Private detective Smokey Dalton does his best to protect his adopted family, from his 11-year-old son Jimmy to his friends, the Grimshaws. But Smokey can’t see everything. Jimmy notices that Lacey Grimshaw—“thirteen going on trouble,” Smokey says—skips school to hang out with an adult man. Jimmy doesn’t want to tattle, but he’s worried about Lacey. So he pretends he’s Smokey, 
and follows her, learning secrets that will change him—and Lacey—forever.
“Guarding Lacey” by Edgar-award nominee Kris Nelscott is free on this website for one week only. The story’s also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Omnilit, Smashwords and other ebookstores. If you want to find out how Smokey Dalton does next, pick up Street Justice, which releases in trade paper, audio, and ebook on Tuesday, March 18.
Guarding Lacey
Kris Nelscott
EVERY OTHER MORNING, my dad drives me and my cousins to school, except he’s not really my dad and they’re not really my cousins. My dad—his name is Smokey—he says we’re family, and I guess he’s right about that.
He sure guards us like family. When Smoke drives (I known Smoke since I was three; I just can’t get used to calling him Dad), he lines us up like little ducklings, and makes us walk hand-in-hand into the school.
The duckling thing is hardest in the winter. It’s the beginning of 1970—a decade Smoke says’ll be better than the last one—and there’s been ice. We lose our balance if even one person slips (and it’s usually Noreen, who’s six, and never pays attention), and we just look plain silly.
I’m tired of looking silly, but I know the dangers if we don’t.
Last year, the Blackstone Rangers tried to recruit me and my cousin Keith, and Smoke, he beat up a Stone so bad they ain’t bothered us since. Or not much, anyway. Smoke’s a big guy and now he’s got a knife scar on his face and he can take on just about anybody. The Stones look away when they see him. I think he scares them.
They hang in the playground and smoke cigarettes and they watch us all, especially my cousin Lacey. Smoke says she’s thirteen going on trouble, and he don’t know the half of it.
Our school is on the South Side, which the news says gots the worst schools in Chicago. Smoke agrees, but he’s weird about it; his girlfriend, Laura Hathaway, is rich and white and has what Smoke calls clout and she says she can get me into one of them private schools and she’d even pay for it. But Smoke says we gots to do what we can afford and we don’t take charity from nobody, not even if it’s from someone like Laura.
Besides, he says, we got to do for everybody, not just make one of us special, so that’s why him and my Uncle Franklin started the afterschool program for anybody who wants to come and really learn.
Sometimes I wish Smoke would come inside our school though instead of staying out front. He thinks we’s safe inside, but that’s not true. Some of the gang kids still go to classes just to cause trouble. Last week, Li’l Dan sat in the back of history class and just snicked his knife open and closed. I almost turned around and took it from him, but that would get me noticed, and I been noticed enough.
Lacey and Jonathon, they say it’s worse in the junior high part of the school, which is an attached building at the other end. They come in with us, go down the hall, and then go through the double doors which get locked until school’s over since the teachers don’t want no older kids coming in and “corrupting” us younger ones. But they forget: most of us gots brothers and sisters who’re older or friends or neighbors and we get corrupted all the dang time.
I don’t like school much.
Especially this year, and that’s because of Lace. I’m the only one who sees the problem, and I ain’t sure what to do.
* * *
Ever since she got into junior high, Lace has been weird. I mean, she’s always been stuck-up and stuff, and she’s always worn make-up and clothes that my Uncle Franklin don’t like at all. This year, Uncle Franklin and Aunt Althea, they make Lacey change dang near every morning before school, and they’re threatening to ground her.
But it won’t do no good.
Once Smoke or Uncle Franklin drops us ducklings off at school and we get inside those dented metal doors, Lace heads to the girls room. If she can’t smuggle her clothes out of the house, she takes what she’s already wearing and changes it. She rolls up her skirt and tucks the fabric under the waistband so the skirt is short and double-thick. She ties off her shirt to show her tummy, and she puts on so much make-up you can’t see her face at all.
