“No, Miss Woodward,” the detective explained as she led her down the hallway to the visitors' waiting room. “Follow me,” said the detective. She unlocked the door with a jingling key ring that any school custodian would envy.
“Taylor!” Krystal oozed when her stepdaughter poked her nose past the detective's shoulder.
“I hope you didn't tie Connie up and leave her behind in a dumpster,” Taylor greeted her stepmother.
“Don't be silly,” Krystal snickered in her most-practiced Southern drawl. She smiled politely for the lady cop who was carefully watching them.
“Why else would you be here?” Taylor demanded, staying close to the detective.
“Silly girl,” Krystal playfully scolded her.
Rushing to pet her stepdaughter, Krystal continued in a voice dripping with practiced sincerity. “Poor thing, look at you! We need to get you home. This has all been such a big, nasty misunderstanding.”
Staring in shock and awe, Taylor gripped her crutches to keep from smacking Krystal as hard as she could. “What are you really doing here, Krystal?” she asked calmly. At the same time, Taylor was calculating in her mind how fast she could run with a cast on her leg. On the other hand, Taylor did find Krystal entertaining.
Maybe I should stay
, she thought.
This performance is classic.
For example, Taylor loved the wardrobe Krystal had chosen to walk into a police station wearing. The frayed, denim mini-skirt barely concealed the bottom of her butt. The white tank top complemented her neon-pink, push-up bra. A stack of gold wrist bangles jangled when Krystal bent down from her spiked Dolce and Gabbana silver sandals to hug her.
Planting a pair of air kisses on each of Taylor's steaming cheeks, Krystal said, “Don't be silly. Connie is super busy, and this is a family matter. We'll talk when we get home.”
Extending her tanned arm toward the detective, Krystal shook her hand vigorously. “Thank you so much for your patience with us. We'll do our best not to bother you again. Won't we, Taylor?” Krystal patted the fuming girl on the shoulder, the tips of her red claws grazing Taylor's graceful neck.
“Yes, ma'am,” Taylor said, nodding her head, her confused eyes aimed at the brown-and-black confetti pattern on the white linoleum floor.
You're a fool, Krystal
, Taylor thought while she waved goodbye to the policewoman.
Outside in the parking lot, a cherry-red Hummer beeped at them when they emerged from the police station. Her vision blurry from her seclusion in the bowels of the police station, Taylor blinked and rubbed her watery eyes in the brilliant afternoon sunlight.
“Get in,” Krystal demanded. The tips of her claws tapped the unlock button on the monster truck's keyless remote, and she pulled herself into the vehicle. The headlights flashed in Taylor's face. Taylor hesitated.
“Get in!” Krystal shrieked. Her half-naked bottom was already planted on the black leather driver's seat. “Hurry up, crip,” she hounded Taylor, as the teen struggled to lift herself and her crutches into the passenger seat.
The red tank jarred forward as Krystal released the emergency brake and punched the gearshift into drive. As the Hummer lurched, Taylor scrambled her legs inside the truck and slammed the door.
Punching the gas pedal, Krystal ignored the blinking seatbelt light on the dash and simply peeled out of the parking lot without one. Taylor struggled to secure her own seatbelt around her chest.
“I don't get it,” Taylor mumbled. “You can't stand up straight most of the time. What makes you think you should drive?” she asked, leaning her aching head back and closing her eyes.
“Practice,” Krystal answered. Her fingernails tapped the steering wheel as she guided the Hummer through the congested Buckhead side streets toward the interstate.
“I'm not going to apologize to you when we get home,” Taylor told her stepmother.
The Hummer's twenty-inch chrome wheels slammed into a cavernous pothole.
“You're right, you're not,” Krystal agreed emphatically.
The jolt of the pothole had jarred open Taylor's drowsy eyes. Outside the tinted window, she saw a blur of blue and white as they sped by a metal signpost:
Interstate 75/85 South.
“This is the way to your weird little friend's place,” Krystal said, popping a stick of mango-banana mint gum into her smiling mouth.
“Yes,” Taylor spat back at her, her stomach turning at the smell of the gum.
