Stay (Dunham series #2) (7 page)

“Well, you’re probably right about that, but until I
decide to get on the wagon, you don’t breathe a word.”

She signaled a server to take the food out to the
grand parlor so Knox wouldn’t try to carry it himself. “So.
Dad
. You think you can handle the phones and play chess at
the same time?”

He smirked. “Yeah, I think so. Give my love to
Laura.”

“Sure thing.”

* * * * *

7: Low-Rent Rendezvous

By mid-afternoon, the office teemed and thrummed
with the comings and goings of attorneys, county deputies, Kansas
City cops, state troopers, criminals, and witnesses—

—just another day in a prosecutor’s office.

Eric sat at Knox’s—
his
—desk sorting through a
handful of very old résumés and wondered if he should try to get in
touch with any of these people.

A state trooper burst through his door, dragging a
blond twelve-year-old boy who turned the air blue with profanities
he’d learned direct from his mother and grandmother. Eric sighed
and pointed to one of the wooden chairs in front of his desk.

The officer snarled at the boy and cuffed him to the
chair without having to be told. With one slap upside the kid’s
head, he stalked out, his dignity offended by having to wrestle
with the brat.

The boy spat at Eric, but it missed his mark; it was
an old tactic and every cop knew to park the kid far enough away
from any available human target.

“What’d you do this time, Junior?”

His nostrils flared. “Fuck you, Cipriani,” he
returned. As usual.

What a waste of skin, doomed from birth. It wasn’t
the kid’s fault; he hadn’t chosen his family. When he still
wouldn’t answer the question, Eric went back to reading résumés,
knowing his phone would ring at any moment—

“Cipriani.”

“I want to file charges on that boy of yours.”

Eric sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, not
bothering to correct the assertion, considering “that boy of yours”
was county shorthand for “Simone Whittaker’s kid, you know, the kid
with the same name as the prosecutor.”

Yes, it is true that Simone Whittaker had a son
approximately nine months after I left for college and claims that
I am his father. DNA testing has confirmed that I am not. Your
press kit includes copies of the lab tests and all court documents,
including his original and amended birth certificates.

“Do something with him. That’s the fifth time in two
months he’s taken off with something he could pawn.”

“What was it this time?”

“Brand new CB radio.”

“They still make those?”

“Eric!”

“Sam, I don’t even know why you bother calling. Just
send me the damned bill. As usual.”

He hung up and looked at the boy, who stared off to
his left, out the window at the bleakness of winter. He did that a
lot, Eric had noticed, as if he were far away, perhaps on a pirate
ship or the space shuttle on his way to Mars. Maybe in a car
running two hundred on a NASCAR track or pumping a bicycle in
France, a hundred other cyclists on his tail. He remembered those
fantasies, the escape, the need to get away from his life. Too bad
the kid couldn’t read; there were whole libraries available to lose
himself in.

Thirty-two-year-old Eric Cipriani looked at the
twelve-year-old Eric Cipriani, wondering how many more
Whittaker-spawned issues would crop up today.

“I hate your mother,” Eric said matter-of-factly.
That got the kid’s attention and his eyes narrowed at him. “Look,
tell me what you need. I’ll give it to you. Food? Money? Clothes? A
place to stay besides juvie? What? Just tell me.”

He stared at Eric stonily.

“Dammit. What do I have to do to get you to act like
a normal human being? You can
not
keep stealing shit to pawn,
and I’m about this close to getting social services out to your
house.”

The kid swallowed, but otherwise showed no
reaction.

Eric sighed. “Better the devil you know, eh?”

Eric Junior still wouldn’t answer, but Eric knew.
Living with Simone and LaVon had to be hell, but at least it was
familiar. And Eric Senior had to tread lightly; his life was
inextricably woven with those women’s lives. Any action he took
against them, legal or otherwise, could be seen as retaliatory—and
he was in the power position in a county with a corrupt
reputation.

