Smokescreen (7 page)

He laughed, an ugly sound as good as a confession.

“That’s—
it!
” She slammed her head back into his nose, too restricted to do much damage but not expecting to, because her real goal—

Her real goal gleamed palely at ground level next to her own nose, and she went for it. She sunk her teeth into the strip of skin exposed by his ridden-up jacket
sleeves and this time she got a surprised bellow, and then everything happened pretty much at once. House lights came on, Jethro shouted her name from what seemed a very long distance and Sam’s flailing hands found a flat cut-out lawn ornament jammed into the ground on a thick piece of rebar. She yanked it out, spat out the flesh of his arm, and laid into him with the lawn ornament, awkward but unrelenting as he jerked his arm out of range. She shot forward, rose to her knees and cocked the flat, heavy wood back like a bat, swinging to the bleachers just as he sent a big ham fist in her direction. She ducked.

He didn’t.

He reeled backward, barely catching himself with one hand, and Sam surged to her feet, throwing so much energy into her next blow that the impact lifted her feet off the ground by a grass blade or two.

“Sam!”

And suddenly Jethro was right there, rolling the stunned heavyweight to his stomach and cranking an arm up behind the man in a way those beefy muscles barely allowed. He yanked a couple of stout Velcro tie-downs from his pocket as Sam watched in disbelief, wavering slightly on her feet. Dammit, she felt like she’d been trampled by a whole herd of gorillas and not just this one and it made her seriously cranky. “What the hell are those?”

“My geek straps,” Jethro said, intent on his task; the effort it took left her with no doubt that the Velcro would hold. His words came in little rushes between his movements. “For my pants. When I’m biking.”

“Perfect,” she said numbly. In the light from the refuge house windows she got her first good glimpse of her
own improvised weapon and discovered a little old lady bending over to weed, her petticoats and undies bared to the world. Okay, there was something appropriate about
that.
She gave a little laugh and threw the wooden figure on top of the trussed man. As Jethro stood, the man rolled partway to his back, stopped there by his own beefy arms behind him, and Sam prodded his soft groin with her toe. “All gone,” she noted with satisfaction. “I hope you’ll think of your current stunning performance any time you get a notion to use
this
again.”

Jethro made a strangled noise. And then he said, “Why didn’t you call me? You think I wouldn’t have been of any help? You and my sister—”

“Shut up,” she told him, blunt and unable to muster any kinder words for him as she nursed all her new owies. “What makes you think I had a chance?”

“I—”

“Shut up,” said an entirely new voice. “And drag that trash off my lawn. Who the hell are you and what are you doing here? Better talk fast, because the cops are on their way.”

“No, they’re not,” Sam said, calm enough as she finally caught her breath. She looked up at the woman on the front stoop, finding an African-American version of the Captain. Short, stout and damned tough. “Not unless someone else called them, and I don’t see any other house lights on down the street. You don’t want them here any more than I do.”

The woman grunted something uncomplimentary and held up a cell phone. “Got my finger on 9-1-1.”

“Sure,” Sam agreed. “But let’s talk before you use it. I’ve come from the Captain’s end of town. You’re gonna want to hear this.”

For the first time, the woman hesitated; in the darkness she nodded at Jethro. “And him?”

“He’s going to stand out here and make sure this guy doesn’t have any pals trying to finish what he started.” Sam rubbed her hip where it had hit the cold, hard ground.

Jethro leaned in close to her. “Why
wouldn’t
there be?” He glanced at the house as if he weren’t sure he wanted her to overhear. “If Scalpucci is behind this trouble, why would he send only one man? Why not send a posse?”

“Huh. Good point.” The bomb had been more Scalpucci’s style—unmistakable, in your face, getting the job done with a bang. She looked down at the conquered mound of muscle and asked it, “How about that?” But she didn’t wait for the answer she knew wouldn’t be forthcoming. “I think we’d better get out to that other house. But I’ve got to talk to her first.” Sam nodded at the house. “I mean it about staying out here. I need her to trust me.”

“And I’m not part of your little organization.”

Sam gave him a sweet smile. “You’re a man. That’s enough.” She patted his cheek, counting on the gesture to put him off long enough so she could make her getaway without further discussion—and though she couldn’t quite decipher the startled look on his face, she made her getaway nonetheless.

