The Runaway Daughter

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’ bathroom at the Oakwood Youth Center. Anything to avoid the posse of teenage boys, Garret Henderson included, who wouldn’t stop talking about Travis Reynolds overdosing. The mayor’s son always thrived on sharing every gory detail he overheard from his dad.

Claire’s baby was in dire need of a diaper change, so she and Maggie had jumped at the excuse to get lost.

“Are you sure Sam’s dealing?” Maggie asked her friend.

“He’s doing more than that. I think he’s supplying the stuff to half the county. Where else would he be getting the money for the new car, and the apartment and all the electronic junk he’s got lying around everywhere?” Claire shoved her frizzy red hair away from her face and yanked at the plastic tape holding the diaper on a wiggling baby Max. The plastic unfolded from the baby’s bottom, revealing more mess than a seven-month-old should be capable of making.

Maggie couldn’t keep from covering her nose.

“Oh, that’s not right!” She tried breathing through her mouth. It didn’t help.

“Peaches.” Claire went to work with a wad of baby wipes. She looked like she wanted to race Maggie for the door. “I’m trying solid foods, and this happens every time he eats strained peaches.”

“Then stop giving them to him.” Desperate to do something to help, Maggie fished for a fresh diaper in her friend’s oversize bag.

She lifted out an Elmo-emblazoned plastic panty. A small baggie came with it, slipping off the diaper onto the cracked, fake-marble surface of the vanity. The white powder inside could have been formula. But the speed at which her friend snatched the baggie off the counter put a swift end to that theory.

“You see?” Claire waved it fiercely in the air between them. She left Maggie to hold the baby as she stomped to the nearest stall and flushed the bag, contents and all, down the toilet. “Sam thinks he’s hiding it from me. There’s never anything like this in the apartment. But I found more between the seats of his car the other day. He wouldn’t tell me what it was— just that it was none of my business. Now it’s in Max’s things. I think…I think Sam might have even been selling the stuff that killed Travis. I saw them talking together the other day, all secret-like. And Travis called Sam’s cell phone yesterday morning.”

Maggie stared as her friend returned her attention to the baby she’d made with Sam Walker, one of the shadiest characters in Oakwood. She had to keep her cool for her friend’s sake. Claire had never thought she was a goody-goody, like some of the other kids, just because her dad was the sheriff and her uncle a deputy. Now wasn’t the time to prove her friend wrong and start nagging about the law.

Besides, she’d heard worse back home in New York, where she’d lived with her mom until a year ago. It hadn’t been hard to pick out the druggies and the dealers in her high school in Manhattan. Even though she’d gone to a specialized math and science school with some of the smartest kids in the country, the drug culture had been accepted as a way of life. Moving to picturesque Georgia to live with her newly discovered father, Maggie had expected things to be different. Simpler somehow, more homespun.

But it hadn’t taken long to recognize the familiar patterns. The half lives being lived by people, many of them teens her age or younger, who fed their habits in secret, or so they thought. But the secrets were getting harder to hide. Her dad’s deputies kept raiding places all over town, trying to bust things up. But nothing was working.

And now Claire’s boyfriend was the ring leader?

“There were all these people at the apartment when Max and I got home last night.” Her friend hefted the now clean smelling baby onto her shoulder and pushed at the hair falling into her worried blue eyes. “I didn’t know many of them. I never do. It seems like it’s a new bunch every time, except for one or two of the local guys Sam keeps telling me to forget about seeing there. And there are the endless cell-phone calls. The beepers going off all the time. Then Sam or one of his goons disappears, and it’s hours before I see them again. They keep talking about some kind of shack over on his mom’s property near Pineview. They’re storing who knows what there. And one of the guys last night had a gun. I swear, Maggie, I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

“If Sam’s running the local drug scene, you can’t stay with him, Claire. It’s not safe, for you or for Max. You’ve got to get out of there.”

And you’ve got to tell somebody, but Maggie didn’t dare say the words out loud. Claire was so freaked, no way would she talk to Maggie’s dad or any grown-up. Not until she was free of Sam.

“Get out where? Like I can find some place to stay without going to Sam’s family. And those people are bad as he is. I think he’s bankrolling most of them with the money he’s making. No way would they take my side against him. They wouldn’t let me walk away with Max, either.”

“You’re always complaining that Sam never spends any time with the baby.” Maggie smoothed a hand over the downy fluff on Max’s head. She and her dad would never get back the years when neither of them had known the other existed. Every new day was a scramble to make up for what they’d missed. How could Sam not care about his own kid? “I hate to say it, but I doubt Sam’s going to stop you two from leaving.”

“Maybe not, but his family would. The Walkers are like some kind of backwoods clan—nobody takes what’s theirs. And they’re all over the place,” Claire added with a touch of envy.

She’d hit town as a runaway, leaving behind parents she said had wanted to control her life and tell her what to do. She’d been on her way to somewhere bigger like Atlanta. Someplace you could start over and make a new beginning with nothing, not even a high-school diploma. But then she’d hooked up with Sam Walker, and the guy’s anything-goes, get-the-most-from-today line had made Oakwood look really good.

