Love, Marriage And Family 101. Anne Peters

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      Hally used her own free arm and hand to help him clear a path. “They’re herding her into that police van over there!” she yelled, needlessly, since Mike could certainly see what was happening, too.

      “Officer.” They had reached the armored human wall around the kids. “Please,” Mike implored the nearest policeman. “I’ve got to get through. That’s my daughter over there. She’s only fourteen, an innocent bystander. I know she didn’t do anything.”

       Except steal from me.

      “Move along, sir,” the beleaguered lawman said curtly.

      “But she didn’t do anything!” Mike repeated with angry exasperation. “If you’ll just let me go and get her…”

      “I’m telling you only once more,” the officer bellowed. “Move along. They’re all innocent to hear them tell it.”

      The officer glared at Mike, brandishing his nightstick. “Move now. Get”

      “Come on, Mike.” Hally tugged on Mike’s arm to end the glaring contest she knew Mike had no chance of winning. The policeman held all the cards.

      “Where are they taking the kids?” she asked the patrolman.

      “Downtown.”

      “Come on.” Hally pulled the fuming and reluctant-tocapitulate Mike forcibly away.

      “There’s nothing you can accomplish here,” she told him across her shoulder. “But at least you can be at the other end to bail her out. Where’s your car?”

      “Don’t have it,” Mike said grimly.

      Hally frowned at him. “Then how…”

      “Got a ride from a neighbor.” Mike clenched his teeth, rage consuming him. Damn that stiff-necked policeman. And damn Pam Swigert for getting Corinne into this mess in the first place. He didn’t care that it wasn’t entirely fair to blame the woman, any more than he cared to admit that this stranger his daughter had become would have found a way to get here, no matter what. He needed to blame someone—anyone.

      And for the moment he was too overwrought to concede that the only one he should be blaming was himself.

      “Where is he?” Hally asked, meaning the neighbor.

      “She,” Mike absently corrected, frowning as he looked around. He had only just become aware that Pam had become separated from him somewhere along the line. “I don’t know. She’s a redhead…”

      He scanned the crowd, concerned now for his neighbor’s well-being in spite of his anger. What if Pamela had fallen and been trampled, like Halloran McKenzie had nearly been? This was no place for anyone alone, least of all a woman.

      “Is that her?” Hally pointed, already moving that way.

      Mike followed. “Yes.” Alarm slammed into him. Pam was surrounded by several other women. She was crying. Black rivulets ran down her cheeks. Her always perfectly coiffed hair looked like a swarm of birds had gotten tangled up in it. She was obviously in great distress. “Pamela!”

      He surged toward her, Hally in tow. “For God’s sake, what happened?” He let go of Hally to take hold of and support his distraught neighbor instead.

      “Some kids beat on her pretty good,” one of the other women said when Pam just wailed and buried her face against Mike’s chest.

      “Take me home,” she cried, blindly reaching out with one hand. To Mike’s shock and surprise, Latisha was there to take it. Corinne’s socalled friend.

      Rage overcame him once more. “Why aren’t you with Cory?” he shouted at the hapless girl who, he only then noticed, was sobbing and as disheveled as her mother.

      “W-we g-got se-separated and…and….”

      “Never mind,” Mike said tiredly, his anger gone as abruptly as it had been aroused. It was all such a mess, such total madness. And there was nothing to be gained by yelling and carrying on.

      “Halloran…” Guiding Pamela and her daughter out of the melee, he turned to Hally. “Look, I’ve got to drive them home. Could you…I mean, I know it’s an imposition, but could…”

      “I go to the police station and find Corinne?” Hally finished for him when he hesitated. And as everything inside her yelled, No, no, no, she heard herself say, “Sure. Though you realize I won’t be able to spring her.”

      “I know. I’ll get there myself just as quickly as I can. And, Halloran—” He gripped Hally’s shoulder and stopped her as, with a quick nod, she started to move away to go to her car. “Thanks.”

      “Sure,” Hally said, averting her eyes because the weary gratitude in his was making her feel like a phony. The last thing she wanted to do was to go to that police station. She moved away from Mike’s touch, thinking, How do I get myself into these things?

      

      It smelled of dust, sweat and unwashed humanity. People were everywhere. Some clean, some not so. Some drunk. All of them unhappy to be there, even the police officers on duty, it seemed to Mike. Certainly they had long since given up on cordiality or even professional courtesy.

      Tempers were short on both sides of the counter.

      As promised, Hally was there, waiting for him. She had ascertained that the van carrying the adolescent miscreants had arrived and that the kids were being held in one large cell at the back of the building.

      Irate parents were demanding the release of their offspring, Mike included. Harried officers were wrestling with the paperwork that would allow them to let go of their unwanted guests in the back, and thus clear the station of the throng of outraged citizens in the front.

      Conversation between Mike and Hally was sparse as they waited for Corinne to be escorted out. At odd moments throughout the drive home with Pam, on the subsequent drive in his own car over to the station, and even during his dealings with the law, Mike would recall that he wasn’t alone in this fight for and with his daughter, and he’d experience a sense of wonder that left him puzzled and discomfited. And not a little scared.

      Scared because Halloran McKenzie was the first woman since Becky who’d stirred in him a desire to know her better. A whole lot better.

      Which, of course, simply could not be. He had enough on his plate without adding the complications of a romantic fling. If he knew what was good for him, he’d best get things back on a strictly professional footing right away.

      “Ms. McKenzie.” Taking a deep breath, he slanted her a strained smile. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

      “Then don’t,” Hally said. She was tired and also a bit put off by the waves of reserve now emanating from this brooding man like chilled air from an open refrigerator. She spoke curtly. “I’m heading home, but I expect to see Corinne in my office a half hour before class tomorrow morning.”

      “I’ll see to it,” Mike promised, uncomfortably aware that he had affronted her, СКАЧАТЬ