“It wasn't a question,” Krystal said calmly as her tongue smacked against the roof of her mouth. She merged onto the interstate. When a rock-laden dump truck sped up to pass the Hummer, Krystal rolled down her window and flipped off the driver. She slammed the gas pedal to the floorboard.
Giggling to herself, she wove the Hummer into the far left lane of traffic. She jerked her thumb past Taylor's nose to the back seat. A Burberry-print suitcase rested on the floorboard. “You're going to be staying with Alice for a while.”
“Her name is Alexandra,” Taylor said, rolling her eyes.
“Whatever,” Krystal snapped. “I will tell your father that you ran away and you will not come back until I say you can.”
“What if I come home anyway?” Taylor said, clasping her palms in her lap to keep from strangling the driver.
By way of an answer, Krystal shifted her right arm off the top of the center console. Krystal popped the lid open. Her stepdaughter's eyes locked on the gleaming barrel of an automatic pistol. “An old friend said I could borrow it,” Krystal said, slamming down the console lid, “for as long as I need it.”
“You are beyond crazy,” Taylor observed with caution. “I'll call my dad and tell him everything.”
“You need to tell me where to go when we get off the interstate. I don't get to this part of town much,” Krystal said, jerking the steering wheel to the right as the Hummer cut over to the exit lane.
She will regret this
, Taylor silently vowed and pointed a finger straight at the windshield. “Take a right on Peachtree Street. Alexandra's apartment building is a couple of miles straight down the road here.”
Krystal smiled, a delicious grin spreading wide across her puffy, Restylane-injected lips. “Your father is not taking calls in Miami. His secretary is handling all correspondence while he is out of town.”
“But I'm his daughter,” Taylor said, as Park View Tower loomed closer.
“And I am his wife,” Krystal countered, easing to the curb across from the apartment building.
Just then a light breeze rustled the trees in the park, as if disturbed by the wings of a flailing bird. The wind felt warm and erratic against Taylor's moist cheeks. She slunk from the passenger seat to the sidewalk while Krystal unloaded the packed suitcase from the back of the Hummer. Chucking the bag on the cement, Krystal blew her stepdaughter a kiss.
“Ciao, bella,” she called aloud and climbed up into the behemoth. “Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”
When the Hummer pulled away from the curb, Taylor raised the crutch beneath her right arm into the air and heaved it with every morsel of strength in her body at the rear window.
“Poor thing,” Krystal said, spying the missile flying futilely toward her truck.
When the crutch pinged off the window and landed bent in the gutter, Taylor fumed, her good leg stomping the ground.
“Ouch!” she yelped, holding back her fury.
“Let me help with you that,” a familiar voice said. It was the raven-haired cowboy, gliding past her into the street. As Kraven bent to retrieve the crutch, Taylor admired the arch of his back and the bulging of his biceps.
“Kraven,” she cooed with somewhat suspicious relief. “My hero.” She slid the crutch beneath her right arm.
Wistfully, Kraven brushed her golden locks back from her face until Taylor remembered her shabby appearance. She shyly said thanks and asked where Alexandra was. But what she really was hoping was that she'd look better to him with makeup.
Taylor stared into his deep azure eyes, waiting for his answer. The longer she gazed, the less she was concerned with her best friend's whereabouts.
Kraven hitched his thumb to the sky. “Up there,” he said, hanging his chin to his chest.
“The parking garage?” Taylor asked, glancing across the street.
Shielding his ears with his palms, Kraven winced as Alexandra's voice echoed in his mind. He could block out the thoughts of the hordes that had passed his gaze in the last thousand years, but he could not do so with her. Her smell, her voiceâthey lingered, no matter how far apart they stood.
“Something has happened,” he told Taylor while retrieving her suitcase from the sidewalk.
“Need some company for a while?” Taylor asked, only half-kidding, and blushed at the stranger holding her suitcase to his chest. “Where do you live anyway?” A thousand probing questions flooded her brain. She giggled. “Do you sleep? What do you eat? Do you eat? How old are you?”
He stared back at her in complete silence, his face as implacable as a stone statue's.
“Sorry,” she stuttered. She had already embarrassed herself enough for the moment and did not dare ask the question foremost in her thoughts:
Why Alex?
Kraven smiled to himself, her thoughts as transparent as the strategically positioned holes in her fashionable tank top.
