Chapter One
Corporal Gardner Fairhurst had his life down to a perfect science these days. He had a challenging, fulfilling job. One that offered him enough spontaneity and movement to serve the side of him that craved both, without drawing him into the kinds of danger he’d been trying to pull his younger sister out of since he could remember.
Maybe being a cop hadn’t turned out to be assave the worldas he’d once thought when he’d been young and eager and naive, but he still knew that he helped people. On the bad days, it felt like not enough. On the good days, it felt like a badge of honor he’d earned.
Tonight, he’d clocked out, radioed off duty, and headed inside his nice little house on Main Street in Bent, Wyoming. Today had neither been good nor bad, and after some of the years ofbadhe’d been through, he appreciated a boring day that offered neither.
Or maybe he was just getting old. Sure, forty was a few years off yet, but it was breathing down his neck. Something he was reminded of with each new recruit he was assigned to train who seemed to get younger and younger with each assignment.
A couple of thekids, as he called them, had invited him to hit Rightful Claim, the local saloon in Bent. Gard had declined. Tonight, he’d shower. Eat a frozen dinner and watch a sporting event. Then go to bed. Alone.
Some people might call it boring, but Gard figured those people had never spent time in the unknown. They’d neverturned their back on everything comfortable and supportive and easy and then had to suddenly rebuild their own life.
Boringwas a death knell only for people who’d never knownstruggle.
Besides, going out when you were feeling your age was a recipe for recklessness and disaster, so Gard stayed in. Recklessness wasn’t his MO.
He ran through the shower, microwaved a frozen chicken potpie, and grabbed a beer from his fridge. He was halfway to the couch when he heard a noise outside his front door. The knob of said door moved. He stood, beer in one hand, a microwaved chicken potpie on a plate in the other. He’d locked that door—a habit being a cop had ingrained deep into his bones. Still, the knob jiggled and moved and then…opened.
He blew out a breath and scowled at the intruder. “Sammy.”
His niece stepped inside. She’d dyed her usually blond hair black since the last time he’d seen her a few weeks ago, and she had it piled on top of her head in messy waves. Her blue eyes were direct and defiant, reminding Gard of her mother. She had a duffel bag slung over her shoulder.
And there was no one entering his house with her.
So just like that, the well-ordered construct of his world crumbled. Because if Sammy was here without her mother…
“Just to get it out of the way, she never came home last night,” Sammy said, her voice devoid of all emotion except generic teenage distaste for everything. “I don’t know where she is, and since she didn’t come backtonight, I guess I’m crashing here for a bit.”
Gard didn’t say anything to that at first. He’d bought this house with the extra bedroom for just this kind of situation, but… Things had been going so well, he’d really stopped thinking she’d need it.
“You want me in family services?” she demanded when he didn’t say anything.
He sighed. He didn’tloveworking around the system, but his sister had made that a constant struggle. Because the system kind of sucked when you couldn’t stay clean, but you didn’t want to lose your kid. Years ago, Gard had tried to convince Dani to give him custody—that way she wouldn’t have to worry about the Department of Family Services.
Dani hadn’t gone for it, and Gard hadn’t felt right forcing the issue. And for the past three years, he hadn’t even thought of it. Dani had been clean. Sammy had been good.Everythinghad been good. It killed him that after all this time, they were about to start over.
“Let me crash here,” Sammy said, all world-weary detachment too big for a fifteen-year-old. “All you have to do is give me a ride to school in the mornings. I’ve got a ride home. No one will know the difference as long as I’m in school.”
“You’ll get a ride home fromwho?”
She smiled at him, reminding him so much of Dani it hurt. He’d never been able to save his sister, and he had increasing concern he’d never be able to save Sammy.
Sometimes a man had to accept people didn’t want to be saved, but he’d never been able to accept that when it came to the people he loved.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, tossing her lone duffel bag on his couch.
The problem was, hedidworry about it. About Dani. About Sammy. He thought they were past her one-bagged arrivals. It had been three years since the last one, and back then it had always been Dani dropping Sammy off on her way to do something…bad.
Now, apparently, Sammy was old enough to show up all on her own. Even though she was still a few months shy from getting her driver’s license.
“How’d you get here?” Dani and Sammy had a place in Fairmont. He’d had one too for a long time, but last year Dani had insisted she needed space. She needed to know she could take care of Sammy and herself without him breathing down her neck.
So he’d bought a house out here in Bent, about a half hour away. Space, but not…too much. Close enough, room enough, to be what either of them needed, if they needed.
“A friend dropped me off,” Sammy said casually, but with a kind of smugness that made Gard especially aware he had no business helping raise a teenage girl.
But that was life. Gard was going to have to look into her friends. Which wouldn’t win him any favors with Sammy, but he wasn’t looking for her to hero-worship him like she had when she was little. He was desperate to find a way to help her be…all right.
