Kissed (The Thorn Chronicles) (23 page)

I chucked a pillow at him and got up, thankful I had chosen to wear a t-shirt and shorts to bed instead of the nightgown Ricki bought me from Victoria’s secret.

“I’m telling Ginny. About everything,” I said, scrambling from the bed and heading for the door.

“Whoa, hold on a sec,” he said, dumping my laptop on the floor and making a beeline for the door. “Let’s talk about this first.” He stood in front of the door and I tried to reach around him for the handle, but he grabbed my hand.

I tried to pull it away, but instead he pulled me closer to him so that his face was only inches from mine.

“You’ve got to quit changing how we feel. It’s not fair.” I said, trying to ignore how blue his eyes were.

Puck squeezed his eyes shut and paused for a few minutes. He finally sighed and opened them again. “Either we make her feel good about us being around all the time or we risk her being beheaded or kidnapped by Destroyers. Which would you rather have?”

I looked down, resting my head on his chest. It was distracting being so close to him, but this was better than looking him in the eye. I noticed that each one of my toenails was painted a different color. I certainly didn’t paint them that way.

“Did you?” I asked, pointing down and looking back up at him.

He grinned and nodded. “Told you I was bored.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Look,” he said and released me. He pointed down at his own toes. “We match.” I took a couple of steps back, trying to make sense of my emotions.

I laughed. “Okay, fine. We’ll discuss Ginny later. But can you at least have the courtesy not to mess with my emotions?”

“I haven’t been. Can’t actually. Ever since you found out what you were, I haven’t been able to change the way you feel. Believe me, I’ve tried. Especially last night. No one may have trained you on how to put a shield up, but you’ve done it. Amazing really. It took me weeks to perfect.”

I was pleased that I was able to do something to protect myself. Even if I had no idea how I’d done it.

He walked over to my dresser and picked up a piece of paper.

“I saw this last night and I wondered where you got it.”

I blushed. He was holding the picture I took from my father’s office. The one of him.

“Uh, I took it off of my father’s office wall. The whole goth thing fascinated me. I didn’t actually plan on meeting you.” I looked down at my feet, finding myself too embarrassed to look at him.

“Do you know where this came from?”

I shook my head.

“Someone had to have taken it. I certainly didn’t pose for it. But it feels like it came from a magazine. It bothers me. Can I have it?”

The doorbell rang and I raced to open it, grateful for the distraction. So far Puck was simply worried about what he was doing in a magazine. I didn’t want him to start asking questions about why I kept it.

When I opened the door, two men stood there. Both wore black suits and held badges in their hands. I slammed the door without thinking and bent over, trying not to hyperventilate. The last time I’d seen two men like that, my parents were arrested and I was sent to Dwayne’s. I didn’t want to leave. I loved Las Vegas. And Ginny.

Puck wasted no time. He opened the door cautiously. I cowered behind him.

He relaxed, probably realizing that they were not Destroyers. “Can I help you?”

“We are here to talk to Virginia Shelley and Naomi Aren. Are they here?”

Puck nodded. “But I’ll need to go get Ginny before I let you in. Excuse me.”

He shut the door politely, took my hand, and led me back to my room.

“Stay here. I’m getting Ginny.”

I wrapped my arms around myself and curled into a ball, terrified that they were going to take me away. I shivered.

A few minutes later Puck came back and wrapped his arms around me. He didn’t say anything, just held me. I could hear voices coming from the kitchen, but couldn’t make out the words. Puck massaged the back of my neck, probably thinking it would relax me, but my muscles tensed even tighter. I shook in his arms, comforted only by the fact that it didn’t sound like Ginny was yelling. Surely if they were going to take me away she would put up a fight.

A small hand brushed my hair away from my face. “Naomi,” said Ginny, “the detectives would like to talk to you. Will you do that?”

I shook my head.

“Please. They want to tell you some things about your parents. Things they think you need to know. They are going to ask for your help, but they won’t force you to do anything. I’ll be in there with you.” She paused for a second and I could feel Puck moving. “Puck will come with you as well. Will you come if both of us are there?”

