Feverish (Bullet #3) (3 page)

There was no answer, so he washed the shampoo
out quickly and shut off the water, grabbing for the towel hanging
next to the tub.
Stupid.
Someday he’d quit showering with
the door open. He was seriously vulnerable. He wrapped the towel
around his waist. It was probably psycho Tatiana ready to exact
some revenge. “Who’s there?” Still no answer. He had to find
something to use as a weapon, but he didn’t think he had much of
anything in the bathroom to use. The toilet plunger maybe—at least
he could use it to keep a little distance between him and someone
else. First, though, he slammed the bathroom door and locked it.
Then he dried his legs and worked his dirty jeans back on. He was
going to unleash his motherfucking wrath on whatever asshole had
made him put those goddamned jeans back on. He dried his hair off
some too to keep it from dripping, but he had to get out there and
find out what the hell was going on. He got in the little closet in
the bathroom and pulled out the plunger. Then he walked to the door
and quietly unlocked it. Strange—he couldn’t hear anything in the
other room, even though it was obvious someone had to be there.

He took a deep breath and yanked the door
open, hoping to use the element of surprise to his advantage. He
waved the plunger around, taking in the entire sunlit room, but saw
nothing. He looked at the CD player. Someone had turned it off. He
felt all the more resolved to find out what was going on. It could
still be Mary. Maybe she’d already gathered up some laundry and was
in the basement washing some clothes. That would explain why he
couldn’t hear her. It
had
to be her. She bitched constantly
about his music.

Hah. How’d she think he could pay her fucking
salary?

He smiled. He thought part of her actually
liked it. She was a sweet little thing, and if she wasn’t married
and ten years his senior, he’d consider sweeping her off her feet.
They had a playful banter. They both acted irritated with each
other, but it was evident they liked each other immensely. He took
a deep breath and considered setting the plunger down, but he
wasn’t convinced his housekeeper was here yet. He took tentative
steps through his bedroom, then the living room and the kitchen,
and then he opened the door to the basement, expecting to see
Mary’s short round body down there. “Mary? You there?”

But she wasn’t. In fact, he was starting to
think there was no one anywhere in his house. He walked halfway
down the stairs to the basement, just to be sure, but she wasn’t
down there. She usually turned the lights on down there anyway,
even when she didn’t need them during the day, but they were off.
When he walked back upstairs, he checked the rest of the rooms and
the locks on the door. Nothing, nobody.

So maybe it was a breaker problem. Where the
hell were the breakers? Oh, yeah, downstairs. He walked back to the
basement door and went downstairs again. The breaker box was
located in a corner past the dryer. He flipped the light switch so
he could see the breakers in the corner and no light came on.

Hmm.

The basement light surely wasn’t on the same
circuit that his stereo was on. That made him wonder if the power
was off. He walked back out the door and flipped the light switch
to the kitchen. It didn’t turn on either. Just as a last
reassurance, he opened the refrigerator door and found
confirmation. No light, no fan.

He needed to call the power company and see
if there was some weird electricity outage in his neighborhood. He
couldn’t remember where he’d put his cell phone, so he looked all
through the living room, on end tables, under furniture, inside
cushions. He’d never had a landline put in, much to Mary’s chagrin,
and this was the only time since he’d moved here that he wished
he’d done it. He considered walking to a neighbor’s house, but they
weren’t huge Jet fans.

Finally, Clay went back in his bedroom and
looked around, but it wasn’t there either. Then he remembered. It
had been in the back pocket of last night’s jeans, and they were
still in his music room. He hustled to the other end of the house
to the most important room in it—the one that held his prize
possessions—his guitars, amps, pedals, and everything else that
went with his musical life. Carm—er, Tatiana had asked to see some
of his guitars, and she’d attacked him shortly after he’d started
playing a riff from Last Five Second’s first single. And there they
were, in the middle of the floor.
Please let it be
there.

