Slow Burn. Heather Pozzessere Graham
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He took them from her and walked up the tile path to her door, which he opened, then stepped into the house. He looked around the foyer and up the stairway. She thought she saw a small smile curving his lips, and she wondered if he was sniffing at Montgomery elegance, Montgomery money. The house wasn’t ostentatious in any way, she thought resentfully. It was sleek, warm, inviting.
She held out a hand. “My keys, David.”
He handed them over. “Don’t forget to set the alarm when I leave,” he told her.
“I’ve been managing on my own for over a year now,” she informed him briskly.
He nodded and turned to walk out. She was appalled at herself when she suddenly slammed a fist against his back, causing him to turn with a look of surprise on his features.
She swallowed hard, determined not to back down. “What were you doing there?” she demanded.
“I told you. I was following you, Spencer.”
“Why?” she exploded.
He shrugged. “Sly asked me to.”
“You’re—you’re working for Sly?” she gasped.
He hesitated for a moment, then shrugged again. “Yeah, I’m working for Sly.”
“As of when?”
“As of this afternoon.”
“I don’t want you following me.”
“Take it up with Sly.”
“Damn it, David—”
“Take it up with Sly, Spencer. He thinks you’re in danger.”
“But I’m not!”
“And as of tonight, I agree with him. Hell, Spencer, you’re a damned danger to yourself, if nothing else. Don’t forget the alarm,” he said again.
“David, I’m telling you—”
“Don’t tell me, Spencer. Tell Sly.”
“Damn you—” she began, but he’d managed to exit, pulling the door shut behind him. She slammed the door, just as she had slammed his back, swearing.
“The alarm, Spencer!” he called back to her.
She told him what he should go do to himself.
“The alarm!”
She set the damned alarm, then turned away from the door, hurrying for the kitchen. She had good brandy somewhere, and she had never wanted a swallow of it more.
She downed half a snifter in a gulp, then stood there as it warmed her. Dear God, what a night. She knew what a stupid move she’d made. She’d been scared out of half of her hair pigment, but in the end they’d caught someone, and something might be solved because of that.
Might be. They hadn’t been after Danny’s grave, no one knew yet what had really been going on. But…
But something might come of it.
David was following her. Sly had hired David to follow her. Oh, God. Sly had paid David to watch her. The last thing she wanted in her life was David following her, watching her.
Oh, God. She poured more brandy and gulped that down, too. And then she had some more.
It might be nearly three o’clock in the morning, but brandy was the only way in hell she was ever going to get to sleep tonight.
4
Sometimes the past seemed forever away. And sometimes, especially in dreams, it felt as if it had never gone away.
It was almost as if she was there again, on that long-ago day by the rock pit where they all congregated after school. She had been sixteen, David and some of the others were almost eighteen then. The dream had texture and taste. She could feel the stinging warmth of the sun.
It probably wasn’t such a great place for them to be. There certainly wasn’t any kind of supervision. The water was very clear, so clear that you could swim down and see all the wrecked cars that had gone off or been dumped. The boys liked to tease the girls and tell them that there were still bodies in the trunks of the cars, that there were a few skeletons still sitting right in the front seats, as well. “But we all know that’s not real,” Cecily would inform them regally. “Boys just like to scare girls. It’s easier to get into a girl’s pants if she’s scared. At least, that’s what boys think,” she assured them all.
“All” meant their group, one they had formed when they were around twelve and pretty much kept together ever since. Danny Huntington was the leader of the male pack, with Spencer’s cousin Jared coming in a close second. Then there were Ansel Rhodes and George Manger, followers to the core. And then, paradoxically a part and yet not a part, there was David Delgado.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want him in their group—they did. It was funny. When they had been even younger and Danny had first dragged him in, they’d all stuck their noses up just a bit. David just didn’t come from the same kind of family. He spoke Spanish as easily as he spoke English. He was dark; even his eyes were dark, though they were blue, not the black they often appeared. His clothes were mended and remended, and a lot of the time he couldn’t do things because he had chores to take care of for his grandfather. But he didn’t seem to resent not having a good time.
Then, suddenly, he was in school with them. He worked hard; Spencer saw him staying after school to study almost every day. It was a hard school; homework took about three hours a night. Unless, of course, you were Jared and skimmed by, paying other kids to do the work for you. But it wasn’t academics that really got David Delgado noticed—it was sheer athletic ability. The small private school had never had great baseball or football teams. With David playing, they suddenly began to win a few games. By the time they got to the rock pit on that particular afternoon, David was probably the most popular kid in the school. He could accept the acclaim that came his way, but he never sought it. He still did chores for his grandfather. He came to things when he chose and backed away when he chose, too. He was never with them at the country club dances or some of the other social events their parents planned for them.
None of that mattered, or maybe it helped. To Spencer, just like the other girls in her circle—Cecily, Terry-Sue and Gina Davis—David Delgado was even more appealing because of that little touch of something different about him. He was the kind of boy their folks didn’t quite approve of; he wasn’t one of them. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t into drugs, didn’t rob convenience stores and was a hell of a lot more moral than most of the kids in their circle. What mattered was that he didn’t come from the old guard—that he was a refugee.
Spencer didn’t give a damn. She thought it was wonderfully romantic—and erotic, a word she was beginning to find fascinating. Maybe there was something else a little bit deeper than those feelings, as well. She knew that Sly liked David. Really liked him. Not conditionally, the way her parents did. Sly just out and out liked David; it didn’t matter one iota to him whether David had come from Cuba or the moon. And for all her life, Sly had been Spencer’s favorite person. So if Sly approved of David…
Actually, that day, thinking hadn’t really entered into it. It was summer, and the heat was piercing, and they’d packed picnic lunches. Spencer had gotten a brand new cherry red Jeep for her birthday, Jared had his mom’s last-year’s Volvo, Ansel Rhodes had a new Firebird, and David had a great ‘57 Chevy he had bought himself, earning the money at a photo lab where he worked Saturdays and some afternoons.
Spencer almost wished she hadn’t gotten the damned car. She had driven that afternoon while Terry-Sue had all but crawled on top of David in the front seat of his car.
Reva was with them that day. She was in Spencer’s class, but she’d become part of the gang because of her brother. She was in school due to the same strange magic that had gotten David in, the same “scholarship.” Sly denied that he was paying