The Distraction Read online

  I showered with the door open, the curtain pulled back halfway, and a steak knife next to my shampoo. No one was going to surprise me while I was naked. Not ever again.

  Because my car was still at the hotel, Marcos, the officer who’d been guarding Alec’s room last night, took me there. It turned out he was a pretty nice guy. A little green. A lot serious. But nice. He followed me to Rave, walked me to the door, and asked that I not leave the building after my shift until he came to get me. I had no doubts he’d be right on time.

  I was on my way to the back to drop off my purse and get ready when Derrick waved me over. He was wearing black cargo pants tucked into combat boots today, and a loose white knit sweater that hung off his shoulder. He killed it in that outfit, and already I was trying to replicate it in my mind with items from my closet.

  “Anything I should be worried about?” He tilted his chin toward Marcos as he slipped back into the patrol car. There was an appreciative look in his eye—clearly he was admiring the view.

  “Oh. He’s just a friend,” I said.

  Derrick hummed the equivalent of “yeah, right” and linked his arm around mine.

  “You have a visitor,” he said quietly.

  My heart skipped a beat. “Alec?”

  Derrick’s chin jutted out. He stopped in his tracks. “The guy who pulled a gun in the middle of my spa? Uh, no. Much as I appreciate him taking out creepy stalker boy, I’m not interested in a repeat performance, thank you very much.”

  Four months ago, Alec had rescued me when Melvin Herman, who we’d learned had been hired by Bobby to play the role of stalker, had cornered me in the break room. A lot of customers had been freaked out by the whole thing, and Derrick had lost a ton of business. I was lucky he’d kept me on after that.

  It took some effort to clear the disappointment from my face.

  “Who, then?”

  “One of your regulars. Looks like the guy from Fight Club. Not Brad Pitt, the one who keeps getting his ass kicked.”

  Derrick led me into the nail section of the spa, where Trevor was sitting in a pedicure chair looking very uncomfortable. He was still wearing his shoes, which were perched on the outside of the unfilled soaking tub, and he boasted a split lip and the biggest jaw bruise I had ever seen.

  “Oh shit,” I said under my breath.

  “His condition was making some of the ladies uncomfortable,” whispered Derrick as he walked away.

  I marched straight up to Trevor, hiding the cringe when I noticed that his nose was still swollen, and that the dark purple faded to a very ugly yellow at the edges.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you,” I said.

  He tried to laugh, but then clutched his head.

  “Really,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “They had to rebreak my nose in order to reset it,” he said, a little nasally.

  “Aw, crap.” I sat on the low rolling chair where the nail technicians did their work and rested my forehead on the heels of my hands. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But you did feel bad for a second, didn’t you?”

  I glared at him.

  “What are you doing here?” I said. He didn’t even have an appointment for a massage. Not that I would have done it anyway.

  He pushed himself out of the huge mechanical massage chair and stood, reaching out his hand to help me up. I took it begrudgingly, and let go as soon as I was standing.

  “I wanted to say I’m not sorry.”

  My mouth gaped open.

  “You came here to offer a non apology?”

  He nodded. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time, Anna. And for the three seconds before your asshole boyfriend punched me in the face I was really enjoying myself.”

  I laughed incredulously before I caught myself.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  He shook his head, his grin flattening. “You deserve better than him. He shouldn’t even be out of jail.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. But for some stupid reason, I couldn’t look him in the face anymore. I stared at my toes. “You didn’t tell anyone what happened, right?”

  There was no denying I felt bad about that one.

  “That I almost got mugged outside the gym by five enormous, armed Navy Seals? Fuck yeah. I told everyone.”

  He took a step closer when I hiccupped a laugh.

  “I do know what I’m talking about,” he said quietly. “Stay with him, and you’re going to get hurt. Really hurt. All the things he’s done, and he gets what? A slap on the wrist? People need to pay for what they do.”

  “You keep saying that. Eye for an eye. I get it.” I remembered what he’d said at the deli, before the first time he’d confronted Alec. “That woman on the news that was driven off the bridge? Someone should make the guy who’s responsible jump.”

  In my darker moments, I’d wished someone had made Bobby jump, just as he’d forced Charlotte off in her car. Or tied him up and driven him around at gunpoint the way he’d done to me. Last night, staring at the ceiling, I’d even had thoughts of Alec turning that knife on Reznik’s man. Thoughts like that were as sticky and black as hot tar.

  I may not have agreed with Trevor on this issue, but I understood him at least. When I looked up, his green eyes had hardened with the same anger I’d seen just glimpses of before.

  “What happened to you, Trevor?” I asked quietly.

  By some force beyond my control, I reached to touch his arm. He looked down at my hand, the anger rolling into something less certain.

  He inhaled slowly, then pulled his arm back. “Stay clear of Alec Flynn. You’re not stupid, so stop acting like it.”

  My shoulders went rigid at his harsh tone.

  “Excuse me?”

  He turned away. “I’ve got a lot going on at work over the next few weeks. I’ll call to reschedule my appointments.”

