“What should I tell them?” Audrey asked.
“Tell them a dog ran in front of your car and you almost hit it and now you’re too shaken up to drive.”
The girl shook her head. “I mean about the warning ticket.”
“Nothing. It’s a bullshit piece of paper that will piss your dad off to the point of doing something stupid. It won’t get put into the system, and if it does, I’ll take care of it. I have a couple friends on the force,” Bree promised. Literally, two, and ‘friends’ was a strong word, but namedropping Dutch would grease the wheels.
She’d gone in to the station the next day to warn the inspector about what had happened to his daughter. He’d had the front desk sergeant escort her off the premises before she had a chance to speak.
“Audrey never told me. Not until she saw Zane in the news,” Dutch said. “As far as she knew, you were still dating Eric, so she trusted you. I can’t tell you how thankful we were—Brenda and Audrey and I. You didn’t have to do that.”
“She’s a good kid. She didn’t have any more trouble from him that I didn’t know about, did she?”
“No, he steered clear after that. It was right before he went on administrative leave, so maybe he was looking for one last piece of leverage. Anyway, thank you for looking after my daughter. She’s finishing her biology degree at U of M . Pre-med.”
“Good for her.”
Dutch still looked uncomfortable. “I threw you out of the building.”
“Zane screwed us all over. How about we both let it go?” The guys had just arrived, and she was already exhausted. Mackie apologized. Dutch apologized. Adam was easier to forgive since he was family, but his behaviour was making it a lot easier to forget as well.
Which left Eric. He’d fallen the farthest. But he was also the one who mattered most. She wanted him back, and he wanted to come back. Maybe they could get past the past.
