Hot Water (9 page)

“Anyone have some water?” I asked as I began to undo her collar buttons.

“Stop! Don’t touch her with your filthy hands!” One of the men with her grabbed my arm, but Grandel’s security guy hauled him off me.

Morris crouched opposite me and handed me a bottle of water from his bag. “It’s not very cold, I’m afraid. I prefer my water at twenty-one degrees Celsius.”

“That’s fine, don’t worry.” I poured some water over her hair and clothing.

She was awake, watching me, although she still remained silent, but she nodded her head in thanks as I raised her head up with one hand and held the bottle to her lips with the other.

“You fainted,” I told her. “Probably the heat. Have you been drinking fluids? How long have you been out here?”

She swallowed hard but pushed my hand away when I tried to unbutton another button on her collar.

“I’m fine. Thank you.” Her voice was a soft murmur, but the man who’d yelled at me before heard her.

“Don’t you talk to my sister! Get your hands off her, you heathen whore!”

The woman broke eye contact, her cheeks flushing.

I bent close, pretending to steady her as she sat up, and whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ve been called worse.”

“The ambulance is coming,” Grandel said. “How is she?”

“I think she’ll be fine once she gets some fluids in her.” I looked around. The heat shimmered off the blacktop and stuck my jeans to my skin. I’d only been out here a few minutes—what must it be like to be out here all day? I turned to Grandel. “You need to have your people bring water out here for everyone. And a canopy to shelter them from the sun—”

To my surprise, Morris chimed in, “How about an evaporative cooler? I can easily rig one—”

“Morris, shut up.” Grandel jerked his head to the side, summoning me.

I didn’t like his imperative manner, but the woman was fine, so I waited a moment—just to piss him off—before joining him on the side of the road. We were on the side near the river, standing beneath a branch draped in more Spanish moss than a Christmas tree had icicles.

“What are you thinking?” Grandel’s voice was controlled but angry. “We’re not going to give these people water and air conditioning while they try to destroy my reputation.”

“It’s not your reputation, it’s your plant’s,” I reminded him.

“My future depends on this plant running smoothly without any more mishaps. Which is what I hired you for.” He didn’t look too happy about that employment choice right now.

“My point is, that reputation depends not on how good you are, but on how good you are perceived to be.” I tried to translate basic human nature into concepts he could understand—power, control, deception. “Treating these people with respect and common courtesy will go a long way to cementing a good impression of Colleton Landing.”

His face twisted as he looked out across the mud and water. The tide must have been out because there were about ten yards of mud between us and the water. Something moved in the mud under the shadow of a tree close to ours. Another alligator.

My nerves skittered with primeval flight or fight, but I forced myself to stand still. The gator didn’t care one way or the other. He merely oriented himself to keep us in sight, gave a shudder to splash more mud over his scales, and went back to his nap.

Grandel made up his mind, smiling and clapping me on the shoulder as if mugging for the cameras. “Okay, we’ll do it your way. But in the future, you come to me first. Don’t go shouting things out in public like that.”

“Of course.” All the better for him to grab the credit—but that’s what he was paying me for, so I held my tongue.

After dinner, alone in the summerhouse with Elizabeth—now David knew what a volcano felt like. Or the inside of a nuclear reactor like the kind his mom was getting to visit. So unfair.

His skin felt hot and stretched so tight he thought his feelings would burst right through it. His heart kept galloping away, and with it his ability to look at Elizabeth without his throat closing tight, threatening to choke him to death. He couldn’t speak. Not without his voice emerging high-pitched like a little girl’s and cracking.

It was torture sitting in his chair pretending to work on inking Captain Awesome’s latest adventure—saving a nuclear plant from meltdown—while Elizabeth curled up on the couch, surrounded by legal documents, her teeth nibbling at her lower lip as she flicked her pen back and forth. God, she was so pretty. What could he say to make her notice him?

“Interesting case?” he finally asked. Idiot. How lame was that. Of course it was interesting if it had her so absorbed.

“Huh-huh,” she made a noise without looking up at him.

“What’s it about?” His mom shared all her cases with him.

She glanced up at that, her brown hair falling into her face at the sudden movement. He wished he were close enough to touch her hair, maybe tuck it behind her ears like the cool guys in the movies always did. They never had to say anything, the girls just knew, and next thing they’d be together, kissing and hugging.

Not that he wanted to kiss Elizabeth. Well, maybe. No, probably not—from the movies and TV it looked complicated, like it would be so easy to mess it up if you didn’t know what you were doing.

“Sorry,” she said, answering a question he couldn’t remember asking. “Confidential.”

His face lit on fire so fast he was astonished his eyebrows weren’t singed off. “Oh. Of course. Sorry. I knew that.”

Lame, lame, lame. He sounded like a stupid little kid. Elizabeth was so smart, so beautiful. Of course she’d never notice him.

Then came the
coup de grace
. She smiled at him—not the good, “I like you” smile that he wanted to see, but more the “that’s okay, you’re just a child” smile that his mother sometimes gave him and he despised.

She went back to her files and he melted into his chair, completely demolished.

All he wanted to do was talk with her—but how?

He couldn’t ask Ty. He’d seen Ty around women and he wasn’t exactly smooth. Especially not around David’s mom. Ty would usually just stand there watching, waiting for a chance to take action. Besides, Ty might tell his mom.