Whew. Just in time. Traitors, those fingers of hers, wanting to linger. Pure and simple traitors.

The house guardian met her with hands impatiently propped on her square hips. “What the hell is going on? Who are you? I’ve already asked once and by my way of thinking you’ve had far too long to answer.”

“My name is Sam.” Sam stood at the bottom step of the tiny porch, one hand on the rail, knowing she wouldn’t be invited inside. “I watch the Captain’s house. Earlier this evening a van blew up in front of it.”

The woman stiffened. She hadn’t heard. Sam wasn’t surprised. The Captain was probably still dealing with the cops and no one else had the contact info—and wouldn’t, not unless the Captain’s death set into motion the events that would bring her successor up to speed. But for now…

The woman’s voice turned quiet. “And she’s all right?”

“She’s tied up with things. But we think your location has been compromised. That’s what I came to tell you—to warn you—and given what we found…” She nodded at the dark lump on the grass that had so recently been trying to hurt her.

“She gave you this location?” the woman asked suspiciously.

“No,” Sam said dryly. “That’s the point. I got it from the same person who was beaten into revealing it to Scalpucci’s people. I don’t suppose you have Gretchen Scalpucci here.”

The guardian snorted. “I don’t suppose I’ll tell you. And what’s
his
story?”

“He’s looking for someone.”

“And you brought him
here?
”

Sam shook her head, somewhat bemused herself. “That I did. Of course, I don’t believe his sister’s even in the city anymore, and your location is blown anyway—you need to pack up and get out of here even if Gretchen Scalpucci never got anywhere near you. She wasn’t at the refuge, either, and Scalpucci still left us a
bomb to make sure we know he’s peeved at us. My guess is that he’ll try to take out the entire underground. I hope you’ve got a fallback.”

The woman snorted again. “Of course. We started evacuation procedures as soon as you got noisy out here. Another half hour and no one will ever know anyone was here.”

Sam looked at their prisoner. Jethro had left him in an ungainly huddle on the grass to return to the sidewalk, somewhat more vigilant than he’d been the first time. “I’ve got another house to warn. I’d rather not stick around to deal with him.”

“Not a problem. The cops can get a tip once we’re outta here. I’ll make sure they know he beat on someone once already tonight.”

Sam nodded, gave her the quick details of Madonna’s situation, and saw the first signs of sadness in the woman’s eyes. “I remember her. I had hoped she would make it. She was taking her meds when she was here, and she’s really quite a smart young lady.”

Sam felt the same twinge of regret, thinking of the vacant lot where Madonna had set up house. “I guess she just has to make it her own way.”

“And him?”

Jethro, that’s who the woman meant. And Sam didn’t blame her for the hard note that came into her voice. “His sister came through. He can’t let go. He’s been helpful this evening.” She hadn’t realized it until she said it…so used to being on her own, so used to simply handling things as they happened.

“Do you believe him?” the woman asked abruptly.

“You know, I do.” That, too, came as a surprise. At first she’d easily assumed Jethro had been lying, that
he’d been the abuser behind one of their refugees. But Sam was a people watcher by nature…and by profession. And in spite of the violence of this evening, she’d never seen anything of it reflected in Jethro. Nothing but honesty and persistence and more than a dab of deliberate blindness when it came to his sister’s decision. “I don’t agree with him, but I do believe him.”

Another snort. And a hard directive. “Don’t compromise us.”

And that raised Sam’s hackles but good. “The whole system is already compromised. He’s not learning anything that will hold true within fifteen minutes after we walk away from here.” She felt her own surprise at the strength of her response, saw it reflected in the other woman’s face. She grasped for annoyance to cover the moment. “Don’t worry about us. But see if you can reach the Captain. She doesn’t know Madonna talked.” And as she stepped away from the landing, her thoughts went unbidden to Jeth’s earlier question…why only one man? Why hadn’t she run into a whole group? They could have bulldozed through her and right into the house.

Unless they were otherwise occupied.

Unless they already knew the other house held Gretchen, and had sent this one man here to deliver the same kind of message Scalpucci had given the Captain.

Great. The thought put spring back into her step; she broke into a run as she headed for the car, swooping up behind Jethro to grab his arm. He hesitated, gaze on the house, thoughts on his sister. Sam shook her head, more sharply than she truly felt. “I told you it wouldn’t happen. She’s not there—and if she was that woman would shoot you and put you out to the curb before she let you in.” Not quite. Stun guns were just as effective and not
as problematic. But he didn’t need to know that. “Now let’s
go.
”

He still hesitated, hope lingering. And then he visibly steeled himself. “You’re sure—”

“
Yes.
Now get in or get out of the way.”

