Out of the Dark (15 page)

Jade didn’t bother to hide her shock. “Admiration? There is nothing in my life worth admiring.”

“I beg to differ with you,” he said. “Without having been told any details, I gather your childhood was terrible, and yet you not only survived it, you managed to escape.”

“Because of Raphael,” she said.

Luke wanted to brush a stray strand of hair from near her eye but restrained himself.

“Yes, honey,” he said gently. “Because of Raphael. But somehow you managed to stay away from what happens on the streets.”

Then the elevator car arrived. Everyone inside got out, leaving them alone as they started down. Luke Kelly didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and Jade wasn’t sure she had the guts to tell him different. But if this new phase of her life was ever going to work, it would be because of the truth, not the secrets. She glanced up at Luke and caught him watching her.

“Back there…you told Raphael that you would be anything I needed you to be.”

Luke’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes, and I meant it.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But you don’t know everything about us…about what we did…what Solomon made us do.”

Suddenly Luke knew he was about to learn why she screamed in her sleep. The knot in his stomach grew harder.

The elevator stopped on the first floor. Two people got on and rode the rest of the way down with them, forcing Jade to delay what she viewed as a confession of sins. The longer she had to wait, the more difficult it became to regain her courage.

In the cafeteria, she went through the food line, picking and choosing without appetite, knowing that the food was simply a means to survival. Then she chose a table in the back of the room in the hopes that she could finish what needed to be said without interruption.

As they sat, Luke’s phone began to ring. He glanced at the caller ID, then turned it off.

“I’ll call them back later,” he said.

Jade felt guilty. The man had a business to run, and here she was, taking up his time.

“It’s okay,” she said. “If you need to leave, please don’t let me stop you.”

“I don’t need to leave. If I did, I would tell you. Besides, doing what I want, when I want, is one of the perks of being the boss.”

“Oh.” She picked up her fork and shoved a green bean around on the plate, then remembered her napkin, laid down her fork and spread her napkin in her lap. “Sorry. I haven’t had all that many opportunities to practice my manners.”

Luke grinned wryly. “Jade…honey…in the grand scheme of things, how much do you think napkin etiquette matters?”

She paused, sighed. “I’m being defensive again, aren’t I?”

She stared down at her plate, absently watching the green bean juice spilling off the edge. Then she looked up. “Damn it, Luke, don’t you see?”

He frowned. “See what?”

“How flawed I am.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that no one’s perfect?”

“Don’t be flip. I’m serious.”

“Then explain it to me,” Luke said.

Her voice shook. “It’s ugly. Sam will be ashamed of me. You will no longer want to be my friend.”

“No, Jade. That will never happen.”

“You don’t know.”

“Then tell me,” he said softly.

He laid his hand over hers, expecting resistance. To his surprise, there was none.

She glanced over her shoulder, making sure they were still alone. Then she took a deep breath.

“My mother died when I was six. I can barely remember her.”

“That’s tough. I can’t even imagine what that must be like.”

She looked down. Her fingers were trembling. She curled them into fists so that he might not see.

“You slept in the same room with Raphael and me.”

“Yes?”

“You heard me…you never talked about it…but you heard just the same, didn’t you?”

He didn’t know how to answer.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. But it’s part of what I’m trying to say. I don’t remember my mother or my father, but it’s what I do remember that has made me the way I am.”

“Look, if this is making you that uncomfortable, you don’t have to tell me,” Luke said.

She sighed, then looked at him, studying the solidity of his jaw and the steady gaze in his eyes.

“Unfortunately, I do.”

“Then I’m listening.”

“Right after my mother died, Solomon…the man who was the leader of the People of Joy…sold me to a man.”

Luke flinched. “Sold you how?”

“For the night.”

Shock hit Luke like a fist to the gut.

“Sold you. For the night.”

She nodded.

“For sex?”

She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob.

“Yes.”

Now it was Luke who looked away. The colors of a painting on the wall behind Jade ran together in a kaleidoscope of hues, but it wasn’t until he felt the moisture on his cheeks that he knew he was crying.

The emotion startled, then frightened, Jade. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly.

