ANGEL MEETS THE BADMAN Page 10

  The kitchen, if that was what it had been, was in horrible shape. A sink with no faucets stood with an old pail underneath its drain. There were no cupboards, just shelves on the walls, some of which still held a handful of chipped plates and mismatched cups. No table. No chairs. No refrigerator or stove.

  A sense of overwhelming misery seemed to permeate the musty air here. It was so palpable that Sara had to back out of the room. She took a moment to shake off the sudden sense of sadness that had overwhelmed her, then she ventured into the other darkened room. The one Jake hadn't let her enter when they'd first arrived.

  It was small and square, but almost deliberately more cheerful than the others, in a pathetic way. The walls had been papered with comic strips … once colorful, but faded and peeling now. There was a cot in one corner, its mattress chewed to bits, but still identifiable despite the mess around and atop it. In one corner a pole had been fixed between two walls, and coat hangers still dangled from it. One even had a blouse hanging from it. Yellow now.

  Maybe it had been white once. A wooden crate stood next to the bed, turned upside down, with a scrap of cloth thrown over it. Lying on its side atop the makeshift bedside stand was a glass vase with a long-dead stem inside. And next to that, facedown, was a tiny picture frame.

  Holding her lamp out in front of her, Sara moved closer. And for some reason, as she reached for that frame, her hand trembled and her throat went tight.

  She picked it up, held it to the light.

  A teenage boy stood arm in arm with a thin, haggard-looking woman who had to be his mother. And though he was very young, maybe fifteen, and very skinny and gangly, Sara recognized the boy.

  "I thought I told you to stay in the front room."

  She turned slowly, staring at him as the golden light spilled over his features. Pained features. She held out the photo. "You lived here," she whispered.

  His gaze flicked downward to the photo in her hand. He came closer, took it from her, looked at it and slammed his eyes closed.

  "She … she's your mother, isn't she?"

  "Yeah. She was."

  "She died?"

  Jake nodded once, sharply, then turned away from her and stalked back into the front room again. She hurried after him, setting the lamp down on the way. "What happened to her, Jake?"

  "What the hell do you care?" he asked, and he sounded angry as he stomped across the room, headed for the door, yanked it open. Blinding sunlight spilled in, and he paused there, blinking in the brightness.

  Sara came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to bring up something so painful."

  "It's history."

  "No, it isn't."

  Finally he glanced down at her, his eyes so full of hurting that she wanted to hold him and rock him against her until it went away.

  "I know all about it, Jake. Don't forget, I've been there. You can move on, start over, but it's not history. It's never history. That kind of pain doesn't go away or ease up. Other people might buy that, but not me. You know better than to say that to me."

  He stared at her for a long moment, and finally he said, "You're right. I do."

  "So? You wanna tell me about it?"

  Licking his lips, Jake heaved a long sigh, faced front again and walked outside. She followed him down the steps and around to the side of the house, where a tire swing hung from a tree by a fraying, time-grayed rope. Jake gripped the rope, stood there, silent for a while. "It's not something I've ever talked about," he said.

  "And has that helped?"

  "You know it hasn't."

  "So?"

  She watched him. The way he lowered his head, the way his Adam's apple moved when he tried to swallow the lump in his throat. She knew exactly what he was feeling. She felt it every time she remembered losing her own mother, and her father, and the horror that followed.

  "I put this tire swing up for her. She used to love to have me push her back and forth." He gave the swing an experimental shove. It danced and spun in slow circles.

  Moving forward, Sara grabbed hold and gave the rope a tug. "Think it's still safe?"

  Jake shrugged, blinking and not meeting her eyes. "Why don't you try it and see?"

  "Okay." She put her legs through the center of the tire, lowered her weight onto it, and it held her. Jake put his hands on her back and pushed her gently. Sara leaned back, looking up at him as the swing carried her slowly back and forth. She watched the emotions running over Jake's face. And she waited for him to feel ready to talk.

