Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Garrick was weary to the bone. His morning had started at three with an Amber Alert.
The missing kid was a four-year-old boy who had been taken by his noncustodial father.
While Happily Inc didn’t have a lot of crime, bad stuff happened everywhere.
His officers had issued the alert and started patrolling the area, looking for the man’s car.
The father’s violent past had added urgency to the search.
The department had been contacted by a concerned citizen who had heard screaming while on a morning run.
Garrick had joined his officers on the edge of the desert and had found the boy and his dad, setting up camp.
The father had defied the police order to put up his hands.
Instead, he’d gone for his gun. When the shooting had stopped, two officers were injured, the man was dead, but the boy was safe. Traumatized, but safe.
Garrick had spent the rest of the day dealing with the paperwork that followed a situation like that.
The boy had been bruised from a beating, but otherwise physically all right.
Back in town, the mother had a black eye and a broken arm.
Garrick had insisted that in addition to a medical checkup that they both got counseling to deal with the aftermath of what they’d been through.
He didn’t believe killing a suspect was ever a positive outcome, but sometimes there wasn’t a choice and every now and then, he thought maybe the world was better off because of it. This was one of those days.
He’d spoken with all the officers involved in the shooting, visited the two injured officers at the hospital, been reassured they would be released in the morning and had given an accounting to the local TV station.
Garrick told himself the kid and the mother were safe and that was what mattered, but he didn’t like the reminder that the world could be a dark place, even in Happily Inc.
By the time he got home, he wanted nothing more than a shower, a beer and a couple of hours of watching his favorite football team kick someone’s ass. Instead, he found his daughter pacing in the living room.
“I heard,” she said, staring at him wide-eyed. “About that man kidnapping his son. There was a shoot-out. Are you all right?”
She sounded worried, which felt kind of nice. Without thinking, he held open his arms, before remembering that for some reason, Joylyn didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. Only instead of rejecting him, she raced into his embrace and hung on tight.
“I was so scared,” she said.
“I’m fine. I wasn’t in any danger.”
He held her, aware of the differences in her body.
Her huge belly got between them, reminding him that his little girl was a grown woman and soon to be a mother herself.
He thought about how scared the boy’s mom had been and knew if something like that ever happened to Joylyn, he would move heaven and earth to keep her safe.
She stepped back. “Did you go to the shoot-out?” she asked.
“It wasn’t a shoot-out. It’s not like in the movies.”
She glared at him. “Did the suspect have a gun and did he fire at officers?”
“Yes.”
“Were any of them injured?”
Damn. “A couple.”
“So you were in danger.”
“I was coordinating the action. I wasn’t in the direct line of fire.”
“But you still could have been shot.”
“I suppose, but I wasn’t. I’m fine.”
He thought she might continue to grill him, but instead she nodded. “Okay, Dad. I know you want to take a shower. We’ll talk after that.”
Twenty minutes later, he joined her in the kitchen. When she saw him, she got a beer from the refrigerator and opened the bottle, then poured herself some water. She put out chips and dip, along with a plate of cut-up vegetables.
“Thanks,” he said, both surprised by and wary of her thoughtfulness.
She picked up a slice of red bell pepper but didn’t take a bite. He waited, wanting her to tell him what was on her mind. He assumed she would want to know more about the morning’s events, but she surprised him by asking, “Were you working for the DEA when you were gone that one year?”
He groaned silently. Not a topic he wanted to discuss with her. He didn’t like talking about that time in his life. So much had happened that still haunted him. His capture and torture, Raine’s death, the realization that someone he’d trusted had betrayed him.
He nodded slowly. “Yes, I was on assignment in Colombia, working undercover. I wasn’t supposed to be gone that long, but the cartel found out who I was and took me prisoner.”
Her eyes widened. “Wh-what?”
He raised one shoulder. “It was a long time ago and I’m fine.”
“It wasn’t a long time ago. You came home less than four years ago.” She brushed away tears. “I thought you were just living your life. No one told me.”
“I’m sure your mother didn’t want to upset you.”
“Upset me? She didn’t tell me my own father was held captive by some drug cartel? How did they even know who you were?”
“Someone on the inside told them.”
The tears stopped. “Do you know who did that?”
