The Lawman's Convenient Family. Judy Duarte

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a spiffy new Stetson, too. But that wasn’t surprising. Costume parties weren’t Matt’s style.

      And normally, they weren’t Adam’s, either. So he’d planned to cut out early, but after dancing with Lisa, he’d changed his mind. Damn, she felt good—soft in all the right places. And she smelled amazing, too. Her perfume reminded him of lemon blossoms.

      Matt came to a stop and pointed to a shiny black Dodge Ram, the new registration sticker still taped to the passenger side of the windshield. “There’s my truck.”

      The driver’s door was open, the window shattered. On the seat, amidst shards of broken glass, sat a good-size rock.

      “It would have been easy enough for you to check and see if that envelope was still there,” Adam said. “Why didn’t you?”

      “Because I know how fussy you cops can be about disturbing a crime scene. But something else is definitely missing, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

      “What’s that?”

      “My food. I hadn’t eaten since the crack of dawn, so on my way here, I picked up something to tide me over at Bubba’s Burger Barn. The bag was on the passenger seat, and now it’s gone.”

      Adam furrowed his brow. “Someone took your leftovers?”

      Matt scoffed. “Hell, it wasn’t table scraps. It was a double bacon cheeseburger with large fries, and I didn’t get the chance to take a single bite. I was going to eat it on the way over here, but as soon as I pulled out of the drive-through, my cell phone rang. And by the time the call ended, I’d already arrived at the party. So I decided to check out the fancy, hundred-dollar food first.”

      Adam scanned the area. The ground was still damp and a bit muddy from last night’s rain, revealing small shoe prints—two sets, plus paw prints. All of which were fresh.

      “Amateurs,” Adam said. “Kids, most likely. Young ones. You mentioned the dog. It might be theirs.”

      “I’m pretty sure it was a stray. It had that scruffy, scrawny look. And it was tricolored—black, brown and what might be white if someone gave it a bath. I saw it when I was parking, and then again when I came back outside to eat my burger, which I figured was going to taste a heck of a lot better than those fancy tidbits they were putting out. That’s when I saw that someone had broken into my truck.”

      “Did you notice anyone hanging around or hear anything?”

      “No, but if they were anywhere nearby, they would have heard my reaction. I just bought that truck last week. So when I saw the broken glass, I swore loud enough to scare off the mutt. If there were kids anywhere around, they probably hightailed it out of here, too.”

      Adam reached beneath the seat, retrieved the yellow manila envelope stuffed with cash and handed it to Matt. “You might want to count it.”

      He fingered the thickness. “It feels like it’s all here.” Then he looked inside and counted it.

      Apparently the young burglars had only wanted the food. Or else they’d been scared off before they could find anything of value.

      Call it a hunch, or the memory of his own personal history, but something told Adam those kids were in some kind of trouble and that he’d better find them. And not just to put the fear of the law into them.

      “Do you have insurance?” he asked.

      “Yeah, but with a big deductible.” Matt swore under his breath. “Why do you think the damn kids did this?”

      “I suspect they were hungry.”

      Matt seemed to think on that for a couple of beats. “What are you going to do about it?”

      “I’m going to look for them.” And quickly. He wanted to return to the party before Lisa, the sexy intergalactic goddess, decided to leave.

      While Matt remained near his truck, picking up the shards of glass and placing them in a burlap sack he’d found behind the driver’s seat, Adam tracked the small footprints to a wooded area outside the grange hall and continued along the path they’d taken until he reached what appeared to be an abandoned, rusted-out paneled truck.

      He didn’t have his gun on him, but his gut told him he wouldn’t need it. His steps slowed as he approached the vehicle. When he got close enough, he peered through the grimy driver’s-side window and spotted a young boy, a smaller girl and a scruffy mutt sitting in the cab sharing Matt’s burger and fries. The kids didn’t look much cleaner or better fed than the dirty dog.

      As Adam opened the door, the mutt barked, and the children’s eyes widened in apprehension. The dark-haired boy, who was about six or seven, slipped a bone-thin arm around his little blonde companion.

      The moment Adam spotted her bruised cheek and her swollen, split lip, she commanded his full attention.

      “Hey, guys.” Adam offered his friendliest smile. “What’s going on?”

      Neither child uttered a word. The dog, its fur matted, merely cocked its head.

      Adam scanned the interior of the dusty, beat-up vehicle. “This is a cool fort you guys have.”

      The kids remained silent, eyes leery. Something had them scared, and Adam doubted it was him.

      “I know I’m not wearing a uniform,” Adam said, “but I’m a police officer. And I’d like to help you.”

      The boy bit down on his bottom lip and studied Adam carefully, then he lifted his chin. “We ain’t going home. And I’m not telling you where we live, either.”

      Kids often ran away from good homes, but given the overall undernourished appearance and defensive nature of these two, instinct told Adam that wasn’t the case. And so did the girl’s injury.

      “I figure you two have a good reason for being out here.”

      When he was met with tight-lipped silence, he continued his questioning, attempting to be kind and gentle as he ferreted out what he already suspected. “Did someone at your house hurt you?”

      “Yeah,” the boy said indignantly. “He hurt my sister just because she peed her pants. It was an accident, and I cleaned it up. But he didn’t care. He still spanked her. And he ain’t even our dad.”

      Whether one believed in spanking or not, striking a child in the face was flat-out abuse. And doing so hard enough to leave a mark was criminal.

      “Who is he?” Adam asked. “Your dad? Stepdad?”

      “No, he’s just a guy. The one who lived with us before our mama went away and didn’t come back. But it’s not like he takes care of us anyway.”

      Adam’s gut clenched, and his thoughts took a personal turn as painful memories welled to the surface. He tamped them down the best he could, but his heart went out the poor kids, just as it always did when he came across other abused and neglected children. And he vowed to make sure that, when these two did go home, from now on, it was to a safe place, where a proper guardian would see that they had food to eat, clean clothes to wear and warm beds in which they could sleep.

      “What’s СКАЧАТЬ