Deadly Games - Cate Noble [5]
Cheap hollow-core doors were designed for privacy , not security. And most of the women who would stay at the New Beginnings II shelter—once it finally opened, that is—had firsthand experience with doors like this one being kicked down. Locks only enraged an attacker.
“Don’t ever lock me out of our bedroom, you worthless slut!”
Furious that her selective memory had once again served up a nasty remnant from her past, Gena yanked the door open.
“Lupe!” Gena took a reflexive step back, not expecting to see someone there.
Lupe Del Fuego, the young woman who’d been helping paint walls and trim in the evenings, stood in the doorway, her hand poised to knock. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to, what is the word? Make you jumpy-scared.”
“Startle. And it wasn’t your fault. I didn’t hear you come up.”
“I am done with the paint.”
“And I am done with these doors.”
Lupe nodded at the door. “Looks like brand new.”
It was brand new. Gena had arrived that morning only to find the vacant shelter had been vandalized during the night. That was twice this week. So much for the promised increase in police patrols.
“Evidence of GMW activity in the area,” the responding officer had noted in his report. GMW was local cop talk for Gang Member Wannabe. Juveniles. Which meant the complaint was viewed as more nuisance than criminal.
Gena was grateful the damage hadn’t been worse.
The red spray paint graffiti had been confined to the downstairs family room and had been less costly to fix since that was the one room that hadn’t been painted, thanks to drywall repairs from the GMWs’ prior visit. It had taken two coats of white primer to cover the red, but at least now it was ready for a final coat of sage-colored paint.
The upstairs damage had been more costly and time-consuming to repair. Four of the six bedroom doors the vandals had kicked in were beyond repair. And since the shelter’s construction budget couldn’t take another hit, Gena had paid for the new doors with personal funds. Call it obsessive, but it was vital to Gena that everything be perfect for tomorrow.
And what about the day after tomorrow? Once the shelter was complete, she was out of a job, which shouldn’t bother her since she’d never intended to stay in Texas this long to begin with.
“Now we pass inspection, si?” Lupe’s anxiety furrowed her brow.
“Si.” The doors wouldn’t have been critical enough for the county inspector to hold up their certificate of occupancy any longer, but at this point Gena wasn’t taking chances.
After weeks of setbacks ranging from screwups by a lowlife electrician to theft of construction supplies— including the kitchen appliances—it finally appeared the tides had indeed turned.
The first inkling of change had coincided with a visit by delegates of the Sugar Springs Garden Club, who had wanted to take on the shelter’s landscaping as a group project. When the club’s committee learned of the shelter’s other problems, they’d donated funds to have the structure properly rewired. Then they went a step further and convinced a local business to donate replacement appliances.
The shelter residents, currently living in a ramshackle building on Eleventh Street, had prepared a thank-you luncheon, which in turn created a bond between the two organizations.
Helen Newton, the shelter’s founder and longtime director, had high hopes for an increased sense of tolerance within the community at large—especially since the Garden Club’s president was married to one of the county politicians who viewed the battered women’s shelter as a necessary evil, something to be hidden in the worst part of town and forgotten.
To Gena it was a familiar sentiment. A fourth-generation Texan, she’d grown up in the lush Rio Grande valley and knew all about the love/hate relationship between the haves and have-nots. For decades the area’s citrus and agriculture barons, including Gena’s late father, relied on the largely Hispanic