The Runaway Daughter. Anna DeStefano
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half-truths kids clung to rather than facing the music for what they’d done.
“Then I suppose you were only helping Angie fish something out of her eye last night at the Eight Ball.”
Hearing the latest rumors, Eric had been hunting for his brother after shift change.
Tony’s duffel hit the ground. He propped his fists on his hips, where his cutoff T-shirt didn’t quite meet his raggedy gym shorts.
“Nothing happened last night,” he said evenly.
“That’s not what I heard.”
“From who?”
“Now why do you think that would matter?” Eric scratched the back of his neck and did his best imitation of their old man. “I don’t care where the story started, and even less whether it’s true or not.”
“Then what the hell do you want from me?”
“How anyone could have gotten the crazy notion that you and my chief deputy have been going out for weeks, that’s what I’m more concerned about.”
Tony’s gaze dropped to the floor.
“Damn.” Eric hissed in a breath. “I never figured either of you for being stupid.”
Tony looked him square in the eye then, man-to-man.
On the force, he had grown into the responsibility Eric knew he was capable of. No father could be prouder. But the kid still hadn’t shaken off the past. His antics away from the department made him the star of every party, but the good times never seemed to follow him home. And his behavior spoke more of running these days, than of having fun.
Then he and Angie had started hanging out at the youth center, spending more and more time together off the job. Which should have been a good thing. If the kid was getting serious with anyone but their chief deputy, Eric would be all for it. But why Angie?
“We’ve been going out for a few beers after work the last couple of weeks.” Tony winced. “Shooting some pool. Talking. Last night…just happened, okay. I don’t know… One minute we were blowing off steam, same as usual. She’d scratched breaking a new rack of balls, and I was giving her a hard time about it. The next thing I knew…we were in the booth, and she was smiling up at me and…” He shrugged again. “The place was empty. There was no one there to see.”
“Nowhere in this town is empty enough to keep something like you and Angie going after each other under wraps.”
“We weren’t going after anything. It was a kiss, and it wasn’t her idea. I initiated it, and she ended it. We both know we’re better off just friends. It was a mistake….” Tony’s face flushed with anger. “And anyone who says any different needs to keep his mouth shut, or I’ll shut it for him.”
Holy hell.
Eric buried his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. Tony might have convinced himself that he and Angie were all about nothing, but Eric wasn’t buying it. His baby brother was falling for about the only woman in town the kid couldn’t have. A woman who, incidentally, could use a good time or two.
“You’re tangling with a line you can’t cross, son.” Eric gifted his brother with the same look he’d once used to explain the birds and the bees. “Angie’s a superior officer. If you don’t care what something like this would do to your career, think about hers. She’s up for sheriff, with Mayor Henderson and half the town breathing down her neck every waking hour. She’s fought for this chance for years.”
“I know that, but—”
“And even if she wasn’t my chief, she’s not like the other women you date, who like things as fast and loose as you do. After the way Freddie Peters messed Angie up, you can’t play her, then move on to someone else. I’m not even sure she’s dated since the man broke off their engagement. That was three years ago.”
“I know all about Freddie Peters. Angie told me the whole story. Give me some credit. I wouldn’t hurt her like that bastard did. Not for the world!”
They’d had a heart-to-heart about her ex-fiancé?
Just friends my ass.
“End this before it gets serious,” Eric warned, wondering if he wasn’t already too late.
“There’s nothing to end.” His brother’s chin lifted.
“Bull.”
“There’s nothing going—”
“I don’t want to hear any more.” He wished he had the time, but today he was fresh out. “I’m getting on a plane with Carrinne in the morning, and there’s enough to worry about around here without your libido stirring up trouble in my department. Another kid OD’d early this morning. Travis Reynolds—Dawson and Lettie’s oldest. They found him at home. Drove him to the hospital. No one called the department until the E.R. doc coded him DOA.”
“Damn.” Tony’s expression hardened. “Was it—”
“Meth,” Eric confirmed, raging inside at the toll drugs were taking on their town.
Methamphetamine was a designer drug, its trade ideally built to lure in teen dealer-wannabes. Local kids with their own cars, too little money and too much time on their hands. It was easy to manufacture, easy to score and hugely profitable to anyone who needed fast cash. Nothing the department had tried had made a dent in Oakwood’s growing drug culture. And no one spent more time with the kids who were most at risk than Tony. The teens who wandered in and out of the Oakwood Youth Center were his pet project.
“The ME confirmed it was the same grade of stuff as last Christmas,” Eric added. A kid the next county over had celebrated New Year’s early with a buddy who’d talked him into trying meth. The fifteen-year-old hadn’t lived to see January. “More than likely, from the same supplier.”
“I saw Travis at the center the other day,” Tony said, the fury in his eyes tinged with loss. “He and some of the other boys kicked my ass at pool.”
Travis Reynolds had been a cocky kid who’d taken pride in his no-good rep: skipping school, getting booted off the football team for bad grades. He’d even been arrested last month for DUI, by Tony of all people, and his license had been pulled. But he’d been joyriding with Garret Henderson that night, the mayor’s kid. A little mayorly finagling and pressure from the city council had kept the boys out of jail.
Travis had been back on the streets in less than forty-eight hours. Eric wasn’t the only one who’d figured it was just a matter of time before the teen self-destructed again. But no one had expected it would end this way. Least of all the shocked and grieving parents Eric had left at the hospital.
“What a waste.” He rubbed a hand across his face and refocused on his brother’s own foray into recklessness. “And Angie’s going to have her hands full dealing with the fallout while I’m gone. So do her and yourself a favor. Steer clear of the woman outside of the job.”
“Eric, it’s not what you think—”
“Angie deserves better than one of your twenty-four-hour specials.”
“I know that.”
“Then keep your hands off!”
Eric headed for his office and the mound of paperwork he had to finish before leaving to scout out the future he, his wife and their daughter had been waiting a lifetime to start. He hated the idea of leaving Oakwood now, even for a few weeks. The timing sucked. But he trusted his people to watch over the town. His deputies knew how to do their jobs. They were professionals.
Most of the time, anyway.
Had his brother and his chief deputy lost their minds?
“DRUGS?” MAGGIE RIVERS asked Claire Morton.
They’d moved their whispered conversation into the girls’