He looked up, his voice deep and angry.

“Don’t!”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t
ever
apologize again. Not for that. Never for that. God in heaven, Jade, you were a child. Someone was supposed to be taking care of you, not selling you to perverts.”

“Someone tried,” she said.

Luke knew instantly who she meant. “Raphael.”

“Yes, Raphael, but he was only three years older than me, so there wasn’t a lot he could do. Solomon did it to all the kids. It has to be how Raphael got sick…. We never did drugs. And once we’d gotten away from Solomon, we never…we couldn’t…” She shuddered. “It was easier to be hungry than to take money for sex.”

Luke was trying to focus, to ask the right questions so that she would feel safe enough to confide in him, but all he wanted to do was break something—preferably the sorry son-of-a-bitch’s neck who’d done this to them.

“How did you get away?” he asked.

“I’m not real sure. Raphael only talked about it once. After that, we never spoke of it again.”

“Again, if you’d rather not, it’s okay,” Luke said.

“No, you may as well hear it all. It was late in July, I think. At least, I remember how hot it was. The kids slept in rooms sort of like dormitories. I had a couple of bed partners…girls who were about my age or younger. The boys had a larger room down the hall. When Solomon woke me up and started dragging me down the hall to the purple room, I knew one of the uncles had come.”

“Uncles?”

“It’s what he called the men who paid him money to have sex with the kids.”

Luke watched the expression on her face disappear. There was an absence of emotion in her voice as she laid her hands in her lap and leaned back against the chair. He had a moment’s impression of someone taking a stance in front of a firing squad, and then she began to talk.

“I knew the man. He’d been there before. He always called me his pretty baby and made me call him Uncle Frank. But it had been a long time since I’d seen him…maybe six months. Solomon always marked the passing years with a group celebration, so I remember someone telling me it was my eighth year with the People, which meant I was probably around twelve. Anyway, my body was changing. I didn’t look like a little girl anymore, and when the uncle took off my clothes, he got angry. When I told him it wasn’t my fault, he slapped me and told me to shut up. So I did.”

Jade didn’t realize it, but she had started to rock back and forth, weaving the upper half of her body between the back of the chair and the front of the table. Luke had seen similar trancelike behavior in people who’d suffered emotional traumas.

Then she looked at Luke again, trying to see if she could tell what he was thinking by the look on his face. It didn’t work. Except for the tears on his cheeks, he was motionless.

“As I said, I shut up. But he couldn’t…uh, I no longer turned him on. He took his humiliation and anger out on me. I remember the pain from being cut, then I don’t remember anything much after that. Raphael said they heard me screaming all over the house. And at fifteen, Raphael was big for his age. He got to me first and nearly killed the man with his fists. Solomon came next. Told Raphael to get me out of the room. Raphael went him one better and got me out of the house. We stole one of the People’s vans, and we’ve been running ever since.”

Jade stopped, her body suddenly motionless, and looked at Luke, trying to judge his reaction.

“So, now that you know…do you still want to be my friend?”

The tremor in her voice only added to the poignancy of her question. Luke leaned forward, wanting to touch her to add strength to his answer. Instead, he extended his hand toward her, palm up.

“I told you before,” he said softly. “I will be what you need me to be.”

Jade stared at him for a long, silent moment, then looked down at his hand. It was broad across the palm, with a faint scar near his thumb. If he’d made a fist, it would have been large—very large. She should have been terrified to even touch him, and yet there was something within her that kept telling her it would be okay.

Finally she extended her fingers, feeling the warmth and the strength of him against her flesh, and when his fingers curled around her hand, she barely flinched. When she spoke, her voice was so low that Luke had to lean forward to hear.

“What I need is someone I can trust.”

“Trust me.”

Finally she nodded, then asked, “Will you tell Sam?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know. Let me think about it, okay?”

“It’s your call,” Luke said. “But remember what I told you before. Your father is overjoyed to have found you. He doesn’t give a damn about anything else.”

She nodded. “If I ask you something, will you promise to tell me the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Now that you know…what do you think?”