  "Mom … Racine was her name. She was Bert's younger sister. And I guess she was always a little on the wild side. She got pregnant at sixteen, by a no-good bastard without a nickel to his name or a shred of ambition. And when her parents refused to welcome my father into the family, she ran off and married the snake."

  The swing slowed, and Sara put her feet down. "I take it you didn't get along with your father?"

  "He was never my father. I never even met him. He was only after the family's money, the plantation, the name. When my mother's family disinherited her, disowned her for marrying that scumbag, he walked out. So she was alone, with a kid on the way and a family that refused to take her back because she had disgraced them, as they put it."

  "They … they did that?"

  Jake nodded. His eyes were full of bitterness. "It didn't matter. She worked hard, we had it tough, but we got by. But then she got sick, and everything changed. She couldn't work anymore. She needed medicine she couldn't afford. I was old enough that I could have helped if she would have let me. But she flat-out refused to let me quit school and get a job."

  Sara nodded slowly. "She wanted you to do better than she had."

  "I let her down, then, didn't I?"

  Before Sara could disagree, he went on. "We came back here. She begged her family to take her in again. But her parents were still furious, and even though by then Uncle Bert had got over being angry with her, her parents still were. So she moved us into this shack, because it was vacant and it was free and it was close to her family. She was bound and determined that they would get over being mad, if she kept trying to make amends. The worst part was she refused to tell them she was sick. She had her pride." He shook his head slowly. "Right up to the end, my mamma had her pride."

  Sara swallowed hard. "So it was all up to you, to take care of your mother?"

  "It wasn't so bad. I would cut school, take part-time work where I could get it, lie to her about it. I fixed up that bedroom for her. Put up the swing. It seemed to give her a little bit of pleasure until she got too ill to come outside anymore."

  "And eventually you got so desperate to take care of her that you walked into that convenience store and tried to rob it."

  He nodded. "She'd stopped seeing a doctor, stopped taking her medications. The money wasn't there, and she knew it."

  "What happened in that store, Jake?"

  Jake lifted his head, met her eyes. "I said I had a gun, told the old man behind the counter to give me everything in the register. He grabbed his chest and keeled over on the floor." Then he lowered his head, shook it slowly. "I didn't know a damn thing about CPR, but I tried doing what I'd seen on TV. I called for help, tried to breathe for the old guy and pounded on his chest until the ambulance got there." He looked up again, eyes narrow with the memory. "The old bastard came around just long enough to tell them what had happened. Then he died, and I got my ass thrown in jail." Shaking his head slowly, he said, "And I never put my hands on a nickel from the old guy's cash register, either. But that didn't matter."

  "But you … you didn't take the money. And you stayed when you could have run."

  "And he had a son who was a cop and a grandson who was a cop and a cousin in the D.A.'s office. And I was just bayou trash." Jake licked his lips. "The only good thing that came of it was that the newspapers mentioned my mother's illness in covering the story. So her family found out how bad off she really was, and they took her back into the
fold. They had her moved back into the main house with them before my trial even ended. They got her the best care there was, hired a nurse to live in. Made sure she got her medicine. She actually did better for a little while. She had three good years before she took a turn for the worse again and finally died while I was in prison."

  Sara sniffed, and Jake looked at her sharply. "On her death bed," he went on, "she asked to see her brother alone. Bertram went to her, and she begged him to promise that he would give me a home when I got out of prison. And even though he was reluctant, he agreed. I doubt he would have been able to keep that promise, except that their parents passed on ten years into my sentence. They left the place to Bert. And he honored his promise to his sister when I finally got released last year."

  He reached out, gave the swing a push. "So now you know the whole ugly story."

  "It's not an ugly story at all, Jake. It's one of the saddest, most beautiful stories I've ever heard." Slowly she shook her head. "If … if I ever have a son, I hope he loves me half as much as you loved your mother, Jake."

  "Damn," he said, but softly, lowering his head. "I don't know why the hell I'm spilling my guts to you, anyway."

