Chapter Three
Gard had caught up with Sammy halfway down Main Street. She didn’t argue with him when he told her to get in his patrol car, but that hadn’t made his choices any easier.
He’d had to think fast to figure out what to do with her when he had two hours left on his shift. Luckily, one of his former trainees was working the zone his house was in, so he’d asked if he could switch on account of a family emergency.
Gard drove Sammy back to his house, half listening to his radio for a call and half wondering what the hell he was going to do if he got one.
Once he’d arrived at his house, he’d told Sammy to go inside and stay put. He wouldn’t lecture her until he was technically off duty. She’d slammed out of his patrol car and into the house, while he’d stayed parked out front, praying he didn’t get any calls he had to respond to.
Luck was in his favor—at least in this teeny, tiny part of his life, and he was able to clock out and radio off without having to leave his post.
He approached the house, wincing at the sound of music thumping from inside. He couldn’t wait to hear the complaints from his neighbors. Especially since he worked with the detective who lived next door. Hart was a decent guy, and actually…
Gard looked over at the house. Maybe Hart could look into Dani’s disappearance. It wouldn’t be the first time Gard had asked someone at Bent County for help, but he tended to ask the same person so he didn’t have to explain this to someone else.
So tomorrow, maybe he’d go talk to Laurel. She was the lead detective in Bent County these days, and she was familiar with Dani’s issues.
Gard knew better, but it was always a possibility Dani hadn’t caused her own trouble.
And when has that ever been true? Irritated with himself, he stepped inside.
He went straight to the guest room where Sammy was sprawled out on the bed, nose in her phone.
He figured the music thumping out of an external speaker was originating from the laptop on her desk, so he went over and flipped it closed.
Blessed silence followed. Sammy sent him one disgusted look, then went back to playing on her phone. She said nothing. Offered no apologies or excuses. Just haughty indifference.
Because she expected him to yell, lecture, punish. He wanted to—and probably should—but since she was expecting it, he started somewhere else. He couldn’t let her off the hook completely, but he could…work his way around to the hook.
“Has your mom called? Texted?”
Her eyebrows drew together, unable to hide her confusion at him not approaching the subject of her stealing. “No.”
Dani was a lot of things, but even when she was messed up, she communicated with her daughter. You’re grasping at straws. Yeah, he was, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Take me through her leaving again.”
Sammy rolled onto her stomach, looking at her phone, not him. “Look, I know you want this to be different or whatever. But it’s not. It’s the same thing every time. She’s gone. I’m screwed.”
Gard knew Sammy was right. That kernel of concern that something had happened to Dani was… Well, it was never right. It was always…not wishful thinking exactly—because he didn’t wish anything bad on his sister. He just wanted her to be making better choices, and she never was.
“Come on. You’re helping make dinner.”
She said nothing. She didn’t move. She just kept looking at her phone, her thumbs moving over the screen at a rapid pace.
“Sammy.”
“Not hungry,” she said, not bothering to look up.
“Have you eaten anything since lunch?”
She shrugged.
He would not turn into his father—cold and intimidating and threatening, but man, he could feel that welling up inside of him. It left him feeling a little sick to his stomach.
But she did need to eat, and God, he hated cell phones. So he moved closer to the bed and she finally looked up at him. He took the momentary distraction to pluck the phone from her hands.
She shrieked.
“You want it back for school tomorrow? You’re helping make and clean up after dinner.” Then he simply walked out of the room. Calm. Direct. No yelling. No threats.
Maybe it wasn’t the best move—hell, how was he supposed to know how to be a parent? But it wasn’t yelling. It wasn’t the silent treatment. He wouldn’t withdraw love or support just because she was acting out and pissing him off.
He was evolved.
He went into his room and put the cell phone in the safe with his gun. He changed out of his uniform and into sweats. When he went out to the kitchen, he was surprised to find Sammy was there rather than pouting in her room with the door locked.
She gave him a cool once-over. “I don’t even need my phone,” she said, nose in the air. “Technological dependency is a scourge.”
He did not say what he wanted—that she sure did an amazing impression of technological dependency—he just pretended he agreed. He opened the fridge and tried to think of something to make.