It would look bad and for the sake of his career,
Eric couldn’t allow himself to get caught up in their drama any
more than they forced him to.

“Deputy!” he bellowed finally, and a deputy showed
up in a moment or two. He gestured to Junior, and the deputy
unlocked the bracelets to haul him off to the juvenile facility,
not a word between them.

None were necessary, but the baleful glance the boy
shot back at Eric made him catch his breath with the memory of a
little girl who had looked at him that way long ago. Her eyes were
just that color of brilliant turquoise and told him everything that
was in her heart.

Please talk to me. Please don’t make me go back home
to my mother and my sister with nothing to show for what I did for
you.

Guilt hit him in the same place it always did, low
in his gut, sharp, a white-hot fire poker piked into his belly.

He hated dealing with Simone’s kid. Two or three
times a week, he lived through the day he had walked away from his
savior, the little girl who’d begged for some acknowledgment from
the big badass of Chouteau High. He owed her so much, not the least
of which a simple “thank you,” but he’d turned his back on her, too
humiliated that a twelve-year-old girl had done what no one else
could or would, too afraid to talk to her in case someone accused
him of rape again, too aware that she had saved his life—

It never went away, that vile concoction of shame
and regret, humiliation and fervent gratitude that had pooled in
the bottom of his soul for the last thirteen years.

That kid needed something from him or he wouldn’t go
to such lengths to get his attention, but Eric couldn’t figure it
out. Apparently, he continued to fail whatever test the boy kept
giving him and it frustrated Eric to no end, but if he wouldn’t
speak . . .

Eric’s phone rang again. He didn’t have to wonder
who would call so soon after his namesake’s arrest, but he checked
the name on the display anyway.

“LaVon, good afternoon,” he said, affecting a cheer
he didn’t feel. “Why are you up so early? Shouldn’t you be hung
over or something?”

“You half-breed bastard,” she snarled at him.

“Have I thanked you yet today, LaVon?”

Nothing else drove Simone and LaVon Whittaker madder
than when he rubbed their noses in the fact that their machinations
had only served to make him fairly powerful.

“Oh, fuck you.”

“So are you calling about the press conference or
Satanette’s spawn?”

“What’d you do with him?”

“You know where he is and you know I’m going to keep
him at least overnight.”

“You think he can suck you off
all
night?”

Eric yawned.

“Simone’s on her way up there to get him and you
better have him ready.”

“LaVon, you know the drill. He stays until I say he
can go.”

He hung up in the middle of one of her tirades
questioning his parentage, which wasn’t an entirely unreasonable
thing for her to question. He questioned it often enough
himself.

Another knock at his door and Eric looked up to see
his youngest prosecutor poke her head in his door. “Simone’s
here.”

No shit.
“Get rid of her.”

“Eric, let me get a restraining order on her and be
done with it.”

Eric cocked an eyebrow at her. She sighed and
disappeared, closing the door behind her. Poor Lesley, always
having to deal with Simone and LaVon Whittaker since Justice had
passed that chore onto Adam, who had passed it on as soon as he
could get away with it. It’d always been the low man’s job.

He heard Lesley’s stern voice, then the inevitable
screeching. She had little patience for the entire business and
would have Simone dragged out by a deputy the minute Simone dropped
the first F-bomb, which usually took under ten seconds.

Eric shook his head and wondered what it would take
to get Simone Whittaker out of his life, then decided that nothing
short of her death could solve the problem.

* * * * *

8: Needs Must, When the Devil Drives

April 2009

Vanessa looked at the printout of the obituary Knox
had sent to her via email with the entire message in the subject
line:

GO TO THIS

There were very few things in which he brooked no
argument and she knew from experience that this would be one of
them. She nearly told him where to shove it, but his head would
explode and that would not be pretty.

Knox’s motives bothered her. He never had just one
reason for anything he did and he almost never explained himself
beforehand, so she could only assume he had put some scheme into
motion that involved more than simply attending a funeral.