Lately she’s been gluing on them fake eyelashes and wearing hot pants like Twiggy and big ole clunky high heels. That kinda stuff is expensive, and I know her family don’t got that kinda money.
The problem is she looks good in it too. When Lace dresses up, she can pass for eighteen, maybe twenty. Most of her friends look just dorky in the same clothes, but Lace looks slutty-gorgeous. She got big tits last year and a waist and a fine ass, so she looks like a grown-up girl, which is why Uncle Franklin is so worried, I think.
Or maybe he knows what Lace really looks like.
When she dresses up like that, Lace looks just like my mom.
* * *
I ain’t seen my mom in almost exactly two years. She skipped January 8, 1968. I remember because that’s one week before my birthday. When I turned ten, my mom was gone and my older brother Joe was out toking with his buddies. That was Memphis, not Chicago, and Smoke, who was just this guy down the block who kept an eye on me, bought me lunch and told me I needed to get to school.
He didn’t know it was my birthday, just like he didn’t know Mom ain’t paid the rent—again. We got evicted—or really, I did—and that was the end for Smoke. He’d been watching over me for a long time, making sure I studied, making sure I ate. But the eviction, that’s when he took me in.
Mom ain’t got no idea where I am now, not that it matters. She stayed gone from January to April, and even Smoke, who’s a private detective, couldn’t find her (not that I think he tried real hard). Mom ran off with one of her johns again, or maybe she knew the rent was due. She said she was gonna send money but she never did.
Sometimes I think she’s dead. I seen a lot of hookers before I moved to Chicago, and they get hurt lots. Knifed or beat up or worse. Sometimes they get beat so bad they die. That last Christmas, I was mopping up after Mom all over the apartment, she was bleeding so bad from her female parts. I ain’t never told Smoke that. He’d give me that shocked look like he does when I mention my mom, like he can’t believe anybody would ever do the stuff she did.
But Mom explained it to me and Joe. She said you have the kinda life she had, you gots to do the best you can. And if she had it to do over she wouldn’ta chased all them boys when she was twelve and she wouldn’ta gone with the older guys, and she wouldn’ta never had kids.
Mom, she was only a year older than Lace when she had my brother Joe. She knew who his dad was, but she never said. Me, my dad coulda been anyone. Sometimes my mom would take on four or five guys a night—and that don’t count the quickies in the alley behind our apartment.
Sometimes her pimp, this guy named Thug, used to get her to train the new girls. He’d say he could break them in but he couldn’t teach them the ropes. Mom was in charge of the ropes. She’d talk to them and by the end, they’d be crying and she’d be yelling at them: If you’re crying now, you ain’t gonna make it. You’ll die before the year’s out. You gotta be tough.
Lacey ain’t tough and she ain’t hooking—at least not yet. But the guys she meets in the schoolyard during lunch ain’t junior high boys. They ain’t even high school boys. They’s men, and they’s way too interested.
* * *
It’s so cold in Mrs. Dylan’s classroom that I’m wearing my coat, and I’m glad Laura gave me real sturdy boots for Christmas. Still, the tip of my nose is freezing and I can see my breath.
Mrs. Dylan’s going on about fractions. I had that a long time ago, so I keep doodling on my notepad while I look out the window.
Lace is standing underneath an archway. The graffiti on it is mostly basic crap—Jud loves Susan, stuff like that, but Lace’s standing under some spray-paint that says Blackstones Are Stone Cold. She’s wearing a miniskirt and open toed high heel shoes and a top tied under her tits. She’s teased her hair into a afro—I got no idea how she’s gonna get that out before we get to the afterschool program at the church—and I can see her eye makeup from across the yard.
Her hands are cupped as she leans forward to light a cigarette. That’s another new habit, and one I’m surprised Uncle Franklin and Aunt Althea haven’t figured yet. Lace stinks of cigarettes most of the time.
She’s gotta be cold, but she don’t look cold. She looks like she’s waiting for someone, just like my Mom used to do, only there ain’t no road here for them to drive up to, and no way for some guy just passing by to ask her into his car so she can make a quick twenty.