Now, a year and a half later, she and Max were trapped in a no-win situation worse than what she’d left behind in Virginia.

“Sam’s mama’s not going to let this baby out of her sight,” Claire added.

“What does Betty Walker have to do with it? Max is yours.”

“And Sam is hers. My job is to make her son happy, and take care of her grandson. If she got wind I was even thinking of leaving, the family would take Max from me and worry about making it look legal later.”

“Then you’d go to the police. My dad—”

“The Walkers could make Max disappear before your dad got to them. I have no one here, Maggie. My parents don’t even know I had a baby. And I’m not sure they’d help, even if they did. I’ve got to forget all the stuff going on in the apartment and make the best of it. At least until Max is older. Maybe then if I take him away, I can leave him with someone while I work.”

And that was the argument Maggie kept banging her head against, every time she tried to talk her friend into walking away from her baby’s father. Claire believed she was completely helpless. Completely dependent. Sam and his family made sure of it.

“Can… Can you talk with Sam about it?” Maggie fought not to tell her friend she was nuts for even thinking of sleeping one more night in that apartment. “Maybe he’ll agree to do whatever he’s doing somewhere else. There has to be some other place he can…you know, do business with people.”

What was she saying! Sam Walker had to be stopped.

But Claire was already shaking her head, her eyes clouding with tears. “I hardly say anything to him anymore. The baby’s crying all night, and he’s tired of Max’s stuff being all over the apartment when he has people over. I don’t even think he wants us there, except his mama’d hit the roof if he turned us out. And I think…I think I heard him and those guys talking about that drive-by shooting that happened last month. I…I think Sam was involved somehow. Maybe that guy who died even worked for him. I’m scared, Maggie. I…” A tear trickled down. “I don’t know what to do.”

“The drive-by’s all my dad and my uncle talk about. Nothing like that’s ever happened here before. It’s got everyone in town messed up worrying. Claire—” She grasped her friend’s elbow. “You’ve got to get away from Sam.”

“I can’t. Where would I go?”

“Let me talk to my dad. He’ll know what to do.”

Her dad. Maggie’s chest grew tight, same as every time she thought how lucky she was to have her mom, and now her dad and Uncle Tony in her life. Even crusty old LeJeune was growing on her. Her Oakwood family took care of each other like nobody’s business, the part of her newfound southern heritage she liked best. To people down here, family meant fighting to the death for the people you loved.

But Claire had no one to fight for her but scummy Sam.

And me. She has me.

“Don’t you dare tell Sheriff Rivers,” her friend warned. “No cops. They’d want to question Sam and his family. They’d take Max away from me, ’cause I have no way to take care of him without Sam’s money, then the Walkers—”

“My dad wouldn’t do that—”

“I swear, Maggie. If you tell anyone about this—”

“Okay! I won’t.”

“If you do, I’ll never speak to you ag—”

The bathroom door swung open.

Claire sucked in the rest of her threat.

“Hey girls.” Angie Carter’s smile lost some of its customary gusto as she absorbed their stunned silence. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.” Claire grabbed the diaper bag and all but trampled Oakwood’s chief deputy rushing out the door.

Maggie picked up the packet of baby wipes her friend had left, and tried to slip away, too. The hand on her arm wasn’t exactly a command to halt, but Maggie skidded to a stop inside the door all the same.

She should tell Angie what was going on. But Claire would never trust her again if she did.

“What’s up?” Angie’s voice was friendly but firm, which was a pretty good description of the woman herself.

For a cop, Angie got along great with the kids at the center—she and Uncle Tony, both. They’d become a great team, spending most of their off-duty afternoons coordinating cool activities. They didn’t talk down to anyone, either. They treated teens like grown-ups. Like friends.

No matter who you were, you were okay with them, no questions asked. And one smart-mouthed kid after another in the county had started to trust them. Except Claire, who didn’t trust anybody but Maggie.

“Nothing’s up.” Her stomach tightened at the lie.

“I know you two are friends.” Angie looked at Maggie, as honest and straight-shooting as ever, even in her everyday khakis and a knit golf shirt. Today’s shirt was the same cool green color as her eyes. “But Claire’s been hanging with a pretty rough crowd lately. If she’s in some kind of trouble—”

“Claire’s fine.” Maggie held her breath against the urge to blurt out what she knew about Sam Walker. She ducked her head. “I…I’ve got to get home and help my uncle Tony with my parents’ going-away thing. I…I’ll see you later.”

She made a quick escape, leaving Angie no chance for more questions. As she jogged toward the side door her friend had most likely left through, she thought of that night’s family dinner and couldn’t help but smile.

Her parents were leaving for New York in the morning, to scout places for the three of them to live in the fall. Maggie was staying behind this trip, finishing summer school and the two classes she needed to graduate. She’d missed tons of school last year. The liver-donor surgery that had saved her mom’s life had taken months to recover from.

Two more classes and her future was ahead of her. The kind of future Claire would never have if she kept hooking up with losers like Sam.

Outside, there was no sign of Claire or the boys they’d been hiding from. Boys, including Garret Henderson, who hung with Sam Walker almost every afternoon—doing what, Maggie could only guess.

