AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Damn him.
“Chief?”
I turned and found Miguel standing beside the back door of my sedan.
Great, I thought, just what I need. Miguel with an earful.
“You okay?” Miguel asked, his concern fierce and palpable.
“I’m fine,” I said, and took a deep breath. “And, actually, so are you. The owner of the Porsche isn’t going to press charges.”
“Tyler O’Neill?” Miguel asked.
“How do you know that?”
“I recognized him in the car. I’ve seen him playing poker on TV. He’s rich, huh?”
“Hard to say,” I said. “Not much ever sticks to Tyler.” I turned back to Miguel, narrowing my eyes. “You were just pretending to sleep in the backseat, weren’t you?”
He nodded, unapologetic. Probably a skill he’d learned to survive.
“I’m not going to jail?” Miguel asked, as if he couldn’t believe it. I put my hands on his shoulders and waited until he looked at me. The impact of his wounds could still take my breath away and I wondered again whether I really was doing the right thing, or if calling in the social workers wasn’t the way to try and save this boy.
“It’s not too late,” I told him. “I can call the Office of Community Services—”
Miguel shook his head. “I’ll run. I swear it.”
He wasn’t lying. And while I didn’t doubt that I’d be able to find him, if he took his sister, who knew what kind of trouble might find them before I did. Two kids, no money—it was a disaster in the making.
“Okay,” I said. “But we’ve got to keep you away from your dad. Where is he now?”
“It’s Monday, so he’s sleeping it off and then he’s back out at the refinery until Saturday.” The refinery was over the state line, and employed many of the men and women of Bonne Terre. Due to the commute, many of them, like Miguel’s father, spent part of the week in a cheap hotel closer to the refinery.
“Your sister?”
“She’s at Patricia’s. I’m gonna pick her up for school tomorrow.” Patricia was an old friend of Miguel’s mother, who did what she could for the kids, but the woman was eighty, had very little money of her own and barely spoke English. Her status was questionable and so she kept herself under the radar. When push came to shove with the law and the kids, I could not in any way put that on Patricia. Patricia could lose everything.
“All right.” I ducked my head, looking hard into his good eye. “Tomorrow after school you come right here. In fact, after school you come here every day.”
“To the police station?” he asked, horrified as any good delinquent would be.
“It’s your only choice, Miguel. And considering what I’ve done for you, if you don’t show up I’ll be—” He looked away. “Miguel,” I snapped and he looked back up, sighing. “I will be very, very insulted.”
Miguel nodded, his lip lifting slightly. Nearly made me cry to see it. Here he was, face beat in, future up in the air, and the kid could still smile. Sort of.
Maybe I could make this work—as long as Dr. Roberts didn’t tell anyone and Tyler kept his mouth shut. And if no one in the station cared about an attempted grand theft I made disappear, or wondered why Miguel was cleaning squad cars every day after school.
And particularly if no one else saw Miguel’s file.
“Chief!” Lisa came running out into the impound yard, her blond ponytail a little flag out behind her.
“What’s up?” I asked, a little surprised to see Lisa away from her FreeCell game.
“Mayor wants to see you,” Lisa’s eyes flipped over to Miguel. “About the boy. He asked for his file.”
TYLER
“Dad!” I called, slamming the front door shut behind me.
“Yeah?” Richard stepped in from the kitchen into the hallway, a sauce-splattered apron tied around his trim waist. Good God, the man was playing house. “Let’s go,” I said to Richard’s blank face. “Let’s go back to Vegas. Play some cards, get a steak as big as our heads.”
“I’m making lasagna.”
“Screw the lasagna!” I cried. “It’s time to go.”
“But we just got here. We haven’t found the gems.”
“Dad, if it’s about money, I’ve got more than—”
Richard shook his head. “I’m not taking your money.”
I blew out a long breath and stared up at the ceiling. This totally misplaced sense of honor my father had could be such a pain in the butt. “You will live in my suite, charge meals to my room and wear my damn clothes, but you can’t take money from me?”
“Hey—” Richard wiped his hands off on the apron “—that’s taking care of one another. You’ll remember I did the same thing for you for years after you found me in Vegas.”
I was a kid! I wanted to yell. I was your kid! It’s part of a father’s job description.
But the truth was, Richard often got the job description for father and sperm donor confused.