“I think that if I ever get my hands on the son-of-a-bitch who calls himself Solomon, I will kill him.”

Oddly, the violence in his answer satisfied something within Jade that she hadn’t known was there. A yearning of her own, she’d stifled through the years, to enact some form of revenge. That Luke Kelly echoed the same feelings connected them in a way she hadn’t expected.

“Okay, then,” she said, and glanced at her plate. “The food is getting cold.”

She needed to change the subject. Luke was willing to go along. He looked at his own food, congealing in its separate servings, and picked up his fork.

“Looks okay to me,” he said, then forced a bite of his salad into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, then gave her a wink. “It’s not so bad—if you’re into warm lettuce and cold chicken.”

Jade made a face.

Impulsively Luke stuck his fork into the blob of whipped cream in the center of his pie and dobbed it on the end of her nose.

Jade was so stunned by what he’d done that for a moment she couldn’t think what to do. Then she took the napkin from her lap and wiped off the whipped cream before looking around to see if anyone noticed.

“Why did you do that?”

He grinned. “Just sharing my food with my friend.”

It was the smile that did it. If Jade could have put words to what she was feeling inside, she would have sworn that the old wall around her emotions had started to crack.

J
ohnny Newton’s rental car was a gray four-door sedan. It blended well with the neighborhood as he cruised past the Cochrane estate and then turned up the driveway of the house across the street.

The house was an old Tudor-style place built back in the early 1900s. The present owner, a seventy-seven-year old widow named Margaret Tyler, had lived there for more than forty years. According to Johnny’s research, although Mabel was very wealthy, she’d become a bit of a recluse after her husband’s death. She had no children, no living relatives in the area, and no regular routine. A cleaning service came once a week on Mondays, and since today was Tuesday, Johnny had almost an entire week before he needed to be concerned about being discovered, which made this location perfect for what he had in mind.

Without hesitation, he drove his car along the driveway that circled to the back of the house to the detached garages, then parked in one of the vacant spaces. After retrieving his suitcase from the trunk, he headed for the back door. It took less than a minute to pick the lock.

Once inside, he stood for a moment to get his bearings. The scent of coffee was still in the air, and there was a faint dusting of toast crumbs on the counter near a toaster. It seemed he’d missed breakfast with Mabel. Too bad. She might have been an interesting woman to know, but he didn’t have time for chitchat. He carried his suitcase through the house and then up the stairs. An array of bedrooms beckoned to be chosen, but he had to meet his hostess first.

“Mabel! Are you home?”

Seconds later, an elderly woman stepped out into the hallway, still holding a pillow and a pillow case in her hand.

“Ah, making the beds, are you?” Johnny said.

Mabel clutched the pillow against her breasts as the man started toward her.

“Who are you? How did you get in my house?”

He smiled. “Oh, that’s easy. I’m Johnny Newton. I picked the lock on your back door.”

Mabel gasped, then dropped the pillow as she moved back into the bedroom, toward the phone. Johnny caught her from behind before she could pick up the receiver and broke her neck with one vicious twist. As he threw her dead body over his shoulder, he paused for a moment to look around.

“Damn, Mabel…nice room,” he said, and then headed back down the stairs.

Considering the heat this time of year, he needed to dump Mabel’s body as far away from the main area of the house as possible. All old houses like this had full basements with lots of nooks and crannies. It should be perfect.

Sure enough, he found a door to the basement just off the laundry room in an area that had once been used as servants’ quarters. He turned on a light at the head of the stairs, then carried her down.

The old coal furnace that had once heated the house had been replaced by central heat and air units, but there were several small closetlike rooms beneath the stairs. He chose the one farthest from the stairs and dumped her inside beside a box marked
Christmas tree ornaments,
then whistled as he returned to the main level.

Now that he had settled the question of his stakeout location, he felt much more relaxed. Rummaging through the fridge, he found the makings for a sandwich, poured himself a glass of milk, and carried it into the living room, choosing a seat with a good view to the house across the street.

