took a quick glance at her face. Evidently she didn’t think much of Gordon.
“I’m his mother,” she said, with that same natural dignity that held back her tears. “They should let me talk to him.”
That shocked Blue. His mother? How old was she, anyway? This Shane must be a teenager or nearly so if he was taking girls hostage at gunpoint.
If he’d thought about it, he would’ve guessed she was in her twenties. He sneaked another look while she leaned across him toward Micah again.
“They should let me talk to him. Gordon’s been trying to do it himself, since they don’t have a professional negotiator in here yet. Tracie said he’s so furious with Jason for calling in the law that he’s about to strangle him.”
She could be thirty, maybe. There were tiny crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.
Micah drove faster. They careened around a turn that led off to the west long before they got near the main headquarters.
“What kind of gun is it?” Micah asked. “Where in hell did he get it?”
“A handgun, a twenty-two,” she said. “Where and how he got it, I don’t have a clue. I know the counselors can’t watch them every second, but they could do better than this.”
Now the whole length of her leg lay smooth and warm against Blue’s.
“He’s a big boy and nobody can control him, honey,” Micah said.
Andie Lee jerked away from him and leaned forward in a sudden movement as if to make the truck go faster. She stared through the windshield into the distance.
Blue felt a chill. The line of her body reminded him of Rose’s long ago, yearning into the dark from their tiny front porch in Tahlequah, willing her darling Dannah to appear out of the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I TOLD GORDON instead of building that goddamn rehab center he oughtta put them boys to work,” Micah said. “That’ll cure ’em. Let ’em buck hay bales when it’s a hundred in the shade and then load ’em up again and haul ’em out on the ice and bust ’em for the cows when it’s twenty below and they’ll be too tired to go looking for dope or guns.”
Andie Lee didn’t answer.
Taking advantage of her silence to try to distract her, Micah said, “This here’s Blue Bowman, Andie. Blue, Andie Lee Hart, Gordon’s daughter.”
Blue took a breath that dragged her flowery woman-smell deeper into him. Gordon had a daughter? A daughter other than Dannie? Another daughter—one he was helping in her time of trouble.
It fit. She looked like a rich rancher’s daughter. She had that air of position and privilege. Her jeans were faded Wranglers and her boots were broken-in and battered, but there was nothing ordinary about her. The boots were fine and custom-made. That silver clip. Shiny hair, silky-looking skin.
Then it hit him as they both turned at the same time to look each other full in the face. This woman was his half sister.
“Stepdaughter,” she said, quick and hard. “Gordon’s not my father.”
She looked deep into his eyes to make sure that he got it. Then she gave him the barest nod and turned away to begin boring a hole with her gaze through the windshield again.
“I just hope they don’t shoot him, Micah,” she said, too quietly.
“They won’t,” he said. “You’re gonna talk him into giving up.”
Stepdaughter.
So. Gordon must’ve divorced the first wife he’d had back when he’d refused to marry Rose.
“Shane’s never done anything violent before,” Andie Lee said. “Never. You know that, Micah, as well as I do.”
“And he ain’t yet,” Micah said, with a forced calm in his voice.
He did drive even faster, however. Too fast around a curve in the winding road. The roan kicked the trailer again—so hard it rocked the old truck and Micah cursed, just under his breath.
They headed downhill again, toward another cluster of ranch buildings. A sign beside the road came into view.
GORDON CAMPBELL RECOVERY CENTER
Blue ran his eye over the neat, low buildings—bunkhouses, cottages, barns and pens—all built to seem rustic but they were fairly new. Good lord. Gordon was trying to work his way into heaven.
Did he build all this just because Andie Lee’s son had a drug problem?
“Shane’s in the recreation hall,” Andie Lee said, pointing it out.
Then she added sarcastically, “Naturally, he’s not in a classroom or a barn.”
“That’s what I mean— They want to straighten these kids out, they got to learn ’em what work is,” Micah said.
But now his voice sounded shaky. Micah was worried. Micah really cared for Andie Lee and her son so they must be worth liking.
They started driving past the first building, one with Gordon’s name on it.
“Tracie said Shane and the girl are in the game room,” Andie Lee said. “It’s on the back of the office.”
“I’m going with you,” Micah said.
She gave him a quick smile, the first smile Blue had ever seen on her.
“Park over there,” she said, pointing. “I want to surprise them and get in before they try to keep me out.”
Micah pulled into a paved area that held another patrol car and several more vehicles, mostly pickup trucks, and parked his rig parallel to one of the landscapings of bushes and small trees. He turned the key off and opened his door.
Andie Lee was out of the truck and around the front of it, reaching for his arm by the time he could get his stiff limbs out from behind the wheel, and they took off at a hobbling run up the little hill toward the rec hall. Blue watched them go.
So. Gordon’s stepgrandson was dealing drugs and holding girls hostage. Sins of the fathers visited, as usual, upon the children and the children’s children—because, judging from the way Andie Lee said Gordon wasn’t her father, he hadn’t tried to be a daddy to her, either.
He and Dannah weren’t the only ones. There had been other children Gordon had neglected. Knowing that made him angry for her, too.
The roan stamped and nickered. Blue looked around just in time to see him sit down and halfheartedly twist on his tie rope. That’d be trouble nobody needed right now.
Blue opened the door and got out.
“No sense in choking yourself again,” he said as he walked up to the trailer. “That will get you nowhere, buddy. You know that.”
The
