Bending the Rules Read online

  She nodded. See, they got it—it wasn’t for nothing they were her BFFs.

  Ava glowered. “Why, that low-down, dirty, rotten—”

  “Pig,” Jane spat.

  And suddenly Poppy felt a measure of her usual confidence return. Yes, she was still mortified and less than thrilled at the prospect of facing Studly Do-Right again. But she had the most loyal friends in the world. And that went a long way toward removing the sting from even the worst bites that life had to offer.

  “Why the hell did the jerk kiss you in the first place?” Jane demanded.

  Arrested, Poppy stared at her. “That’s a very good question,” she said slowly. And for the first time since Jason had pushed her away she thought about his actions: his hands guiding hers up to encircle his strong neck, the look in his dark eyes when he’d lowered his mouth to hers. Reflectively, she said, “He didn’t seem to like it when I told him it was hardly worth apologizing over.”

  Ava and Jane snorted their amusement, but Poppy waved it aside. “So why did he kiss me?” she mused softly, reaching for the wine bottle to tip another splash into her and Ava’s glasses. “That brie ready yet? I think we’re going to need something to soak up this second glass.”

  Then she leveled a look at her friends and came back to the important issue. “You know what? I just might have to ask him about that. Don’tcha think?”

  Ava and Jane exchanged glances. Then they turned identical smiles on her.

  And gave her the thumbs-up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Man. I wouldn’t be a fourteen-year-old girl again for all the world. Cory just broke my heart.

  EMOTIONS BOILING, Jase headed straight to the squad room, where he started making calls on a few open cases.

  Why the hell did you kiss her? The question kept popping up in the back of his mind whenever he was put on hold and later as he studied the surveillance videos from the series of jewelry-store robberies. Of all the stupid, lamebrain impulses! After spending half his frigging life trying to avoid the base urges fueled by de Sanges genes, he’d gone and crowded a civilian he was supposed to be working with and laid a kiss on her?

  Terrific. Maybe he should send a postcard to the joint to let the old man know that the family talent for bad behavior was trumping his years of toeing the line.

  Except he refused to believe that. He refused to be a victim of heredity. He had a choice, dammit.

  So why had he kissed Poppy? Yes, as Henry had pointed out, she was hot. But he’d been tempted by hot women in the past—temptation that he’d turned away from without a qualm if the timing wasn’t right or the situation was inappropriate. So what was so compelling about the Babe?

  David Hohn dropped into a chair in the room where Jase was viewing the tapes. “Anything new pop?”

  “No.” Grateful to have his attention directed somewhere, any where, else, he shoved upright in his chair. “It’s the same damn thing on every tape—just one guy, medium height, weight-lifter’s build, wearing a dark jacket, dark slacks and a dark ninja-style hood. He keeps his head down and shoots Silly String at the camera to disable it. But the timing doesn’t make sense on several of these stores. There shouldn’t be enough time between the alarm going off and patrol arriving for just one person to clean everything out.”

  “We’ll figure it out. Sooner or later we’re gonna grab hold of that one piece of string that unravels the whole ball.” David grinned at him. “Meanwhile, you missed the idiot-of-the-day show.”

  “Yeah?” He was more than happy to let the problem slide for now. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Patrol out of south precinct sees this mope acting suspicious on the street and pulls over to talk to him. Guy’s wearing a do-rag that one of the officers thought looked surprisingly smart and when she looks closer, she sees it says Versace by one of the knots. So she calls Robbery to see if we’ve got a blue zodiac-printed silk Versace scarf in the database and, sure enough, it kicks out from that burglary over on Sunset in West Seattle.

  “She hauls him in and when they get here he struts into the room like he’s got good sense, complaining to all and sundry that Officer Manelli’s doin’ him wrong.” Hohn’s grin grew wider. “I explained that calling the arresting officer a bitch and a ho is probably not the best way to clear his path through the system—then asked if he understood he was under arrest for possession of stolen goods.

  “‘Nah, dude,’ he says, ‘I bought this!’

  “‘Yeah?’ I ask. ‘Where’d you get it?’

