Simple Man (3 page)

Shane tried to recall what was said, but his memory was a fun house mirror. He remembered her attacking him and screaming, but couldn’t recall exactly what she’d said. His gut knotted uncomfortably as he remembered the way he spoke to her. Fuck. They needed to figure out how to be a family again, but first he needed to find her.

Hiding his concern, he shrugged. “She can be pissed all she wants. I’m not giving her a cent until I have a name.” And he needed to be certain she was sure about her choices. There were other options. Even if she didn’t keep the baby, maybe someone else would want it. He didn’t want his little sister haunted by hasty choices.

Duce tossed the plate on the coffee table. A few cans fell to the floor. “Where’re you going to get money like that? You’ve been saving up to fix the truck for weeks.”

“I’ll figure something out. Come on.”

They cleaned themselves up and quickly filled a trash bag with garbage, tossing it outside the door of the trailer. That was a slight improvement. If he could get the beer and weed stink out of his home he’d be good. “Crack that window to let some air in while we’re gone.”

Duce did as he asked and paused when Shane returned from the bedroom. “Seriously, man…what are you doing with the bat?”

“I told you. I’m kicking someone’s ass.”

Duce shook his head, stepped closer, and pried the Louisville out of his friend’s hand. “No, man. You know better than that.”

Duce was an odd guy. Of all his friends he was the dumbest, but at the same time he was also the most level headed and sometimes smartest. He was the diplomat. So long as they kept him fed, he’d do anything for any one of them.

They climbed into Duce’s Ford Focus, which, due to his friend’s generous size, was more like driving around in a roller skate.  Sunny Acres, the mobile community Shane lived in, was about ten miles from Lakota. Neither would be considered nice neighborhoods. One was a ghetto and one was ready to order aluminum homes for good ol’ lower class like himself.

He supposed he was what some might call white trash, but that wasn’t the way it would always be. He’d once had a beautiful home and a decent future promised to him. When life got hard, he’d tried his best, but he was just a kid. He’d fucked up a lot, thinking he was doing right. This place, Sunny Acres, this was just a pit stop. Eventually his hard work would pay off and he’d get the hell out of there. He needed to believe that or else he wouldn’t have the strength to keep on going.

For a guy who’d been on his own since he was seventeen with an eleven-year-old sister to raise, he figured he was doing all right. Although Noel had always been sort of a self-sufficient kid, she still needed food and clothes, the likes of which he was supposed to provide.

Noel begged him not to let her go into the system. It was no easy task to get custody of his sister when he turned eighteen. The months leading up to his eighteenth birthday were hell. They’d just lost their parents, their home was temporarily held up with estate paperwork neither he nor Noel understood, and they’d gone to two different foster families. He never thought after going through so much to be together, they’d end up treating each other the way they had over the past few months. Something definitely had to change.

He didn’t think about how hard it would be to raise Noel. All he focused on was holding on to the family he had left. There were some services that helped them along the way, but he was an adult and she was a kid. So much fell on his shoulders once he took on the role of guardian.

After the will was cleared up, they’d held onto their parent’s house for a few years before the bank foreclosed on it. Then they’d moved to an apartment in Lakota. Shane hated it there, but it was all he could afford at the time. He felt responsible for unintentionally introducing her to the people she met in Lakota and now called friends.

He worked his ass off, flipping burgers and finally caught a break getting hooked up with a construction company. Pouring concrete paid good, but the work only held out as long as the weather did. Winters were always tough.

Once he’d saved up enough money he’d bought a trailer in Sunny Acres. All he had to worry about was lot rent, which was about a third of what he paid in rent for their apartment. However, by that time Noel was already graduating high school and free to do as she pleased.

He didn’t approve of her friends in Lakota. She chose to stay there and if not for her cell phone, he wouldn’t have been able to find her half the time.

It was difficult for Shane to watch her date, knowing she could do so much better than some guy working a double o ’seven job she couldn’t answer for. This was supposed to be a phase, not the path her life followed. He’d tried so hard to give her as many opportunities as he could. He wanted his parents to look down on them and be proud. This was not where he expected her life to go.

