Page 54 of Grissom
Pushing to his feet, Grissom followed the woman he adored. Tiny crimson beads in the snow told him she was still bleeding but running, following those gawddamned Army issue boots leading back to his house. To his sons. Damn. He had to get there first.
Alex ran alongside, both of them charged with enough angst to blast a rocket to the sun.
“This was never about Tuesday, Boss. Someone’s after my boys,” Grissom explained, his lungs on fire, pissed that he’d left them alone. Two little guys who trusted him, only him, to keep them safe. Who’d been told to never open any doors. Which might keep them safe. They had no idea how to shut off the alarm. Not like that meant much to Luke. He was too young to understand. Too bull-headed and too stubborn. Too much like his old man. And now, the jackhole who’d hurt Tuesday wouldn’t hesitate to break windows or doors. Or heads.
I left them alone. What was I thinking?
Of Tuesday. That was who.
Run, damn you! Run!
Too late. A raucous shriek blasted over the trees. His alarm. His only line of defense had just been breached. Someone was in his house, after his boys. Tuesday had just been a distraction, and Grissom fell for it.
Must! Run! Faster!
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You bitch!” Pamela hissed the second Tuesday landed on Grissom’s rear deck, her fists clenched and so, so ready for battle. Her bare feet were sore from running since she’d long since ditched her slippers. Bare soles and ten toes had more grip. She was poised and focused, weaponless, but ready to strike first and ask questions later. If only that alarm would shut up or turn off. How long was it going to blare like a runaway freight train?
Pamela, on the other hand, didn’t seem affected by the noise. She was armed with a small caliber pistol and waving it at Tanner.
“You’re alive,” Tuesday deadpanned loudly, her head spinning from the over-exertion of the run. She was fairly sure Pam had given her a concussion with that brick. The intense noise didn’t help, but no way would she let Pamela McCoy hurt Tanner or Luke. If this miserable excuse of a human being thought she stood a chance of kidnapping Grissom’s boys…
Guess again.The only way this deadly confrontation would end was with one of them on her knees, and it wouldn’t be Tuesday Smart.
“What’s it look like?” Pam yelled, tossing short, greasy red hair off her forehead like some sweaty dancer from that ’80’s movie,“Saturday Night Fever.”Her weapon was aimed at a defenseless six-year-old. “’Course, I’m alive. I come back to get my son, so keep outta my way!”
“Son?” Tuesday asked just as loudly.Not sons?Man, that alarm was going to be the death of her.
“Yeah,son. You deaf or something? Look at ’em, why don’tcha? Which one of these shits do you think is mine?”Howabout neither of them.“Sure ain’t the little bastard who takes after his lazy-assed father.”
“These boys are not bastards,” Tuesday asserted over the intense ringing in her skull.
“That one is.” Pam pointed her chin at Tanner. “But Luke’s mine, and I’m not leaving without him.”
Tuesday hadn’t seen Pam’s explosive reveal coming. Not in her wildest imaginations had she suspected Luke wasn’t Grissom’s biological child. Not once. Sure, she’d noticed the differences in the boys’ appearances, but kids from the same parents often looked dissimilar.
Now that she had Mommy Dearest to compare with Luke, her brain did the math. He could’ve only inherited his strawberry blond baby-hair and those sparkling cherub-blue eyes from two parents with the same red-hair slash blue-eye genes. He had the same fair complexion as his mom, although Pam’s face was more wrinkled and her skin was sallow and slack. Pam was a drinker and a smoker, probably a drug addict, and every last bit of her self-abuse showed. Didn’t matter that her split ends were bright lobster-red. Her roots were the same soft coppery tones as the baby-fine hairs covering Luke’s head.
Mother Nature’s laws of genetics were hard fast rules, not suggestions. Not up for votes. Ordained long before mankind lifted his bleary, entitled eyes out of the primordial swamp and decided to walk upright. They were as undeniable as the laws of gravity and the speed of light. You didn’t have to believe in them for them to be real. They. Just. Were.
But Luke wasn’t Grissom’s child? The thought had never entered Tuesday’s mind. Since the moment he’d collapsed in her hotel door, in Puntarenas, Grissom had done nothing but love both these boys. He’d never treated one better than the other, and his love showed everywhere. While riding horseback in Maverick’s field. At Cakes and Honey’s. On the mantle.Upstairs in the loft. Under the tree. When he’d hoisted Luke on his shoulder while he and Tanner dragged back the tree she’d chosen. And every moment in-between.
The more concerning question was:What’s Pam on now? Booze? Pills? Crack? Meth?
“He’s mine!” she screamed, stamping her foot like a woman deranged.
All of the above?
“I thought you were with your boyfriend when his plane went down,” Tuesday offered more calmly.
Tuesday had no idea what these boys had been told about how their mother died, or if they’d been told anything. Regardless, this was not their battle. They were children and this was adult business, and somehow, Tuesday was once again in a standoff with their evil witch of a mother.
“You thought wrong!” Pam shrilled. “Bastard thought he could screw me over once he was back on his home turf. Well, I showed him. Watching him pat that bitch’s ass when he helped her aboard was the last straw. I had enough of his two-timing lies.”
Pot meet kettle.
Pam was obviously unhinged. Her pupils were black, enlarged like wide-open camera lenses meant for nighttime photography. Fireworks. Lunar eclipses. Meteor showers. Fun stuff like that.