Well. If he had any bright ideas about using
Simone’s death to force Vanessa back to Chouteau County so Eric
could conveniently run into her, then she would make sure that
backfired on him.

There were ways around Knox Hilliard.

When she’d finished packing a duffle and garment
bag, she clattered down the stairs and out the front door of her
cottage. She had packed carefully, as she had very little trunk
room and absolutely nowhere to hang her garment bag. She briefly
considered hitching the trailer to her car, but then decided that
wouldn’t be necessary for a short stay in a town where she wouldn’t
be socializing.

Had to be on a weekend, too.

Dammit.

Well, better now, in April, than June, she supposed.
Whittaker House had no guests other than her permanent residents.
Nash had holed himself up in his suite for the past week “to work,”
he said (whatever that meant), and would not tolerate disruptions
other than room service. Her only concern was for Friday and
Saturday dinner and how her absence would affect the mood of the
diners who came as much for Vanessa’s celebrity as her food.

She went to her office to make a to-do list for
Knox, hoping he could plow through some of it.

“Damn,” she muttered when she checked her calendar.
“He’ll have to go to that zoning meeting by himself if I’m not
back.” That wouldn’t earn her any points with the zoning board,
considering a special meeting of the county government had to be
called every time Vanessa wanted to do so much as plant a daisy.
Everyone loved Knox, true, but Vanessa was the face of and driving
force behind Whittaker House; the next thing she wanted to do would
affect a lot of people—and a lot of those people didn’t want things
to change.

“Shit.”

At the end of the drive, she waited for traffic to
clear off the highway. Looking in her rearview mirror, she was
struck again with the stately, elegant beauty of her home, her
life’s work, her vision come to thriving and prospering life.

She will always be part of my life and I am grateful
to her every day for what she did for me.

Vanessa clenched her teeth. “So help me, if this is
about what happened in January . . . ” she muttered as she pulled
off her property.

Chouteau City, Missouri, the Chouteau County
seat.

She’d left it at sixteen, emancipated, graduated,
matriculated, and headed for Indiana. She hadn’t been back to it in
years and would never have gone back but for Knox’s imperious
command.

Vanessa’s mood did not improve during the four-hour
drive northward. She made phone calls to her allies on the county
commission to warn them that she might not be able to make the
zoning hearing Wednesday. She couldn’t estimate how long she’d be
gone, but there were going to be a lot of unhappy people around the
Ozarks, and she would hear every syllable of it, loudly and with
much repetition.

“I might as well have gone to the wedding,” she
snarled at no one. Her jaw clenched tighter and tighter as she
neared her exit and then there it was: Chouteau City.

She sucked in a tortured breath as she zipped
through town to a motel close to the courthouse. Once she’d parked
and sat for a moment, hearing her engine click as it cooled, she
allowed one moment of indulgence to wonder what
he
was doing
right this very minute.

* * * * *

9: Tipping Point

“I think I’m going to lose my mind, right this very
minute,” Eric muttered to himself as he surveyed the chaos of his
dojo, crammed with students and their parents. How had he lost
control of his life so fast? Knox had been gone a mere four months,
and already Eric was in over his

head. He looked at the clock; only half an hour to
go before it would be time to close up shop and go back to the
courthouse for the rest of the evening.

“EricEricEric!” squealed six little girls as they
scrambled toward him. Dressed identically in white karate gis,
their waists wrapped with little white and yellow belts, they
jockeyed for position around him, which was kinda cute in a kitten
sort of way.

“Yes, ladies?” he asked gravely, giving them his
full attention. Kids. What a mess.

Too bad teaching kids’ karate was as close as he
would ever get to being a father. He regretted that a bit.

“Will you come see us in our school program Saturday
night?”

He pretended to consider that and watched them get
antsier and antsier as he dragged his thinking out. “Well,” he
said, wondering if Annie would blow her top, “I’ll have to check my
calendar, but it’s a possibility.”