BURNING INTUITION (Intuition Series Book 2) Read online

  Nina is different. She’s smarter than them. She’s almost as smart as me. I drop her off at Social Studies class and she talks me into going inside with her. She’s nervous, she says. I go in and sit beside her even though this is my least favorite class. Math is easy compared to Societies of the Past. They’re all dead. Isn’t it obvious that they were losers? What could we possibly learn from them? I walk Nina to the rest of her classes and wait outside with her after school until her mom comes.

  “Don’t you live close enough to walk home?” I ask her.

  “We’re staying in a townhouse until we get a place.”

  “Do you have a dad?”

  “Uh, he lives somewhere else.” She studies her pink fingernails.

  There’s something she’s not telling me.

  “I’m in a motel with my uncle right now.” Albert isn’t exactly my uncle. He’s my grandfather’s brother’s son. What does that make him? I never had enough relatives to want to puzzle that out. Uncle is close enough for me. I didn’t even know he existed until I had to move in with him.

  It’s not like my grandfather and I had a lot of meaningful conversations. It was more like, ‘This is how you bait the hook’, or ‘Back up the truck so I can load the boat trailer’. It usually ended with ‘Dummkopf, you’re doing it wrong!’ I didn’t expect that old buzzard to live and I can’t believe that he’d ever want to talk to me again. He knows by now that my dad wasn’t the one that poisoned his beer.

  A dented red minivan pulls up in front of the school and the front tire bounces over the curb with a loud screech of steel against concrete. I bet that rim won’t last long. Everyone notices and Nina’s whole body shivers.

  Interesting.

  Her mom sits behind the steering wheel and her face is red and puffy. She’s been crying all day. Her hair is flat in the back with that slept-on look.

  I stand up from the concrete planter and Nina touches my forearm. I flinch. I don’t like to be touched. She catches my eye and gives her head a tiny shake. She grabs her backpack and runs to the car. I shrug and turn away. She wants to get the hell out of here so everyone will stop staring. I know what that’s like.

  When they’re gone I walk back to the motel. Albert is still at work and Barb will be in the hospital for another day or two. She says I scare the crap out of her. I’m not supposed to visit, but that’s not what I told the cops who investigated the fire. I told them we all got along great. They are the best guardians ever and I’m happy I moved to Winnipeg.

  Then I said that Barb gets confused sometimes and that old gas stove always worried me. The two of them together made me downright nervous. The firemen looked at each other and I walked away, satisfied.

  Barb made it easy to convince the cops. The pill I put in her tea made her sound addle-brained. She made no sense at all when they asked her what happened. Thank you to the lady at the mall who had them in her purse. I scored fifty bucks and a bottle of sleeping tablets the day I grabbed that bag.

  I throw my math homework into the cheap metal trashcan and open the fridge in the kitchenette. There’s no beer. In the cupboard I find fruit snacks. Albert must think I’m a baby. Just like Barb. They’re both clueless.

  It’s quiet in here, just the way I like it. I curl up on the pullout sofa. There’s nothing good on TV so I open the door to the bedroom and go through the drawers. There’s gotta be cash somewhere. Everyone hides money, don’t they? I find a twenty-dollar bill in the pocket of Albert’s pants in the laundry basket. I can usually count on a few coins, but twenty bucks is a bonanza.

  I hold it up to the light and the yellow bulb shines through the transparent plastic section. Canadian money is pretty cool, I gotta admit. You can tell what you have right away, just by the color. It doesn’t fold properly so I bend it in half and jam it into my jeans pocket. It’s Friday night and I’ve decided I’m going out as soon as it gets dark. I want to figure out where Nina lives.

  A block from the motel is a bar where construction guys drink all afternoon. I don’t know why they’re not out fixing roads in this city. There are enough potholes to keep them working all summer but here they sit getting drunk. This seems like a good spot to find a car and I try the doors one by one.

