Page 59 of Playing With Forever

“If you wouldn’t mind escorting me to my car, my family’s already home. Evan’s making his potatoes au gratin, and Lindy says she’s manning the grill tonight, and I skipped lunch.”

“Can’t have you missing out on Evan’s potatoes au gratin,” Phil said with his lips twitching.

No one should ever miss the culinary brilliance of Evan’s potatoes.

“If you’re interested, you should come over for dinner one night,” I offered, as he pushed open the door and motioned me through.

The cleaners were still there, so Phil didn’t set the alarm, but he did lock the door behind us.

“Name the time and I’m there.”

“I’ll talk to Evan and Lindy.” Phil was studiously scanning the parking lot. I was scanning as well, just not as intensely as Phil’s trained eye. “Did the police get back to you after you sent them the security footage?”

“No. They said they’d call tomorrow. But it was clearly Tyler, and the officer checked the cars in the lot for break-ins but didn’t find anything.”

That was good news.

The bad news was Tyler was lurking around the parking lot when he should’ve been in school.

Worse news, he still hadn’t gone home to his mother.

Worse, worse news, I was still on a communications ban with Diane and Bella, and each day I longed to reach out and check on her.

But I was smart enough to listen to the law enforcement officers around me, who very much did not think it was safe.

One day, they’d get a handle on the situation, and I’d go to Diane and explain. I just hoped when I did, she understood and didn’t think I was cold-hearted and had abandoned her in the worst days of her life.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I was losing her, I could feel it.

Every day that passed, Josie was getting more agitated she couldn’t get to Diane and Bella. So far, she’d stayed the course. In the week since she saw Tyler in the parking lot, he’d been spotted three more times.

Josie was taking this as a cry for help.

The police were taking it as something else. The problem was, he wasn’t breaking into cars to steal. He wasn’t vandalizing. He wasn’t being a nuisance. He was trespassing. There wasn’t much anyone could do.

Saul Trapp’s house was under surveillance. We knew Tyler was living there with him, the problem with that was he was fifteen and legally allowed to choose which parent he wanted to live with. The other problem was Diane didn’t file to take away Saul’s parental rights or even for sole custody. She’d banked on her ex being a dickwad criminal and never coming back for his children. Social Services were involved due to school attendance, but that was a long process, and by the time Saul faced any charges, Tyler would likely be sixteen and could, with parental permission, withdrawl from school.

Unfortunately, in my line of work, I’d seen it all too often—Tyler would follow in his father’s footsteps until he was either buried so far under he’d never find his way to clean again or something would scare the shit out of him and he’d turn straight. There’d be no in between.

Josie was walking the tragic line of hope, and if I didn’t do something soon, I feared she’d fall to the wrong side and disregard everything we’d talked about in the last month.

Something was coming.

I could feel it.

And whatever it was, I had to find a way to talk Josie out of it.

The boys would be over this weekend—they’d keep her mind occupied, and I’d find time to have a quiet word and recruit them to help me keep their mother on the righteous path. They were staying at Josie’s place since it was still furnished and hadn’t been rented yet. However, we’d moved all of her clothes and most of her personal items to my house. I’d been worried about how DJ would react to his mother moving in with a man he’d never met in person. Shockingly, or maybe not since the man was level-headed and loved his mother beyond reason. It helped that Kane was all for Josie moving in with me and Lindy.

And Lindy was thriving. Not only did she have Josie full-time, she had Carrie, who, according to Lindy, was the bomb and was going to take her thrifting while she was visiting. And Kane had done exactly what I knew he’d do—he’d fully pulled Lindy into the sibling fold.

Josie had told me Lindy had used Kane’s nickname for her. Since then, I’d heard Lindy call Josie ‘Mamalious’ on more than one occasion. I wasn’t sure who loved it more—Lindy, Kane, or Josie.

I’d suspect Josie if the way her eyes lit up every time my girl switched out her name for the nickname.

Which meant it was me who loved it the most. Anything that made my woman’s eyes alight and made my girl beam, I was all for.