I uncurled myself out of Pucks arms. “Will they take me away from you?”

Ginny shook her head vigorously.

I followed her into the kitchen and in spite of her reassurances, I still had a death grip on Puck’s hand. The detectives eyed Puck suspiciously.

“The boy should leave. This is for you and Naomi. The nature of visit is confidential, concerning an open case that should not be discussed freely with others.”

I got ready to tell them I wouldn’t stay without Puck but Ginny rescued me instead. “Puck is part of our family. He will stay or Naomi won’t hear you out.”

I smiled at her, grateful for the white lie.

The detective grumbled, but proceeded. In the air I smelled mint and I was certain Puck had done some “influencing.”

“You understand your parents were arrested on murder charges?”

“Yes.”

“What else do you know?”

“Not much.”

“We’ve had a gag order on the media not to publish anything. We were lucky no one else found out about it. We didn’t want a media circus. Once the trial starts, all gag orders are void, so the press is going to have a field day. And then there are going to be protesters from each side. What a nightmare.”

The second detective cleared his throat. “Get to the point Johnson.”

Johnson fiddled with some papers in front of him.

“Naomi, your parents murdered three people. It wasn’t a random act or an accident. They planned it, for weeks, maybe even months.”

I clenched my hands together.
Three people. And they planned it for months
. How could I come from two people who would do something so wicked? My whole life they’d preached to me of my evils. Meanwhile, they were plotting murder.

“Who did they kill?” I choked out.

He laid a picture in front of me of a family. The mother and father stood behind a beaming teenage girl. Bile rose in my throat and my head spun. I’d know that wild hair anywhere. Ruth. And her foster parents.

Ruth Alexander Rose = Dead

Ruth dead
. And her foster parents who made her life wonderful. Her eyes would no longer sparkle and her bright orange corkscrew hair would be rotting in the ground by now. All because I chose to be her friend instead of listening to my father.

I hung over the toilet waiting for the rest of last night’s dinner to make its way out, but my stomach settled as someone knocked on the door.

“Go away,” I hollered.

“I brought you some Sprite,” Puck said though the door. “Ginny said it will make you feel better. Let me in.”

“No.” I took a drink of water and surveyed myself in the mirror. My face was pale.

The door handle rattled and the lock turned.

Puck poked his head in the doorway. “You decent?”

“No,” I said staring at the sheen of sweat on my face.

Puck came in anyway. He handed me the glass of Sprite and leaned against the black granite counter. His hair fell into his eyes and he searched mine.

“I take it you knew Ruth.”

“How’d you know her name?”

“Ginny flipped when you ran. The detectives told her who they were.”

“Did they kill her because she was my friend?”

Puck shrugged. “I’m not sure. They didn’t say anything about that. Ginny won’t let them stay. She said she’ll let us know when they’re gone.”

“No, I need to talk to them.” I staggered to the door, but my head went all fuzzy. I grabbed the handle and tried to clear my head. “Puck, could you go tell them to wait? I’ll be there in a minute, but if I move quickly I’ll pass out.”

He cocked his head for a second then swooped me up into his arms and out of the bathroom.

“Oh, this is dignified.”

“You’re in a hurry. I could’ve put you over my shoulder. At least you’re still facing upright.”

“You only did that so I wouldn’t puke all over your back.”

He grinned. “True.” My insides churned with guilt. Ruth just died and here I was flirting with Puck. Why did they have to kill her?

As he entered the kitchen, Puck put me down in front of the detectives who were gathering up their papers.

“Wait. I want to know what happened.”

The detectives paused and looked at Ginny.

“Are you sure?” Ginny asked.

“Yes,” I said and sat down.

The picture of Ruth and her parents still lay on the table.

“It was because of me.” There, I admitted my role in the whole thing. Now they would probably arrest me too.

The detective raised his eyebrows in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Ruth was my best friend. Father didn’t want me to be friends with her.”

He sighed. “Motive has never been a question, but this throws a whole new angle to the case. No, we always assumed she was murdered because your parents were waiting outside the clinic and killed the first person they saw.”

