Page 88 of Before We Fell

She gave the same mumbled okay Riley had and I finally pressed the connect button on my phone. Ushering both Lauren and Riley outside, I explained everything to the operator, gave them Lauren’s address, and moved Lauren and Riley to the wooden rocking chairs. Riley climbed into Lauren’s lap, candy forgotten, and when I got off the phone, both of them looked at me expectantly.

“Said there are cruisers nearby. Someone will be here in a few minutes. Okay?”

I was wrong. Someone didn’t show in a few minutes.

Less than one minute later, two squad cars and an unmarked one pulled up to Lauren’s driveway, lights flashing but silent, and my jaw clamped shut when Shawn climbed out of the unmarked car, hurrying to Lauren’s porch before the other officers got out of their vehicles.

Of course. Of all the cops in all the small towns. It had to be the guy who wanted in her pants who showed up. I knew she’d told him weeks ago about us, but I still didn’t like the attention he gave her. Apparently I had some caveman left in me.

“Lauren, you okay?” Shawn asked.

Her eyes slid to me, and like she read my mind, she came to me, arm curving around my lower back. I draped my arm over her shoulders and held her close. “I’m fine, Shawn.”

Shawn’s jaw ticked, his gaze moved to mine, unwavering. Understanding. With a brief nod only a man would understand, a pressure valve released tightness in my chest.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We just got back from trick-or-treating,” Lauren said, her voice shaking. My arm around her wasn’t any comfort, wasn’t calming her, but hell if I was letting her go. “Someone was in my house.”

“How can you tell?” As he asked, the two other uniformed officers stepped up on the porch. Ryan gave me a quick “hey man,” and the other man focused on Lauren.

“The back door. My curtains are stuck in it…where it closes? And I know I locked it. I checked it before I left. And there’s a picture missing from the fridge. Stupid…just a drawing.”

“Of what?”

“A stick drawing. A student gave it to me, said he wanted me to bring it home. It’s just him and I, stick figures, and a heart around us. It’s nothing. Just a drawing.”

Her head was shaking back and forth, slow, jerky movements. At my hip, her hand gripped me like I was made of steel. I ignored the pain and ran my hand up and down her back. Slowly, she released her death grip on me and stepped to the side, shoving her hands to her hair.

The officer I didn’t know stepped forward. “Never know, Lauren. Maybe the kid just wanted his picture back. Kids have done stranger things, especially on this night. It’s always the weirdest.”

“We’ll go in and take a look,” Ryan said. And in sync, from years of training and practice, all men flipped the snap on their belts, hands went to their weapons. “Did you go anywhere in the house? Anywhere at all.”

“No,” I said, stepping in. “We walked in, she went to the fridge, saw the picture missing, saw the curtains. We called you and came right back out.”

“Stay here while we make sure no one’s in there, okay? Give us a few minutes, then we want you to walk us through the house, see if anything else is gone.”

“Okay,” Lauren croaked, and her hands were a tangled mess in front of her. At the side of the porch, I caught Riley sitting, rocking. Feet swaying, eyes fixed on the cruisers with their lights flashing.

They disappeared inside, hands on their belts, covering their weapons. An echo of the “clear” filtered through the door they left open and I moved Lauren toward Riley.

“Hey, Squirt.” I crouched down in front of her.

“Shit,” Lauren whispered, joining me. “Hey honey, you okay?”

“I don’t like cops.” Her voice was so small. So damn tiny but her blank expression was what scared me the most. I’d lived with that expression for months after her parents died. A nothingness that was so eerie it chilled my bones.

Riley looked down at me. At my hand on her knee. Then to the cars. “Mom said you keep bad men from going to jail.”

“Not anymore.” She was too young to understand the nuance of my job. Yeah, sometimes I did. Sometimes I kept innocent from facing consequences that weren’t theirs to pay too. “I’m working in town now, remember?”

I hadn’t started yet, Morty and I were still talking. But I’d agreed to take the job, working with him and learning his clients and taking on new ones until he was ready to step aside.

“But you save bad people.”

Her tone was creepy. She was sitting in front of us. The heat of her skin beneath my palm. Yet Riley was somewhere else, she was in a parking garage, watching a bad man aim a gun at her mom and dad, and wondering…I had no damn clue what in the hell she was thinking.

That I would have saved that man?

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