Etched in Bone (The Others #5)



Firesday, Messis 10


Jimmy stepped out on the apartment’s porch, wanting to inflict a world of hurt on somebody. But there were too many people already awake, and some of those people were cops. And one of those cops was his brother.

Caw!

And if being around cops wasn’t bad enough, there were too many fucking things watching him, keeping tabs on every ass scratch and fart.

A bit of mellow weed would have smoothed things out, but the fucking freaking Others had found not only Sandee’s stash of pills but the weed he’d carefully hidden in a secret compartment in the suitcase. Nobody should have found that hiding place. But his stash was gone, and the compartment had been slashed by a claw or something.

This was all Sissy’s fault. Stupid bitch. Yeah, she’d told him that she was going with Mama and her girls to visit CJ in Lakeside. But she hadn’t pushed hard enough to get him included, and he couldn’t squeeze anything out of her, not with Mama holding the train tickets and the available cash. And, yeah, once she’d reached Lakeside, Sissy had called to warn him to get out of Toland, that something bad was going to go down. And maybe she’d called him in time for him to get one of the last trains out of Toland before the storm shut everything down. But he’d had to pay for his own tickets, with Sandee clinging to him so tight he couldn’t shake her. Weighing him down with her snot-nosed brats. Gods. The way she put out when she needed something, he wasn’t sure those kids were his, so why should he use the stash of money he needed in order to buy clothes and food for them?

After getting out of Toland—he heard on the news later that entire blocks in some neighborhoods were nothing but rubble—he got bogged down around Hubbney, unable to find transportation to a town large enough to have the kind of business opportunities he preferred. In the end, Lakeside was the largest city he could reach. He would have preferred Shikago, even knew some people there, but he couldn’t afford the train fare or, gods, even the bus fare, since the ticket prices had doubled after the travel restrictions were put in place. As it was, he had to scrimp and save for weeks before he could buy the bus tickets to Lakeside and then had to wait a while longer to reach the top of the travel list. And during that time he’d had to smile and pretend to be grateful for the work that allowed him to eat watery soup and hard bread.

At first he’d thought he could set up in Hubbney, maybe meet up with acquaintances and do a little business, but the handouts ended after the first week. With all the storm damage, there was plenty of grunt work to be had, and every physically able adult had to show a work chit in order to get a meal at the reduced price for displaced persons. The chits could also be used to buy food from the nearest grocery store—and they could be exchanged for money. But Sandee gobbled up as much food as the two kids put together and then whined about there being no one to watch the kids when he told her he wasn’t feeding her anymore. If she wanted to eat, she could work too.

Since she was coming back to the flop with money instead of chits, he had a good idea what kind of work she was doing. Fine with him. These days, she was the body he banged when he couldn’t find better.

Should have gone back to Toland, where he knew the players, knew the games, knew whose back to scratch and who was weak enough that he could lean on them to get something. But he was in Lakeside because Sissy had led him on, let him believe CJ had somehow greased some wheels and set her and Mama up with a place to stay and food for the taking. But there was no food for the taking, and while he wasn’t paying anything to stay there, the apartment wasn’t any better than the flop they’d had in Hubbney. The freaks had found another bed and brought it up yesterday afternoon. Single beds for a man who had a woman. And bedsprings that squeaked every time he moved. How was he even supposed to hump his woman, knowing there were cops—and worse—listening?

Sissy’s fault. All of it. Well, she could do a little something to make it up to him. She surely could.

Jimmy went inside, letting the screen door slam. The sound woke Sandee, who jerked up in bed.

“What’s going on? Jimmy? Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out? Where? Baby, let me put some clothes on, and I’ll go with you.”

He left the apartment while she was still scrambling to find something to wear that didn’t stink since she’d been “too busy” to wash any clothes. He wasn’t concerned about his own clothes. If Sandee didn’t look after him properly, he’d boot her ass out and let Sissy look after him.

Maybe he should do that anyway.

When a break came in the morning traffic, Jimmy hustled across Crowfield Avenue and went into A Little Bite to let Sissy provide him with a decent breakfast.

? ? ?

While Nadine filled the display case with fresh baked goods, Tess wrote the day’s offerings on the menu board.

“We received extra eggs yesterday, so I made quiche for the breakfast crowd and figured I’d use the rest of the eggs to make egg salad for sandwiches later in the day,” Nadine said.

“I’ll add them as specials,” Tess replied. “Save a piece of quiche for Meg. She dashed out this morning without eating an adequate breakfast.”

“Why was she in such a hurry to reach the office? Some kind of special delivery?”

“She’s reading a book, which she left at the office because she went to the Quiet Mind class last evening. But she had stopped at an exciting part and wanted to read more before work.”

Nadine raised her eyebrows. “And there were no comments at home?”

Tess smiled. “Simon doesn’t know how to complain about it since he asked her to review the book.”

Nadine laughed softly. “Maybe I’ll walk the piece of quiche over to the Liaison’s Office and see for myself what Meg finds so interesting.”

Tess looked at the Sierra, who was moving a broom around but didn’t seem to be doing much actual work. Her smile faded. “Hold off for a few minutes. I’ll be back.”

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