Web of Smoke by Erin Quinn Page A

known that he was trouble. Not that she could convince her mother of it. Her mom had been on his short leash and sang his praises every time he gave a yank. Ten years her mother’s junior, he had swept her right off her feet. She’d worshiped him.
    Near the end, though, Christie thought she had glimpsed something different in her mother’s eyes. A flicker of fear, a hope for rescue. Yet she steadfastly refused any lifeline Christie threw her. Until that day….
    Sam began jamming the files back into the bag. “God, I hate this guy. Describe him again.”
    Christie stood, suddenly stiff as a board. “He’s average height. He’s blond and he wears his hair short now. He has this look about him. I can’t explain it. He turned my blood cold the first time I met him. But he can be charming. I’ve seen him in action and he’s good.”
    “At least he doesn’t sound like any of my students. He’s begging for a lesson, though. I can’t wait to give it to him.”
    They walked back to the Jeep, the intimate mood gone, the humming currents banked. Although she tried not to admit it, she felt saddened by the loss.
     

 
    Chapter Ten
     
     
    DC parked outside his mother’s house and waited in his car for her to come home. He didn’t go to the door because he had no reason to believe he’d be invited inside. He figured if he hadn’t been asked yet, he probably never would.
    Perched on a hill, her house sat in the middle of an acre of real estate. A blanket of green grass stretched from the base of the house to a shrub border. A white stuccoed wall shielded the house from the street but, long ago, DC had found this spot on the hill to park. He’d spent many nights here, watching her cocktail parties, glittering with champagne and laughter. He’d seen his stepbrother, James, introduced like young royalty to his mother’s smiling court.
    Her car rounded the corner and zoomed up the drive. Stepping from his car, DC walked down the hill, scaling the wall with a groan of sore muscles. He’d fought three women in the past few days and each had left her mark.
    Landing on the macadam drive, he hunched and shuffled to the concealing foliage along the base of the wall. His fingers brushed her shiny new car as he passed it in the horseshoe driveway.
    DC had never had the nerve to come so close to her domain, to actually sully the ground with his passage, and now he felt a sick, nervous tension grip him. He knew she wouldn’t welcome him.
    He slipped into the backyard, where patio tables and chairs clustered around a pool that glittered like a gem centered in a red tile setting. Last July, they’d celebrated James’s thirteenth birthday out here. Their mother had carried a cake out and everyone sang, their voices drifting up the hill to DC’s secluded hideaway.
    Now, rap music blasted from an upstairs window as DC crept to the back door and peered through the screen into the kitchen. His mother stood just inside, the phone cupped between her shoulder and chin. A frown marred her face. Barefoot, she paced.
    “I thought you’d be home,” she said into the phone. She sounded pissed, her pause weighted, her response tight.
    “I know you’re busy, but so am I.” Another tension-filled pause. “I don’t know what he’s doing. That’s my point. Unless one of us is here, there’s no way to know what he’s been up to.”
    She was talking to her husband, probably about James. DC’s stepbrother was a punk who didn’t know how good he had it. James wouldn’t have survived DC’s childhood. The two sons shared a mother, but their lives couldn’t have been more different.
    DC’s mother coiled the phone cord around a finger, listening to the voice on the other end.
    “Just call me next time. I’ll come home early. It’s just not safe to leave him alone. Okay?”
    She apparently received her answer and hung up without saying good-bye. DC stayed where he was, listening to her fuss in the kitchen. Except for James upstairs