I can’t tell her none of this. I swore to Smoke I’d never talk about Memphis ever because I might slip and the secret’d be out. And the secret’s an important one. I seen something I wasn’t supposed to and people tried to kill me for it.
Smoke saved me, and then he brought me here. Thanks to Uncle Franklin, we get to use his last name (and his kids all think I’m a real cousin) and Smoke got fake i.d.s and stuff. People are searching for me, but Smoke says we’re safe if we stay quiet.
Still I get nightmares and I know if we slip we might gotta leave with a moment’s notice. Smoke hates it when I even think of Memphis because then I can’t sleep and stuff.
But seeing Lacey like that, all tricked out and me not able to say anything for fear of hurting me and Smoke, scares me to death.
I talked to Smoke about it last fall, when things wasn’t quite so bad. We was in the car after dropping off Lacey. He’d seen her tricked out—well, wiping the crap off her face anyway—and he tried to tell her what happens to girls who look like that from our part of town, but Lace didn’t listen, not really.
After everybody got out of the car except me and Smoke, I asked him, “You don’t think Lace’ll end up like my mom, do you?”
He looked at me. He’s got this measuring thing, where he can see all the way inside you, and he was doing that to me then. He could tell I was worried.
He said, “She won’t end up like your mom. Lacey has too many friends and family for that. But she could get hurt.”
I remembered how Mom laid in bed for days sometimes with ice pressed on her face so the bruises would go away, or that last Christmas, cleaning up the blood she left all over the apartment because she couldn’t afford no doctor. I didn’t want none of that to happen to Lace.
“Some trick’ll hurt her?” I asked.
“Some boy’ll hurt her. He’ll think she wants to do what your mom used to do. Lacey won’t understand and—”
“He’ll just do her. I know,” I said real quick because I didn’t want to think about Lace like that.
That’s when Smoke gave me that shocked look, like he can’t believe half the stuff I know. Then he blinked, and the look went away.
“We can’t talk her out of dressing like this,” he said. “We’ve been trying for nearly a year. She’ll do what she wants. But if she does get into trouble—if she starts crying a lot, or acting really angry for no reason, tell me okay?”
I hated that. I hated telling on anybody, even for a good reason. There was lotsa stuff Smoke should probably know, but I’d make my friends and my pretend cousins mad at me if I said something, and they wouldn’t like me no more, and worse, they wouldn’t trust me.
“What if she don’t want me to?” I asked.
“Tell me that too.”
“Feels like tattling,” I muttered.
Smoke ignored that. “If someone just—does her—then she’s not going to want to tell her parents. Maybe she’ll tell me. We can make sure it won’t happen again. We’d be protecting her, Jim, not tattling on her.”
Made sense, but it still scared me. I seen them guys with my mom. There was no protecting. There was just getting by, surviving, and trying all over again.
But I didn’t say that to Smoke. I don’t say a lot of what I think to Smoke. He don’t need to know all the details of what happened before. I try to forget a lot of them too.
But it’s dang hard when I see Lace standing under that arch, smoking, when she’s supposed to be in class. She’s just waiting, and I don’t know for what. Then some guy comes up and he’s tall and thin and wears a long cloth coat. The thin guy puts a gloved hand on Lace’s arm, and she smiles up at him like he’s God.
Just then, Mrs. Dylan calls on me, and I have to turn away from the window. Mrs. Dylan always looks tired. She’s not as old as Smoke, but she has these big bags under her eyes, and even her voice sounds a little wispy, like she can’t get enough energy to use it right.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to remember what she’d said before she called my name. “I forgot the question.”
“When I called on you,” she says all precise, which makes her seem madder than she probably is, “I asked you to add one-half and one-fourth.”
“Three-fourths, ma’am,” I say.
She frowns at me, and I realize I answered too fast. I don’t want nobody in this school to know how easy it is for me. I feel my cheeks getting hot.
“Maybe I heard the question after all,” I say with just enough attitude to make my friends smile, but not enough to make her madder.
“Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you kids,” she says and goes back to talking about how when you add fractions you got to make the bottom numbers the same.
I turn back to the window.
Lace is gone.
I hope she’s gone back inside, all alone, and is in some class now, shivering and wishing she was dressed proper.
But I know she’s with the guy in the coat. And I know she feels cool.
None of this is cool. And I know at some point, he’s gonna hurt her.
But what I don’t know is when’s the right time to tell Smoke? And what if I’m wrong? What if the guy in the coat is somebody nice like Smoke was to me, trying to talk Lace into the right path like the rest of us been doing?
Lace’d never forgive me.
But she’d never forgive me if I wait too long too.
I wish this all was as simple as adding fractions. But it ain’t. And I got no idea what to do.
* * *
The answer comes at lunch. What would Smoke do if this was some case? And that makes the answer easy.
Smoke would make sure he knows what’s going on before he does anything. So I gotta know exactly what’s going on.
The lunch room is near the back doors. They’re locked during school hours, even though Smoke says that ain’t legal. There’s windows to the right side, but they’re marked up with soap so no one can see in.
We can’t see much—sunlight or snow or nothing—and the lights overhead are that regular kind not the fluorescents like in the classroom, so it’s pretty dark in here, which is okay with me.
I always sit as far from the windows as I can get. My cousin Keith usually joins me. He’s my age. My younger cousins, Mikie and Noreen, they know better than to even smile at us. We don’t want no little girls anywhere near us, though I always make sure I know exactly where they’re sitting, so I can keep an eye on them.
Keith sits down across from me. He’s smaller than me but not by much. Smoke says I’m coming into my growth. I got taller last year and Keith didn’t. He don’t seem to mind. He thinks I’ll get as big as Smoke, not knowing that we’re not really blood.
He opens the brown sack his lunch comes in and I do the same. None of the kids here have them fancy metal lunch boxes because you can hide a gun in em so the school banned em. We check our sandwiches (both peanut butter), our desserts (he’s got three homemade chocolate chip cookies that I want and I know he won’t trade for my Nilla Wafers), and our extras. I hand him my carrots and he gives me an apple. There ain’t much more to trade, so we settle in.
“Lace dating some older guy?” I ask.
Keith frowns at me. “Lace can’t date.”
“Well, some guy picked her up this morning.” I tell him what I saw. He’s more upset about the cigarettes because he don’t know what I know about the way the world works.
“Can you find out where the guy takes her?” I ask.
“Why’s that so important to you?”
“Because he might hurt her, that’s why.” I don’t want him to ask no more because then I’ll have to just shut up. I can’t explain.
Instead he grins. “You know Lace. Any guy tries to hurt her, she’ll just hurt him right back.”
And he don’t say no more. Me neither, not then. Because Smoke taught me if you want to get something out of somebody the best way is to not push. So I don’t push. I wait.
Just before the bell rings for the next class, Keith crumples up his lunch bag and tosses it into the garbage can across the room. He makes it, and grabs mine to do the same.
But he stops, frowns at me because I don’t complain, and says, “If I find out who Lace’s with, what’re you gonna do?”
I shrug.
He crumples the bag harder. He knows me too well. “You’re going to be Smokey, aren’t you? You’re going after her.”
“This guy’s too old for her,” I say.
“So tell Uncle Bill.”
Uncle Bill is Smokey. That’s what my cousins call him.
“I don’t know what to tell Smoke,” I say. “What if the guy’s just some minister or something and he’s being nice.”
Keith nods real slow. He finally gets it.
“If you cut school, Uncle Bill will kill you.”
“Not if he don’t find out,” I say.
Keith tosses my bag into the garbage and makes that shot too. The bell rings and we stand up.
“If you cut,” he says, “I’m cutting with you.”
“You don’t got to,” I say.
“She’s my sister,” he says. “And she’ll kill me if she sees me going through her stuff.”
“Is that what you’re gonna do?” I ask.
“You think I’m gonna ask her?” He grins at me. “She keeps a diary. In code. And I know how to read it.”
