Trusting Ryan. Tara Quinn Taylor

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      CHAPTER FIVE

      RYAN GOT UP in time to make it to the meeting with Scott Markovich. The kid, fearing that his stepfather would hurt his mother if he was in detention and not there to protect her, admitted that the woman had been home the afternoon the bastard had come after Scott in a way a man should never come at a boy.

      She’d been drinking since early morning and had been plastered enough that her husband thought he could get away with a little on the side with her son.

      He’d miscalculated Scott’s determination never to be touched that way again.

      He’d also overestimated his wife’s stupor. She’d come into the room soon enough to keep Scott from killing the son of a bitch.

      And she’d promised him that from that moment forward she would never, ever let another drop of alcohol pass her lips.

      Scott believed her.

      Ryan didn’t. As much as Scott wasn’t going to like it at first, being separated from his mother was the best thing that could happen to the boy. There was a relative, an aunt on his father’s side, who desperately wanted him.

      None of that was Ryan’s business, however. His business here was almost done. A report to the prosecutor and he was out.

      Another job done. A successful outcome this time.

      Not something he ever took for granted.

      Just as he didn’t take for granted the woman who, on Saturday night, he was once again holding in his arms.

      Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. His sudden need for Audrey was not something he was comfortable with. It didn’t fit at all with his life plan. With his self-concept.

      But one thing he’d learned in life—sometimes the things least understood were the most important.

      “Thank you,” she said now, her voice sleepy.

      “For what?” They’d been talking for more than an hour, lying there naked in his bed, the covers up around their waists.

      They’d been in bed almost three hours.

      “For Scott.”

      He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

      “Maybe.”

      There was no maybe about it.

      “But there’s something different about you. Something that makes you, I don’t know, more accessible. I don’t think Scott would have talked to anyone else. He’s not very trusting of cops. As a rule, every time they’ve come around, his life has been painfully disrupted.”

      Because of his mother’s drinking. And because when he’d reported his stepfather’s earlier abuse, there hadn’t been enough solid evidence to charge the man with anything. And now, when Scott had been defending himself from a horror that must have seemed worse than death to him, he’d been arrested and detained on charges of manslaughter.

      They were all doing their jobs. Enforcing laws that were in place to protect society, the people. So why was it so often that the victims were the ones who had the fewest rights?

      With a brief flash of his birth mother, and a briefer one of his birth father—a man Ryan still struggled to accept for so many reasons on so many levels—Ryan said, “I think maybe my age helped us out this time. Most times it’s the other way around.”

      He could say this here, to her. She’d understand. Audrey must have to fight many of the same battles he did, having so much responsibility, being capable of a maturity that was uncommon at such a young age.

      Being forced into it by life’s lessons.

      Maybe someday, he’d even be able to tell her about the circumstances surrounding his conception.

      Maybe someday. Not today. Other than a few brief conversations with the parents who’d raised him, Ryan hadn’t talked about that particular case since they’d solved it the year before. Not even to the biological grandfather who was a law-enforcement icon in this state.

      “How would your age have had anything to do with Scott’s ability to trust you?” She turned onto her back, her head in the crook of his shoulder, pulling his hands around her to rest across the flatness of her belly.

      “Maybe СКАЧАТЬ