Danny and his mother. His role, strictly volunteer, was to keep an eye on Danny anytime the boy wasn’t with his mother or teachers. Specifically he was to do multiple drive-bys a day to see that all was well. Miranda, a frequent visiting member of the High Risk Team, had come up with the idea for the two of them, Danny and him, to actually meet. Her reasoning—if Danny knew him and knew he was close by, he’d be more apt to reach out if he was in trouble—was sound.
But it was only going to work if he could get Danny to trust him.
Not an easy feat for a man who’d had few dealings with kids until recently, and a little boy who’d had his trust in men destroyed by the one man he should’ve been able to count on—his father.
The boy didn’t turn to him as Tad spoke. Danny’s tennis-shoe-clad heel on his good leg was no longer lightly bumping the table. It hung completely still beside the leg he could hardly move.
That caught Tad’s attention.
Danny didn’t have to know or like Tad for Tad to keep an eye on him. But maybe he could do more here than help prevent further physical harm. Maybe he could help the little guy heal in other ways.
As someone who was attempting to heal himself, he found that the idea appealed to him.
“Ladies, if you’ll please forgive any impropriety and feel free to turn your heads, I’d like to show Danny something on my leg.” He tore the paper from the top half of the exam table, wrapped it around his waist. Then, looking at Miranda and Danny’s mother for an okay and receiving nods, he awkwardly—using one hand, as though performing some kind of comic routine—managed to get his loose-fitting jeans undone and dropped them to the floor. He was a boxers kind of guy, dark blue that day, and even without the paper all pertinent parts were fully covered. It wasn’t the pertinent parts that were relevant right now.
Pulling the paper up on his waist, high enough to expose his upper thigh or, more accurately, the jagged, puffy and discolored seven-inch scar slashing across the front and around the side of his leg, he said, “It doesn’t look as gross now as it did. And yours won’t look nearly as bad because it was a straight line, and that makes a big difference.”
Standing there with his pants around his ankles, Tad might have felt embarrassed. Or inappropriate. All he felt was that he had to reach this little guy on his own level. Dealing with what was foremost on the boy’s mind.
And it appeared to be working. Danny, having sat upright, was staring at the scar. Boys must still be somewhat the way he remembered himself being—fascinated by gross things.
“I fell, too,” he said, leaving out the part about the explosion that had sent him flying. Just like he didn’t mention that he knew Danny had been running from his enraged father when he’d tripped and impaled his leg on a plant stake in the backyard.
“It hurt like heck to move my leg for a while,” he added, because he knew Danny had months of rehab ahead of him as the muscle that had been cut in his upper thigh healed. “I go to the gym at least twice a day, three days a week, to make it stronger, and now I can walk without any limp at all.” Unless he was overtired. Then a tilted gait came back to remind him of what he’d done.
He moved his leg enough to flex the muscle, which made the scar jump. “See, it works just fine now.”
Glancing briefly at the two women on either side of the exam table, he asked if they’d mind turning around so he could get himself put back together. He did so in record time, except for tucking in the blue cotton polo shirt. Going strictly on instincts, as he watched the boy watching him, he lifted his shirt a few inches, showing Danny his back. “I got burned, too,” he told the boy. “So, you see, I’m just here as a guy who got hurt, wanting to help another guy who got hurt.”
Danny didn’t speak. But he didn’t turn away, either. He watched Tad. And maybe that was enough.
“What happened?” Danny’s mother asked. Tad looked up and saw the compassion on her face. He chose to think of it as that, as opposed to pity, which he could not abide. He’d made a stupid choice.
But it had brought the best result possible—saving a little girl’s life. Something that might have been done with less damage—to himself and others—if he’d followed protocol by waiting for the hostage negotiators and SWAT to arrive.
Or little Lola could have been hurt far worse than the minimal bruising she’d suffered from Tad’s falling too heavily on her when he dived to protect her body from the blast.
“A guy was angry with me,” he said, vetting his words carefully with Danny in mind. “He had something that didn’t belong to him and when I went to get it back, he...hurt me.”
Lola’s’s father had rigged a homemade bomb to go off if anyone pushed open the antiques store’s back office door, behind which he held the child hostage. Unaware that the girl was there, Tad had gone to the business, not yet open for the day, to question him about some things he’d been selling in his shop. Stolen things.
“Did they get the bad guy?” Danny’s voice was surprisingly strong as he looked Tad in the eye.
“Yes, they did,” he said. The man had been prepared to kill himself and his daughter, too, apparently, rather than face arrest. The child wasn’t supposed to have been there. Her mother, who’d had shared custody of her and no idea that her soon to be ex-husband was in any kind of trouble, had dropped her off with him because she’d been called into work.
He’d dragged her into the back office, telling Tad and his partner to get out or he’d hurt her...
“So, anyway, if you want to come to the gym with me sometime, have your mom call me,” Tad said. Marie Williams already had his cell number. “You might see me hanging out, too,” he added. “You can talk to me or not, your choice. I just wanted you to know who I am and that I’ll be around.”
Danny said nothing more. Tad took the boy’s choice at face value and left the room.
* * *
Miranda didn’t hurry through the rest of her appointment with Danny and Marie Williams, but as soon as they were out of the exam room, she finished the last of her administrative responsibilities for the day. Then she was out the back door of the clinic where she worked for pediatric specialist Dr. Max Bennet, and heading to her car.
The white Chevy Equinox blended in with a million other similar-sized and -shaped white mini SUVs, which was why it fit her perfectly. She had an hour before she had to pick Ethan up, and Tad Newberry was waiting for her at a coffee shop halfway between her office and the school.
The balmy sixty-five-degree weather was perfect for her white cardigan and cartoon-spattered scrubs.
Heart pounding in an entirely new way, she drove five miles over the speed limit, switching lanes when necessary to weave past slower cars. All the while, she thought about those minutes in the exam room with the off-duty, out-of-state detective who’d shown up at a High Risk Team meeting six weeks before.
He’d dropped his pants. The move had been calculated, out of the ordinary, a somewhat shocking attempt to get Danny’s attention—and build trust, too. She understood that. Admired the hell out of it, actually. He’d known that Danny felt particularly vulnerable, so he’d made himself seem—and perhaps feel—just as vulnerable.
All of that aside...she’d peeked. She shouldn’t have. It had