  In the city, most people lock their doors and finding a key under the mat is not as easy as in Morley Falls. Today is my lucky day and there’s an open door with a key in the ignition. It’s a beat-up construction truck with a club cab, littered with squashed coffee cups and a mound of smelly old blankets on the rear seat. I don’t care as long as it’s got an automatic transmission and it starts. I’m not so good with standards.

  I gun the engine and take the back alley to the main road to avoid streetlights. Even with my hood up, sometimes people turn their heads when they notice how young I am. I don’t want to get pulled over by the cops. I got stopped once back home but my minion came and took care of it. He can’t do that for me from jail. I cross Portage Avenue and get back onto a side road.

  I’ve been driving for about twenty minutes when I pass a sign covered in graffiti. You can’t even read it. It’s all row houses for blocks and it might have been an okay place twenty years ago. Now everything looks busted. Peeling paint, sagging fences, dirty cars, and a helluva lot of trash on the street. Gangs have scribbled, scratched or spray-painted everything.

  A boy on a BMX bike grabs his crotch when I cruise past and his buddies laugh. They probably did half the graffiti around here, trying to copy the big boys. The kid who grabbed his crotch pedals fast to catch up to my back bumper. He thinks he’s cool to coast along with me so I jerk the steering wheel and he slams into a parked car. There’s a lot of swearing and yelling when his buddies crowd around him to haul him back to his feet. He kicks his bike. Now I’m the one who’s laughing.

  A red van is parked cockeyed in front of a house at the end of the next block. I pull a U-turn and come back. That’s it. That’s the same dent and gouged rim I saw bouncing over the curb in front of the school. It sits right in front of an end unit where a TV glows blue through open curtains. Someone is watching Dora the Explorer. Couldn’t be Nina.

  I’m surprised when she stands up with a little kid in her arms. The kid laughs when Nina twirls her around. I’d never imagined she’d have a younger sister. She’s way nicer than me. I’d never watch Dora for anyone. I pull my hood around my face and idle the truck across the street.

  After a while her mom comes in and she’s as red-faced as she was this afternoon. She’s yelling. I can’t make out any words but I can tell that what her mom says upsets Nina. I push the shifter into park and slide out of the truck.

  With a palm-sized rock in my hand, I duck behind a hedge along the sidewalk. Years of practice pay off when I pitch the rock at the center of the window. It crashes like a gunshot and cracks spider out from the hole. Mom jumps straight up and Nina hauls the kid off. I bet she’s locked herself in her bedroom by now. She’s smart. She’ll stay there until it’s safe.

  The lights go out and her Mom squints out the side window into the dark. I make out the shape of her head through the screen from where I’m crouched. If I can see her, she might see me. I sprint across the road and into the truck, jam it into gear and chirp the tires. A couple of blocks away, I slow to the speed limit and whoop like a savage.

  “What the hell is goin’ on?”

  The reflection of a squirming mound of smelly blankets in the rear-view mirror almost makes me pile the truck into the back of a Volkswagen. I yank the steering wheel straight in time to avoid its back bumper.

  A bearded guy with checkered shirt and bleary eyes looms up to stare at me in the rear-view mirror. “Who the fuck are you? Where is Charlie?” He puts his hands on my seat back. I pound the gas and he’s thrown backward.

  I need to get out. Before he can find his balance, I brake hard and he bashes his face into the back of my headrest. Now he’s really pissed. He’ll kill me if he gets his paws on me.

  I screech to a stop and leap
out the door. The truck rolls, picks up speed down the hill and smashes into a concrete bus bench. Tossed forward, the construction worker’s big boots are in the air. I’m halfway down the block before he shoves the door open and lurches onto the road, rubbing his hairy face. In five minutes he might wonder if he drove there himself.

  I stop running three blocks later. I’m winded. My heart pounds in my ears and I have to bend and hold my knees. City sidewalks kick my ass like the backwoods trails never did. I’m out of shape and I hate it. I could trot for hours back home, but not here. Have I been sitting around too much?

  When I catch my breath, I tilt my head back and look at the sky. I can’t make out a single damn star under these streetlights, but they buzz like bugs mating in the swamp. That makes me feel more at home. Blood rushes in my veins. The surprise of the freaked out construction guy gave me more of a rush than throwing the rock at Nina’s mom.