He set his milk on an end table, propped his feet up on an antique cherry-wood coffee table and took a bite of his sandwich. The turkey was seasoned to perfection, the lettuce and tomato crisp and fresh. He would have preferred mustard to mayonnaise, but obviously Mabel did not, because he hadn’t been able to find any. Still, it was a good beginning to his day’s work. He polished off the sandwich while watching the media circus outside and began making plans to add to the confusion.

Unaware of the fate of his poor neighbor, Sam Cochrane was busy making plans of his own. Ever since Jade’s arrival, he had been cleaning out two large adjoining rooms on the third floor of his house. Since Jade was spending almost all her time at the hospital, it had been simple to do this without revealing his purpose.

Less than an hour ago, the art supplies that he’d ordered had been delivered. Velma had taken the curtains from the windows to let in more light, and polished the brass and the wood trim until all of it shined. Sam had moved all but a few chairs and a couple of small tables into other areas of the house, making room for the large storage cabinet, as well as an assortment of stretched canvases and easels.

Michael Tessler had warned him that it was only a matter of time before Raphael succumbed. Tessler had also warned Sam that because Jade and Raphael were so close, she was not only going to suffer normal grief, but that it was very possible she would suffer survivor’s guilt, as well. Sam was heartsick for Jade and had spent many hours with her at Raphael’s bedside, showing her in the only way he knew how that he cared. And while she’d nodded and smiled in all the right places and thanked him for what he was doing, they both knew the emotional bond that should have been there was missing. It was during one of those times that he’d remembered her skill as an artist, and thought that, maybe later, if she had a place of her own to practice that outlet, it might help with the grief.

And now it was finished. There was nothing left to buy. He shifted a stack of canvases from one side of the room to the other, then stepped back to admire what he’d done. His work here was finished. He felt sadness for the day when this would be revealed to Jade, because that would mean Raphael was gone, but if it gave her even a measure of relief, it would be worth it. Satisfied that he’d done what he’d set out to do, he left, quietly closing the door behind him.

Otis Jacks was scheduled for reconstructive surgery on Wednesday, then developed a toothache on Monday. After a quick visit to a dentist, he was informed that he had an abscessed wisdom tooth that needed to be pulled. But before that could happen, he was going to have to take a round of antibiotics to get rid of the infection. And because of the abscessed tooth, the scheduled surgery to change his face also had to be postponed.

So now he lay propped up in bed with an ice pack on his jaw and the remote control for his new plasma television in his hand, killing time until he could make his escape.

The forced inactivity had also given him time to think about the dangers of delay. A few phone calls had netted him information that made him realize how risky that delay might be.

“Damned tooth,” he muttered, then aimed the remote and turned off the TV.

He reached for the bottle of painkillers on his bedside table, popped a couple in his mouth and downed them with a big swallow of water. He would have preferred bourbon, neat, but he knew from experience that codeine and whiskey didn’t mix. He’d lost one of his best porn stars to just such an incident last year and was in no mood to follow her into oblivion.

Still, his nerves were on edge and would be until he got himself out of the States. As he lay there, waiting for the painkillers to start working, he couldn’t help but curse the luck that had brought Jade Cochrane back into his life.

It had been three days since Big Frank Lawson had made the call that sent Johnny Newton to St. Louis. Three long days without a word. Each day Frank checked the papers and diligently watched all the national news broadcasts, hoping that the return of Sam Cochrane’s daughter was becoming old news. To his dismay, it seemed to be just the reverse. There was news footage of a beautiful, dark-haired woman going in and out of a local hospital. Speculation as to why she was there ran the gamut of guesses, although the consensus was that the man she was living with when she was found was gravely ill. Although they did not mention the man’s name, Frank suspected it was Raphael and wished them both to hell the hard way. Frustrated that all was not going according to his plans, he reached for his cell phone. He’d hired a man to do a job, and ineptitude was not something he tolerated. As far as he was concerned, Johnny Newton should have checked in with an update, but since he hadn’t, Big Frank was going to check in with him.

Raphael’s condition was stable, so at Sam’s urging, Jade had taken time to come home with him this morning. When they’d walked out of the hospital, she’d been startled by the heat and clear skies. She’d been so focused on Raphael that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to wake up to a normal day. And just for a while, she needed to pretend that everything was okay.