He finally caught her urgency. He finally tore himself away from the house, even if not quite convinced. “What’s the big hurry?” he said as they slid into the car on their respective sides.

“You said it,” she said. “Only one man. So where are the others?”

He snapped the seat belt buckle together, a noise somehow made grim by the circumstances. “One step ahead of us.”

“Exactly.”

“H
ow far?” Jethro asked, but it wasn’t the thing foremost on his mind.
Had he just walked away from Lizbet? Would he ever have another chance?

Or maybe she was just ahead. So hard to know…so hard to trust.

“Ten minutes,” she said shortly. “More or less.”

He watched her profile, still expecting to see something other than the moderate and unremarkable nose…something with a bump just below the bridge and more expressive nostrils. And the mouth…the lower lip should be fuller and distinctly undercut, the chin below more stubborn.

But it wasn’t. And he couldn’t figure out how he thought it could or should be. “Holy Velcro handcuffs,” he said. It wasn’t what he was really thinking or what he really wanted to say, but for once Jethro Sheridan didn’t
know
how to say all the things on his mind. “Looks like you pulled a real superhero trick—leaving the bad guy trussed up at the scene of the crime.”

She took the exit from the inner to the outer loop and didn’t respond. But she must have felt him watching, because she finally gave him a hard glance and said, “I didn’t ask about your sister. She wouldn’t have told me
anything if I had. I don’t even know that woman’s
name
—that should tell you something.”

He tried to absorb her words, found himself stuck on the fact that she hadn’t even asked, that these people kept so very much from each other. “You could have tried.”

“No,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t have. I told you from the start that you wouldn’t learn anything this evening and I meant it. I told you not to come. You seem to think you’re the only one of the two of us who tells the truth about things large and small, so I guess you didn’t want to believe me.”

“That’s not it,” he protested, loudly enough to cover the stab of guilt that meant she was, at least to some extent, right in what she said. “I thought maybe you were wrong, not that you were putting me on.”

“Wrong,” she repeated, taking her eyes from the road long enough for a sideways glance at him. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

“Sam—”

“Forget it. You’ve got your eye on your goal. That’s what matters, right?”

He rubbed a knuckle over his mustache and made himself stop. “Yes,” he muttered, and then, “Not only,” but if she heard him she didn’t respond.

For a moment he half expected her to pull over by the side of the deserted four-lane commuter loop, but she gave him another of those looks—this one with more challenge in it. “Tell me about your sister.”

“Is this a test?” he found himself asking dryly.

“If you want.” The thought seemed to amuse her. “It won’t change anything.”

“Then what’s the point?” God, he’d had his fill of this
dark underground world with its intractable members and its secrets and the way it stood so firmly between himself and Lizbet.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel; she winced and carefully relaxed them back to fingertip driving. “The point is…I want to know.”

“It makes a difference to you,” he clarified, unwilling to let it go unsaid. Too many things went unsaid in this woman’s life…even things he thought she probably needed to say. Or to hear.

She took a deep breath, drumming her fingertips against the wheel. “Okay. Yeah. It makes a difference to me.”

Okay. Yeah.

Jethro smiled. He could afford to; she was checking the side-view mirror and wouldn’t see. She wouldn’t guess he’d gotten a warm rumble of feeling from her admission. And to keep her from guessing, he answered her question. “Her husband—Craig, though I prefer to keep things simple and just call him ‘that asshole’—started hitting her a couple of years ago. She hid it from us all.” He shook his head. “I just can’t believe we didn’t guess it.”

“When a woman wants to protect something, she finds a way.”

“Spoken like an expert.”

She ignored him. “Lizbet was protecting the only life she thought she could live. That she thought she deserved. It’s common.”

“Well, it sucks. Because
that asshole
made her life miserable. And it finally got bad enough that we realized what was going on.”

“We?”

“I had a girlfriend. She—” She’d rifled his bank accounts and almost lost him the business, and then she’d disappeared. He hadn’t made any real effort to find her. “She’s gone. But at the time, she was the first to notice that Lizbet was hiding something. It hadn’t gotten too bad, not yet. So I went to discuss the situation with him.”

