Survival Clause, стр. 55
“Knock it off,” Rafe told her, sternly.
She danced out of the way, still yipping. By now, I was close enough to hear the sound of a car door slam outside. When I peered through one of the sidelights, I saw a small, blue car pulled up to the bottom of the stairs, and a man starting to climb.
He wasn’t anyone I knew. Medium height and sort of weedy, he might have been in his mid-twenties, with a scrubby little goatee and a faded T-shirt sporting a picture of the Beatles.
“Hold the dog back,” Rafe told me.
I wrapped my hand around her collar and held on. “It’s OK, sweetheart. Daddy’ll take care of the bad man.”
She stopped barking, but the rumble in her throat made my hand vibrate.
Rafe, meanwhile, pulled the door open and blocked it. “Something I can do for you?”
The young man looked at him, up and down, and rather than look intimidated, he grinned. “Got a kid in the car who says you’ll pay the fare.”
I peered through the window again while I held onto Pearl. She had stopped growling now, so I thought it might be safe to let her go. As soon as I did, she bulleted up next to Rafe and stuck her face outside.
“Whoa.” The guy outside took a step back.
“Thought I told you to hold her,” Rafe said without turning his head.
“You did. But I figured he wasn’t a threat.” I stuck my head outside, too. “Uber?”
He nodded.
“Let me guess. The kid looks like him,” I gestured to Rafe, “only smaller.”
He gave Rafe another up and down. “Pretty much.”
“How’d he con you into driving him from Nashville to Maury County?” Rafe wanted to know. He was already reaching for his wallet, but it didn’t keep him from adding, “It’d serve the little bastard right if I refused to pay and sent him back home.”
“Then Ginny and Sam would have to pay,” I pointed out, “twice the distance.”
“That’s the only reason I’m not doing it.” He held out his card.
The young man shook his head. “It’s gotta be cash, man.”
Rafe sighed. “’Course it does.”
“I’ll go get some,” I said. “How much is the fare?”
The driver mentioned an amount that made me wince, but I nodded gamely. “I’ll be right back.”
“You can let him out,” Rafe said, as I headed toward the kitchen, where we keep the emergency stash of money.
By the time I got back, with the exorbitant fare plus tip, David had been rescued from the confines of the small compact and was standing in the foyer grinning up at Rafe. Not for the first time, the resemblance between them struck me. David looked very much like Rafe had when we’d gone to high school together, and the older he got, the stronger the resemblance became.
If he felt bad for showing up unannounced and setting us back several hundred dollars, he showed no sign of it. “Hi, Savannah,” he told me, with a flash of that grin that wasn’t just his own.
“David.” I tried to sound stern as I handed the driver the money we owed him and watched him take off down the stairs like he was afraid we were going to call him back. “Did you tell your parents you were leaving?”
It was hard to be firm, though, when he looked so much like Rafe.
The latter had no such problems. “You little delinquent,” he told his son, “why do you keep doing this to your parents?”
He wasn’t talking about us. I didn’t feel like David’s mother, and although Rafe was, biologically, his father, I’m not sure he felt much like it, either. Their relationship, since they first met a year and a half ago, had been more fraternal than fatherly.
No, Rafe was talking about Ginny and Sam, David’s adopted parents. This wasn’t the first time David had left home on his own to visit us here, without his parents permission or knowledge. Each time, Ginny had called me in hysterics, letting me know he was gone. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from her this time.
“They don’t know I’m gone yet,” the delinquent said calmly. “They don’t even know I know enough to leave.”
Rafe sighed. “What d’you do? Eavesdrop?”
David shrugged, not the least discombobulated. “How else am I going to find out what’s going on? Nobody ever tells me anything.”
If this was a dig at Rafe (as well as at Ginny and Sam) it didn’t come off. “That’s because there’s nothing going on you need to worry about,” Rafe told him, sternly.
David scowled up at him. He was almost as tall as me now, but had quite a few inches to go before he reached Rafe’s height. And he might never get there. Elspeth had been on the short side. “Dad told Mom you have a stalker. ‘Again,’ they said. And that this somebody’s talking pictures of you, and of Savannah, and of Carrie, and posting them online.”
“I suppose you looked’em up?”
“You suppose right,” David said. “What did you think I’d do, ignore it? You’re my dad, whether you like it or not, and Carrie’s my sister. If something’s happening, I want to know about it.”
“So you can put yourself in danger, too?” Rafe didn’t give him a chance to answer, just went on, “You moron, the reason I called Sam is so he and Ginny could make sure you were safe. The last thing I wanted was for you to show up here. We were all much better off with you in Nashville.”
“I can take care of myself…” David began.
“You think I don’t know that? So can I. That don’t mean I put myself in danger when I don’t have to. That’s not brave. That’s stupid.”
David flushed, and until he spoke I wasn’t sure whether it was from embarrassment or anger. Once he opened his mouth, there was no doubt. “You