the possibility of my own feelings going haywire. I’m not planning to trust them to guide me.” She didn’t do that even on a good day anymore. Except when she was working.
The paramedic, she trusted implicitly. The woman, not at all.
“I just know that Reese isn’t going to let us get even close to a near encounter.”
“And what if he does?” Sara asked.
Faye knew the answer to that one. “I’m grabbing Elliott and running for the hills.”
She wasn’t going down the man road again. Particularly not until her son was man enough to watch out for himself.
* * *
HE’D TOLD HER to stay the hell out of his life. So why in the hell was Reese standing around in a too-small conference room, watching his palms sweat, while he waited to meet the kid who should have been his?
No. The one who should have been his had been his, at least for the few weeks his wife had been pregnant. Even if he hadn’t known about it.
Faye’s child had not been meant to be his. Her defection had told him that. You’d think, after almost ten years, he’d have gotten that one down straight.
He was meeting the kid alone. Whether or not the boy’s mother knew about it was none of his concern. Lila McDaniels—managing director of The Lemonade Stand—had set the whole thing up. Reese had called the Stand as soon as he’d recovered from talking to the boy.
Faye had said Elliott had problems and that he spent his days at the Stand. And now here was Reese, through no wish of his own, having agreed to meet with the boy and hear what he had to say.
Someone thought it was best for Elliott.
Reese damn sure knew it wasn’t best for him.
Meeting Faye’s kid was about the last thing he wanted to do, right down there with having his toenails pulled off one by one without anesthetic.
Maybe one below that.
At the moment, physical pain, in any amount, seemed preferable to—
He turned sharply as the door opened.
Lila, with her gray bun and wearing a gray suit, stood there. She had her hand on the shoulder of a thin, sandy-haired boy with determination on his face.
He looked straight at Reese, almost as if daring him to take him right to jail. The blue in those eyes, so like his mother’s, prevented Reese from moving at all.
Faye’s son.
The boy that he’d thought would be his own. Already half grown up.
“I’ll leave you two, then,” Lila said, nodding at Reese as she ushered the boy in and then closed the door.
Reese and Lila had known each other since before Reese had taken the job as Santa Raquel’s fire chief. He’d had a meeting with her at the request of the city manager and chief of police. All public services, and most particularly rescue services, were available to provide any help the Stand might need.
While no members of Reese’s staff were on the High Risk team that coordinated social services, counselors, doctors and teachers in an effort to prevent domestic violence deaths, Reese was well aware of the team. He reported to them anytime anything suspicious came across his desk.
“Are you here to take me to jail?” The boy tilted his chin up, skinny arms crossed as he stood here in a striped polo shirt and brown baggy shorts. As if to say he didn’t care.
The way his lip trembled gave him away but Reese wasn’t going to let on to that. At least not yet.
Lila had asked him if he’d talk to the boy. Try to find out anything he could about what he’d burned, where he’d gotten the matches, why he’d set the fire.
So far, the boy was refusing to speak to anyone else.
“I don’t carry handcuffs,” Reese said now. He was the man here. Elliott was just a scared little kid.
And it sure as hell wasn’t the kid’s fault his mother had chosen another man. He pulled out a chair. Sat. Motioned for Elliott to do the same.
Without hesitation, the boy did so and tilted his chin up again. Like he was some kind of cool dude who wasn’t going to be intimidated.
Reese wasn’t sure what to do. Truth was, he had no plan at all. He was there as a favor to Lila.
Nothing more.
“Tell me about the fire.”
“I already told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“I did it.”
“Where?”
“In the trash can in the boys’ bathroom by where we do gym.”
“Why that bathroom?” As Reese started focusing on his purpose for being there, the questions came easier. He was an investigator. A damn good one.
Elliott shrugged. His clothes looked new, as did the leather sandal he was tapping rapidly on the commercial tile floor. “It was furthest from anybody.”
“So you didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
He was there to get the kid to trust him. To talk. Nothing else.
“Uh-uh.”
“But you know fire’s dangerous.”
“’Course I know. My mom’s told me about a hundred times that...” He broke off.
“You broke your mother’s rules.”
Elliott’s chin came up again. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“’Cause she’s not always right. ’Cause she thinks she knows best but she doesn’t.”
Interesting.
But in terms of the investigation?
“So you think setting a fire in the boys’ bathroom trash can was right?”
“Sorta.”
“How can something ‘sorta’ be right?”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
“I can’t promise not to. Not until I hear what you have to say.”
Elliott shook his head. “When we talk in there, no one can say what we say.”
Reese studied the boy, investigating a possible subject. He had to consider the fact that he knew, from Elliott’s mother as well as from Lila, that the boy was in a dangerous place. That the rest of his life could well depend on his time at the Stand.