  She shrugged. "Because it feels better if you let it out a little bit. Doesn't it? And because it's easier to share with someone who's been through something similar."

  He didn't answer, just gave her another push in the swing. "What's that, some pop psychology you got from a magazine quiz?"

  She glanced behind her at him as the tire fell toward him. He pushed her again. "No. It's the truth," she said. "Don't you feel better now that we've talked?" He said nothing, but she went right on. "You look as if you do. You're smiling, Jake."

  "Am I? Maybe that's just because you're so full of funny notions."

  "No. It's because you like me. You probably feel like you could tell me anything."

  "Now I think you're having side effects from those tranquilizers."

  "Tranquiliz—oh, Jake, you didn't!" she shouted.

  But she saw the guilt on his face. He sighed, lowered his head a little. "I know it was a lousy, low-down, rotten thing for me to do," he said. "But at the time, I thought it was justified. You needed the rest. You were so wrought up and afraid."

  She lowered her head. "Probably my brother would have done the same thing," she admitted softly.

  "I didn't like seeing you in that state," he admitted.

  "See?" She sent him a teasing smile. "You do like me. And you do feel as if you could tell me anything."

  He pushed her again. Harder this time. She smiled as the swing sailed higher and higher. "You keep dreaming, hon."

  "Well," she said on the downward arc, "I feel like I could tell you anything."

  "Yeah, and I'll bet your life is chock-full of deep, dark secrets, isn't it, teacher?"

  "I have to admit, I've already told you most of them. Though there are one or two I'm keeping to myself."

  He pushed her higher and higher, and she started to laugh as she thought that lately she had lots more secrets than she'd ever had before. Secret thoughts. Secret desires. Secret feelings writhing around in her most-secret places.

  He pushed her again.

  The frayed rope snapped. And the tire sailed through the sultry air, carrying Sara with it. She didn't even have time to shriek before it splashed down into the murky black waters.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

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  One minute Jake was standing there thinking how unbelievably right she had been and how much better, how much lighter, he suddenly felt. He was pushing her on his mother's old tire swing, and he was thinking about good times, instead of sickness and bitterness and loss. He was smiling. Standing outside a place full of memories that should bring him nothing but pain, and smiling, and pushing a virgin kindergarten teacher on a tire swing. And, craziest of all, enjoying it!

  The next minute he was standing there with his jaw lax, watching said virgin kindergarten teacher sink into the gator-infested swamp water. She came up sputtering and flailing her arms. She was still laughing, though, oblivious to how badly it had scared him to see her fly off like that and vanish beneath the muck. But she was okay. Sighing in relief, Jake kicked off his shoes and cracked a smile himself as he waded in to get her.

  Then he saw the log-like shape on the far bank as it slid silently into the water. He tried to move faster. "Stop splashing, Sara!" He hurried closer, doing enough splashing for both of them, dammit, but you couldn't move through muck without it. His feet were sinking deep into the mire on the bottom by the time he reached her, snagged her around the waist and pulled her to him. The damned bathrobe was dragging in the water, and he shoved it off her, let it go, scooped her up and turned back toward shore.

  She was still grinning. "My hero," she sighed, fluttering her eyes in exaggerated Southern belle fashion. But when he looked down at her, her smile died. "What's wrong, Jake?"

  The shore was still ten feet away when he felt the bump against his leg, and he knew damn well the next sensation would be far less pleasant. So he shoved her forward for all he was worth, tossed her toward shore and shouted, "Run!" And then he spun around, spied the damned monster coming for him just below the surface and did the only thing he could think of to save his leg. He dove down and wrapped his arms around the brute.

  The gator went into a death roll, and Jake held tight.

  Sara had known something was horribly wrong when Jake had looked into her eyes as he carried her back toward the shore. His face had been drawn and tight, his jaw rigid. Then his eyes had suddenly widened, and he'd thrown her bodily toward shore, shouted at her to run and vanished beneath the water.