Ginny ran her hand through her hair. “What clinic?”

“Dr. Aren had an office full of propaganda. He was a religious fanatic. Ruth’s natural father raped her and she ended up pregnant. Her foster parents took her to Planned Parenthood to explore options. They were killed in the parking lot. We assumed your father was targeting abortion clinics.

“The thing is, we can’t associate him with any known group. It’s like he did this all on his own. But his attorney is one of the best defense attorneys in the country. Usually only powerful groups with a lot of money can afford a lawyer like that. The other strange thing is that the media hasn’t picked up on it.

“Now that you’ve told us this, I can’t help but wonder if the clinic was a coincidence.”

Ginny slammed her glass down on the counter. “That’s enough. I’m sure they were not killed because of Naomi.”

But she was wrong. Ruth was murdered because I was her friend.

“What can I do to help you?” I asked. My parents would pay for what they did to her and I would do everything I could to make sure.

“You can come back and be a character witness for us. No one knows them as well as you. We suspect they were not good to you.”

“When?”

“Two weeks.”

“Can Ginny come with me?”

Ginny snorted. “You aren’t going anywhere without me.”

“And Puck. Puck needs to come too.”

This time I helped Puck. When I gathered the feeling of cooperation in my chest I found that mint wasn’t quite right. It was more like spearmint. Michael Jackson was dead on though. Thriller played in my head. I released the emotion.

The detective nodded and pulled some papers out of a briefcase. Ginny eyed the stack and turned to Puck.

“Why don’t you take Naomi out for a while? I’ll take care of all this.”

I showered. The shower was always a nice place to think. I tried to put together all the pieces of what I knew. Kai was in Arkansas trying to find the Master Destroyer. My Father was evil. That much was certain. Puck had said that his dad used to be the Master Destroyer and that his dad was killed when he was eight. That was around the time when Mother left for a few days. When she came back, Father started withdrawing from me.
How old was I then? Near eight.
I couldn’t remember exactly. What if my father was the Master Destroyer? It was possible.

Twenty minutes later we escaped the flat while Ginny continued to argue with the detectives.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to leave Ginny’s side.” We walked down the strip toward Puck’s condo so he could change his clothes.

“That’s only at night, when Destroyers are at their strongest. Alejandro and I both placed defenses on Ginny and her house that will hold off anything during the day. But in the dark they’re useless.”

We walked in silence for a while, both of us lost in our own thoughts. I thought about my parents and how evil they were. All these years and I never spoke up or tried to get away from it. I wondered if my mother really had played any role at all or if she was just there when it happened. Maybe after she got out of jail and away from my father, she would be different and we could have a real relationship.

“Why do you want me to come to Arkansas?” Puck asked, dodging a guy with a huge drink.

“I knew you weren’t allowed to leave Ginny so I figured that would make it easier for all of us. But more than that I have a suspicion that only you can confirm for me. At least I think you can,” I said, moving closer to Puck as we approached the peddlers hawking nasty cards with naked women on them.

“What’s that?”

“I think my father may be the Master Destroyer.”

Puck paused for a few seconds. “What?”

“You said Kai was looking for the Master Destroyer. Kai spent an awful long time at my house. What if he came to my house looking for someone other than me?”

“I suppose that’s possible.”

“Is it common for Destroyers to be associated with groups like the detective was talking about?”

Puck nodded. “They seek out groups with hatred and anger. If your dad really is the Master Destroyer, the propaganda and cult is just a cover for what he is really doing. Those kinds of churches make it easy to control people. What do you want me to do anyway?”

“I don’t know, just confirm whether or not he is. Then we’ll tell Alejandro and he can have the big guys take care of it.”

“You have no idea what it is you are asking from me.” Puck wove his fingers into mine and tugged me up the long driveway and to the elevator. He didn’t say another word until we got to his apartment.

He left me in his living room while he showered and changed. He took way longer than he should have and I fiddled with a puzzle ball he had on his table. After a good half hour he finally came out smelling like soap and apples. Humility and Honesty.