4. Theo #2
If I get caught letting myself into a cop’s home without permission, shit could go bad, and everything I’ve worked for could unravel.
I’m not into buying cops, so I can’t buy my way out of trouble the way Colum did.
I’d have to use other means to get out – and usually, those means include running from bullets.
But I don’t have the luxury today that I had back when I was eleven.
I can’t change my name and make myself disappear the way that boy did.
If I’m caught, my troubles will follow me.
And yet…
I take a pair of rubber gloves from my back pocket and slide them onto my hands.
It would seem that I came prepared for a little breaking and entering.
Premeditation; that’s what the cops call it.
Glancing down the hall, I make sure no one is watching, then I lean in close and slide my pick into the lock, straining my ears to listen as I go to work breaking into the home of the girl to whom I promised a lifetime of loyalty, of love, of family.
She’s the girl who was once short and chubby and had dimples on her knees.
Jesus, for that one hour of my life, even knowing my mom was in a dangerous place, my world was kind of simple.
I got to talk to Elizabeth Tate. She was smart, stubborn, cute, and sassy as fuck.
She was forced to take shit from girls she hated, but she wanted to fight back.
She wanted to fight against the hierarchy that had ruled her life until that point.
When the lock snick s, I inch the door open, pocket my pick set, and step into the dark.
Libby’s home is pitch black, just as it was when I was outside.
I allow my eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, something I was able to hone and learn when I lived on the streets, until a long counter materializes on my left.
A galley kitchen. A couch. A television.
This place is small, so if I thought she was hoarding her dirty money and living a life of luxury behind closed doors, that idea escapes like water through a sieve.
There are no valuables lying around. The TV is a modest forty-inch, and the couch has a long tear along the far cushion from overuse.
I take slow steps through her living space and look everywhere at once.
There are no ornaments by the TV, no jewels carelessly tossed aside after a long evening amongst the rich and self-proclaimed elite.
I pass the couch, the coffee table, the television, then step into the hall. This place is literally smaller than my office, so it’s easy to find my way; door on the left is the bathroom. Door on the right, partially open, is the sole bedroom.
If she was a good cop, she’d already know I was here. I’d know if someone was in my space while I slept, so the fact I’ve come this far makes me worry for her the way I didn’t worry ten minutes ago when I studied her not-terrible street.
The bedroom window faces the street where my car is parked.
The blinds are partially open, the window closed to keep the cold air out.
I inch the door open and pray the hinges don’t squeak, but as soon as I make enough room to step inside, I stop and press a fist to my mouth to stop my own involuntary groan.
Libby-fucking-Tate grew the hell up. She sleeps tangled in her covers, one naked leg out of the blankets, one leg in.
She’s topless, but sleeps on her stomach, so I see nothing but her bare back and half an ass cheek.
She still has dimples, but they’re not on her knees anymore.
Snake eyes blink from the small of her back, and muscles in her thighs, tensed even in sleep, make my brows lift high.
I found a gym membership in her accounts. I can now confirm she uses it.
Jesus .
I step into her shadowed bedroom and move closer.
Her bed takes up eighty percent of the room.
She has a foot of space on the left, a foot on the right.
And at the end, just enough room for a chest of drawers, so long as you squeeze to get between it and the bed.
She has another, smaller TV perched on top of the drawers, and a utility belt tossed down beside it.
I see the cuffs, the keys, the flashlight. I see the gun holster, but no gun.
I also see her hand hidden beneath her pillow, and in my mind, I see it wrapped around the gun for protection.
Adrenaline surges in my blood as my body understands the danger. It’s dark, she lives alone, she’s a cop, and I’m a stranger in her home; I’m a dead man if she wakes.
I’m here to check her space and then leave.
Staring at her ass is neither useful nor smart, so I take one last peek, then move through her room in silence.
I check the drawers and under the bed. I check behind the clothes neatly stacked in each drawer, under the shirts, amongst her panties.
Mostly she owns beige grandma panties, but there’s a thong or two in the back.
They’re her special occasion panties, and that bothers me on a strange, primal level.
She doesn’t need special occasion panties, and any man that has seen them has somehow landed themselves on my shit list.
I haven’t thought of Libby Tate in, well…
I want to say twenty-two years. I want to say I left the chubby little girl standing at the top of those stairs and moved on with my life.
But in reality, I’ve thought of her a lot.
When you’re at war and you have only one ally, you think of that ally long after the war has ended.
It’s a brotherhood of sorts, a camaraderie, despite having only served together for a short time.
In truth, I thought of Libby Tate almost every single day of my first year in an alleyway. Many people bought drawings of her; her eyes, her hair, her smile. I have a million sketchpads, and every single page is filled with doodles of that nine-year-old girl.
I thought of her every second day of my second year in that alley, and most days of the year after that.
I wondered if she was safe, if she was happy.
I’d acquired a radio during my days in hell, a scanner that dialed into police frequencies.
For years, I heard Raymond Tate’s voice, I heard him go about his work and act like he was a legitimate servant of society.
But best of all, I did not hear of a child being rushed to the hospital because of a drug overdose, nor did I hear of her being beaten half to death by her police officer father.
Tate remained in his position of power for many years after that day in the club, which I guess was good news in a way. It was shitty news for me and the others that he’d hurt. But it was good for Libby; it meant she was alive and safe, and it meant she had food on her table each night.
