Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

around the Bluestone Lane house and was standing in the living room, just locking the back door before she left for the night, when she saw the boy’s head pop up over the gate like a blond, grinning Whac-A-Mole. She still held the key in the lock. A baby had cried on the flight back from San Francisco that evening, two seats away, kicking its legs and thrashing in its carrier, splintery, squealy noises making mincemeat of her brain, of any attempt to make sense of what John Fishwick had told her or not told her in the prison. She wasn’t sure she could do another minute’s interaction with a child, but before she could turn away from the door the boy hefted himself over the gate and landed on the grass.

“I’ve had a long, long day,” she said, opening the door a crack. “I’m going to go home and sit on the floor of my shower with a cold beer.”

“Have a swim instead,” the boy suggested brightly. He was heading for the pool, tearing his shirt off. Jessica sighed and trudged out to greet him.

On the bottom of the pool, their legs crossed and their cheeks full of air, the two stared at each other, mentally counting. After thirty seconds the boy released his lungfuls in a huge laugh and rose to the surface in an explosion of electric-blue bubbles.

“No fair!” he cried when Jessica rose up with him. “You made me laugh. Cheater!”

“I was literally staring at you without a single emotion on my face. How is that cheating?”

“Your hair was going everywhere, like a mermaid.” The boy giggled. “Like Mendosa.”

“Medusa?” she asked, grabbing him and nudging him into the floating position.

“That one.”

They floated side by side. Jessica calculated that Beansie would be entering Wallert’s house around that very moment. Terror and excitement roiled in her stomach.

“Why was your day so long?” the boy asked. She could barely hear him through the water gushing in and out of her ears.

“I went to San Francisco.”

“Why?”

“To see a guy in prison.”

“Whoa! Why?”

“Because I thought he had some information I needed. He didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Look,” Jessica said, “I can’t talk a lot about this. The president asked me to go, and just you knowing that I went could be kind of risky. Both for me and for you.”

“Really?” The boy dropped his feet. Jessica did the same and stood before him in the pool.

“Yeah, really. The White House called me this morning. Well, they tried to call, but I was still asleep, so instead they sent a couple of guys in suits round my apartment. They gave me the mission files to read on the helicopter. I got out of the prison alive. Only barely though. The guy I went to see, he’s pretty dangerous. He has a whole wing of the facility to himself. Guards round the clock. Laser-maze technology.”

“Oh my god,” the boy said.

“He has to wear this special helmet made from graphite,” Jessica continued. “So that he can’t read your mind.”

Jessica and the boy stared at each other. A moment passed.

“Aw, you’re such a jerk.” Jamie splashed her.

She laughed for what felt like the first time in months. The kid was too easy. She dunked his head under the water for good measure and went to the edge of the pool, where her phone sat with the screen lit, a message tone dinging for the second time.

It’s Kristi. I want to talk.

“Gotta fly, kid.” Jessica climbed out of the pool. “It’s the prez. He’s thrown up the bat signal.”

She watched the child climb out of the pool, shake off like a dog, and head back toward his house.

I’ll be right there, she typed into her phone.

Grunions Bar was difficult to find from Sepulveda Boulevard: a cream building that could have been offices or a medical clinic, surrounded by car dealerships at Manhattan Beach. Jessica circled the block twice then parked behind the bar, trudging through gravel to the side door. She found an enormous space dominated by a U-shaped bar, television sets visible from every angle, a section with diner-style booths and sports memorabilia. In the semi-darkness, men and women on stools at the bar turned and watched her arrive. Every panel in the ceiling had been bought in some fundraiser or another by locals, and was scrawled with artwork from the simplistic to the complex—single names hastily written, airbrushed space-scapes, hand-drawn Dodgers and LA Kings logos. The wizened Irishman behind the bar asked her what she wanted, and she ordered a bourbon. At the front windows, Kristi Zea was sitting at a high stool and table, lazily tapping her phone.

Jessica thought that, just like Blair Harbour, the woman had aged far more than the eleven years that had passed since she had seen her. Kristi Zea had been a battered and bruised mess when Jessica interviewed her after her boyfriend’s murder, but she had lightened and tightened into a pale, freckled, waifish girl with spunky blonde hair and lots of ear piercings as she dealt with her throughout the trial. The woman Jessica sat down before now had lines around her mouth that were too deep, giving her a sullen expression, and her piercings were gone, leaving little stitch-like indentations in her ears. The sports jacket she was wearing floated around her as she picked up her beer glass.

“Well, look at you.” Kristi nodded. “You haven’t aged a day.”

“I bathe in the blood of my enemies.” Jessica put her phone on the table beside her glass. “What made you change your mind about talking?”

“It was just like you said.” Kristi shrugged. “The sleepless nights. The guilt.”

The two women sat in silence for a long time. At the bar, a group of locals started shouting at the Dodgers game.

“I want immunity,” Kristi said.

“Yeah. I thought you’d ask for that. You’ve been watching too much television,” Jessica said. “The case isn’t officially reopened. If it was, another officer would probably be assigned to it, not me. They might be