  She better leave Nina alone.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Hey asshole!” The inmate’s muted voice crept from the adjacent cell.

  Derek Peterson didn’t move from the edge of his bunk and kept his feet planted on the floor. After another attempt on his life, he’d been transferred back to the protective custody wing. The loneliness ate at him worse than last time. He focused on the muscle car magazine he’d borrowed from the prison’s library cart. He’d already read it front to back twice but it was a distraction from the mouthy dirt bag next door who’d been taunting him since breakfast.

  “Badger gonna kill you.”

  Badger, a.k.a. Ethan Lewis, had been gunning for him since Derek had popped his knee out in the stairwell. He walked with a cane now. Most guys would have backed off, but not Ethan. It made him more determined than ever to recover his jailhouse reputation. He needed to kill Derek to do that.

  “He gonna stick a shiv right in your throat.”

  Derek didn’t rise to the bait. He tried to relax his tense shoulders and loosen his jaw. How did anyone survive the chronic stress in here? It was worse than being in uniform on the street. Worse than staying constantly alert and always looking over your shoulder. At least out there, you weren’t trapped in a six by eight concrete cubicle. Out there, you could plan your attack, or escape.

  “We gonna watch your blood make a swimmin’ pool on the floor. Then we gonna party.”

  That got Derek to his feet, fists balled tight, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. The rat next door didn’t need to know he’d riled him. It was only a matter of time before someone got to him in here. If it wasn’t Ethan Lewis, there were a dozen more waiting in line to take out a cop.

  Derek picked up the photo of his daughter and sat on the edge of the thin mattress. Eight years old in the picture, Lily straddled a shiny bicycle and beamed up at the camera. Sunlight backlit her blonde hair with angelic radiance. He cradled it in his rough hands and a half smile cracked his dry lips.

  Tiffany had given him the photo when she’d first told him the girl was his daughter. He knew instantly that it was true. He could see himself in her pale green eyes, fair skin and hair. There was something more, something about the way she stared directly into the camera’s lens. It was compelling and unnerving at the same time.

  He’d tried to be a father to her, hadn’t he? He’d been a standup guy when he’d talked to her grandfather and together the two men came to a gentlemen’s agreement. Every month since, Derek drove out to Gunther’s place by the river. He left a check in the shed for his daughter’s care and a six-pack of beer in the fridge for Gunther. He didn’t know many other men who would take on this kind of responsibility. He really was a decent guy.

  At first he tried to be Lily’s friend, her confidante, then her father. She didn’t buy it and she never listened to him, except when she feigned interest long enough to ask for money. She could sure put on a pathetic face, and she was relentless. Nothing could keep her from what she wanted.

  When he saw her wandering town at night, he always gave her a ride home so she didn’t have to walk through the woods. There were bears and wolves out there, not to mention the risk of getting lost. That would be scary for a young girl, wouldn’t it? He squinted at the picture and the intense eyes stared back. Maybe not.

  There was more to Lily than the cheerful smile she produced for pictures. She’d used that same smile on him but it vanished as soon as he gave in. The weirdest thing about her was the way she talked to him, like he was her servant or something. Minion? What kind of kid called her dad that? He’d heard disrespectful teens call their parents by first name, but this? He was no father of the year, but even he knew this was unusual.

  At first he’d thought it was in jest and he tried to treat it as a private joke, something special they shared, like a man calling his wife his ‘old lady’ in front of his drinking buddies. It was all for fun, wasn’t it? After a while, the joke grew stale but Lily kept at it. He finally realized that she truly regarded him not as a father but more as a man who would do whatever she asked. He set the picture back on the desk. It was true, he would.

  He unfolded the pencil sketch Lily had left in his car. Why did it look so much like Dolores Johnson’s house? Why had Lily scrawled the word NEXT on the back? Had she been casing the place? Did she have something to do with the gas explosion? Was his kid really responsible for all the things Erin said?