When they reached Lakota, Duce drove them to Tracy’s house, Noel’s best friend, but Tracy claimed she hadn’t seen Noel in over a week. They drove to two other friends’ houses. Neither had heard from Noel in days, but one suggested they visit a guy named Davis Charles who lived over by the post office.

Duce drove them to the guy’s house and Shane got out to knock on the door. His body pulsed with tension. In situations like this things could escalate quickly and he was prepared for anything. Who knew if she’d lied and actually gone to the father, but the father tossed her out on her ass? His jaw clenched as he tried to distract the rage percolating inside of him. This may not be the father at all. He needed to play it cool in order to get some answers.

His knuckles rapped on the door again as he distracted himself with his surroundings. The house was a duplex, brick on one side, yellow siding on the other. Why did people do that? If someone shared a house wouldn’t they want it to match?

A thin, disheveled woman opened the door with a runny nosed toddler hanging on her hip. “Can I help you?” There was no welcome in her tone.

“Uh, yeah. I’m looking for Davis Charles.”

“What you want with Davis? He ain’t got no money if that’s what this is about.”

“I need to ask him something.”

She pursed her full lips and eyed him skeptically. “Fine, but I gots kids in here. You start fighting and I’m gonna call the cops, ya hear?”

He nodded.

She turned. “Davis! You got some people here to see you.”

The door slammed in their faces. “Wholesome neighborhood,” Duce commented under his breath.

The door opened and a tall, shirtless man stared down at them. He was tall, but skinny. “Who are you?”

“I’m Shane Martin. I’m trying to find my sister, Noel.”

“Well, Noel ain’t here. You probably find her over at Dan Nucci’s place.”

“Where’s Dan live?”

Davis gave them directions and they hopped back in the roller skate and continued their search. But Dan Nucci didn’t know where Noel was. Neither did his friend Mark Shields, or his friend Lauren Coats. It seemed everyone had an idea, but none of them panned out.

As it started getting dark, Shane dialed his sister’s number for the hundredth time, only to have it go to voicemail.

“I gotta eat, Shane. I’m wilting away to nothing over here. And I’m almost out of gas.” Duce had done nothing but complain for the last hour.

They fueled up at a local station closer to Sunny Acres. While Duce wolfed down three hot dogs, Shane scrolled through his contacts and texted anyone who might know where Noel was hiding. No one had seen her since last night.

“She’ll turn up, dude. She’s probably out with her girls somewhere, licking her wounds.”

Duce’s words were poor comfort. Regardless of her age, Noel was his responsibility. He’d let her go her own way for the most part, because no one told him how to live when he was seventeen and she deserved the same. But he always looked out for her. Over the last three years, as she’d become an adult, guilt seeped in for his lack of guidance. Not that his opinions were always welcomed, but he hadn’t been there for her the way he could have been.

Truth be told, he’d sort of let his own life go adrift. Work had been sparse, money tight, and at the end of the week all he wanted to do was drink his worries away.

Shane untied his ponytail and ran his fingers through his dark, shoulder length hair, tying it back off his neck again. He had a gig tomorrow night and needed to find her before then or he’d have to cancel. Without his truck running and his friends holding nine to five jobs, he’d be limited to searching for her at night. His worry took a back seat to the surge of irritation. Her little disappearing act was going to cost him more money if she didn’t turn up soon.

 “Should we head back?” Duce asked as he crumpled up his wrapper and tossed it in the back of the roller skate.

Shane dialed again and cursed when it went straight to voicemail. He was out of ideas. Where the fuck could she be? Sighing, he said, “Yeah, I guess.”

Duce started the car and backed out of the gas station. The thing buzzed down the highway as if powered by Duracell.

When Duce dropped him off, he entered his trailer and winced. It smelled like pot, piss, and beer. Rather than zone out on the couch like he usually would, Shane grabbed another trash bag and began cleaning up. He was anxious and it would only get worse if he sat around. He filled five big trash bags before the place looked decent again. The smell had dissipated, but wasn’t completely gone.

