Sloth (15 page)

“Gimme a break, kid.” The guy leaned against the truck, casually letting his jacket fall open to reveal the holster strapped underneath. It wasn’t holding a Taser gun. “You think I’m out here in Crapville, USA, for my health?
They pay plenty to run punks like you off the property— so I’m telling you. Get.”

“No one lives here anymore,” Reed pointed out.

“Don’t mean no one owns it.” He glanced up at the deserted mansion and scowled. “And the guy who does is plenty pissed off. There’ve been some break-ins—but I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, eh?”

Reed just stared blankly at him.

“Yeah. Of course not. But now I’m here, and I’ve got my instructions.”

“Yeah?”

“No lurkers. No prowlers. No squatters. No punks.” He squinted into the truck and stared pointedly at a glass pipe that had rolled onto the floor. “I don’t care which one you are. Just get going and don’t come back.”

“Or what?” Reed asked, something in him spoiling for a fight. “You’ll call in the real cops?”

“Don’t need ‘em,” the guy said, ambling away from the window. But he didn’t head back to his car—instead, he circled the front of the truck and, looking up to give Reed a jaunty grin, smashed in the front headlight.

“Dude! What the hell are you doing?”

“Take my advice, kid. Just get out of here,” the guy yelled, waving with his arm still and his fingers glued together in the universal sign for buh-bye. “Just drive away and don’t look back.”

“Harper, can you come down here for a second?” Her mother’s normally lilting voice had a steely undertone that suggested her options were limited.

“Great, more family together time,” Harper muttered,
burned out on bonding after a night that had already included ice-cream sundaes and four rounds of Boggle. Ever since the accident her parents had gone into maximum overdrive on the TLC front—failing to realize that, to Harper, tender loving care involved a few drinks, a sugar high, and plenty of uninterrupted alone time. Tonight the plan had been simple: barricade herself in her room, blast some Belle and Sebastian, bury her head under a pillow, and try to plan out her next step. She’d been a master strategist, once, and though it seemed like too long ago to remember, she was certain the skills had just gone into hibernation, waiting for a more hospitable climate before they re-emerged to save her. Family fun time didn’t fit into her schedule.

“What?” she grunted as she trudged down the stairs. She stopped, midway down, catching sight of Kane’s smooth hair and smoother style. He gave her a reptilian grin, then offered her parents a far warmer expression, compassion oozing from every orifice.

“It’s just so good to see her up and around again,” he told her parents, as if she weren’t even in the room.

“Yes,
she’s
thrilled to pieces,” Harper said dryly. “What the hell do you want?”

“Harper!” Her mother shot her a scandalized look. Much as Harper despised the depths to which her family had sunk over the generations, from American-style royalty (read: outrageously wealthy with an attitude to match) to middle-middle-class plodders carrying the torch of small-town mediocrity, Amanda Grace hated it more. So much so that she refused to acknowledge that the family she’d married into no longer guarded the flame of civility amongst
the heathens of the wild west. “People look to us,” she’d often told a young Harper, lost in delusions of mannered grandeur, “and it’s important we live up to expectations.” Miss Manners had nothing on Amanda Grace; Emily Post would have been booted from the house for rude behavior. And a solicitous attitude toward guests, from visiting dignitaries (in her dreams) to collection agencies (a walking, and frequent, nightmare) was rule number one. Apparently even in her fragile, post-invalid state, Harper was still expected to abide by the Grace code of etiquette.

“As I was saying, Kane, it’s so lovely of you to drop by,” her mother said, placing a deceptively firm hand on Harper’s shoulder. “Isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” Harper echoed. Her mother got a dutiful smile; Kane got the death glare.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?” her mother asked, releasing her grip.

“Fine.” Harper scowled; if only everyone would stop asking her that a hundred times a day, maybe she’d actually have a prayer of it being true. Though that was doubtful, she conceded. How fine could she be when the most important moment of her life was lost in some fog of for-getfulness and the only glimpses her memory chose to grant her were the ones that proved she probably didn’t deserve to live?

“That’s great!” Amanda Grace turned to Kane.” I think it’s a fine idea, then, as long as you don’t have her out too late.”

“Excuse me?” Harper snapped. “Could everyone stop talking about me like I’m invisible and—” She caught sight of her mother’s face and forced herself to soften her tone. “What’s a fine idea,
Kane?
’

”Well, Harper—” He winked at her, acknowledgment of the fact that he almost never used her first name and its appearance only confirmed that everything following would be a show put on for the sake of her parents. “I was just telling your parents that I thought you might enjoy it if I took you out for some coffee—”

“Decaf,” her father interjected.

“Right, of course, decaf.” Kane shrugged and gave everyone an “Aw shucks, aren’t I a heck of a guy” look. “You’ve been cooped up in the house for so long, and we get so little chance to catch up in school, that I thought it might be nice. As long as your parents are okay with it, of course.”

“It’s quite refreshing,” her father said, beaming. “Most of the time, you kids just dash off to some place or another and no one knows what the hell”—this time her father was the one who drew the patented Amanda glare—“I mean, heck, you’re up to. I hope you know what a good friend you’ve got here, Harp. I think this one’s a keeper.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly what I’ve got here,” Harper said through gritted teeth.
Nice job with the Eddie Haskell impression
, she thought.
I’m suffocating in smarm
. Kane always boasted he could read minds—let him read that.

“I’m kind of tired, actually,” she said, faking a yawn. “I was thinking I’d just stay here tonight . . .”

“You’re spending too much time up in your room,” her mother said, and behind the polite facade Harper could read real concern in her voice. “It’ll be good for you to get out. Get back to—”

“Okay. Okay, fine, whatever,” Harper cut in, knowing
that if one more person suggested that things could ever be normal again, she might spit, or scream, or simply collapse, any one of which was definitely a Grace etiquette don’t. With a sigh, she slipped into a pair of green flip-flops and grabbed a faded gray hoodie from the closet. Her mother hated it—so much the better.

