Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption (7 page)

“I hear them,” Tyler said, pushing a pillow over his eyes to block out the morning sun.

“You need to answer that.”

“You answer it.”

“What if it’s that cop?” Richard said. “You want to explain me?”

No. No, he did not.

Tyler stood, got his bearings, and stumbled to the front door.

“Someone better be dead,” he muttered, opening the door only to find the kid—what’s his name, with the beat-up face?—staring up at him.

“Miguel?” Tyler asked, the name erupting from the fog in his brain. He carefully kept the door closed around him so Miguel couldn’t see inside. No need for the kid to see Richard. “What are you doing here?” Tyler asked. “You…okay?”

Miguel nodded, pushing back the gray hood of his sweatshirt, revealing bruises and the burn that looked no better for having been twenty-four hours older.

Tyler stepped out onto the porch and shut the door firmly behind him. “What can I do for you, Miguel?”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Miguel said. “About your car.”

Tyler was a little stunned. The hoodlum apologizes? He hadn’t seen that coming. “Bad idea stealing cars,” he said, because he figured some kind of anti-grand theft auto PSA was called for.

“I guess so,” Miguel said, glancing over at the road, the big tree in front.

Tyler waited, but the kid didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to elaborate.

“Well,” Tyler said, clapping his hands together, hoping Miguel might startle like a bird, “glad we got that sorted out—”

“I wouldn’t need to steal any cars if I had money,” Miguel said.

Tyler’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“I saw you on TV last year winning all that money,” Miguel said. Tyler’s head cleared real fast. Extortion. He hadn’t seen that coming, either. This kid was full of surprises.

“I don’t want your money,” Miguel said, correctly reading the fury Tyler was projecting. “I’m not here for that.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I want to learn how to do what you do,” Miguel said.

“Play cards?” Tyler laughed.

Miguel nodded, not laughing at all. Tyler laughed harder. The kid was
serious?
He wondered if Dad had heard that, because he would have gotten a real kick out of it.

“That’s a good one, Miguel. Seriously. But—”

“I already know how to play. I play online over at my friend George’s house and I win. A lot.”

“That’s great, but I’m not teaching you how to play poker. Juliette would have a fit.”

“She doesn’t have to know.”

Tyler reassessed the kid in front of him. His dark eyes, past the scabby blood and bruises, were focused, smart and…very, very old.

A kid who’d never been a kid.

The sound of a car pulling around the corner, spitting gravel, ripped Tyler’s eyes from Miguel’s.

The car was too far away to tell who it was, but suddenly the cherry top blazed once from just inside the windshield.

Juliette. Holy hell.

“Listen,” Miguel said. “Just let me come here after school, a few hours for a few weeks. That’s it.”

“That’s
it?
” Tyler asked, laughing.

Juliette’s car stopped in front of the house and she was out the door in a split second, marching toward them.

“Morning, Juliette,” Tyler said, waving as though it was all no big deal, when under his shirt he had a good cold sweat going.

“We got a call saying some kid was snooping around here,” Juliette snapped.

His father! He must have been peeking through the window, but what was he thinking, calling the cops? Juliette would be furious if she found out Richard had been the one sneaking around the place when no one was around.

“Sorry to call,” Tyler said, falling in step with the lie because he had no choice. “I saw someone snooping around, I got a little nervous and—”

“You!” she said, sticking her finger in Miguel’s face, not even listening to Tyler’s crappy cover-up. “You should be at school.”

“I show up like this and Ms. Jenkins has to call the social workers,” he said, and she rocked back for a second. She took a deep breath, as if reassessing, and Tyler got the sense that Juliette was flying blind.

“George is bringing me my homework,” Miguel said in the vacuum. “He told Ms. Jenkins I was sick. Don’t worry, Chief, I’ve got it covered.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“He came to apologize,” Tyler said. “About the car. Very adult of him, if you ask me.”

Juliette watched Tyler for a long time, her eyes unreadable. And he had the worst, the
worst
urge to reach over, touch her shoulder and tell her everything would be fine.

But he had the old man to hide, some stolen gems to find, a delinquent to get rid of and a whole lot of past experience that told him reaching out for Juliette only hurt in the end.

“Fine,” she finally said, holding out her arm as if to steer Miguel out toward her car. “You apologized. If you’re not going to be at school, you can come down to the station. Get to work cleaning cars.”