Sam cupped her elbow as they started toward the parking lot. When he did, she looked up at him and smiled. With each passing day, she was becoming more comfortable with him. A couple of times since she’d been home, she’d experienced what could only be called déjà vu. Once it had been as she walked into the kitchen. The scent of cinnamon had been faint but persistent, and there had been a blue coffee cup sitting in a slice of sunshine on the countertop. She’d been staggered by the sight and the memory that had come with it. Her mother laughing as she stuffed an oversized bite of cinnamon roll into her father’s mouth. A blue cup sitting on a counter just out of her reach.

The other time, as she’d been going up the stairs, she’d had the feeling that if she turned around, her father would be right behind her with his hand on her shoulder and a little pink blanket in his hand. She hadn’t told him, but she’d thought about it. If the memories were real, then it was true that he’d loved her—loved them both.

Now, sitting beside him in the car as he maneuvered through traffic, she thought of it again and looked at him. He was a handsome man, with a full head of steel-gray hair. Despite what was happening, he seemed to handle each setback with clarity and purpose. Even more, he made Jade feel safe, which didn’t make sense. Logically, he was a man she’d met only days earlier. With her history, every emotional warning bell should be going off, and yet it was just the opposite.

“Sam, can I ask you something?” Jade asked.

Surprised that she’d initiated a conversation, Sam could barely hide his joy.

“Of course,” he said, then tapped the brakes as a light turned red at the intersection they were approaching.

“The other day…in the house…I think I remembered something. Well, actually, two somethings.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Really? Like what?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t much. More like a picture that is flashed before your eyes and then taken away, but I’ve been wondering if it’s something I really remembered or if it’s just my imagination.”

The light turned green. He accelerated through the intersection, then urged her to continue.

“Tell me,” he said.

“We’re all in the kitchen. My mother is laughing and stuffing a huge bite of cinnamon roll into your mouth. You have cinnamon and sugar on your chin, and you’re trying to do the same thing to her, only she’s avoiding the sweet roll that you’re holding in your hand.”

Sam inhaled slowly, then pulled over into a side street and parked. When he turned to look at Jade, there were tears in his eyes.

“That wasn’t a dream, honey. It really happened. We used to play like that together a lot, especially in the beginning. That’s why I was so stunned when she ran away. I didn’t know she was that unhappy.”

“I don’t think she was unhappy,” Jade said. “I think she was selfish and self-centered. If she’d been thinking about me, she wouldn’t have wanted me within a thousand miles of the People of Joy.”

Sam was startled by the anger. He hadn’t realized that Jade blamed her mother for the hardships of her past. He should have, but he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what she was thinking when she took you, but I truly believe that she loved you too much to leave you behind.”

Jade’s laugh was sharp and bitter. “Love like that can kill you.” Then she waved her hand in the air, as if brushing away the past, and moved on to her other memory. “Remember the other day when you brought me home from the hospital so I could take a shower and change my clothes?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I was walking up the stairs when suddenly it seemed that I’d walked up those stairs a lot of times before and that you were right beside me with your hand on my shoulder. Oh…and you were carrying a little pink blanket. I think it was mine. Was that a real memory?”

Sam’s breath caught at the back of his throat. She was remembering their night-time ritual.

“Yes, and when we get home, there’s something I want to show you,” he said, and pulled away from the curb.

A short while later they reached the house. There were still a couple of vans from local television stations, but the national news crews were starting to disperse, leaving the prodigal daughter story for something new. The media still in the area had been restricted from the immediate vicinity of Sam’s home, so it was becoming easier for Jade to pretend they weren’t even there. Still, it had been disconcerting to see herself on film on the evening news, going in and out of the hospital, or walking out of Sam’s house to get in the car. And there had been the story of her homecoming on the front page of the biggest St. Louis paper with the picture that had run when she disappeared, as well as one of her now. It hadn’t occurred to her that the story had been picked up and was running nationwide. If it had, she would have panicked for certain. The last thing she wanted was for Solomon to know where she was. Even now, she still feared his power.