Smokescreen Read online

  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 police 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 backyard 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.

  And one of the men was Scalpucci.

  What the devil?

  Sam trotted back to the bushes, counting on the nearby party to cover any sound she might make. Gretchen Scalpucci. She had to be at this house. Scalpucci’s little spy had found her and called in Scalpucci, and that’s why Sam and Jeth had made it here before everything was over. Preoccupied, her ears filled with the thump of excessive party bass and her mind’s eye with the bare glimpse of bullying men and frightened women, she crouched behind the cover and dropped her unseen guise.

  And Jeth’s voice blurted, “Holy freakin’ crap!”

  There he knelt, right at the edge of the bushes, blending into the dark shadows so he’d simply looked like part of the foliage itself.

  Sam closed her eyes, ducked her head, pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. No, no, NO. Not now. Not ever. “Ah,” she said, finding no words to suit the situation, “Holy freakin’ fuck.”

  The shadows lined his anger, sharpening the angles of his face and hiding his eyes. “I hope,” he said tightly, “you can find a way to convince me I was seeing things just now. That you didn’t actually just…appear.”

  “I didn’t.” Earnest words, a little desperate…because the truth was even harder. She dropped down to her knees in the cold grass, desperately hunting some way to handle this moment—to get past it and back to work. Saving women. Saving the underground.

  He stared at her, aghast even in shadow. “My God.” If anything, the anger built. “Those photos…you can change. You can disappear.” Then he scrubbed his hands across his face, roughly enough to make Sam wince. Then again, her whole being was set to wince just this moment. “No. I didn’t say that. Holy Batman redux, I did not say that.”

  “I can’t disappear, though,” she said. Helpfully, she thought.

  His head swung up to pin her with that shadowed gaze. “No,” he said. “No more lies. That’s all you do, isn’t it? Lie? Who you are, what you are?”

  Sam stiffened. Self-righteous— But she didn’t even give herself time to finish the thought. “I wasn’t lying,” she informed him, reaching deeply into the acerbic tone that worked so well to cover hurt she wouldn’t even admit to herself. “I don’t disappear. Any camera can tell you as much. People just can’t see me. It’s in their heads, not my body.”

  “Camera,” he repeated. He looked at the digital in her hands. “It doesn’t work for cameras. Whatever the hell you do, it doesn’t work for them. And I saw your images. The real you. You’re the one who’s been chasing me off—”

  “It didn’t work,” Sam said dryly.

  “Everything about you…is any of it true?”

  She couldn’t keep the snap out of her voice. “Everything that matters.”

  “And you really think you’re
some sort of hero, using the ultimate lie to lead these women off into a life of their own deception? Don’t you think that’s the blind leading the blind?”

  “I can see perfectly fine.” Sam glared at him, no longer sunk in the horror of being discovered, no longer thinking of the shivery feeling he’d sometimes given her. “I see a damned lot better than you. These women need help—that’s what this is about. Not about me. Not about you.”

  He snorted. “Get real. If you ditched this charade and called the cops on Scalpucci right now, his wife would be safe.”

  She snorted back, and then aimed below the belt. “Like your sister was safe.”

  He flinched. Hard. “She could have come to me. She should have come to me.”

  The night music filled the air around them, thumping its way through the conversation, filling in the gaps with angry noise. She took a breath. “Look, Jeth, I admire your faith in the system—”

  He scoffed. “Naiveté, don’t you mean?”

  Sam peered behind her, checking the driveway and the van and finding the house just as it had been. No telling what was happening on the inside. She reached past all her hurt and defensiveness, trying to see him just as clearly as he wanted to see her. “Maybe some of that,” she admitted, hunting honesty of a sort she didn’t often need to tap. “But I’m not sure it’s bad to look at life that way. It gives the rest of us something to aim for.”

  Silence. Even the music, for that instant, was silent. His voice was low and crystal clear against that backdrop, his face still hidden by shadows. “That’s not…I wasn’t expecting you to say that.”

  “Look,” Sam told him, sitting back on her heels when she realized she’d somehow ended up leaning toward him, almost off balance in her need to convince him—to reach him. “I do what I need to. I do the things no one else can do, in a way no one else can do them. But I’m not the one who makes this underground either possible or necessary. And I did my best to keep you out of it.”

  “You were trying to protect the underground.” His voice had grown subdued, almost hidden in the renewed music.