Free Bending the Rules by Susan Andersen Page A

will refer to me as Ms. Calloway. This is Detective de Sanges.” She looked at the lone girl in the group. “Are you Danny or Cory?”
    “Cory.” The red lipstick, the heavily mascaraed blue eyes beneath the long, black bangs of an otherwise short, spiky hairdo gave her attitude. But a wash of color upon her fair, fair skin hinted at nerves.
    “You’re a surprise.” There was an understatement, but she buried her astonishment in a calm tone. “Lot of people thought you were a boy.”
    “No shit,” the scrawnier of the two boys muttered.
    Poppy turned to him. “And you are?”
    A who-wants-to-know expression was her only answer for a long moment. But when Poppy merely looked at him and de Sanges shifted impatiently at her back, he muttered, “Henry.”
    She glanced at her notes, then back up to meet his gaze with a level, carefully nonconfrontational one of her own. “Well, Mr. Close,” she said pleasantly, “as long as you’re a part of this group, you will check your language at the door.”
    “Right. That’s fuckin’ gonna happen.”
    She put a hand on de Sanges’s arm as he took a giant step to brush past her, aware, even through two layers of clothing, of the strength and heat beneath her fingers. He was closer to them than the fifteen feet she’d insisted upon during their last conversation. She was willing to let it go, however, as long as he let her handle matters without his less-than-sympathetic interference.
    The instant he subsided, she released her grip, then moved within a foot of Henry Close herself. He was undersize even for a thirteen-year-old, but he had old eyes and she recognized a hard life when she saw one written on a child’s face.
    “Oh, it will happen, Mr. Close,” she said amiably.
    “M’name’s Henry.”
    “If you learn nothing else while you’re under my supervision,” she said as if he hadn’t interrupted, “you will learn this—we show each other respect. That’s my number-one rule. And a large part of that is avoiding the use of inflammatory language. Another part is to address each other with courtesy. So as long as you are in my program, you are Mr. Close, who is just as valuable a member of Seattle society as Bill Gates.”
    “Who, technically,” the third kid said, “is a member of Medina society—not Seattle’s.”
    “Yes, who is technically a member of the snooty eastside,” Poppy agreed with an easy grin, turning to the last of her trio, a tall boy with subtly expensive clothing and razor-cut brown hair. “But we like to claim him as our own when it suits our purposes to do so. And you, by process of elimination, must be Mr. Gardo.”
    “Most people call me Danny G.”
    “As I explained to Mr. Close, we’re a little more formal than most people.”
    “What program?” Henry demanded.
    Poppy raised her eyebrows at him in inquiry.
    “You said as long as we’re in your program. I thought this painting over the tagging gig was just for today.”
    “Then you weren’t paying attention when I called to let you know that while you will not be going to jail for defacing the shopping district, you are mine after school and on weekends until I say otherwise.”
    “That sucks!”
    “Funny, that’s pretty much what the merchants said when they saw what the three of you had done to their buildings.”
    “Three of us, my booty,” Cory muttered.
    Poppy looked at the young girl, only to find her exchanging some heavy eye contact with Henry. “Do you have something you’d like to contribute to the conversation, Ms. Capelli?”
    The girl hesitated a moment, then tore her gaze away from Henry’s, glanced at Danny and shrugged shoulders burdened with a beat-up, much-too-large leather jacket worn over a black hoodie. “No, ma’am.”
    “Then let’s discuss you for a minute.”
    The teen started. “Nuthin’to discuss,” she mumbled.
    “Now, there we’ll have to disagree.” Poppy smiled at Cory’s unique attire. She wore a flowery black-andtan