He nodded. “He’s dead.”
“Did you kill him?”
He managed a slight smile. “No. I don’t do revenge killings. The cartel did it. While they appreciated the information, they knew he could never be trusted, so they killed him.” He didn’t mention they’d slit open his belly and left him to bleed out and be eaten in the jungle.
“Did they hurt you?”
He thought about the scars on his torso, reminders of the knife fights he’d been forced into. He thought of the beatings and the starvation, of how they’d poisoned him just enough to make him wish he would die, but not enough to actually kill him.
“Joylyn, I’m fine. Why do you want to talk about this?”
“Because I should know what happened to you. What if you’d died? What if the last thing I ever said to you was that I didn’t want to see you anymore? I thought you were just ignoring me, and now I find out you were in Colombia and kidnapped and I never knew.”
“Maybe if you’d bothered to talk to me, this wouldn’t be such a surprise. I showed up every damned weekend for months before taking the first assignment. When I got back, I kept showing up. Every weekend, Joylyn. Until you graduated from high school. What the hell?”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You’ve never sworn at me before.”
“You’ve never poked at the open wound before.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I won’t swear at you again.”
“It’s okay. I probably deserve it.”
He leaned toward her. “Tell me what happened. Please. I want to know. Why did you turn your back on me? I want to say it was just some teenage thing, but I know it wasn’t. I can’t think of a single thing I did that was worthy of that kind of rejection. Just tell me.”
She lowered her gaze before looking at him again. “It was Sandy.”
“My ex-wife? What does she have to do with anything?”
Sandy had never been thrilled to have a stepdaughter, he thought, then reminded himself it wasn’t the stepdaughter she’d objected to as much as Garrick’s devotion to Joylyn. That was what had pissed off Sandy.
“When you two split up, she came to see me.” She bit her lower lip.
“She said you’d thrown her out because you’d gotten tired of her.
She said you’d never really loved me and that she wanted me to prepare myself because I was next.
She said you couldn’t wait for me to grow up so you could be done with me. ”
“What?” he roared, coming to his feet.
Joylyn stared at him without speaking. Probably for the best, he thought, pacing the length of the kitchen, looking for something to throw through the window.
How could she? That bitch. Only the word wasn’t strong enough and he couldn’t think of one bad enough. How could she have done that? Who would have done that to an impressionable kid?
He returned to the table and sank back in his chair, then stretched out his arms and took Joylyn’s hands in his.
“I love you,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “Joylyn, I have always loved you. Do you believe me?”
She hesitated before nodding.
“Good. Now look into my eyes so you can see I’m telling the truth.
I did not dump Sandy. She left me because she hated everything about our life.
She made that very clear. She was angry that I wouldn’t move to a different city or find another job.
She wanted me to sell insurance or some such nonsense. ”
“You’d be really bad at that.”
“I probably would. Salespeople have skills I don’t begin to understand. Anyway, I came home one day and she was moving out. She had a whole list of reasons.”
“Was I one of them?”
Now it was his turn to pause. He weighed the consequences of lying, only to realize he had to be completely honest. “Yes.”
“She never liked me.”
“I think the person she didn’t like was me, kid.”
One corner of Joylyn’s mouth turned up. “That might be true.”
He squeezed her hands. “I never wanted to stop seeing you. I didn’t look forward to you growing up and moving on. If it were up to me, I would have kept you nine forever.”
“Why nine?”
“It was a good age.”
She smiled. “Dad, I couldn’t be nine my whole life.”
“You didn’t even try.”
She laughed, then started to cry. She pulled her hands free and wiped her cheeks. “Sorry. I’m one blubbering emotion these days.”
“It’s okay. I want you to believe me. I’ll give you the phone number of some of my friends back in Phoenix. You can text them and get all this confirmed. I didn’t dump Sandy, and I would never abandon you.”
“I know.”
Some of the tension left his body. “You believe me?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Was that really why you refused to see me? You were leaving me first?”
“It wasn’t a very formed plan. Part of it was that and part of it was me testing you, I think. I wanted you to push back. I wanted you to get mad and demand I see you.”
“I would have, only I was giving you space.” Completely the wrong thing to do, he thought grimly. “The whole time you assumed my actions proved what you already believed.”
She nodded.