Page 17 of Hold a Candle

Chapter 5

Thirty minutes later, Pauley set her phone down on her desk in the police station and dropped her head into her hands. This whole incident had left her badly shaken. Had they planned to kill Luca? Or was it just a warning? Granted, the damages could have been worse, but if he’d actually been in the room, he could have been seriously injured or even, God forbid, killed.

Cringing at the memory of losing her membership in the patient mother’s club by grabbing the front of Luca’s shirt and shaking him senseless, she tried to think. He still wasn’t talking, and frankly, she was still angry with him.

She hadn’t been at her best anyway when he’d come down the stairs with a sullen face and refused to reveal anything about what he was doing when he’d been running from Tommie Ruskag. When the room above the stairs had suddenly exploded, they’d run out of the house to seek safety. When Mica had responded along with the fire department, blind fury and fear had taken over when Luca refused to answer Mica’s questions once again, and she’d assaulted her own son.

Not her finest moment.

Mica had separated them and whispered how he understood that the kid needed a good thrashing, but it would be better to do it in private. She’d been so embarrassed.

One good thing had come out of it, though. Luca had agreed to go to Heaven’s Gate and work there for a while. With a sigh, she ran her palms down her face, feeling the crusty stickiness of dried tears. She must look like hell.

“I’m sorry, Mum.”

She looked over at Luca sitting beside her desk. “I’m still angry, Luca, but mostly because ye scared me half to death. I just don’t understand why ye won’t talk about what ye are into. How can I help ye if ye won’t trust me?”

Luca hesitated, his puppy dog eyes staring at her. “It’s not that I don’t trust ye, Mum. I-It’s complicated, and it’s not my secret to tell.”

She stared at him, her mind ticking over possibilities. “If it’s a secret that’s putting ye in danger, ye need to tell someone. Whoever ye are covering for isn’t being fair to ye.”

His face closed over again. “I shouldn’t have said that, never mind.”

Pauley studied him a moment and silently cursed the fact that he was every bit as stubborn as she was. He’d come by it honestly. With a heavy sigh, she stood up. “All right then, let’s go. I’m taking ye to Neamh where I think ye’ll be safe for now.”

Mica saw them stand up and came over. “Are ye ready?”

She nodded. “Aye, Mica, thank ye.”

“Luca, ye come with me,” Mica instructed.

“I’ll meet ye outside,” Pauley said.” She picked up her cell phone and dialed Jamie’s number.

“Hello?” His buttery, smooth voice came across the line, very pleasing in her ear.

“Jamie, we are headed out of the police station now,” she said as she walked towards the door.

“I’ll tell Darro, lass. Be careful.”

His concern caused a pool of warmth in her breast. She had called Peter to tell him about the house and he’d raged for five minutes about her job causing his son to be in danger until she’d finally hung up on him. Not one offer to come by the police station, or even to see his son. Of course, that could change tomorrow because she could tell he’d been drinking heavily.

Pauley hadn’t called her parents because they didn’t like her job either, and she figured it would be more of the same complaints she’d gotten from Peter. Sometimes she felt like she was swimming upstream while everyone else was content to lie in the shallows and gripe that the current was too difficult to navigate.

---