The Babysitter. Nancy Bush

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      Chapter Eight

      Cooper stood just outside the doors to the media room, recognizing most of the songs on the DJ’s playlist, and for that he had Marissa to thank. He didn’t feel old, but he was cruising toward forty, only a few years left. His stepdaughter was keeping him teen relevant.

      The administrators at the school and the volunteers, mostly women, had taken him up on his offer to help chaperone, as if he were sent from heaven. They posted him outside the main door, while others kept vigil on the other exits, just in case some enterprising teen decided to escape. Kids were clustered in groups all over the main floor and on the stage above. Two of the volunteers were on the stage as well, a man and a woman, though they seemed more interested in talking to each other than watching their charges.

      He looked down the empty hallway that led to the main doors of the school, the length of a basketball court away. There was another chaperone outside the media room’s second door to the hallway, which also was the nearest exit to the bathrooms. A couple of kids had told him they wanted to use the facilities and he’d turned them back in and said to use the other door, to which they’d groaned and muttered comments about being jailed.

      He smiled to himself. Laura had wanted to exert her parental superiority, which was an ongoing need of hers; she believed he and Marissa were somehow plotting against her. She was therefore constantly making sure they knew who the real boss was. Tonight, he’d thwarted her by simply going along with her suggestion to chaperone. He’d learned early in their marriage that it was the best way to blunt her need to turn everything into a fight wherein he was always at fault. His seemingly easygoing attitude had won him major teasing at the station. Howie tried to make out that he was “pussy-whipped,” a completely politically incorrect term that was also spectacularly inaccurate. Cooper hadn’t explained his tactics to Howie. He didn’t much care what anyone thought. What he cared about was working for the department and solving crimes and being there for Marissa. That was his life, and he was satisfied with it.

      But then his thoughts turned traitorously to Jamie Whelan again. She’d hovered on his mind all day, no doubt about it. He’d wanted to reach out and hug her when they were standing in the parking lot.

      Like that would make better what had happened to Emma.

      Emma.

      “She was here for like ten minutes,” Race Stillwell had told him in disgust the night of the attack. “Did you have something to do with it?”

      They’d been standing outside the house after Emma left.

      “Me?” Cooper had held himself back from shoving Race up against his car. Race had always been pugnacious; his younger brother was even worse.

      “Well, what the fuck. She’s babysitting. Took over for her sister for the Ryersons.”

      Cooper had a quick mental image of Dr. and Mrs. Ryerson. Nadine Ryerson oozed a certain sex appeal, while her husband seemed uptight and quiet. A MILF, one of his friends, Mark Norquist, had said of her, but then Mark was always saying stuff like that.

      Cooper shrugged. He’d been thinking of blowing off the Stillwell party himself, had only gone because Emma might be there. Had spontaneously asked her sister at school that day to come because she looked like Emma.

      “Let’s spook her,” Dug Douglas said. “It’s almost Halloween. We know where the Ryersons live.”

      “She should still be here,” Stillwell growled.

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