  “And he says—get this—‘Target, man!’”

  Hohn shook his head. “You gotta love how dumb they can be. Officer Manelli tells me she went online and discovered the scarf, which is about the size of your average bandanna, retails for about two-seventy-five. And you can’t even buy the damn thing at Nordstrom, let alone Tarjay.” He reached for a folder on his desk, still grinning. “I love this job.”

  Jase did, too, most of the time. But he was more than ready to go home by the time he pushed back from his desk a few hours later.

  He stopped for a sub on the way home and decided, as he pulled his car into a slot alongside his apartment building a short while later, that things were a lot less grim on a full stomach. It didn’t stop him from jumping straight into cop mode, however, when a man stepped out of the shadows as he was climbing from his Honda CR-V. Adrenaline spiking, he crouched to make himself a smaller target behind the open car door and reached for his gun.

  “Hey, Jase, it’s me,” the man said softly, hands wide of his body as he stepped under a nearby light, making himself more visible.

  Jason’s hand slid away from his service revolver. “Holy shit, Joe,” he said to his older brother. “That’s an excellent way to get yourself shot. What the hell are you doing lurking in the laurels?”

  “Waitin’ for you to get home, man. I didn’t wanna run into fucking Murphy.” A touch of bitterness entered his voice. “Did he even bother to tell you I called before?”

  “Yeah, he did. And I called the number you left with him, but I got some woman who said you were out.” There was always a woman. Used to be the minute Joe or Dad or Pops were sprung, they’d come liberate him from his current foster home, then hook up with the first available warm, willing squeeze they stumbled across.

  “Damn that Sherry.” Joe scrubbed his hand across his face and Jase noticed a new jailhouse tattoo, a crudely inked black spider above the knuckle of his right forefinger. “Guess I shoulda known she’d forget half my messages. I didn’t exactly pick her for her brains.”

  “Come on up,” Jase said as he headed for the entrance. “You working?”

  “Why? You wanna offer me the janitor position at the cop shop?”

  Holding the entrance door, Jase gazed down at his brother as Joe muscled past. His big brother was shorter and stockier than he and looked a lot like their dad. Jase took more after Pops. “I was just making conversation, Joey. I haven’t seen you in—what?—eight years? We gotta start somewhere.”

  Joe jammed his hands in his jacket pockets and shifted his beefy shoulders. “Yeah, okay, sorry. I got me a job at a garage in Lake City. You might not remember this, since I been in and out of the pen since you was fairly little, but I’m a pretty decent mechanic.”

  “I remember. One of the times you were out, you let me hang out while you worked on a car. You showed me how to hot-wire it.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know then you’d be working the other side of the fence someday.”

  “At the time I was leaning more toward joining the family tradition, so I thought it was a primo lesson.”

  Bypassing the elevators, he opened the door to the stairwell and they climbed in silence. But once they reached his apartment and he’d let them in, his brother said, “I’m sure you know that none of us, not me or Dad or Pops, was real thrilled with your friendship with Detective Dickwad.”

  “No shit? I never would have guessed that, the three of you being so diplomatic when it comes to e
xpressing your opinions.”

  Joe grinned and for the first time looked completely relaxed with him. “That prob’ly explains why I got two aggravateds on my sheet—I forget to use my diplomatic skills.” Then he sobered. “I’m gonna tell you something I never thought I’d say about that sumbitch, though. I’m glad he nipped your crime career in the bud.”

  Jase turned from where he was assembling a pot of coffee to look at his brother. Under the kitchen cam lights, Joe looked older than he had in the more forgiving shadows outside. His dark hair was shaved almost into nonexistence but Jase could see glints of gray stubble among the dark. The jaw was the same: it gleamed with a fresh shave, but still sported the ubiquitous five o’clock shadow that de Sanges males had inherited along with all the other fun shit accompanying puberty. The rest of his face, however, appeared pasty, his eyes had dark bags under them and he looked tired. “You’re glad?”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his hand over his head and Jase noted a small separation in the underarm seam of his flannel shirt. “Look at you,” his brother said. “You look like one a’ them GQ models. Much as I hate that bastard’s more to you than us, I gotta admit your nice clothes, this decent apartment—that’s because a’ him. Him takin’you under his wing when you was still young enough to influence—well, you got a chance at a real life on account of it.”