I’ve created warped coping mechanisms over the years; I wanted him to be taken down, but not immediately, because that would affect Libby’s happiness and safety.
Like all things, I want justice, but on my terms.
I continue to search her room, peek at the windowsill, and try my damnedest not to look at her face as she sleeps.
Her long hair isn’t as curly as it used to be.
Now it’s more of a loose wave, long enough to touch her shoulders and hang in her face while she sleeps.
Her lips are pouty, just like they were when she was a child, her cheeks puffy, though that has more to do with sleep than it does with her weight.
The image I found online today didn’t include puffy cheeks.
Her lashes are long, but not the fake kind. Her nose is pert and the perfect button size for her face. It was too big when she was nine. Now it borders on small and, well, cute.
So much for not looking at her face.
I guess the most surprising feature of all has nothing to do with knee dimples or wavy hair, and everything to do with the muscle I see in her shoulders, her back, her thighs.
She’s a gym junkie, and that’s kind of cute in a way, but at the same time, it’s somewhat intimidating, when almost nothing intimidates me.
All of the women I know that go to the gym – and I know many, because how else would they maintain their size zero clothes?
– go to spin class or Pilates. What Libby does isn’t a class.
It’s not a spa or yoga retreat. Libby lifts, she lifts heavy, and when her hand slides out from beneath her pillow and she turns a little to the side, my mind scrambles with an inability to focus.
Tits.
Or bruised knuckles.
Side tit and creamy flesh.
Or focus on the knuckles, and the proof that she hits too?
Neither !
There’s nothing in her room, and staying now has nothing to do with searching and everything to do with a man’s dependency on a beautiful woman.
Sliding between the bed and the dresser, I grit my teeth when my jeans brush against the wooden frame of her bed. It makes just the barest sound of fabric on wood, but in the middle of the night, in the dark, with a cop in her bed, it sounds like a gunshot to my ears.
She doesn’t wake. In fact, she gives a piggy-like snore and turns back to her stomach.
She’s a cop, but her spatial awareness is all kinds of fucked up.
Slipping out of her room, I take a fast study of her bathroom; neat, but not cleaned today. In her shower; clean, but with a small pile of hair in the drain. Behind her toilet; one hidden gun. No drugs, no money, no admissions of guilt.
Nodding as though I’ve proven something to myself, I back out again and know I’m pushing my luck the longer I stay.
I need to leave and make a new plan, because after twenty-two years, I’ve ended up in the same town as Libby Tate, a couple Bishops, and Sean Frankston’s child.
Twenty-two years, and they all end up in the same geographical space, despite starting somewhere else entirely.
The word coincidence is a lie.
Now I have to decide what to do with this new information.
Leaving the hall and passing through the living room, I stop with a skid at a flash of red tucked into the back of the couch.
I was facing the wrong way when I passed earlier, but now I see it.
I glance back toward Libby’s room to make sure she’s still out, then I move toward the couch and yank the fabric free.
A lifetime of memories sprint through my mind.
A lifetime of wants, hungers, loneliness, exhaustion, fear.
So much fucking fear. Dark alleyways and skittering vermin pass through my conscience while I stand in Libby’s dark living room and study my discovery.
When Libby makes another soft snoring sound, I ball the fabric in my fists and toss it back onto the couch as though it offends me.
I take a step back, then another. I only make it three steps before I charge forward and snatch it up, then I dash out her door and make sure it’s locked up securely before I walk away.
I skip down the stairs and out the front door, and when Olly winds his window down and lifts an inquisitive brow at the dinosaur sweater an eleven-year-old boy once wore now bundled in my hand, he says nothing except, “Sir?”
I slide into the back seat with an odd betrayal swirling in my stomach.
Technically, finding evidence of being a dirty cop would be the true betrayal, but my emotions take over, and the unfairness and everything this sweater represents bothers me more.
She has it. Perhaps she’s had it all along.
Why, after two decades, is this sweater still in her possession?
Why is it out in her living room as though she’d touched it only today?
And how the fuck did she come into possession of it in the first place?
“Sir?” Olly prompts me again.
“Head to the hotel. We’re done for tonight. I’ll drive myself tomorrow, but I have some things for you to look into while I’m busy.”
He pulls away from the curb and heads across town. “Bishops?”
“We’ll watch for a little longer, but I think I’ll make contact soon. I’m gonna work this other angle first.”
“ Work it .” Dropping character, my driver smirks and meets my eyes in the mirror. “I see you working it , Griff. I know whose home you were in tonight, I see the fire in your eyes. You act like I haven’t known you for fifteen years already.”
“If you think you know me so well, then you know you should shut your mouth and drive me where I wanna go.”
He’s not scared. He might be the only person on this planet that knows the real me.
He doesn’t know my name was Bishop once, but he knows I’m from the streets, he knows I have a problem with authority, and he knows that deep down, below the intimidation, below the businessman, below the high-rise buildings and multitudes of loyal staff, I’m just a poor kid with a witty sense of humor buried deep in the dark recesses behind my black heart.
He’s possibly the only human I would call a friend.
Chuckling when I say nothing else, he dips his imaginary hat and makes a right onto Main Street. “Yes, sir.”
My lips twitch, but I try to school it as my sweater rests on my lap and Libby Tate sleeps naked just a couple miles from where I’ll have a bed for the night. “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll staple your lips closed.”