Miguel stepped away but glanced back at Tyler, who did nothing but squirm under the kid’s intense gaze.

He tried hard not to see the desperation in Miguel’s old-man eyes, but then remembered that Miguel had a little sister.

A little sister he was trying to protect.

All too clearly, Tyler recalled being sixteen and feeling sixty, trying to keep a little sister safe, keep her a child, when his entire world was conspiring to rip her innocence away from her.

And then there was Juliette, working so hard against a system set up to ruin kids like Miguel. And while he wasn’t about to teach Miguel how to play poker, he could find something to keep the kid busy a few hours a day.

Before he could put the brakes on this ludicrous idea, he jumped right off the cliff.

“I think I figured out what you could do to punish Miguel here.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” Juliette asked.

“I did.” He nodded, not a single idea coming to him. “I had an idea.” Tyler kept nodding.

“Okay, so let’s hear it.” Juliette shifted her weight and the porch groaned. The sagging, beat-up porch.

“He’s going to fix up the house,” Tyler said.

“Not buying it, Tyler,” she said, shaking her head. “Let’s go, Miguel.”

“What do you mean, not buying it?” he asked, his temper flaring. “I’m trying to help you out!”

“Well, I don’t need your help.” She practically sneered, and Tyler threw his hands up.

“This is what I get for trying to be a good guy.”

“Oh, please, Tyler. Like you would know?”

“But, I want to do this,” Miguel said, before Tyler could say anything. “He said he would supervise, he’d even write up reports and stuff.”

Tyler blinked down at the kid. The word
supervise
had never even crossed his brain. Miguel shrugged and smiled, and damn if Tyler didn’t start liking the kid.

“Right.” Juliette’s sarcasm was not missed by Tyler. “Tyler O’Neill supervising is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Hey,” Tyler said, “you don’t know that.”

“I know you, Tyler, and that’s enough. This isn’t going to happen. Now, come on, Miguel. You can come willingly to the station, or I’ll drag your ass to school. Come what may.”

Miguel followed Juliette back across the yard and Tyler watched them from his rotting porch.

You dodged a bullet there, man,
he told himself.

But oddly, the sting in his chest felt like disappointment.

“What are you going to do?” Miguel asked, petulant in the backseat, a little dog thwarted. She had no idea what had brought Miguel and Tyler together, but it didn’t take a psychic to see where it would lead.

“Did you go to his house?” she asked, watching him in the rearview mirror.

“Yes,” Miguel said.

“This was all your idea?”

“Better than cleaning cop cars at the station.”

The kid was creative, she’d give him that.

She pulled up in front of the station just in time to see Mayor Bourdage climb out of his pickup, a stack of files under his arm.

Her stomach fell and twisted into her shoes.

“Duck,” she said.

“What?”

“Get down!”

Miguel slouched in the backseat and Juliette watched the mayor climb the steps and go in the glass doors. She waited a few seconds and then called Lisa.

“Bonne Terre Police,” Lisa said. “How can—”

“Lisa—”

“Jul—”

“Shh,” Juliette hissed. “Is the mayor standing there?”

“No, I sent him into your office.”

“Why is he here?”

“Squad cars or something.”

Juliette rested her head against the steering wheel. Tyler O’Neill, she thought. If given half a chance, she was going to kill the man.

“Tell him I’m running late, I’ll be right back.” Juliette ended the call and threw her phone into the passenger seat. Then, despite being police chief and having an impressionable minor in the car, Juliette swore as hard and as long and as creatively as she could.

When she finished, she turned the car around and headed back to The Manor and Tyler O’Neill and what was surely going to be the biggest mistake of her life.

“Right, handled. Like you handle everything—”

Tyler stood, sick to death of the criticism coming from every corner. “Don’t start with me, Dad. Don’t you dare.”

“We’ve got a fortune in gems around here, Tyler, and you’re—”

“Handling it!” he yelled.

A furious pounding at the front door ended the fight before it began.

“What now?” Dad asked.

“Tyler!” Juliette’s voice, muffled by wood and glass, still managed to stop his heart. “Open the door!”

“I don’t think that’s nece—”

“And you,” Juliette talked over him like he wasn’t there, turning all her attention to Miguel. “You will go to school tomorrow. Tell Ms. Jenkins you were in a fight with the football team or something, I don’t care. But you’re at school and then you’re here and I’ll make sure,” she said. “And if you’re so much as ten minutes—”

“I won’t be,” Miguel said, quick and eager, looking nothing like the ballsy kid who’d been on his stoop this morning. Now he was all exuberant puppy, bright-eyed and wagging tail.