  “Trevor . . .”

  “Take care, Anna.”

  He didn’t even look at me. He strode out without another word, leaving me wondering if I was supposed to follow him.

  Twenty-six

  Four days passed uneventfully. Then four more. Though I knew he couldn’t contact me, I checked my cell phone religiously for messages or missed calls, just in case Alec had tried to reach me. I searched my car for notes, or little gifts, like the little license plate he’d left that day, but there was nothing. He was gone, like he’d never come back in the first place.

  I did what I was supposed to do. I went to work. I gave massages. I laughed at all of Mike’s jokes, and didn’t pester Marcos when he gave me a look for crossing a parking lot without waiting for him to hold my hand. I had movie night with Amy and thanked Miss Iris for the chocolate chip cookies she kept sending my way.

  But I couldn’t sleep. Not without Alec.

  I was plagued with nightmares. Of men with scarred faces hiding in my house. Of blood dripping down Alec’s chest. Of drowning in a car that was driven off a bridge.

  And sometimes I dreamed of Alec making love to me. Slowly. Gently. They were so clear that I could feel the sweet friction of him moving inside me, feel his ragged breaths against my neck. I would often shudder awake, only to find myself alone.

  Those were the worst.

  It was ten p.m. Sunday night, eight days after Alec was taken from me, that I got a phone call. I didn’t recognize the number right away, but the voice was easy enough to distinguish.

  “You told me to call if I was going to leave.”

  I’d been lying back on the couch with my feet on the armrest, scanning through the news on my cellphone with hopes that something new had come up regarding the Maxim Stein trial, but at Jacob’s words, I sat up.

  “Jacob, what . . .” I closed my eyes, remembering too easily what it was like to be a kid tak
ing off from home alone.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To get Sissy.”

  “Okay.” I ran to the bedroom where I’d thrown my purse. Inside was his foster mom’s phone number. Hopefully she would know how to contact Jacob’s sister’s host family.

  “We set a secret meeting place. We’re going to Georgia.”

  Shit.

  “What’s in Georgia?” Keep talking, keep talking. I found the card, and cursed myself for not having another phone to call the police.

  “Peaches,” he said. “I saw them on a sign once. I like peaches.”

  I sat on the bed. “You’re messing with me.”

  “Yeah. You didn’t really think I was going to tell you where I was going, did you?”

  Smart little bastard. “No, I guess not.”

  “I just wanted to say thanks for the tacos that one day. I know you were assigned to me and everything, but it was cool. I never had breakfast tacos before.”

  I flinched at the word assigned. I’d once said something similar to Alec when I’d learned how we’d first gotten together.

  “Stick around, and I’ll get you some more tomorrow. We’ll bring your sister. Show her what’s what in the taco world.”

  He was quiet. “I got bus tickets.”

  Double, triple, quadruple shit. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. My dad used to send me to get them for him. It’s not hard.”

  No. If you had money, I didn’t suppose it was.

  In the background I heard the hiss of bus brakes. I stood again.

  “Sounds like you’re at a bus stop,” I said. “Or is that a station?”

  Come on, give me something, kid.

  “Okay, I’ve got to go.”

  “Jacob, listen to me. I’ve been where you are. I’ve run away. Nothing gets fixed that way. Things only got better for me when I stayed put.” That was how I’d met my father—the only cop on the scene who’d had the patience to sit beside me long enough for me to crack.

  Silence.

  “Jacob? You still there?”

  Silence.

  “Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you. We’ll talk. We’ll go get tacos now.”

  “Bye, Anna.”

  “Jacob . . .”

  Click.

  “Fuck!” I stared at the phone for only a few seconds before I dialed his foster mom. On the fourth ring she answered, half asleep, and I quickly explained the situation. I held on while she went to search Jacob’s room, but I already knew what she’d say. He was gone.

  “I’m calling the police,” I said. “You call his sister’s home and see if she’s still there.”

  I dialed the number and told them what Jacob had told me. I didn’t have enough information—what he’d been wearing, any allergies he may have had—but I could paint enough of a picture for them to put out an AMBER alert. He was last at a bus station or stop, somewhere that still had a pay phone since he hadn’t taken anyone’s cell, and was trying to connect with his sister.

  There was nothing else to do after that but pace.

  And I wore a hole through the damn carpet.

  It wasn’t until three a.m. that I got a call from his foster mother saying Jacob had been found. His sister had gotten scared and stayed in her room. She’d given up the whole story—they were to meet at her elementary school, and then take a bus to Mexico. Jacob had told her she could have tacos any time of day there.

  They’d already moved him to the juvenile detention center. “For his own safety.”

  I thought of him in one of those military-style bunks, surrounded by other frightened boys, completely freaked out by how he’d lost everything in a matter of weeks. He’d probably figured out by now that I’d turned him in. I was sure he hated me for that. The one person he’d trusted enough to call to say good-bye had betrayed him.

  Alec’s words filled my mind: “You’re not letting him down. You listened to him. That’s probably more than anyone else has done.”