  It was true. He’d been well on his way to embracing his family’s unsavory traditions when Murphy caught him with those topazes. By rights, the old cop could have, should have, busted his ass. But he’d cut him a break. Then, instead of doing his good deed for the day and disappearing, Murph had started dropping by Jase’s various foster homes. Sometimes it was just to jaw for a while. Other times he took him out for a burger or to walk the beaches at Alki or Golden Gardens. Occasionally he sprang for tickets in the nosebleed section of the old Kingdome to catch a Mariners game.

  Jase hadn’t been accustomed to having a positive male influence and Murphy’s continued attention had made him think about where he wanted to be in five, ten, twenty years. When the vision that popped most frequently to mind featured something more along the lines of Murphy’s life than that of his blood relatives, he’d set his sights on becoming a cop.

  “Those two aggravateds I mentioned?” Joe said, interrupting his stroll down memory lane. “Both were the parole breakers that sent me back to jail and I’m just a bar fight away from my three strikes. I been lucky so far—if you can call it that—to get arrested for different things and avoid the three-strikes law. But it’s prob’ly only a matter of time.”

  Jase handed him a mug of coffee and set the sugar canister on the tiny table. Sitting down with his own black coffee, he looked across at his brother, watching as Joe shoveled three heaping spoons into his cup. “You ever consider signing up for an anger management program?”

  “Took one a’ them in the joint. But I’m afraid in a tight situation I’ll forget what I learned.” He met Jase’s gaze across the table. “I’m thirty-nine years old, though, Jason. I’m not as impatient as I was as a kid for that what-ayacall it—instant gratification shit. And God knows, I’m tired of living my en-fuckin’-tire life in the pen.” He took a sip of his coffee, then said morosely, “I’m just not sure I’ve got what it takes to live it on the outside.”

  “You’ve got a marketable skill. You’re employed. That’s a pretty sweet start.”

  “True.” Joe sat straighter. “I make good money and they like me there. Sherry’s got a good job, too. She works at the post office. They got good benefits and stuff. And she might not be great about passin’ along my messages, but she’s sweet. So maybe I oughtta just avoid bars and work on those anger management skills they taught me.”

  That sounded real hopeful…on paper. Jase had his doubts, however, about this playing out any differently than events in the past. He’d heard too many promises from the men in his family—assurances that this time they were going to turn things around, live clean. But it never happened. So he didn’t intend to hold his breath. He wished his brother the best, but had no expectations.

  But he nodded all the same. “That sounds like a real good place to start, Joe.”

  AT A FEW MINUTES before eight o’clock the following morning, Cory handed Ms. Calloway two fives and seven battered dollar bills. The pretty blonde accepted them with a smile, marked the amount against Cory’s debt in her notebook and handed her a painting smock.

  As she shed her father’s leather coat and set it carefully out of reach of even the most ambitious paint splatters, she reflected that it was lucky Nina Petrocova had needed a babysitter last night. Okay, Nina was always looking for a sitter. It was Mom who wasn’t wild about Cory sitting for her because their neighbor danced downtown at the Lusty Lady. Cory thought Nina was nice, though. Her little boy, Kai, was really cute, too, and it was kind of nice having something to do and someone else to talk to while Mom worked her second job—if only for a couple of hours until she put the toddler down for the night.

  She wanted to please her mother, but sometimes that just wasn’t possible. So far she’d lucked out and hadn’t had to ’fess up to the getting-busted-tagging business. She’d told her she was part of a community art project but had conveniently left out the illegal activity that had led up to it. Anything to avoid having to see the disappointment on her mom’s face.