  He’d been so eager to protect her. He’d operated on pure gut reaction when he’d confessed and hadn’t considered all the angles. He rubbed tired eyes with coarse fingers. All this ruminating was getting to him. He re-folded the drawing and placed it beside Lily’s photo.

  Think about the facts, just the facts, man.

  Okay.

  He thought back to the night he’d picked Lily up from the Stop ’N Go. The kid was damn lucky that Gina, the manager, hadn’t insisted on pressing charges. He’d given Lily a short lecture about shoplifting, which she’d ignored, and a ride straight home. She’d used those pathetic eyes and talked him into giving her a cigarette.

  She was a kid. What was she doing smoking?

  Well, it was better that she got cigarettes from him than by stealing. He’d discovered later that she’d lifted his lighter while she was at it. He wasn’t entirely surprised. What else was she capable of?

  He’d dropped her off at Gunther’s place and there was the flicker of a TV in the living room. Gunther was probably up watching the game. Lily would have gone in and watched it with him.

  Come to think of it, she hadn’t entered the house when he’d dropped her off. His Norman Rockwell vision of a young girl watching a ball game with her kindly grandfather crumbled. She had gone directly to the shed. It would have been so easy for her to wait for him to leave and then head straight back to town. Lily was determined when she got something in her sights.

  He didn’t want to allow himself to remember the fleeting glimpse he’d had of a kid ducking behind a fence by the Stop ’N Go. He’d seen her in his rear-view mirror later when he was on his way to the bar. The skinny girl in the gray hoodie. She could have lit that fire. She must have. He didn’t like loudmouth interfering Gina any better than he had in high school but he’d never hurt her. It was Lily.

  No!

  This was his daughter. His little girl. He was not thinking straight. It must be the claustrophobia of the cinderblock walls closing in on him. He got to his feet. Three steps to the door, turn, three steps back. He pivoted on his heel and walked to the door again. With hands flat against the glass, he bashed his forehead into the steel frame. The newly healed cut split open and a trickle of blood ran down the side of his nose.

  He flashed back to the last time he’d hurt himself. He’d taken a run at the safety glass separating him from Erin Ericsson. The guards had terminated the visit. He’d lain face down, strapped to that board longer than he cared remember, so angry his entire body shook. Murderous thoughts intruded. They hadn’t let him up until he’d been a sniveling wreck. He sank onto the bed and put his head in his ha
nds.

  There had to be something the girl had not told him. In his bones, he felt she held the key to finding Tiffany. They would be together as a family some day. Tiffany had his heart and Lily had his blood. That was what life was all about, wasn’t it? If his daughter was in trouble, he needed to help her but he couldn’t do that from here. He had to get out, before she did something she could never come back from. Then he’d never find Tiffany.

  Lily was his connection to Tiffany, but Erin was his connection to Lily. Within a matter of days, Erin would be in Winnipeg. She was a bulldog once she got her teeth into something. She would find Lily. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed Erin’s help, but she was the one woman immune to his masculine charm. How would he possibly get her on his side?

  Derek jumped like a startled rodent when the lunch cart rattled up in front of his cell door. How the hell had it snuck up on him? He did his best to look unruffled when the inmate worker slid a plastic-covered tray through the slit in his door.

  “Ethan says to enjoy your lunch,” the worker sniggered. He shot a glance over his shoulder and scurried off to the next cell.

  Derek waited until he could no longer hear the rattling and got up to retrieve his food. He flipped off the plastic cover and held the tray at eye-level. The sandwich with crisp lettuce and a pickle hanging out the side looked innocent enough. He poked a finger at the apple and it rolled harmlessly over to the piece of plastic-wrapped cheese. What did he expect? An apple bomb? He was being ridiculous.

  He picked up the sandwich and lifted the top slice of whole grain bread. A bright red tomato nestled on top of a generous leaf of fresh lettuce. Tiny water droplets still clung to the edges. The toppings had been as neatly arranged as a magazine ad, not at all the kind of sandwich he’d expected in prison. His stomach rumbled. It had been hours since he’d suspiciously sifted through this morning’s oatmeal. He was starving.