“Now, remember, don’t be back too late,” Amanda Grace reminded them as Kane escorted her out, hands tightly gripping her arm and waist.

“So now you’re kidnapping me?” Harper asked, as soon as they were safely in the car. “General havoc and mischief making getting too boring for you, so you’re moving on to felonies?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kane said, in his parent-proof, silky smooth voice. “I just wanted to spend some time with my good friend Harper, who’s so recently been having such a tough time of it.” There was a pause, then, “Oof!”

Kane talked tough, but shove a sharp elbow into his gut and he’d fold like a poker player with no face cards.

“What the hell was that for?” he asked, rubbing his side and giving her a wounded look. “You know I bruise easily.”

“Gosh, I’m awfully sorry,” Harper whined, pouring on some false solicitation of her own. “Whatever was I thinking?” Then she whacked him in the chest. “What the hell were you thinking? Since when do you ask my parents for my hand in coffee?”

“If I called and asked if you wanted to go out tonight, what would you have said?”

“You’re assuming I would have picked up the phone?”

”Exactly,” he concluded in an irritatingly reasonable voice. “You would have made the wrong choice. Again. So this time, I decided not to give you one.”

“Fine.” Harper leaned back against the seat and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “So where are you taking me? Bourquin’s, at least? I can’t drink that shit coffee they have at the diner.”

He shook his head. “Guess again.”

“So not in the mood for games, Kane. And you know exactly why.”

“This isn’t a game, Grace—you’re the one who hasn’t figured that out yet. You’ll see where we’re going soon enough.”

She crossed her arms and turned toward the window. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

They drove in silence for several minutes. The radio might at least have lightened things up or offered them something neutral to argue about, but Kane made no move to switch it on and Harper wasn’t about to do anything that might signify her willing participation in this ridiculous adventure.

They swung into a small parking lot and Kane turned off the car. “We’re here.”

“And where is . . . oh.” They had pulled up in front of a large, boxy building, its face a windowless wall of institutional gray. A single door, also gray, stood square in the middle, and over it hung a neon blue-and-white sign that would have been enough to scare away most visitors if the decor hadn’t already done the job: POLICE.

“What the hell is this, Kane?” Harper’s eyes flicked
toward her bag, half expecting her phone to ring as if Detective Wells, who’d already left four or five messages for her over the course of the day, could somehow sense that she was nearby. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to call— Harper turned back to the window, gaze fixed on the solid-looking door, wondering if it would swing open. Who would they send out to escort her inside, where she belonged? “Why would you bring me here?”

Kane shrugged, but this time there was nothing
aw-shucks
about it. “You’re the one who said you wanted to talk to the cops. I thought I’d help you out. You want to confess your sins? You want to ruin your life? Go ahead.”

“This isn’t how it works,” she retorted, struggling against encroaching panic. “This isn’t—what do you want me to do, just march in there and say, ‘Hey, just FYI, I was the one driving the car’?”

“You don’t think they’d be interested to hear it?”

“This is what you want me to do?” Harper asked, her hand gripping the door handle.

“Isn’t it what you want to do?” Kane sneered.

“It’s the right thing. . . .”

“Absolutely. So go ahead.”

“I’m just not . . .”

“No time like the present, Grace.” Kane opened his own door—and at the sound of the latch releasing and the outside air rushing in, Harper almost gasped. “I’ll go with you, if you want. Should be quite a show.”

She couldn’t say anything; she didn’t move.

“What are you waiting for? They’re right inside, just—”

“Stop!” she shouted, slapping her hand over her eyes so he wouldn’t see the tears. “Why are you doing this?”

He slammed the door. “Why are you doing this?” he shouted, and it was the first time she could remember ever hearing him raise his voice. “What the hell are you trying to do to yourself?”

“What do you care?” she mumbled, still hiding her face.

“This is real, Harper. Look out there.” When she didn’t move, he grabbed her hands roughly and pulled them away from her eyes, jerking her head toward the police station. “
Look
. This isn’t
Law & Order
. This is your life.”

“It was her life, too,” Harper said, almost too softly to hear.

“You don’t know what happened,” Kane said in an almost bored voice, as if he’d gotten tired of ticking off the items on the list. He’d stopped shouting and had released his grip on Harper’s wrists, and was now staring straight ahead, his hands loosely resting on the wheel. “You don’t remember anything about the accident—” She tried to interrupt, but he talked over her. “
Except
a few things you
think
you remember but could just be part of some Vicodin-induced nightmare.”

“Percodan,” she corrected him.

“Whatever. Okay, so you were driving. So what? There were drugs in your system—you don’t know how they got there. You were going somewhere—you don’t know where. Kaia’s fingerprints were found all over that perv’s apartment after he turned up with his head beat in—you don’t know why. Another car forced you off the road— you don’t know who. You don’t know anything except that if you tell them you were behind that wheel, they’ll crucify you.”

“I know it’s my fault,” she said stubbornly.

”You don’t know anything” he repeated loudly, over-enunciating each syllable.

And I
can’t stand it
, she admitted, but only to herself.

“I’m not saying we can’t figure it out,” he suggested, turning toward her and slinging his arm across the back of her seat. “Do some investigating, poke around—you and me against the world, like the good old days?”

“So this isn’t
Law & Order
, but now you want me to go all Veronica Mars on you?” Harper asked wryly.

“That’s kind of a chick show.” Kane smirked. “I was thinking more CSI. Or Scooby-Doo . . . you’d look pretty smoking in that purple dress, and I don’t know”—he peered at himself in the rearview mirror—”think I could pull off an ascot?”