Chapter Twenty-six – Somewhere In Between
Chapter Twenty-six
Cooper
SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
Performed by Lifehouse
Leaving Andie at the ranch twisted my gut. Not only because she was in the spotlight of some asshole, but it felt like every time we came back together, she’d reassembled some of her walls I’d spent time and effort tearing down. It was understandable that she’d be afraid and doubt me—doubt us.
Hell, I still had moments where I wasn’t sure I hadn’t lost my damn mind.
I’d known Andie for mere weeks.
We’d had one fucking date that had dissolved into a traumatic reliving of her worst moments.
But I couldn’t shake the truth of what I’d told her.
She was the answer to the hole I hadn’t even realized was in my life. In Luca’s. All of us were more than the scars that had been carved into us by betrayal and loss, including my son.
We could be a family.
It was scary and a gamble that could cost Luca as much as myself. I had to talk to him about it. About Andie and me and what it meant if we built a family together.
I was halfway to my parents’ house when the call came in—a break-in at the Blaze artist colony. Officers in route and requesting backup.
“This is Wylee. I’m en route. ETA five minutes. Who’s on site?”
“Freeborn took the call.”
“Where’s Deering?”
“Deering was at Frank’s, breaking up a bar fight. He’s at least ten minutes out.”
I hit the lights, put my foot to the pedal, and called Dad. I wasn’t going to make it to their house to get Luca.
I’d just turned into the long drive when Freeborn’s shaky voice came over the radio. “Owner is injured. I’m trying to stop the bleeding, but I need an ambulance ASAP.”
My brakes screeched, and gravel skidded as I pulled up outside the main house of the artists’ colony.
The rambling ranch house had been added onto in all directions over the years, with buildings and rooms spread out all over the damn place.
A search for a perp would take far more manpower than the two of us.
Freeborn’s vehicle was parked outside, lights still swirling.
I jumped from the cab and drew my weapon and tactical flashlight as I approached. The front door was open, the entranceway dark. I entered, swinging my light to clear it.
“Sheriff! Back here,” Freeborn called out.
I slowly made my way toward his voice, briefly scanning each room as I passed it. The hair on my neck raised.
Freeborn was kneeling on the black-and-white-checkered linoleum floor in the kitchen with his hands pressed on a towel to a woman’s stomach. Blood was all over him, her, and the floor.
As I got closer, I recognized the thick, gray hair and wrinkled face of Sookie Blaze, who owned and ran the colony these days.
“She pulled the knife out of her stomach before I could tell her not to,” Freeborn said, glancing toward the long eight-inch carving knife lying next to her.
“She was babbling about someone in the pottery studio before she passed out. I heard a door slam and someone running through the hall toward the backyard.”
“Where are the rest of the artists?”
“Field trip to Stonyridge Falls.”
“So she was by herself?”
Freeborn nodded.
“Bugsy’s on her way. Stay put.”
I headed out toward the pottery studio, which was at the rear of the house.
I hadn’t ever spent time in that particular studio in my youth.
I’d always been in the wood shop, and in the years I’d been gone, the colony had continued to grow.
Worse, the maze of rooms and sheds contained some serious-ass tools that could be used as weapons.
When I eased into the studio, broken bits of clay were strewn across the floor, tools lay scattered, and the heavier equipment had been toppled over.
The room had been ransacked just like the houses along my parents’ street.
The thieves were good at causing chaos, slowing down the victims’ ability to determine what had actually been taken.
While the fucking drug dealer selling to kids had rightly been my priority, it pissed me off we hadn’t caught the robbers either.
If we didn’t end both these crime streaks soon, the county supervisors would be asking for my resignation long before I’d finished out a single year of Dad’s term.
The back door leading to the courtyard was wide open, but the screen door was banging every time the wind caught it. The sound wasn’t unlike feet stomping along a hall.
Had Freeborn misheard? Was the perp still inside?
I was just about to turn back and start a careful search of the house when a shift of light caught my eye outside. A phone flashlight, turned on low, was directed at the ground as someone picked their way through the rose bushes.
I eased the screen door open, relieved when it didn’t squeal. In order to keep my footsteps as quiet as possible, I avoided the pebbled paths and stuck to the grass, ducking low as I approached.
