we have ever known. Which means you can’t base God’s actions on how you see yourself. You’re living as if you’re still chained to the past. Don’t you know you’re free? It’s time to lift your eyes off your failures and put them on the truth.”