* * *
The next day, after we get inside the school and Lacey runs off to the girls room, Keith takes my arm and steers us toward the lockers.
“He takes her to the Starlight Café for lunch, every day for the last week now.”
The Starlight’s just around the corner. It’s the restaurant part of an old hotel that’s mostly used for drug sales and one-hour rentals. Mostly old people eat in the restaurant, like they probably did when it was a fancy place.
I frown. “That’s all her diary says? Lunch.”
“Says he thinks she’s pretty. Says he’s an agent or something and thinks she can be a model.”
I let out a small breath. I’d heard that before, lots of times. Mom used to yell at girls who cried in her living room, girls who were always saying they thought they were supposed to be modeling.
“What’re you gonna do?” Keith asks.
“I’m gonna tell him the truth. She’s too young to be a model.”
“Okay,” Keith says. “You wanna go to the café and wait?”
I bite my lower lip. I’m not gonna be able to get rid of him. It’s his sister after all. But I don’t really have much of a plan. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on.
“No,” I say. “Let’s see if he comes today first.”
We skip class. We hide out near the janitor’s closet before it’s time for math, and then we go outside. I make sure we stay as far from that arch as we can and still see it. And I tell Keith to just stay quiet.
He thinks it’s all a game, and Keith is really good at games. So he’s so quiet next to me that if I didn’t see the white from his breath, I wouldn’t know he was there.
Sure enough, about the time math starts, Lacey comes outside and stands under the arch. She’s wearing another short top tied so tight around her tummy that I can see the red mark it’s making from where I’m standing. Today she’s wearing a skirt so short that if she bends over, she’s not hiding nothing, and a pair of white go-go boots she had to have borrowed from somebody.
She lights a cigarette and Keith makes a growly sound.
We all wait, and finally the guy in the coat shows up.
I can see him closer than I did yesterday. He’s old, maybe as old as Smoke. His hair’s slicked back and he’s got them weird sideburns that go most of the way to his jaw. He smiles at Lace, but I don’t like it. His eyes aren’t smiling at all.
He puts out his elbow and she takes it. Me and Keith follow.
Smoke taught me how to tail somebody. I don’t think he meant to, but sometimes he gets tails on his cases, and he has me watch for them, and he always tells me if they’re good tails or bad ones. I told Keith how to do this, how once we get to the sidewalk, it’s important to look like we belong and like we ain’t watching nothing, but I’m afraid he’ll screw me up.
That’s why I go first and when I got to the sidewalk, I start walking with attitude, like I’m a Stone. I can hear Keith’s boots crunching on the snowy walk behind me. Ahead, the Starlight Diner looks just as cheesy as I remember, with its dirty windows and the black steam rising out of the grates on the ceiling, turning that side of the eight-story hotel gray.
I don’t see Lace or the guy, but I figure they’re inside. It took me and Keith about ten minutes to get there, which I figure gave Lace and the guy time enough to get settled and not worry about the windows or the door.
Just as I make it to the store next to the Starlight, the door opens, and Lace comes out. She’s smiling. The guy still has her elbow. He’s taking her across the driveway and to the front door of the hotel.
My stomach cramps so hard I think I’m gonna puke. But I swallow it down.
I run forward—I’m gonna stop them—but Keith grabs me and makes me near to falling over.
“What’re you doing?” I whisper.
“You said not to—”
“They’re going to the hotel.”
He looks confused. I shake him off. By the time I get inside the hotel, they’re on the stairs. The place is old and smells of cigars and sweat and beer. The smell makes my eyes water—not because it’s so bad, but because I know that smell. I grew up with it.
I’m shaking real bad. That morning, I thought of taking Smoke’s gun out of the glove box in the car, but he told me if I ever did that, even for a good reason, he’d whup me—and that’s the only time he’s ever threatened to whup me for anything, so I only thought about the gun, I didn’t take it.
All I brought was some tweezers and a pen and a screwdriver, just cause I thought I might have to break into Lace’s locker or something.
Now I understand though why the Stones have those knives, and I wish I had something because that old guy’s a lot bigger than me, and Lace and Keith’re next to worthless.
