Page 32 of Married to the Enemy

The man. Huge, rock solid. Muscles stacked on muscles, with that look in his eyes. The kind of look that said he’d noticed Barry, even if Barry thought he was well hidden. The kind of look that made Barry’s stomach twist.

Dangerous. That’s what he was. Dangerous in a way Barry didn’t dare test.

He rubbed his ribs again, grimacing. He couldn’t take another beating, not from Vito and definitely not from a man like that.

Still, he refused to leave his post. This treehouse had become his command center.

The first day, it had been tolerable. He’d brought a thermos of coffee and a pack of crackers. When nature called, he’d simply leaned over the side and taken care of it.

The second day, he’d been smarter. He’d brought chips, a soda, and a sandwich. He’d marked the tree trunk with his urine, like some wild animal, and assured himself no one would ever climb up here to notice.

By day three, though, his nerves were fraying. He’d woken up stiff, sore, with a gnawing hunger and a full bladder. He was furious at being reduced to this indignity, hiding in a wooden shack nailed to a tree, watching shadows move through windows.

And worse—nothing. This third day, there was no activity. No one had come or gone all day. The driveway stayed empty. The curtains stayed drawn.

They were gone.

Barry chewed the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. He’d dragged himself into this treehouse later than usual, but still—there should have been some movement. A curtain shifting. A car engine turning over. Something.

Instead, silence.

His only consolation was that Vito didn’t know where he was. Vito would never imagine him up here, hunched in a tree like a squirrel. The great Vito Calvino, Minneapolis’s new mob king, would be prowling around his ugly mansion, sending out his capos, barking orders, and never once would he think to check a neighborhood treehouse for his missing nursing home manager.

Barry almost smiled at that. Almost.

But then his ribs twinged again, and the smile twisted into a grimace. He didn’t know how he was going to fix this mess, but one thing was certain. If he didn’t deliver Evangeline soon, he’d end up buried under one of the old man’s rose bushes.

Chapter 18

Jim Fuller yanked open the fridge and grabbed another beer, twisting off the cap with his teeth. He spat the cap onto the linoleum, where it skittered under the counter and rattled against the wall. He didn’t bother to pick it up. Katy would find it eventually, or she wouldn’t—he didn’t care either way.

He’d been in a bad mood all day, but now he was seething. That nosy social worker had shown up right in the middle of dinner last night. He hated that. Dinner was supposed to be his time, sitting at the table with his plate of food while the kids hovered in the kitchen, watching like hungry dogs waiting for scraps.

All of them had been doing chores, just like they should. Sweeping floors, scrubbing dishes, hauling out trash—nothing unreasonable. If one didn’t look too closely, the whole setup looked fine. The kids weren’t bruised, weren’t locked up, weren’t barefoot. Hell, if anything, they looked cleaner than most of the kids he saw running around the neighborhood.

But Jenny—that meddling busybody—looked too damn closely. She’d walked right past him, talking sweet like honey to the brats, asking them questions in her nosy, singsong voice. And then she had the nerve to take them outside. One by one. Asking things that weren’t her business.

And the little ingrates had talked.

Said they were hungry. Said they hadn’t eaten all day because they hadn’t done their chores right.

Jim took a long pull from the bottle, foam sliding down his chin. He didn’t give a damn about the chores. The chores were just to keep them out of his way, and keep the house from looking like a pigsty when the social worker came sniffing around. What he really cared about was the check from the state. Every month, right on time, that money landed in his bank account. Enough for a fridge stocked with beer, a decent bottle of whiskey every now and then, and enough smokes to keep him happy.

Now, it was gone.

Jenny had whisked the kids out of the house, emergency protection or some such crap. Said it wasn’t safe here. Said she “had concerns.”

Concerns, his ass.

Now Katy was stomping around, whining about how they weren’t going to get any more payments from the state. “What are we supposed to do, Jim? That money was everything! We can’t pay the bills without it!”

Jim ignored her, drinking his beer and staring at the darkened television. He didn’t give a damn about bills. He cared about his next six-pack. And now, thanks to that meddling woman, he was going to have to do without.

But maybe it wasn’t all Jenny’s fault.

Maybe the real problem was that crippled kid. Freddy.

Freddy with his sullen eyes, always acting like he was too good for the rest of them. Freddy with his sharp little brain, sneaking into the kitchen at night and raiding the cupboards. He thought Jim didn’t notice, but he did. Jim had seen the empty bread bags, the missing cans of beans, the way the other brats got a little plumper in the cheeks while Freddy stayed skinny as a rail. He’d been sneaking them food.