Sam snorted. “I’ll bet
that
worked.” But she sounded sympathetic, too—enough to take the edge off her words.

“I know better, now,” he said. “At the time…he seemed sincere enough. Cowed enough.”

“He probably was. And then he started to resent your interference, and then he told himself no one could control him, and then he started in on her again.”

He laughed, and it felt painful even to his own ears. “You’ve heard this before.”

“I wouldn’t be doing this work if there wasn’t a need for it.”

Right. “It gets better. This time when I went over there, it was to pack Lizbet up to stay with me for a while.” His girlfriend hadn’t liked the idea…that’s when she’d had her way with his bank accounts. “Except he was there, and he tried to stop me.”

“Ah.” She navigated through the narrow streets of some dignified old brick homes not far from one of the most exclusive areas of town. “And you had a manly confrontation?”

“I broke his nose,” Jethro said sheepishly. He hadn’t expected the meeting to escalate so suddenly. “He wasn’t used to someone who hit back. And Lizbet came with me. She called a lawyer that very afternoon. She’d had enough.”

“Not something
that asshole
would have taken well.”

Jethro rubbed his fingers over his eyes, suddenly
overcome by the absurdity of the whole situation—of his role in events. The words on the tip of his tongue sounded so dramatic, so
melodramatic,
that he almost couldn’t believe them himself. “In fact, he went out, drank himself cocky, and found a seventeen-year-old kid to take offense at. Killed him.”

“Damn,” she said, and he realized she had no trouble believing it. Believing it could happen just like that. Believing that Jethro wasn’t just spinning a story.

“So he ended up in jail waiting trial—couldn’t raise the bail—and Lizbet went back home.”

“That’s not the end.”

“Or I wouldn’t be here,” he said, finishing her thought; he saw it in the glance she gave him as she picked out the next street in the dark. “No, that’s not the end. He raised the bail. He got out. I went to Lizbet’s as soon as I heard, but…it was too late.” He closed his eyes, unable to keep the images away. Blood on the wall, overturned furniture. No sign of Lizbet
or
the asshole. He’d checked the hospitals, he’d checked with police….

She was gone. And that asshole had established himself in a rent-by-the-week apartment on the other side of the city, an apparent low-life poster child.

“And you’re sure—” She didn’t finish her sentence; she took a twisting turn that made him believe she was bringing him into this neighborhood the back way.

“I know she was at Sheltering Arms. I know that’s where she fell off the map.”

And Sam pulled over to the curb, put the car in Park and pocketed the keys. Thumping bass filled the neighborhood from the only house on the street lit from within; the driveway was crammed with cars, and more cars littered the curb around it. Sam looked at him—not
the Sam he kept expecting to see, the one he wanted to touch and verify, but this blander version. She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “You
did
try. You did a lot of the wrong things, but so does everyone. Don’t feel bad that she hid things from you so well. It happens all the time.”

It shouldn’t have happened to me.
And even so, he found himself needing her acceptance…relieved by it. A little surprised by it. She struck him as hard, as matter-of-fact…as often distant. And yet every now and then a little heart would come peeking out and grab at him. “You’re not so different than she,” he said, thinking out loud when he shouldn’t have. “So much of you is hidden. The question is why. And somehow…what.”

She gave an unexpected start; a flicker of panic crossed her face and disappeared into complete composure. “Anything I want to,” she told him. “For as long as I want to.”

I’m hidden. He can’t see me.

Not
really
see her.

Sam swallowed her bolt of panic and remembered the face she wore over her own. The not quite Sam face. The safe face. She exited the car without any further hesitation, leaving Jethro scrambling to catch up. “It’s the same deal,” she told him, meeting him at the grill of the car and speaking louder than she’d have preferred so he could hear her over the gut-rumbling music of the local homecoming party. The party parking filled the curbs around the refuge; she’d had to pull in half a block down. “You’ve got to stay back. If you want to help, keep an eye out for Scalpucci’s people. If not, then just wait here.”

“Of course I want to help.” The tilt of his head was
enough for Sam to imagine his puzzled, troubled expression. She knew he’d been affected by their discussion of his sister, knew he didn’t understand her abrupt change.

No. I don’t know him that well. And he doesn’t know
me.

Dammit. Get your head together.