Keith’s beside me, breathing hard, and looking confused. The desk clerk don’t even look at us. He’s probably used to Stones coming in and out. Nobody else is in the lobby.
I point to the payphone next to the bathrooms. “Call Smoke,” I say, handing Keith all the dimes I got. “If he’s not at home, try Laura’s. Tell her it’s an emergency and who you are and she’ll get him. If you get him, tell him I said Lace is in trouble.”
“Trouble?” Keith repeats and looks at the stairs. “What kind of trouble?”
“You stay here,” I say and run for the stairs. As I fly up those stairs. I can hear Lace asking a question far away, which means she’s not in a room yet, so I go past the first floor, then the second, and by the time I get to the third, I see a door close at the end of the hall.
I figure they’re down there. If I’m wrong, I’m in trouble, but I’ll search this whole place until I find them. I hurry down the hall, and try the door, but it’s locked.
“Go away!” some guy yells from inside. I never heard the old guy talk, so I don’t know if it’s him or not.
I don’t breathe. I want to surprise him, because otherwise he’ll hurt me.
Then I hear Lace say, “I thought there was supposed to be agency people here.”
“There will be,” the guy says. “Take off your clothes and let’s see what you got.”
“No,” Lace says.
I’m not strong enough to kick the door in, but I do know how to get a door open. I learned picking almost before I learned to walk. The easiest is just to take off the knob, and that’s what I decide to do because it looks loose already.
I take out the screwdriver. My hands are shaking so bad I almost drop it. I look down the hall, but no one’s coming, not even Keith, so I figure we’re okay.
“Listen, cunt,” the guy says, “you’ll do what I say.”
“No!” Lace says, and then there’s an awful crash.
My hands stop shaking, but I can’t swallow.
Lace screams and there’s another thud, and a bang, and it’s like I’m back in our apartment in the kitchen where I’m not supposed to leave while Thug is there showing Mom what’s what.
I concentrate and force the screwdriver onto the screw and start turning. I make myself focus on the work instead of the thuds and whimpers inside. I’m trying to pretend it’s Mom and not Lace, who has no idea what’s happening, Lace who I promised Smoke I’d protect, Lace—
The knob falls away and I have to catch it before it hits the floor. I set it down real quiet, keep the screwdriver in my left hand, and pull the door open with my right.
First, Mom would say, you get the money. Then you worry about the guy.
That was when she knew the guy had more money than he was willing to give her, and she wanted it anyway, sometimes for weed, sometimes for rent, sometimes for food.
I ease inside. The place is dark and smells of sweat and Lace’s perfume. She’s on her back on the bed and she’s pushing on the guy who’s on top of her, and she’s kicking her feet, but it’s not doing no good because he’s between her legs with his pants down.
She don’t see me, which is just as good. I keep a grip on that screwdriver, but first, I get behind the guy and slide his wallet out of his pants just like Mom taught me. I put it in my pocket, then I grab the guy by the belt and yank up.
It shouldn’ta worked. It wouldn’ta worked in Memphis. But I’m spitting mad and it makes me strong. I pull him off. Lace lets out an awful scream and starts kicking him and I whale on the back of his head with the screwdriver.
“Jesus,” he says, covering his head with his hands. Lace keeps kicking and I keep hitting and he grabs his pants, pulling them up as he runs out of the room.
I go to the door, but he’s running down the hall, holding his pants up. Blood’s dripping off his greasy head and I think that’s not enough. If I had Smoke’s gun, he wouldn’t be moving at all. If—
“Jim?”
Lace don’t sound like Lace. She sounds like a baby, her voice shaking. The bed’s covered with blood and she’s shoved against the wall, her shirt ripped and her bra busted open and her tits hanging out. Her skirt’s up to her hips.
“We gots to get you outta here.” I take off my coat and wrap it around her.
“No,” she says, but she don’t fight me. I seen this before too.
