Untamed (A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance)(44)

I peel off the plastic seals covering the screws on the steering column, use a key to unscrew them. I crack it open, find the wiring harness connector, and pull out the battery, ignition and starter bundle of wires. I use my key to strip them, twirl the battery and ignition wires together, and then spark them with the starter wire.

The car rumbles to life, and I rev the engine to prevent a stall.

All in all, it took about thirty seconds, but I’m out of practice.

“Holy shit,” Deidre breathes. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“Good thing you picked this car,” I tell her with a smirk. “Only works on older models.”

“Can you fix… it?” she asks. “So Dad won’t know?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll deal with your father if he finds out. I’ll just tell him I borrowed the car, but didn’t know where he kept the keys.”

“He won’t like that.”

“Seems like nobody has driven this car in a while, though.”

“You’re right,” Dee says. “This was Mom’s car.”

I lick my lips as realization oozes all over me like lava. I just vandalized her dead mother’s car!

I look at Dee. The atmosphere has grown somber in just an instant.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she says quickly. “I don’t care about the car.”

“What happened to your mother, Dee?” I ask her gently.

“She died when I was young. That’s all I know. I don’t know how or why. Dad never talks about her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. I can’t even remember what she looks like, and Dad doesn’t keep photos around the house. Sometimes that bothers me, you know? But most of the time, I just don’t think about it.” She turns to me. “Do you know what your mother looks like?”

I shake my head. “She left me on a church doorstep as a baby. Never met her, never seen her, never heard her. Well, not literally never, just nothing that I can remember.”

“Would you want to? See her I mean… hear her?”

I suck in a breath of air. It’s a question I’ve thought about for a long time. “Sure,” I say eventually.

“But why? She just abandoned you. She wasn’t there for you.”

“People do all kinds of shit,” I tell her. I don’t know how to put my thoughts into words. “I do what I want, and I don’t want to hold a grudge against my own mother. Even if her reasons were stupid, or bad, or whatever… how can I stay bitter?”

“But your life could have been so different.”

“It could have been worse,” I say. “She wasn’t a stable person, and had a drug habit to boot.”

Dee fidgets. “Really?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“By whom?”

“She was seen leaving me. People around the area knew her, everybody knew what she was about. I found out from a social worker who lived in the area and worked in the home.”

“Is she still alive?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

Dee pauses for a moment, then asks me, “But wouldn’t that mean that when she was pregnant—”

“Obviously she stopped using during that time,” I say. “That must have been hell for her. But for that, I’ll always owe her one.”

“Owe her one,” Dee echoes.

“Yeah,” I say. “My life, probably.”

“Come on, let’s go,” she says, looking straight ahead. “And change the subject. Let’s not talk about our parents.”

I put the car into gear and drive us out of the garage. The doors are automatic, don’t require a signal. Nobody breaks into Johnny Marino’s house and steals his cars. Not unless they want to end up floating face-down in the river.

“Tell me where to go,” I say.

Dee gives me rough directions, and after a bit of searching, we come to the mall. I park the car beneath a tree, shield it in the shadow, and together we climb out and walk through the near-empty parking lot.

“This way,” she says, taking my hand. “There’s something eerie about walking through an empty mall at night, don’t you think?”

We pass by a guard post, and I spy that he’s sleeping, slumped into his chair, newspaper on his chest. I stop, peer at him, measure how deep he’s sleeping. His breaths are very slow; he’s been out for a while. Coffee sits cool in a paper cup, untouched, not steaming.

“What are you doing?” Dee hisses at me, but I put a finger to my lips. I kneel down, turn the doorknob carefully, pull open the door, wincing as it creaks.

The guard doesn’t move. I reach out, unclip his keys from his belt, clasp them in my hand so they don’t jingle, and then shut the door.