He tended to lean toward frozen dinners, sandwiches, or something canned, so he was a little at a loss staring at the contents of his fridge. “Well…” At least a sandwich could have a few different food groups. Maybe he could heat up a can of soup with them and—
“I’ll make spaghetti,” Sammy said, sounding disgusted with him. Or maybe just life.
“I can do it.”
She gave him a little shove away from the refrigerator. “No, you’ll put extra salt in the sauce and make it gross. I’ll do it.”
He opened his mouth to argue some more. She was in a lot of trouble, and her making dinner certainly didn’t get her out of it, and he didn’t feel right having someone else make him a meal. Not these days.
“I like it,” she muttered. “Let me do it.”
Since she muttered the I like it part, he figured she wasn’t lying. “All right. You cook. I’ll clean.”
She perked up a little at that, surprising Gard.
He tried to keep up with what she liked, but he hadn’t heard anything about a desire to spend time in the kitchen.
Still, he watched her work. She knew her way around his kitchen even though she’d never cooked here before—likely because he’d organized Dani’s kitchen in the apartment in Fairmont the same way he did his.
Gard sat down at the table, keeping an eye on her over the counter that separated kitchen from dining room.
As he watched her put everything together, he realized…
she was enjoying herself. She was concentrating, cutting up tomatoes and inspecting his array of spices.
She didn’t have that permanent teenage-rebellion scowl on her face as she poured dry pasta into boiling water and stirred whatever sauce concoction she was making.
When it was all done, she even made up two plates—complete with toasted bread slathered in butter. She brought them to the table.
“Are you really going to make me go to work at six in the morning on a weekend?” she asked, sliding the plate in front of him. “That’s like…child abuse.”
Since she brought it up, he figured it was fair game now.
“How about this? Don’t steal. You won’t earn yourself a job.
” And him the complication of having to finagle some afternoons off so he could pick her up from the bakery.
He tended to work most weekends since he didn’t have a wife or kids to see, and most of his friends were first responders working nontraditional hours.
She shrugged, sliding into the seat across from him. “It’s fun.”
He didn’t groan or grimace or close his eyes in quiet supplication to some higher power to help him survive this. He tried to remain even-keeled and unimpressed. No matter how he felt about the idea of stealing being fun.
“Well, it’s not going to be fun when you don’t have a nice bakery owner to bail you out and I have no choice but to have someone I work with actually arrest you.”
“It’d just be juvie.”
Gard rolled his eyes. She didn’t have a damn clue, but she certainly thought she did.
Teenagers. “You want to stay out of the system, Sammy? Follow the rules.” He took a bite of the plate of food she’d put in front of him, chewed thoughtfully, then narrowed his eyes at her.
“Hey, this is really good. What did you do to it?”
He watched as she tried to fight her pleasure over the compliment. “It’s just spaghetti.”
“Maybe, but that’s not just generic brand sauce from a jar. Believe me, I know.”
“I just doctored it up a little bit.”
“It’s amazing. Be careful. I could get used to this.”
She ducked her head, clearly trying to hide a smile. Which made him feel a bit like he’d won the lottery—a very strange, warped lottery, but a win nonetheless.
He didn’t bring up the stealing again. He asked about school.
About her schedule. They talked about getting her driver’s permit.
He had a lot of realities to figure out now that he suddenly had a fifteen-year-old to take care of.
In some ways, that was easier than when she’d been a baby or a toddler, but it still required a lot of reconfiguring his life.
But he’d never want her to know just how much effort it was, because he’d do it a million times if it kept her safe.
They did not talk about Dani. They did not talk about her decidedly not going to this Model UN meeting and instead heading to Hope Town to steal.
Gard knew that was probably a failure on his part, but he just couldn’t bring himself to ruin the ease of this dinner with the negative subject of her…breaking the law.
When Sammy got up to take her plate to the sink, he stopped her. “Nope. I’m on cleanup duty.”
Sammy considered him, then shrugged and put her plate back down. “’Kay.”
“You got homework?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes.”
“Then get on it.”
“Mom never asks if I have homework.”
“That’s because your mom didn’t graduate high school. You plan on following in those footsteps?”
She wrinkled her nose, regarded him with serious blue eyes. “Were you really going to go to law school?”
Gard blinked in surprise. “She told you that?”