Sam struck out for the refuge house with long, firm strides. She wouldn’t linger here; she’d warn the occupants off and if all went well, they’d be gone before Scalpucci’s people arrived.

The Captain would clean up the mess, the backup houses would swing into gear, and Sam would ply her guises wherever she was needed.

Caught up in her thoughts, she’d steamed on ahead of Jethro on the sidewalk—and then stopped short. He caught up with her quickly enough—and just as quick, saw what had stopped her. “They’re already here.”

A full-size van filled the refuge driveway, parked crookedly so as to block both lanes of the two-car garage—no windows, no markings. Hopefully no bombs.

She exchanged a glance with Jethro, discovered that like her he’d instantly shed the baggage from their conversation; like her, he’d focused directly on the situation before them. “Looks like 9-1-1 time.”

Sam didn’t hesitate. She was the Captain’s voice here; she was the one who understood the ramifications of involving the police. “No,” she said, lowering her voice so he had to move closer, to tip his head down. She drew him aside, onto the strip of grass and under the tree between the curb and the sidewalk—over where a lookout on the other side of the van wouldn’t see. “These women are on the run. We can’t call the police.
We might as well call the men they’re running from. The men who
beat
them.”

“They’d be
alive,
” Jeth said, just as urgently.

“You’d really call that living?” she shot back at him. “And we can’t! It would expose the entire underground to the authorities. It would affect these women, and the ones waiting for the chance to join us. We’d have to start all over again, and even then we might not manage—not once the cops have been forced to take official notice of us.”

He looked at her, stumped. “You told that woman to have the cops pick up the guy you clobbered at the last place.”

“
After
she evacuates everyone, with no plans to return.” Sam peered around him to eye the van and shook her head. “We might well do the same here…it all depends. I need to get a closer look. Gotta understand just what’s going down here.”

“It doesn’t seem like the same thing.” Jeth twisted to look behind himself. “One guy lurking compared to a whole van right out there in the open.”

Exactly. “I need to get a closer look,” she repeated, and then when he looked askance, held up a hand—sore, covered by his gloves, but assertive nonetheless. “Listen. This is what I do. And I only get paid by the job, so I must be pretty good at it. I’m neither dead or broke.”

“And I’m supposed to just hang back here and watch.” Couldn’t get any more skeptical than that.

“It’s not your cause, is it? It’s my thing. I’ll handle it.”

But he still had that stubborn look, and she caught her hair up in one hand, sweeping the bangs back. “I’ll come back, okay? I’ll take a look and I’ll come back and tell you what I see. Maybe we’ll end up calling the po
lice after all—but I won’t make that decision until I can scope out how things stand in there.”

After a long moment, he nodded. “Then I’ll wait. But I won’t wait long, so don’t take your time.”

She said, struck by a sudden congruence of inspiration, “How about I take your camera instead? I can take a few pictures through the windows, give you an idea what’s going down.”

A slow smile spread beneath that mustache. “Good idea.”

Oh, man, that was almost too easy. Guilt nibbled at her as he retrieved the camera, downright took chunks out of her as he handed it over and gave her quick directions about the manual use mode that she didn’t need. She already knew. She knew enough to take the new photos over the old ones, too. Including any pictures of the real Sam, the ones he’d alluded to having.

“Hey,” he said, misreading her distraction as nerves. “You don’t have to—”

“I do,” she assured him. “Try to stay inconspicuous. Go hide in the front seat if it comes to that. I won’t be gone long.”

Long enough to make a casual approach to the trio of evergreen shrubs at the corner of the refuge yard; long enough to duck down behind them and flip through the digital’s menu and the existing photos, aided by the light of a red-tinted flashlight. Long enough to erase them all.

And then, still crouching there, she gathered her concentration and hunted for the unique hum of thought that would take her
unseen.

There.

She did a quick circuit of the van, then of the back
yard perimeter—finding both spots empty. And then she reckoned that she’d been gone too long; she’d lost too much time in erasing the images of Sam I Am.
He never said he wouldn’t follow.
In fact, he’d specifically said he wouldn’t wait long. She’d have to go back and reassure him, then make another pass. As it was she could only peek in the windows, enough to assure her that the women were there, to snap a few quickie pictures that probably wouldn’t even be in focus. Enough to see that two angry-looking men had them under not only a watchful gaze, but the threat of a gun.