Excerpt: Secrets Like Acid

Secrets Like Acid

Chapter 1

Randi Ashman turned the ignition again and her 1998 Honda Civic whined and complained, before sputtering out altogether.

“Must’ve been born under the wrong sign.” She squared her spare frame with the steering wheel and looked around. The windows were sheets of water. The windshield wipers swooshed furiously, but the sheet remained.

The Cabrillo Highway this far north of San Francisco in this downpour was desolate. But she couldn’t very well stay in the car all night. Could she? No, of course not. She pulled out her umbrella and just as she opened it, the wind bent the frames leaving her drenched. Randi saw a twinkling light in the distance. Whatever it was, her course was set.

She walked two miles in the ran to find an underpass to cross to the oceanside, then Randi sloshed herself back the same two miles. Her mom would have wondered what deed brought on this bad karma. Randi wondered that herself. She wasn’t the one who had cheated on her girlfriend, after all. Paula would be laughing her ass off right now, if she knew about her predicament.

Randi curled her arms against her and leaned into the slanted rain. Her twinkling light seemed to laugh at her, too.

Just as she found the porch light that mocked her, it stopped raining. She glared up angrily at the thinning clouds. “Fuck you, too.”

She cautiously peered around the house. It didn’t appear to hide any thugs, dealers, pimps or other walking neon signs for trouble. Randi hadn’t been safe on the streets for the last four years for nothing.

A door mat with yellow flowers and a scrolling “welcome” and a eucalyptus wreath with tiny red birds seemed innocent enough. She pried one hand away from her shivering body and knocked. Randi hoped and prayed it wasn’t some polygamist, paranoid schizophrenic or other backwoods nut holing up from the law. Domestic terrorists do not have welcome mats.

The water that dripped from her nose tickled and she brushed at it, continuously. The house remained asleep so she shattered the calm with louder bangs. She swayed to peak into a window. Darkness. This time she punished the damn door. “Shit!” she howled after long minutes of thick silence. “Of course! Yes. Thank you, thank you very much.” Randi scowled at the sky. “I find the only house without anyone home. Double shit.”

She turned a three-sixty and contemplated her next move. This house sat so far back from the road, it was like it was quarantined. Randi stepped off the porch toward the beach, turning back. From what little she could make out, the cute, little bungalow was embraced by weeds. Tall buggers. Maybe it was abandoned. Who on earth could possibly leave this sad, lonely house? “An idiot, that’s who.”

She caught a thunderclap in the distance. “No more rain,” she snarled.

No lights or buildings in either direction. “No breaks for me,” she muttered miserably. Then Randi sneezed three times. “Nope. None at all.” She braced herself against the biting wind.

Randi started back toward the road when she heard a light tinkle. “Oh, no.” The tinkles turned into thuds. She was pelted with water drops until she returned to the small porch. She looked up at the blackness and the rain that fell out of nowhere. Randi held herself tighter. She would give her best power tool for a blanket. It didn’t have to be clean or smell fresh. It just had to be dry.

She inhaled sadly and kicked the welcome mat. “Well, thank you. Don’t mind if I do.” Randi curled up on top of it and leaned against the front door.

It wasn’t the chirping birds or the screaming light that rousted Randi. It was two small hands that helped her walk through a door. Randi elbowed the hands and thrashed around, disoriented.

“It’s okay,” a smooth, feminine voice said. “I’m trying to help you.”

She wanted to find the body belonging to that hot voice. Randi’s eyelids were heavy, as she stumbled again. Her legs felt like straws and she felt arms supporting her. “You’re burning up,” the voice whispered, impossibly sexy.

Randi laughed at herself. Feverish but on the prowl. Elite lesbian. That’s what she was. And proud. She thought she said that, but she wasn’t sure. She was glad her bad luck finally broke. A woman, even a straight one, would be preferable to a bearded man with stockpiles of guns. And wives. Pregnant. With babies, too. Maybe the Universe didn’t suck after all.

She inhaled gardenia and felt warm, soft linens cover her shivering body. Randi slipped into a deep sleep.

~ ~ ~ ~

Elise Barrows rubbed her eyes. She swore the type size shrunk every year on these financial reports. And she hated her bifocal glasses, even the cute, purple ones her secretary brought. Elise glanced at the stack of papers she still had to get through. Her monthly trips to Tokyo were becoming bi-weekly trips and that meant more reports to read. It meant fatigue. It meant fewer dates. She shook her head and pushed herself up. Who was she kidding? The last date she had was in 2007.

Elise poured herself another cup of coffee and hummed her pleasure at its taste. It was spring 2007.

“I’m so pathetic.”

Elise had taken what’s-her-name to a theater performance in San Francisco, where they spent two glorious nights fucking their brains out.

“What was her name?”

Well, whatever. Then there was Mona the year before that. Elise moaned when she remembered the things that woman could do in bed. She bit her lip.

“It’s been way too long.”

Mona was gorgeous, connected and an expert in female anatomy. But she wanted more than Elise was willing to give her. They were not unreasonable requests for this part of the country. Dinners in town. Rendezvous with friends. The same address. Matching rings and a trip east to meet the folks. Elise’s closet suited her just fine, thank you.

The pile of financial reports screamed at her. Elise hadn’t planned on finding a teenager sleeping on her doorstep when she arrived this morning from the airport.

By the looks of her, Elise pegged her as a dyke. She wasn’t sure if it was the crew cut or the “Licky Leclitty” T-shirt that tipped her off. Whoever or whatever she was, she was most certainly a glitch in Elise’s hectic schedule. She didn’t get to be Senior Vice President of Investments by sleeping her way to the top. They’d have to give her the entire goddamn company for that. No, this ailing young woman was merely a wrinkle that she could easily iron out.

Elise hit a button and pulled the cordless to her ear, while she fiddled with the earring of the other ear. She had just hung up when the bedroom door creaked open.

~ ~ ~ ~