“Alexandra,” Kraven stated firmly and sincerely, meaning to remind Taylor why they were both standing on the sidewalk togetherâthe only reason they were together.
“Oh, yeah,” Taylor remembered, grudgingly.
“Hold on,” Kraven warned as he scooped up her, the suitcase, and the crutches securely into his arms.
The teen relaxed in the stranger's comforting grasp, despite every single one of her internal organs (even the bitty ones that did not matter, such as her appendix) melting into a warm, sticky goo. She was sure she could get used to this. Kraven carried her safely across the street to the mirrored-glass entrance door of Park View Tower.
Kraven smiled to himself. Flattered, he set the pretty blonde girl down on the sidewalk.
“I won't let anyone hurt you,” he told her solemnly. “Alexandra is your friend, and so you are mine, now, also.”
Taylor let the word “mine” cause a tingle in her toes. She replied, “What are we waiting for, cowboy? Let's go see her.”
“Still beats the daylights out of my big old butt hustling for cheap tips at Waffle House,” Rhonda Gorman muttered to herself. She propped open the glass door of the Gas 'n' Go with a case of soda. Then she hauled two body bag-sized sacks of trash onto her sturdy shoulders.
What hair she had left after her home perm and pale-blonde dye job had been growing out for six months. Wisps of fried, white split ends tickled her chin as she scurried to the dumpster.
“Got to go feed Bertha,” she said.
The rusting, green dumpster known as Bertha was anchored behind a security fence topped with barbed wire. It had not been emptied in months, but Big Bertha sat far enough behind the convenience store that most of the customers did not notice her stench until a gust of wind tickled their noses while they pumped gas.
Rhonda sucked in a last gasp of fresh air as she stalked across the parking lot. “At least you keep them raggedy beggar types from sticking around and harassing my paying customers,” she commended the reeking dumpster. She jiggled a key in the padlock. It kept the swinging gate closed to freeloaders who liked to toss their trash into Bertha instead of paying the city for trash removal.
“Good girl,” Rhonda said, patting the side of the dumpster when she threw her bags over Bertha's brimming lip. Bertha did not spit them back at her.
“If it comes down to you or my six and a half bucks an hour, then I reckon I'll just have to buy me one of them gas masks like the army boys get from the surplus shop down the street.”
She hitched one thumb northward while she plugged her flaring nostrils with her other hand.
“Might have to stop on by there when my shift is over,” she said, scooting back across the parking lot toward the store. “I don't think Mr. Deepak is much worried about you, Bertha.”
The bill from the trash company came in the mail in the middle of every month. Last month, the postal carrier made her sign for the envelope. Nevertheless, the owner of this Gas 'n' Go, Deepak Windlass, ripped up the paper in front of Rhonda and tossed the scraps into the toilet.
Fortunately, Mr. Deepak always paid Rhonda on time, and he threw in some chocolate bars.
She stood outside the propped-open door of the convenience store. She retrieved a pack of cigarettes from a pleated front pocket of her gray polyester pants. A black Ford Taurus sedanâ an Atlanta City Police cruiserâidled at one of the pumps. She lit her Marlboro and poised the cigarette between her lips.
This Gas 'n' Go had a prime location. It sat on the corner of Rosewood Avenue and Tangle Wood Lane, so there was steady traffic from young couples renovating houses in the reviving neighborhood. There were also customers from Collinsworth Academy. The continual business made Mr. Deepak happy and Rhonda busy most of the day.
Her regular customers knew her name and told her “good morning” when they stopped for coffee. On Fridays, some of the older Collinsworth boys bribed her to sell them a case of Budweiser for their weekend parties. The extra money she saved meant a new pair of dentures in a few months. Mr. Deepak did not care who bought his beer, as long as they bought a lot of it.
A puff of smoke blew over Rhonda's dry, puckered lips.
“Punks,” she mumbled as two boys in baggy blue jeans cruised past the gas station slowly on their skateboards. “Keep riding, or Bobby will take care of you,” she said softly. Rhonda kept the Louisville slugger, which she'd nicknamed Bobby, under the counter inside the store.
Sucking a last drag from her cigarette, she tossed the butt on the asphalt and stamped the smoldering Marlboro out with the rubber toe of her orthopedic sneakers.