Seriously, Tyler thought, what the hell is going on here?

“No funny stuff,” Juliette said to Tyler and some kind of wiseass comment was right on the tip of his tongue, some kind of “screw you” because she was authority after all, despite being Juliette. He really did have this thing with people telling him what to do, but then she went and blinked and those wide hazel eyes weren’t so steely, weren’t so tough. “I’m counting on you, Tyler. And you’ve got to know how hard that is for me.”

I know,
he thought.
I broke your heart. I hurt you and hurt you again.

Maybe it was shame, maybe it was her eyes, or maybe it was the overly optimistic vibe coming off the kid, but whatever it was his smart-ass joke died on his lips and he nodded.

“I promise, Juliette. I really do.”

She snorted, her doubt like a whole other person standing on the porch, shaking its head at him.

“I’ll come here right after school tomorrow,” Miguel said. The kid was actually smiling—well, as much as he could without popping stitches.

He thinks he’s won,
Tyler thought. But that old saying about conning a con was poignantly true in this situation, particularly when the con happened to involve a house in terrible need of fixing up.

There would be no card playing, not even Go Fish. But the boy would work.

“This is totally nuts,” Juliette muttered. “I’m gonna lose my job over this garbage.”

“Everything will be cool,” Miguel said. The earnestness in the kid’s voice watered Tyler’s shame, made it grow a little more.

“It will be,” he added his own weak assurances.

Her eyes bounced between them and she shook her head. “I’m crazy. I’m absolutely out of my mind,” she said, and turned, walking across the lawn to her car.

Tyler stood next to the kid, watching her go, marveling at the way the world worked, how in Bonne Terre, the joke was always on him.

This was his own fault, he’d actually suggested the idea. Was he insane? A no-account gambler in charge of a juvenile delinquent?

I’d kill a cactus,
he thought, flabbergasted. Four years ago, he had to give away a dog because the basic care and maintenance of another living thing was just too much for him. He lived in a hotel for crying out loud.

He looked at the kid.

What am I going to do with you?

“So?” Miguel said once Juliette’s taillights vanished down the road. The boy rubbed his hands together as if he was about to sit down to a feast of gambling delights. “Where do we start? Five card? Texas hold ’em?”

Tyler made a big point of looking at the front of the house. He flicked off some of the peeling white paint, examined the sad and neglected windowsills and bounced on a few of the sagging floorboards on the porch.

Dad was going to blow a gasket, no doubt about it, but Tyler didn’t see a way around this.

“The porch,” he said, grinning at the kid’s crestfallen expression. “I do believe we’ll start with the porch.”

“What are you talking about?” the kid asked, following him through the red door into the shadowed foyer. “I’m here to learn how to play cards.”

“Yeah, but I liked my idea better.”

“I’m not going to fix up your house,” Miguel said, stopping and crossing his arms in the hallway. Tyler turned.

“Then maybe I should call Juliette and tell her it’s off? You can wash cars at the station.”

“No way, man, a deal is a deal.”

“What the hell is going on here?” Richard demanded, stepping into the hallway from the dark library.

“Dad, don’t freak out—”

“Don’t freak out? There’s a kid in this house, and from what it sounds like, he’s going to be here a while.”

“Who the hell is this guy?” Miguel asked, suddenly a little gangster.

“No one,” Tyler said, “ignore him.”

“He’s not staying,” Richard insisted.

Tyler looked steadily at his father, balancing all his impulses to strangle him. “I don’t have a choice,” he bit out, “You called the cops.”

“Maybe I should just tell the chief that your dad don’t want me here,” Miguel said.

Tyler rubbed his eyes, his face, ran his fingers through his hair, wishing he were back at the Bellagio with nothing more stressful than a massage to schedule.

“Miguel,” he sighed, putting his cards on the table, “you can’t tell Juliette about my dad. This whole thing will blow up if you do.”

“Then maybe you should teach me some cards—”

“Oh,” Richard said, brightening at the idea of an enthusiastic young pupil. “If this is about poker—”

“It’s not,” Tyler said to his father. “We’re not teaching him the game. Ever.”

