Page 22 of Flashback

“You have my number, right?” Allie whispered.

Jen looked at her and nodded.

“Okay. Then you call me. Anytime. For anything. Understand? I will be there as fast as I can.”

Ray and a nurse came around the corner. Jen glanced at them and then lifted her chin as she faced Allie. “Thanks again for finding them.” She slipped back into the exam room.

Ray glowered as he approached. “What are you doing?”

“Just wanted to see how the boys are.” Allie gave him a fake smile and walked across the hall to her own partition.

“Well?” Dakota asked. He sat in a chair, leg bouncing as if he was ready to spring into action.

Allie shook her head. “She won’t admit anything is going on, but I know the signs. She’s scared. I made sure she had my number, but I don’t think we can do much else except report what they said.”

“That’s not good enough.” Dakota stood. “Men like that don’t deserve to go free.” He turned and stalked out of the room.

And she had the distinct feeling he wasn’t only talking about Ray.

Dakota walked back out to the lobby. He’d heard what Jen had said. Ethan might be making up stories about a bad man shooting someone, but he hadn’t even thought of that while the boys told their story. They’d been so adamant, and there was usually a grain of truth in any story. He’d learned that as a cop.

Something told him the real reason the boys had wanted to run away…

Was Ray.

Dakota knew exactly what those boys were going through. This time he was going to do something about it.

“Wait. Dakota.” Allie grabbed his arm. For a woman small in stature, she was strong. “What do you mean, ‘men like that’?”

He stopped before reaching the lobby and faced her.

“I mean men like my old man.” Buck Masterson had known how to avoid leaving marks that would be seen on Dakota’s body, but it was the wounds inside that took much longer to heal.

“What did he do?”

Things a sweet woman like Allie shouldn’t have to hear, but if it helped her understand the real danger those boys were in…“Let’s just say I was a convenient target for his rage. And as sheriff of a large county in the middle of nowhere, he knew how to throw his weight around and not get caught.”

Allie’s eyes widened. “What about your mom?”

“My mom?” He tried really hard to shrug like it wasn’t excruciating to remember. “She tried to smooth things over. She blamed the liquor, or my behavior. But eventually she got tired of being knocked around too, and we left.”

“So you got away? She’s okay now?”

“Okay? No. She never recovered.” Bitterness had taken root, and she’d found escape. “I tried. I tried so hard to take care of her. But…in the end it didn’t matter. She had her own addictions.”

Allie’s small hand latched onto his forearm. “What happened?” Her voice, only a quiet whisper, somehow wound through him and found the aching wounds inside. Places he’d never shown anyone.

“A meth overdose.” He swallowed hard, the picture of his mom’s gaunt figure on the tattered green couch as clear as if it had been yesterday. One moment she’d been high, spouting things she’d hidden from him his whole life. And then she was gone. “Right before she died, though, she told me I had a brother.”

“Wait. You didn’t know about Will?”

He jammed his hands in his pockets. “She’d never told me. Buck had never said a thing about having another son. For a moment I had this glimmer of hope. I had a brother out there somewhere. Maybe I wasn’t so alone, but my mom…she looked at me?—”

Thinks he’s better than us. Thinks we’re trash. So don’t go looking for him or anything.

“And what?”

“She told me Will hated us. That he thought he was better than us and wanted nothing to do with me because he was some big-time federal agent. For a long time I believed her. Later I found out Will never even knew I existed. But this is what Idoknow. Those two brothers deserve better than what Will and I have been through. From both parents.”

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