And it was. It was even halfway charged. Then
he realized he didn’t have the phone number to the power company.
So he pulled up the browser on his phone to search the internet. He
couldn’t remember the name of the power company, though, anymore
than he’d been able to remember Tatiana’s name. In his defense,
however, the power company had been taken over by a new company
just a few months ago.

He sighed, feeling frustrated. He knew he had
a phone book somewhere, but damned if he knew where it was. He knew
Mary would have put it somewhere that seemed logical to her. Then
it dawned on him. Their phone number would
have
to be on his
bill. So he’d have to go into his office where all that crap
was.

He walked farther down the hall to the small
room he’d converted into an office. It had a desk and chairs, some
bookshelves, and a filing cabinet. That was it as far as furniture
went. He opened the door and spied the rather large pile of mail on
the desk. When the hell had it grown so large? This wasn’t
good.

He forced himself to walk all the way inside
and sit down. Caring enough to pay bills had never been Clay’s
forte. It used to be that he didn’t have enough money to stretch,
and he’d do the best he could. Nowadays, he had plenty of money but
wasn’t organized enough—didn’t give enough of a shit, even—to make
sure they got paid. Sure, there were also flyers and magazines and
letters in the pile, but it was mostly bills.

Shit.

He started sifting through the pile. Mary
used to stack the mail neatly but realized that as soon as Clay got
his hands on it, it would crumble into a mess anyway, so she
stopped bothering. As he started looking at one envelope after
another, he was pretty sure the stuff on top was newest. Visa,
cable, water (he was starting to feel relief that he’d bought his
car outright), gas, and
aha
! The electric bill. Oh, that
wasn’t good. The envelope looked normal, except on the front it
said, “Important Notice.” He’d been here before. Paired with the
fact that the bill peeking through the plastic window was printed
on yellow paper meant only one thing: the bill was overdue.

Fuck.

He opened the bill and let out a long sigh.
He felt like cursing, but it wouldn’t do any good. Sure enough,
that damned bill said that if they hadn’t received payment by April
nineteenth, his power would be shut off. It went on to mention that
he’d have to pay fees to reconnect, late fees, and the original
amount, blah, blah, blah. But maybe he still had time. He couldn’t
remember what day it was.

He pressed a button on his phone and read the
date. Well, that had been wishful thinking. Today was April
twentieth, which meant he was officially fucked. He sighed. He’d
have to get a shirt and shoes on and drive to the power company
before five o’clock. He shook his head and shuffled to the bedroom
so he could comb his hair and finish dressing. Time to play grownup
for a while.

Chapter Two

EMILY BRINKMAN TWIRLED her straw in the glass
of iced tea, trying not to tune her dad out. The man meant well,
and she was very lucky to have him in her life. She should have
been putting the finishing touches on her capstone project for
school, not chewing the fat with her dad. Well, she knew damn good
and well she would have been hanging with her boyfriend Bryce if
she hadn’t been with her dad. The project was good to go. She was
just fretting over it now.

Her dad had been waxing poetic over the
chicken wings, telling her how proud he was that she was going to
be graduating with her MBA in just a couple of weeks. He knew how
hard she’d worked on it and, even though she was going to have a
pile of student loans (and he also promised to help her pay them),
he hoped she’d felt as though her education had been worth the hard
work and sacrifice. Yeah, it had been. She knew that degree was
going to be worth every penny. She already had several companies
fighting over her, but she didn’t know that she wanted to go
straight into the corporate world after graduation. She instead
wanted to play a little, kind of like Bryce was going to do. Bryce
would be working for his father’s corporation beginning August
first, but before that, he and three of his closest buddies were
going to travel Europe.

