Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [125]
She needed to be there, too.
Pulling back her sleeve with a gloved hand, Pescoli checked her watch. Seven a.m. Maybe she could get a couple of hours in before anyone stirred at home. She planned to work as long as she could, then head home and check on things. It galled her that Michelle had been the one to finally make her force the issue with Bianca. And this after Bianca came back in clothes too raunchy for even a streetwalker—in Pescoli’s unbiased opinion—clothes Michelle had helped her pick out during their trip to the mall. Good. God.
And then Jeremy, with his video-game playing and no plan to do anything else ...
She stepped out into unrelenting snow. Huge flakes were falling steadily, and she bent her head as she headed up the steps to the station. Her jaw was tight, her thoughts on her son. What the hell did he think he was doing? She wasn’t going to just have him home doing nothing. Even Lucky wouldn’t be up for that. And if Jeremy didn’t get his butt off the couch and do something soon, Pescoli was going to go postal. The video games that were his lifeblood were this close to being given to charity. She was pretty sure there was some deserving kid out there who would be thrilled with Kill ’Em Dead or Annihilation or The End of the World, or whatever the hell they were called. Something like that. The perfect Christmas stocking stuffers.
Thinking of Jeremy reminded her of Heidi Brewster, which in turn reminded her of the undersheriff and the fact that she’d drawn Cort Brewster’s name for a Secret Santa gift.
Stomping snow from her boots, she headed down the still half-darkened hallway toward her desk. She stopped short upon seeing Alvarez already at her workstation, her dark, smoothed hair pulled back tight as she hunched over an area lit by a desk lamp, a small oasis of illumination in an otherwise dimly lit room.
Pescoli flipped the switch by the door and flooded the place with fluorescent lighting, which buzzed and shook and generally made everything look harsh and unappealing.
Alvarez glanced up. “You’re in a mood.”
“How can you tell?”
She gave Pescoli a look that made her realize she was standing with her feet apart, arms crossed, glaring aggressively into the room.
“How’s Bianca?” Alvarez asked.
“Asleep. Hopefully alone, although Chris won’t stay away now that he thinks he’s appointed himself her angel of mercy.”
“Her boyfriend?”
Pescoli made a rude sound, then brought her partner up to speed on Bianca’s boyfriend’s new desire to be at the Pescoli home 24-7. “Like all of a sudden he’s the concerned parent, and none of the rules apply anymore. And then Jeremy . . . if he isn’t spending time playing some video game where he has to annihilate legions of futuristic zombie robots, he’s sexting Heidi Brewster. I got a real surprise the last time Jeremy left his cell phone just lying around for anyone to pick up. Photos. Of Heidi. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, these are like a whole new vocabulary. Some of Heidi’s are . . . Actually, I don’t even have the words.”
Alvarez’s dark eyes were wide and staring straight at Pescoli, telegraphing messages.
“Brewster?” Pescoli said aloud, figuring he must be standing right behind her.
“You don’t have the words,” he said tautly.
Pescoli slowly turned on her heel and eyed the undersheriff uneasily. Some of her anger dissipated as she gazed at his stony face. He might not look like it, but she knew he was just barely holding it together, too. “She’s fully clothed,” Pescoli told him, holding up her hands.
“So, what then?” he challenged.
“Just a major lip-lock between her and my son,” Pescoli said. “My son, who I’m about to give a boot to the backside. And that’s all I’m saying about that.”
He opened and shut his mouth several times like a gasping fish, then showed enormous restraint by merely slapping a hand in the air at her and turning away.
As his footsteps stomped off, Alvarez said, “You didn’t have the words, because Jeremy and Bianca were in a lip-lock?”
“There was one of her bent forward in one of