He’d opened the small windows to let in some air and worked himself into a sweat. Filling a bucket with soapy water, he began scrubbing down the cabinets and walls. The water was black before he reached the living room.

Shane ended up passing out sometime after three in the morning. His last thoughts were of Noel. He hoped, if she wasn’t speaking to him, she at least had a good friend with her. He’d figure out a way to get her the money if that’s what she really wanted, but he wanted to talk to her first, make sure she understood what this could do to a girl.

He didn’t want her going through this alone. It made him sick to think of what their relationship had become and how careless he’d been last night when she needed him. She undoubtedly was pissed with him, but no way was anyone more furious with him than himself. He’d find her. Tomorrow he’d find her and they’d work it all out.

Chapter One

May

“No, I’m definitely in. I just gotta run home and change. I’ll meet you down at Bailey’s in about an hour.” Shane drove his truck down the dusty main road of Sunny Acres toward his trailer.

Duce’s voice came over the phone. “Sims is already there. He said that girl, Sue, with the big lips is there.”

Shane grinned. “Oh, yeah? Is she asking where I am?”

Duce laughed. “Not from the way Sims made it sound. You better get there quick if you want a piece of that. He sounded like he was moving in for the kill.”

Shane shifted the phone to his other shoulder as he took the turn. “You tell Sims I said back off. I’ve been trying to get in her pants for a month now. I don’t need him cock blocking me.”

“Better hurry, bro. Clock’s a ticking and she’s probably already tipsy and doing that pouty drunk face she does.”

Shane groaned. “Goodbye.”

He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat of his truck and whipped into his driveway. A cloud of dust coated his trailer. It hadn’t rained in ages, but he was okay with that. No rain meant plenty of work.

He shut off the truck and headed into his home. His shirt was off before he cleared the front door. Tossing it onto a pile of crap lying on his couch, he shucked his pants and hit the bathroom.

Five minutes and he was showered and looking for something to wear. As he sorted through the bag of clothes from the Laundromat he berated himself for being lazy. Everything was fucking wrinkled.

There was a knock at the rickety front door. “Hold on.”

He shoved his legs into his nicest jeans and zipped the fly. When he opened the door he stilled. A uniformed officer stood on the other end. Shane quickly took inventory of his civic duties. All tickets were paid. He had no issues that he knew of with the IRS. He hadn’t been summoned for jury duty. “Yeah?”

“Are you Shane Martin?”

“Yes.”

“The brother of Noel Rose Martin?”

Fuck. Cold knifed through him like razorblades in his veins. It had been eight months, nine days, and roughly sixteen hours since he last saw his sister. Unable to catch his breath he stared, fighting back his hope, at the officer on his property. He’d be grateful if she was in jail. At least that meant he could find her.

The past eight months had been filled with the worst worry he’d ever known. For nearly three months he’d spent every free minute searching for her. She’d vanished. Her phone eventually turned off and no one, not even Tracy, knew where she’d gone.

Shane toyed with multiple scenarios. Maybe she ran off with the baby daddy. Maybe the guy was married and that was their only option. Maybe she’d gotten the money, taken care of the pregnancy, and didn’t want to face those that knew. Maybe she hated him. The latter was his greatest fear. He’d never forgive himself for letting her think he wouldn’t ultimately be there for her when the anger wore off.

His life became focused on finding her. When six months had passed, his boys sat him down and told him he needed to let her go. They said she’d come home when she was ready. Some days he was furious with her for putting him through this. He probably had an ulcer the size of the Grand Canyon from worrying about her. Her selfish actions affected him and she was wrong to punish him like this.

Adrenaline coursed through him as he eyed the officer. This was the first possible trace of her whereabouts he’d had since she left. He couldn’t talk fast enough. “Yes. Do you know where my sister is? Did she do something wrong? I’ll get a shirt and follow you to the station and—”

“Sir, that won’t be necessary. May I come in?”

Shane frowned. Where the hell was Noel and what did she do? “Uh, sure. The place is kind of a mess, but…” He waved the officer inside.