“Then tell me.” I eased the glass from his grip and set it aside. “Explain it to me.”
His shoulders slumped and he gave in. “He made us special. Jericho made us special.”
That was the last I was able to get from him. Mrs. Delgado interrupted to drop the check on the table, but I had my doubts that he would’ve said anything more even if she’d kept her distance for a while longer. For the moment he’d reached the end of his rope; the strain was evident. He needed time to recuperate and regain a little distance.
The fact that I had questions boiling, hot and unsettled, would have to be put on the back burner for the time being. Special . . . made them special, what the hell could that mean? Misha was special to me; he was my brother. What could Jericho do to him that would make him special in a way that had Michael’s voice breaking on the very word? Distracted, I dropped a few bills and a generous tip on the table. I might have been caught in my own thoughts, but I still appreciated what Mrs. Delgado had done for Michael. It had to be the only mothering he could remember receiving in his short life. There were a thousand things I wished he could recall, but our mom was at the top of the list. Chances were he wouldn’t have remembered much about her anyway; he was five when she died. There would have been only scraps that remained, bits of warmth and emotion, but I would’ve given anything for him to have those scraps back.
In the car I tried to focus. We needed a new car. We needed a new look. We needed a destination other than just “north,” and we definitely had to find out how Jericho had picked up our trail so quickly. It was a list all right, and I knew how to accomplish only two of them.
For those two we’d need a town.
Chapter 14
The parking lot of the drugstore was nearly full, clogged with cars, and the store itself was full of people—good signs, both of them. It had taken a few exits to find just the place I had in mind. Shoving my gun into the back waistband of my pants, I got out of the car and made sure my shirt concealed the weapon. “Come on, kiddo. Be good and I might buy you some ice cream.”
He was torn between outrage and desperation for a sugar fix. Settling on mildly disgruntled, he trailed after me. After walking through the automated door he looked around curiously. It was one of the superdrugstores that carried enough merchandise to cure the diseases of a small Third World country, then throw a party to celebrate, complete with wine, balloons, and barbecued weenies. Colors and noise, it was a lot of stimulation for a kid who was shuttled to the mall once a year to “act normal.” I nudged him as he stalled by the doors to stare at a woman pushing a stroller loaded with squalling twins. Accustomed to the sound, she absently reached down to smooth two nearly bald heads and kept moving. “Weird,” Michael murmured, more to himself than me. “Seeing where they come from.”
They, not we. Moving us both into an aisle, I lightly bumped his shoulder with mine. “I have pictures, tons of them. I’ll show you where you came from. It’s pretty much the same.”
With a defensive folding of his arms, he studied the shelves with a scrutiny more suited to emotionally moving art or really good porn than the feminine-hygiene products that were actually there. “What are we looking for anyway?” he asked with the avoidance of a pro.
We walked on, leaving the aisle of no-man’s-land until we reached hair care products. “Anything your tree-hating little heart desires.” I picked up two boxes at random and shook them in his direction. “And dye. Red or blond?”
He caught the implication instantly. “You must be joking.”
“Blond it is.” I put the red back with the rueful realization of why I’d picked the other color. It was more familiar to me than the brown Michael had now. Swiftly checking one way, then the other, I stuffed the small box into the wad of jacket I’d carried in over my arm for just that purpose. Belatedly, I glanced at the smaller figure beside me. “By the way, stealing is bad, okay? Don’t steal.” Considering, I added, “Or smoke. And don’t drink and drive.” Wait, he was seventeen. “Scratch that last one. Don’t drink at all.” It wasn’t the entire summary of knowledge required for teens, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
“You’re . . .” He shook his head. Apparently there were no words for what I was, and he let it go to pursue another subject. “Why are you stealing it? You have money.”