Emily knew she could have pushed the issue.
She could have made Bryce feel guilty about not taking her, but she
knew she didn’t want to be the one female surrounded by all that
testosterone. Really, this was Bryce’s extended bachelor party. No,
they hadn’t set a date. He hadn’t even given her an engagement
ring. Their first goal had been to get through school, and they
were almost there. It was a done deal, though. Every time Emily
visited his parents’ house in Cherry Creek, his mother grilled her
for details about what she wanted their wedding to be like. Emily
didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that her own father was
firmly rooted in middle-class finances. He wouldn’t be able to
afford the kind of wedding Bryce’s mother envisioned. So she
imagined she and Bryce would live together a year or two and save
up enough so they could pay for that wedding.

In the meantime, though, Emily’s dad was
still talking. She managed to tune back in. He said, “Em, I know it
probably doesn’t make much sense to you, but I won’t worry about
you as long as Bryce is in your life.”

“Oh, come on, dad. I don’t
need
a
man.”

“I know, honey, but you’re all I’ve got, and
I worry about you.”

She smiled and patted his hand. “I survived
college, didn’t I?”

His mouth turned up at one corner but he
nodded. Her father had been her anchor her entire life. He’d never
remarried after her mother had passed away.
Passed away
made
it sound so peaceful, but it really hadn’t been. Her mother had
been in a horrible car accident, a tiny car in the middle of a
stack on the highway between Monument and Denver one snowy January.
Emily had been eight, so she’d missed out on all the things her
friends got from their mothers—the talks about menstruation,
pimples, and boys. Fortunately, her friends’ mothers understood
that and included Emily in on their talks. It wasn’t the same,
though, but Emily didn’t fault her dad for that. He’d done the best
he could.

“Yes, you did. But I’m your father, and it’s
my job to worry.” He smiled at his daughter. She noticed how the
crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes had grown more prominent
over the last few years, and his hair had turned a salt-and-pepper
color. Maybe her going to school really had been harder on him than
she’d thought. “I just wanted you to know I think Bryce is a good
choice for a husband, Em. No, you don’t need my blessing, but you
have it just the same.”

Yes, Bryce was an excellent choice for a
husband…which was why she’d stuck by him long after the initial
spark had fizzled. Honestly, the only thing they had in common was
their degree—both were going into business. Aside from that, they
were night and day. He was from a well-to-do family and he had an
older brother and younger sister; Emily was from a down-to-earth
middle-class family that consisted of herself and her father. Her
dad’s brother also had a family, but they lived in Delaware and
Emily and her father didn’t have much opportunity to visit. They
were like an island unto themselves. Her father had always been
heavily involved in his church, though, and they were like a second
family to him, and Emily had gotten the idea that he might be
interested in a woman who’d started attending a few months ago. She
couldn’t get him to talk about it, though.

That was fair, she guessed, because he
couldn’t get her to talk much about Bryce, either. She knew her dad
worried about her, rational or not, and she wanted to remove that
concern. She’d known from the first that her dad liked Bryce. Her
dad wasn’t much for airs or titles, but Bryce was a bit of a
charismatic smooth talker, and he’d wormed his way into her
father’s heart. In fact, he’d been the first guy to do so, and
Emily was convinced it was because her father saw what Bryce could
do for her.

Over the years too, Emily had been an outside
observer with her friends’ families. Their parents seemed happy and
content, and one by one, over the years, those marriages crumbled.
The first was Sam, a girl she’d lost touch with once they entered
high school, but Sam’s parents split in the third grade. They were
young and Sam didn’t understand it much (nor did Em), but there was
a vague impression that there was another woman in the picture. Her
other elementary school friend Tracy’s mom had been single from the
get go. Then in middle school, her new friend Kim’s parents got a
divorce. In high school, one by one, she saw the rest of them
happen. If the original parents were still together, they split up
sometime during those four years. She knew two—
two!
—people
whose parents were still committed to each other and their family
was intact. There were others who’d remarried since splitting in
the younger years. Some of them had much more successful marriages
the second time around, but a few did not. Emily still believed she
would have rather weathered a divorce than lose her mom in a
tragedy, but she suspected, deep in her heart, that her parents’
marriage wouldn’t have lasted any better than those of her
friends.