  She picked herself up and, standing knee-deep in water and ankle-deep in mud, looked for him. There was roiling, splashing … and then the slap of a huge, scaly … tail?

  "Ohmigod," she whispered. Was that…? "Jake? Jake!"

  As if responding to her summons, Jake rose up out of the mire, but he was not alone. He was clamped to the back of a monster straight out of a Sunday-afternoon horror movie. The beast twisted and writhed, and then they both splashed down again and vanished from sight.

  Sara stood there, shaking all over, staring at the smooth, mud-brown surface of the water, imagining the most horrible, terrifying things. Telling herself she should get to the shore, get out of the muddy mire before she became dessert for the alligator that was even now making Jake his main course. Telling herself she should damn well dive in and try to find him, try to help him. Horror gripped her, but she couldn't run away when he was in so much trouble. She took a step forward. She had to help Jake…

  Something clamped around her ankle.

  Sara shrieked at full, ear-splitting volume and yanked her foot from the teeth of that beast, hopping backward in high-speed clumsiness. And then she saw, not the beast, but Jake, pulling himself shoreward.

  "Ohmigod," she said again. "Jake!" She went to him, grabbed him and hauled him bodily out of the muck and up onto the shore as he winced in pain. The muddy water sluicing down his face and arms and clothes was pink with blood. Her heart damn near burst.

  She eased him down on the grassy bank. "Jake … Jake, I can't believe this. You saved my life, and that … that thing took you instead. Jake, please tell me you're all right. Dammit, I won't let you die. Do you hear me? I won't."

  She tore his shirt open as he blinked up at her, looking a bit confused. No wonder. Anyone would be disoriented. And there was the blood loss, too, likely making him light-headed, dizzy.

  "Where are the wounds, Jake? Can you tell? I have to stop the bleeding." She searched his front, his chest, wet with muddy water. But she saw no gaping wounds or jagged teeth marks there. As gently as she could, she rolled him onto his side and examined his back. Then she checked his arms, his neck. Seeing nothing, she clasped his face between her palms and stared hard at him. "Talk to me, baby. Tell me where you're hurting so I can help you. I'm not gonna lose you, not now. Do you hear m
e, Jake? You have to talk to me so I can…" She sniffled and blinked rapidly.

  Jake's eyes fixed on hers and locked there. "You're crying," he said softly.

  Dammit, he must be going into shock. She dashed the tears away with the back of her hand. "Where the hell is all this blood coming from?" she asked aloud, reaching for his jeans.

  "From the gator," Jake said.

  Sara looked at him … then looked again. "What?"

  Lifting his hand, Jake showed her the knife he still clutched. "Had it in my boot. Hell, you didn't think I was going to wrestle a gator without a blade, did you?"

  "Wrestle…?"

  He smiled slightly, sat up slowly, rubbed his shoulder. "Damn. It was a hell of a lot easier when I was a kid."

  Sara sat back on her heels, blinking at him in total confusion.

  "I guess I didn't tell you that one of those part-time jobs of mine was in a little gator house, over in Belle Ville—"

  "Belle Vee?" She repeated it as he'd said it, just like a parrot.

  "It's that little Cajun village just the other side of—"

  "I don't care where it is, Jake."

  "Oh. Well, anyway, I learned to wrestle alligators there. Lots of guys my age did. Of course, we picked on smaller gators then … and we didn't kill 'em. It was a sideshow attraction for the tourists. Not all that dangerous, if you knew where to hold them." Again he squeezed his shoulder, winced. "Damn. I think I dislocated it." He gave his arm a terrible wrenching tug, made a horrible face, swore a blue streak. "There."

  Sara just sat back on her heels, staring at him. "I thought you had been torn apart," she said. "You lay there and let me think you were half-dead!"

  His brows came together. "Well sorry for the inconvenience, Sara. I was a little out of breath, and in considerable pain."

  "And enjoying every second of seeing me out of my head with worry for you!"