“Come on.” I help her up. I tug down her skirt as best I can and I pull my jacket tight over her front. She’s got a bruise on the side of her face that’s gonna swell real bad, and her mascara’s run, leaving streaks down the side of her face. One of her eyelashes is falling off, and her hair is coated with some of the guy’s blood—at least, I hope it’s his.
It takes forever for me to get her to the door, and even longer to get her down the hall. She keeps falling off her boots. I’d make her take them off, but we have to go outside.
“Jim?” she says every few feet, like she can’t believe it’s me.
I get her to the stairs, and we go down slow, and then I see Keith, who comes running up.
“What happened? Lacey? Are you okay?” and then he screams at the guy at the desk to call the cops.
“Shut up,” I say as mean as I can. “A place like this, they won’t call the cops.”
“You don’t know that,” Keith says.
“I do,” I say. “Shut up, or they’ll hurt us too.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but I want out of here fast.
“You get ahold of Smoke?”
“He was at home. He’s coming now. I told him here.” Keith’s hands are fluttering near Lace’s face but he don’t touch her like he’s afraid he’ll hurt her. I’m not even sure Lace sees him.
“Help me,” I say, and together we get her the rest of the way downstairs.
We’re almost through the lobby when the door busts open. It’s Smoke. He’s wearing his coat and it flaps around him and his eyes are wild and he’s holding his gun. He musta drove like mad to get here so fast.
He sees us and stares for a minute. Then he sticks his gun in the holster he keeps under his coat and comes toward us.
“Lacey,” he says in a real gentle voice.
“Some guy hurt her, Uncle Bill.” Keith is really mad. He’s talking loud. “We gotta call the cops. We gotta—”
“Not now,” Smoke says. He reaches for Lace, but his eyes meet mine.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I didn’t—”
“Jim saved me, Uncle Bill.” Lace says. It’s like seeing Smoke made her strong. “He beat the guy up and sent him away. Jim saved me.”
Smoke put his arm around her and she leans against him. Her boots aren’t white no more. They’re blackish red with blood.
“Uncle Bill,” Keith says like he’s gonna whine about the police, but Smoke shushes him. Then Smoke lifts Lacey up and carries her out the door, and we follow, like ducklings, all the way to the car.
* * *
It’s not until we’ve been in the hospital awhile and Aunt Althea’s come and our neighbor, Marvella, who does women stuff and knows how to take care of people who been through what Lace’s been through, that Smoke sits down next to me.
“You did great,” he says.
“She still got hurt,” I say. “If I’d been faster, I could’ve stopped him.”
“You might have been killed,” he says. Then he put a hand on my shoulder. “When we’re done, I’m going back to the hotel and see if I can get the clerk to tell me this jerk’s name.”
I reach into the pocket of my pants, and with two fingers, I pull out the wallet. I hand it to Smoke.
He frowns at me for a minute, then he opens it, and lets out a small laugh. “This is the guy?”
I nod.
“You got his wallet?”
I don’t say Mom taught me how to do that. I don’t even say I planned it. I’ll let Smoke think it was an accident.
“Son of a bitch,” Smoke says, and pulls me close. “You’re one incredible kid, you know that?”
I just lean against him. I don’t feel incredible. I didn’t get there fast enough, and now Lace’ll be hurt forever, even though Smoke says she’ll get help from the family and stuff.
At least I got the wallet so Smoke can see who the guy is. Because I know what Keith don’t. No cop’ll arrest a guy like that creep. That guy’s probably paying protection. He was prepping Lace to live like my mom. He’s got connections.
Smoke don’t care about connections. Smoke’ll shut him down. Smoke’s done it before.
And even though I wasn’t able to stop that guy from hurting Lace, at least she won’t grow up to be like my mom. If we wasn’t here, Lace would’ve disappeared into that hotel and no one would’ve known what happened.
But I didn’t save her. Not really. I wish I’d gotten that guy before he hurt Lace.
I ain’t Smoke.
At least, not yet.
Guarding Lacey
Copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Chicago Blues,
edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann, Bleak House Books, 2007.
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2012 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © 2012 by Andy2000soft/Dreamstime
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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