Jeremy. Jeremy would know. Jeremy was one of those guys who could talk to anyone. Within five minutes you felt like you’d been best friends for life.

“I’m going up to the house, say goodnight to Gram Flora,” he announced, cringing as his voice cracked.

Elizabeth didn’t even look up. “That’s nice. I’ll be here, ready to tuck you in when you get back.”

Tuck him in? She did think he was a baby. Not even his mom tucked him in anymore.

He needed help. Desperately. Jeremy was his only hope.

TEN

By the time the ambulance arrived, the woman was fine and refused transport—or rather the men with her refused for her. I was about to intervene but she warned me off with a glance that said she’d end up in more trouble if I made a fuss, then she signed the papers the paramedics gave her.

The rest of the crowd had pretty much dispersed—some were enjoying cold refreshments under a bright blue awning that Grandel’s security guys had conjured up while the rest had driven off. Grandel had dropped his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a lemonade, and began working the crowd with the charm and zeal of a politician running for office.

Morris ended up at my side, watching his brother from the shade of a live oak—on the other side of the road from the river and its alligators. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to show you around the plant today.”

“That’s okay.” Grandel had the crowd laughing. Morris nodded his head, beaming like a proud parent. “Are you older or younger than he is?”

It was hard to tell Morris’s age—his face was creaseless, his hair hung thick and full with the overdue for a haircut swing of a college student. And he seemed so much more relaxed than Owen.

“Older. By three years. But we watch out for each other.”

I squinted in the bright sunshine slanted low through the trees as the sun began to set, reappraising Morris. “Your brother said you run the plant?”

“Yes ma’am. But without Owen everything around here would fall apart.”

Owen certainly made it clear that he agreed with that sentiment. “Is that because Owen designed it?”

Morris looked down, shuffled his feet in the red clay dust. “Actually, I designed it. But Owen got it built. Without him, this place would just be some sketches on the back of napkins.”

Now I really didn’t like the way Owen treated his older brother—taking credit for his work, acting like Morris was some kind of charity case that he’d given a job to. It was clear that Morris was different—not Asperger’s, not exactly, more like socially inept and uncomfortable. He kind of reminded me of me, in fact.

It was also clear he was absolutely devoted to his younger brother—something I was certain Owen manipulated as easily as he had manipulated me into taking this job.

“Morris, do you think I could get that tour tomorrow?”

He turned to me, startled, his face lighting up in a way that made me think of David. I had the sudden urge to call home and check on him, see what adventures the day had brought—if he was speaking to me again.

“I would love to give you a tour, AJ.”

Morris headed back to work. A guard drove up with another dark SUV—this was my car to use for the duration, he explained as he had me sign forms in triplicate before giving me the keys. He’d also drawn a map to my accommodations and transferred my luggage to the rear of the SUV.

“Here are your security badges for re-entry. They will only get you to the front gate, then you’ll be given an entrance pass. No cell phones, electronics, or recording devices of any kind are allowed past the entrance. Mr. Grandel is expecting you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

He was gone before I could thank him. Grandel was still entertaining the masses, embracing his new role as gracious host. I decided I’d get out of the heat and my sweaty clothes, clean up, wade through the reams of research Grandel had given me, and call it a day.

David rolled into Flora’s kitchen without knocking—they were family, and family didn’t need to knock, she’d taught him. Which was kinda weird because he still knocked when he visited his grandfather, Mr. Masterson, and his mom always knocked at her folks’ house and her mom or dad would come out on the porch to talk, never ask her inside. But when they went to visit Ty’s mom, they’d walk right on in just like at Flora’s.

As much as David had spent his whole life wishing for one, sometimes having a family was very confusing.

The kitchen was dark except for the red-tinged light from the setting sun streaking through the lace curtains over the sink. David turned on the light. Flora’s kitchen was the heart of the house, taking up the entire back half of the first floor. There was a huge fireplace at one end, flanked by two comfortable overstuffed rocking chairs and tables. Most nights that’s where Flora could be found, knitting and listening to an audio book, while Jeremy read nursing journals or worked on his laptop.

The room was empty. The dinner dishes sat in a sink filled with water—even though Jeremy had started them over an hour ago when he’d shooed Elizabeth and David away, saying he’d clean up.

A hollow echo began to drum through David. Jeremy was a total neat freak—a product of being a nurse and living with a blind woman—and he’d never leave the dishes half done.

“Hello?” David called. His voice bounced back from the walls without any answer.

He rolled forward. A gallon of milk had been left out on the kitchen counter alongside Flora’s insulin bottles. The insulin belonged in the refrigerator—which stood ajar, cold air from it coaxing goose bumps from David’s arms despite the hot night.

“Jeremy? Gram Flora?” He was yelling now, not caring who he disturbed.

The dining room was also empty. If David couldn’t find them downstairs, he’d have to go get Elizabeth—the steps up to the second floor were too steep for him to try himself.

He wheeled through to the living room—the parlor, Flora called it. Jeremy lay half on the sofa, half off, one arm flung over his face as if hiding. He was snoring. An overturned bottle lay on the floor beside him, empty. David wrinkled his nose and spotted a puddle of vomit staining Flora’s prized rag-rug below Jeremy.