  But she needed money to pay for her share of the paint and supplies, so she’d agreed to sit for Nina again tonight. It didn’t hurt that after she paid off her last ten bucks, she’d have a couple of dollars left over for herself. Then maybe she’d talk to Mom about doing this on a more regular basis. Nina was just trying to get by like everyone else in the neighborhood, and she bet Mom didn’t know that their neighbor was taking a couple classes at SCCC during the day so she wouldn’t have to take her clothes off for a living for the rest of her life.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Ms. Calloway said and Cory realized that Danny G., Henry and the cop had arrived and everyone—even Detective de Sanges, who had worn killer clothes yesterday—was suited up in painting gear.

  “Today’s going to be a little different,” Ms. Calloway said. “We’re going to work at removing your tagging from bricks. This is a whole different ball game. On the downside, it’s tougher than simply painting over something. The good news, though, is that you don’t have to do the entire side the way we did on Mr. Harvey’s building.”

  Instructing them all to grab some of the supplies, Poppy—God, that was such a dap name—led the way down the block. As the blonde walked with long-legged strides in front of them, Cory watched the filmy hem of her skirt, which peeked from beneath Ms. C.’s long paint-splotched lab coat, as it floated and flared around her legs.

  The woman was seriously gamagorgeous—especially for a do-gooder. At least Cory had never run in to anyone remotely like her during her and Mom’s encounters with a string of social workers after Daddy was killed. Most of them had been dowdy dressers who seemed to think makeup was the devil’s toolbox.

  Cory couldn’t help but wonder what Ms. Calloway’s story was, why someone so glamourama was riding herd over a posse of captive graffiti artists.

  By the time the rest of them caught up to Ms. C. in front of a brick-fronted store around the corner and up the block, an older woman had joined her. “I want you to meet Mrs. Stories,” Ms. Calloway told them as they walked up. “Marlene, you already know Detective de Sanges. This is Mr. Gardo, Mr. Close and Ms. Capelli.” She looked at them. “I think it’s important that you have a real person to put to the buildings you vandalize. Mrs. Stories pays a bundle every month to lease this place and it’s my sincere hope that you’ll think about the people left to clean up your messes the next time you’re tempted to deface their businesses.”

  Rolling her eyes, Cory curled her lip to show that no one was gonna guilt her into anything. Dammit, she hadn’t even done the crime!

  In this neighborhood, anyway.

  But she couldn’t quite hold Mrs. Sto
ries’s gaze when the older woman turned soft brown eyes on her, giving her a level look. “Sorry, ma’am,” she heard herself muttering to the pavement in front of her—then was furious with herself for caving. The only saving grace was that she wasn’t the only one. Danny G. and Henry apologized, too.

  She scowled at Ms. Calloway when the woman handed her a pair of rubber gloves.

  Ms. C. merely smiled. “I’m not sure how harsh the remover is. You’ll probably want to wear those when you use it.”

  “You’re exposing kids to toxic chemicals?” Henry demanded. “Putting us in a situation where we can inhale them into our still-developing lungs?”

  “Seems only fair to me,” she said mildly, raising an elegant eyebrow at him. “Better you than Marlene, who suffers from asthma. And who—forgive me for beating this to death, but you seem to be missing the basic premise here—is not the person who decorated her stylish business with these chicken scratches.” Not until Henry started to squirm did she release his gaze and turn to include Danny and Cory. “Any more questions? No? Good. One of you help me grab the buckets and we’ll review the instructions. Then we can get started.”

  Reacting to the authority in Ms. Calloway’s voice, Cory stepped forward before she thought it through, then was stuck. Making a face to show the guys she wasn’t one of those teacher’s-pet nerds or anything, she crossed to where Ms. C. stooped next to a couple of plastic containers. She dropped onto her heels next to her.

  They each picked up a sealed tub and had just risen to their feet when the cop snapped, “Look out!”

  Simultaneously Danny leaped across the space and shoved them hard. The bucket in Cory’s hands went flying and she barely kept her footing.

  “Hey!” she snarled at the same time something hit the pavement with a horrendous clamor right where they’d just been standing. She stared without comprehension at a hugegantic wrench sporting a wicked gouge in its silvery surface.