Dressed in dark pants and a hoodie that couldn’t hide a skinny frame, the perp searched the ground as if looking for something they’d lost.
“Sheriff’s office. Freeze.”
Of course, they didn’t.
But I startled them enough that they dropped their phone before taking off like a jack rabbit. I gave chase, boots beating on the gravel. I was already gaining on them when they tripped over a row of bricks edging the fallow vegetable garden and went sprawling face-first into the dirt.
I placed a knee in their back and wrenched one arm behind them while I holstered my weapon. I read them their rights as I slid the cuffs on. I jerked the perp to their feet, and as I did, their hood fell off, revealing a boy about Luca’s age with tawny brown hair.
“I d-didn’t stab her. I swear. I didn’t touch her,” the kid stammered. “That wasn’t me. I swear that was all him. He left me. He just took off on the ATV while I searched for my keys.”
I hauled the teen toward the house while keeping my eyes peeled for more movement, in case his partner wasn’t as gone as the kid said. Sirens lit the air from the front of the property—the whomp of another sheriff vehicle and the high pitch of an ambulance.
“If you don’t let me go, I’m dead. He’ll kill me before he lets me rat him out.
” The terror in the kid’s voice was real, and fury welled inside once more, not only at this kid for ruining his life, but at whoever was jerking his string.
Was it another kid? Or a fucking adult preying on the teens of Rivers in a different way than the asshole selling them drugs?
One way or another, I’d find out. I’d find them and throw the book at them.
? ? ?
It was nearing midnight by the time I finally left the station. The building had gone quiet, returning to the hush that normally filled our small-town department, especially in the wee hours.
Too bad ours had been anything but quiet these days.
Aubrey Warren was locked up, but that was about the only thing that felt certain about the situation. He hadn’t broken down and given me the name of his accomplice, not even when I’d pressed or when his guardian had arrived in a panic, eyes wild and hands shaking.
Furious tears had streamed down his older sister’s face as Ophelia—or Phee as she’d insisted she preferred—had demanded he tell me who had dragged him into this mess.
Her voice had cracked every time she’d said his name, but Aubrey had only stared at the table, terror sitting raw and naked in his eyes.
After his sister had finally left to get a hold of a lawyer and a bail bondsman, Deering filled me in on the rest of their situation.
Their parents had been killed in a train accident a few years ago, and Phee had dropped out of college and moved home to raise Aubrey.
They lived at the end of my parents’ block, in a house in the shadow of the Moorwood mansion—close enough to be seen but quiet enough to be forgotten by most of the neighborhood.
Aubrey’s fingerprints were identified as the ones we’d found at every break-in on my parents’ street.
A good defense attorney would argue the kid had been in and out of those homes because half the block treated open doors like invitations.
And maybe, months ago, that argument would’ve worked.
But these prints were fresh. They put him where he wasn’t supposed to be.
Still, nothing about the kid fit. According to his sister, and his spotless record, Aubrey had never been in trouble before.
Phee couldn’t understand why he’d be mixed up in something like this, and she was terrified that when Sookie woke up, she’d point the finger at him and end what little chance he had left of getting out of this before he was old and gray.
Aubrey denied stabbing her with everything he had in him, and I wanted to believe him, for both their sakes.
The only thing the teen had admitted was that he’d been working with an adult—someone he owed money to.
When I asked what he owed the money for, he shut down completely, fear slamming the door on whatever truth was rattling around inside him.
My gut twisted anyway. Debt. Teenagers. Rivers.
It all circled back to the same damn place, the drugs that had already put too many kids in the ground.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, exhaustion sat heavy in my bones. I glanced next door, anticipation quickening, but Andie’s SUV wasn’t there. At least I’d beaten her home.
Every light in my house was on. Bright enough to make it look as if someone was actually awake and waiting to greet me when it was the last thing I expected. Mom had texted me before she’d left about an hour ago that Luca had headed to bed.
When I’d called Luca earlier from the station, wanting to give him a heads-up about Andie staying with us, he’d accepted it without hesitation. Too easily. Which meant it was probably more about the damn dog than Andie herself, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.