What if telling Angie tonight was the right thing? What if it was the only way to keep Sam from hurting Claire and the rest of the kids in town more than he already had?

Maggie shook off the what-ifs and headed home. She wanted to go after her friend. She wanted to go back and spill her guts to Angie. She wanted to fill her parents in on everything, and help shut Sam Walker and his drugs down for good. But she couldn’t do any of it, not tonight.

She’d talk some sense into Claire in the morning. After her parents left for the airport, she’d head over and confront Sam himself if she had to.

Whatever it took to get her friend out of that apartment.

ANGIE WATCHED Maggie hightail it through the side door of the youth center as if the girl’s low-rise jeans were on fire. Seeing her running scared was a shock.

Maggie was a Rivers through and through. Brown hair, intelligent brown eyes and a heart of gold. And a Rivers didn’t run. From anything. In fact, they’d fight to the death—particularly to protect the people they cared about. And Maggie and Claire Morton had been as thick as thieves from the moment they’d met six months ago, when Maggie had tagged along during one of her uncle’s volunteer nights at the center.

It had been an odd match, the sheriff’s kid and a runaway who’d zeroed in on the toughest badass in town, gotten herself knocked up, and then moved herself and the baby in with Sam Walker for good measure. But Maggie had seen something in Claire worth saving, and that had been the end of her parents trying to talk her out of hanging with the girl every afternoon.

Something was up. Angie could smell it. But was she sure enough to make a stink about it, when her ability to work with the kids around here hinged on not interfering in their life choices unless it was an emergency?

The teens at the center were practically her surrogate children. She’d accepted the reality years ago that she couldn’t have kids of her own. She’d dealt with the devastating impact that news had had on her dreams, and her never-to-be marriage to Freddie. Then she’d gone out and found a way to fill her life with kids regardless. Over the last few years, her volunteer work at the center and her career had become her salvation.

The teens here needed her, and she needed them. Her goal, the goal of all the volunteers who gave their time here, many of them sheriff’s deputies like herself, was to keep the often at-risk kids coming back. Kids from broken or dual-income homes, where parental control was either scarce or nonexistent. Rural families that often didn’t or couldn’t provide the kind of supervision restless teenagers needed. She was a big sister here, a confidante who listened and helped any way she could, while doing everyday things like playing a friendly game of Ping-Pong or basketball.

Angie gritted her teeth against the memory of her last game of hoops with Travis Reynolds. She’d let Travis down by not getting rid of the crap someone had sold him. And now Claire Morton was acting nervous. And big-city-smart Maggie Rivers looked more worried than Angie had ever seen her. It didn’t take a decade in law enforcement to guess what the problem was.

Baby Max’s father was bad news. There were rumors Sam Walker was into Oakwood’s crystal meth trade up to his eyeballs. The department had no proof. Yet. But he’d been working his way to the top of their suspects list ever since their first meth collar eight months ago. And the chance that Maggie had gotten herself involved in the drugs overtaking their county like cancer landed a knot dead center in Angie’s stomach.

She couldn’t let this slide.

Maggie’s parents were leaving in the morning, and they’d been planning tonight’s family dinner all week. With as little information as Angie had, she wasn’t stirring up trouble their last evening in town. But once tomorrow’s shift was over, Maggie Rivers had some questions to answer. Which would leave Angie talking to Tony if there was any truth to her suspicions.

Damn.

The man was the last person she should be spending her off-duty time talking to. She couldn’t get it out of her head, the confused, almost disappointed look on his face when she’d pulled away from him at the Eight Ball.

Tony wore unattached like some kind of shield— exactly why she’d felt so safe spending time with him, talking about things she never talked about with anyone. And she’d listened to his stuff, too. The way a good friend does—hanging out, and listening and trying to understand.

Not to mention the creepy fact that once, like a million years ago in high school, she’d actually had a crush on the man’s older brother.

They were friends. That was all. Just good friends.

Then Tony had pulled her into that kiss, and— “There you are, Chief.” The mayor’s booming voice from the other end of the hall yanked her away from her memories.

The board meeting.

Before stepping into the restroom, she’d been headed for the center’s trustees meeting. She’d already been running late for their discussion about how the town’s civic leaders could help deter the rising drug problem. A quick check of her watch confirmed that she’d now missed the entire meeting.

But instead of being angry, the mayor walked her way with a cheerful gait, his ever-present press gaggle in tow. He never missed an opportunity to corner her into face time with the local reporters. They were her mouthpiece to the community, he insisted. A powerful weapon in her bid for election, not to mention his determination to preserve his winning image now that he was publicly supporting her.

He shook her hand. His politician’s smile played for their audience.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to make it tonight.” He turned slightly so the cameras caught his good side.

And she almost hadn’t, even though it was one of her regular afternoons to volunteer. The mayor’s blatant promotion of her candidacy chafed many of the deputies the wrong way, including her. His recent interest in the department didn’t extend to talking the council into hiring more officers, or upgrading their facilities and equipment to help them better protect the county’s citizens. All flash and no substance, Henderson was as supportive as it took to help himself and his own upcoming bid for reelection.