The Secret Sister by M. DeLuca (leveled readers txt) 📗

binge for suits, little black dresses and a rainbow of fitted silk shirts and shells, I flopped down at a coffee shop table to sort through my stash. Carla’s lingerie store was directly opposite but she wasn’t there anymore. She was working for Earl Rafferty now. He’d lured her away from her one chance to make a decent life for herself. Promised her manicures, pedicures, beauty treatments and probably clothes. I imagined he’d come across as sweet and generous at first, easing her into trusting him. Only later when he had her under his thumb would he spring the real jobs on her. Maybe easy ones at first, then the unmentionable ones later. It was standard practice for jerks like him.

I was about to sip my hazelnut latte when I spotted a heavy-set, broad-shouldered guy standing outside the lingerie store. His white T-shirt stretched across his muscular chest, the short sleeves revealing a bold zigzag tattoo down both arms. But it was his face that made my hand shake so hard, I spilled the hot coffee down my wrist. I’d seen that face before. The broad, flat nose, reddish cheeks and narrow slits of eyes. A black baseball cap covered graying straggly hair. A phone rang and he lifted it to his ear with a hand as big as an oar.

I knew him. Jimmy “Mack” Durban, one of Earl Rafferty’s henchmen and chief “talent” spotter.

How did I know that? He’d recruited Birdie and Loni when they were hanging out in the mall. And he was there that night Birdie got her revenge. For that she owed him and Earl Rafferty big time.

Lester twitched his scrawny hips and tried to drag Patti off the couch to dance to their rubbish music. Her face glowed crimson from giggling when she gave one, huge tug and pulled him on top of her. He struggled for a moment like a fat turtle, then said, To hell with it, and started necking furiously with her. Tray and Anita just sat smoking as if that pipe was the only real thing that existed in the world. They were old hands so it probably took a whole lot more hits to get them high. Birdie’s eyes glanced over at the clock with the knife and fork hands. The look on her face was so cold and cruel I couldn’t think of what to say.

“I’m coming too,” I mumbled.

She shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“If Loni lets you.”

“You can’t leave me here on my own.”

“You left me here for weeks while they stuffed me full of drugs. What’s the difference?”

I leaned forward and grasped her wrist. “I helped you. Gave you food and water. Looked after you.”

“You went off to school so you could make out with that nerdy guy.”

“How do you know Colby?”

“That his name? Figures.”

“You’ve never met him.”

“I have so. He’s a lousy lay. Saw him at the mall. He was so easy. A genuine man-whore.”

I heard a loud buzzing in my ears. “Where? When?”

“Under the Stone Arch Bridge. It was freezing out – a crazy wind chill. He came so quick I barely got started.”

“You’re a liar,” I said, loud enough that Lester’s head swiveled like a chicken’s.

He creaked to his feet and lunged towards me, probably to give me supreme shit, but a loud banging started up at the front door.

“What the hell…?” he gasped, bashing his knee on the coffee table.

Patti and the two others stopped their babbling to gaze around in a shell-shocked stupor.

“Did someone call the freakin’ cops or something?” said Tray, stuffing the meth paraphernalia into the bag and tearing it in the process, while his wife licked her finger and gathered the stray dust, not missing a grain.

Patti’s bloodshot eyes finally came to rest on me. “Lying sack of shit,” she hissed. “Creeping around here like a freakin’ owl and watching everything. Lester,” she squealed. “It’s her. She’s sold us out. I told you she was trouble. Both of them ain’t worth shit.”

I shook my head and looked down at Birdie whose eyes were fixed on the locked door.

The banging escalated to such a point that the neighbors would soon start to complain. A call to the cops might follow and neither Lester nor Patti wanted to risk that happening. Panicked looks flew between them.

“Ungrateful bitches, the pair of you. Sit tight and open your books. Patti, answer the door,” said Lester. “Tray and Anita are gonna leave out back.”

The two ghouls vanished like a puff of noxious smoke and Patti, launched from her meth fog into a grim reality, shuffled to the door and grasped the handle just as it burst open, knocking her flat against the wall. Loni swept in, her spiky hair standing up as if her entire body was plugged into an electric socket. She spotted Birdie and flounced over to her, ignoring Lester’s sweaty red face.

“Who the hell are you?” he bellowed. “Get out of my…”

Loni was taller than Lester by almost a head. She towered over him, her eyes burning into the top of his freckled head. “Or what, you pervert piece of junkie dirt?”

“Or I’ll…”

“You’ll call the cops. I doubt it. You been hot-icing it in here and you call yourself a foster parent.”

“Better than a crazy punk dyke.”

I crept behind the table as the door swung open to reveal Earl Rafferty and a square-shouldered man with a shaved head and flattened nose.

Patti and Lester retreated to the couch while Loni gathered Birdie into a bear hug. Birdie was sobbing, her whole body heaving while Loni whispered into her ear. “I’m gonna get you out of here, baby. Get you healthy again. No more Lester the sick pervert. You’ll see, baby. Earl’s gonna take care of him.”

Earl and Jimmy hovered over Lester who’d shrunk into a shivering, quaking mess. Earl cracked his knuckles, dragged Lester up onto his feet and snapped a sharp right hook into his face, demolishing his nose and sending a spray of blood across Patti’s face. She yelped like a