  I slumped onto the couch and called him, as I’d done a dozen times since we’d parted, just to hear his voice on the message.

  “Hi,” I said after the beep. I was sure he wouldn’t get this, but I continued anyway. “When this is done, come home to me.”

  I hung up, and clutched my phone to my chest just in case by some miracle he got the message and called me back.

  * * *

  “This is a bad idea,” said Marcos, a man of not so many words, the following morning. We were both leaning against my Ford Fiesta facing the courthouse—me with the largest coffee humanly possible, and him with a cigarette.

  “Smoking,” I said. “That’s a bad idea.”

  “A hundred and fifty ounces of java,” he responded. “That’s a bad idea.”

  I glanced at him. Had he just made a joke?

  “Most people need solid food,” he said bluntly. “You should try that.”

  “I eat.”

  He took a long drag on the cigarette. “You’re wasting away.”

  “Are you my mother?”

  “No,” he grunted. “I’m your babysitter.”

  I rolled my eyes. He was right. I hadn’t had the stomach to eat over the last week, but I hardly thought it showed. Maybe a little in my face, but nothing too drastic. I easily could have passed it off as a bout of the stomach flu.

  A woman with dyed black hair, tucked tightly in a bun, strode from the parking garage toward a secure side entrance that said NOT FOR PUBLIC ACCESS. She carried a purse the size of a suitcase and was wearing a boxy pantsuit the color of an eggplant.

  “Hold this.” I shoved the coffee into Marcos’s chest.

  “Come on,” he grumbled as it sloshed up onto the front of his neatly pressed uniform.

  I jogged toward the woman, catching her just before she entered the building.

  “Ms. Sanchez?”

  The woman turned around, surprised to find me there. She glanced back at the door, to the security officer just inside.

  “My name is Anna Rossi. I’m a court-appointed advocate for Jacob Rossdale.”

  “It’s ‘Your Honor,’” she said curtly. “Yes, I recognize you.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor. Jacob ran away last night—”

  She held up her hand. “You can make an appointment. We’ll discuss this case then.”

  “He’s a child, not a case,” I said, a little too harshly. This seemed to get her attention. Her mouth pursed shut, but she didn’t sprint away.

  I knew I had moments before I lost her.

  “The last time we met, you didn’t approve a transfer to a home where Jacob could stay with his sister. Last night, he attempted to run away with her in order to make that happen for himself. Now he’s locked in juvie, which is the last place a kid like him belongs, and I’m begging you to reconsider.”

  My fingers wove together in front of me. To my right, I heard Marcos’s telltale sigh.

  “The system is in place for a reason,” she said.

  “The system is broken,” I said. “I know. I was a part of it.”

  She took a step closer, considering me a moment. “I appreciate that. But this is not the place to work out your issues.”

  “With all due respect,” I said. “It’s not the place to work out yours, either, ma’am.”

  She looked taken aback. I prayed I wasn’t getting Jacob in further trouble.

  “Not everyone fits the model,” I said. “This boy will do anything to be with his sister, and the more he gets burned by us, the more he’s going to rely on himself to get what he wants. He’s vulnerable, Your Honor. If we don’t do the right thing now, we won’t get another chance.” I took a deep breath. “He loves his sister. I wish I had a brother that loved me that much.”

  She turned away, and my heart sun
k.

  Then she turned back.

  “Jacob Rossdale, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “I’ll look into it. And Ms. Rossi?”

  I had to contain myself before I broke out cheering. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “An appointment next time.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  As soon as she was inside, I hugged Marcos so hard he started to wheeze.

  Twenty-seven

  The following evening Amy and I were sitting in the break room at Rave, sharing a roast beef sandwich. She’d picked it up while I stayed in, confined to the premises while Marcos was getting some much-needed rest.

  “So it’s really going to happen? You believe this judge?” Amy had a habit of tearing her food into pieces, and then eating it with her hands. Today was no exception.

  I was still half giddy over the call from Wayne, informing me of the judge’s decision to move Jacob. It would have been easier if they’d just given him what he needed in the first place, but better late than never.

  “It’s really happening. Jacob and his sister are moving into their new place tonight. They’re even going to go to the same school.”

  Amy had taken the whole I’m-volunteering-with-foster-kids thing in stride, and didn’t seem even a little bent out of shape that I hadn’t told her about Jacob until today. Probably because she’d kept some pretty big secrets of her own.

  “Wow,” she said. “Go you.”

  “Go me, indeed.” I was still feeling pretty proud of myself about the whole thing. Later this week I was going to meet with Jacob and see how the new situation was working out, but until then, I was just happy he was safe and out of juvie.

  I wished I could have told Alec about it.

  My gaze shifted from the newly installed swinging door to the intercom near the sink that rang through to the front counter. It was one of Derrick’s recent safety implementations, and though I could now sit comfortably here with Amy, I still had to be in close proximity to the door.

  After a moment I realized that Amy was picking more than normal, and eating less.