“Fine,” Richard said, heading into the kitchen, “but you better keep him out of the house and out of our way.”

Miguel’s face was all but glowing, the prospect of blackmail no doubt warming the little cockles of his devious heart.

“Let me stop you before you even get started.” Tyler chuckled and put his hand on Miguel’s stiff shoulder. “You don’t want to be at that station. Even if I’m not teaching you cards, you’d rather be here. You tipped your hand, kid. I’ve seen every card you’ve got.”

He watched the kid digest it, the wheels turning behind those bright eyes.

“Now,” Tyler said, his throat suddenly dry, his hands wet. Bluffing was nothing—he did it in his sleep, ordering breakfast, every single conversation with every other person in his life was mostly a bluff—but with Juliette in the mix, he wasn’t on his game. He couldn’t keep a clear head.

But Juliette could not know about his father.

“We can call Juliette and we can both of us tell her what’s happening. I’ll tell her you just want to learn to gamble and you can tell her about my dad. But she already expects the worst of me. She’s driving away right now pretty sure I’m lying to her. But if I’m forced to tell her that you’re making all this up—it’ll hurt her.”

The boy swallowed, swore under his breath and Tyler could see that the idea of hurting Juliette bothered him.

So young, that kid, still so many people to disappoint and hurt. Years of doling out pain to people who might trust him, or God forbid love him, stretched out ahead of Miguel.

But it was obvious Miguel wasn’t going to start today, and he wasn’t going to start with Juliette.

Points to Miguel. He was way up on Tyler.

There was a stab of pain in his chest, a wish that he could go back and feel that way again. Clean. Redeemable. Tyler could barely remember what doing the right thing felt like.

“So, what?” Miguel asked. “I’m just gonna clean up your porch?”

“Yeah.” Tyler grinned. “And maybe my windowsills.”

Tyler led the boy through the old house, listening to him whistle under his breath as they stepped under the giant chandelier.

“What is this place?” Miguel asked.

“A relic,” Tyler answered. He led the boy through the inner courtyard, manicured and pristine as a golf course.

“Whoa,” the kid breathed and Tyler smiled. Shabby on the outside, but the old girl still had it where it counted. “This is like a mansion or something?”

“It was,” Tyler answered. They stepped through the second set of doors, into the back part of the house, and he rested his hand on the brass doorknob leading to the back courtyard. “This place used to be a brothel,” he said and the kid snorted. “I’m not kidding. My great-great-great-grandfather built it. It’s been in my family for hundreds of years.”

Miguel nodded. “That’s cool.”

“It is. It is very cool, so you can imagine how I’d feel if anything happened to this place—”

“What are you saying?” Miguel asked, hot and bothered.

“I’m saying—to the kid who tried to steal my car—” Tyler arched his eyebrow and let that sink in “—don’t get any ideas.”

“My idea was learning how to play cards so I could make some money, now I’m slave labor—”

“I’ll pay you,” Tyler said, because that thing about the money bothered Tyler. He knew the kid needed out, needed a way to take care of his sister, and Tyler remembered feeling that way all too well. “But that’s between you and me. Juliette doesn’t need to know.”

Miguel nodded in agreement and Tyler felt a shimmery satisfaction at doing the right thing.

“Now,” Tyler said, opening the door to the rear courtyard—the one that was truly magical, even to a jade like him. “Let’s get some tools and go to work.”

But the kid barely heard him. He stared wide-eyed and slack jawed at the maze and the whirling fountain, the glittering glass roof of the greenhouse.

Tyler walked past him, smiling, to the toolshed in the back corner. Tyler swung open the wooden door to the dusty interior of the shed and the smell of grass and dirt flooded out, giving him the weird desire to actually get his hands dirty.

Miguel caught up and took the tools Tyler started to hand him. A couple of scrappers, a crowbar, a sledgehammer. Tyler tucked a few pairs of dirty canvas gloves into his back pocket.

“Hey, how come you’ve got such a nice yard and your house looks like crap?”

“An excellent question,” Tyler said. “I think we were just waiting for the right extortionist to come along.”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Tyler said.

“What’s the story with you and the chief?” Miguel asked.

“What do you mean?” Tyler asked, playing dumb as he stepped back out into the sunshine.

“Why does she expect the worst from you?”

Tyler kicked the door shut behind him.

“Because that’s all I’ve ever given her.”