Fourteen

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Drea, Naomi didn’t get to sleep in. The pounding on the door had interrupted a perfectly wonderful slide into peaceful slumber.

Without bothering to don a robe, she stumbled to the front door and put her eye up to the peephole. “Oh, Drea. What are you doing here so early on a Sunday?”

Naomi turned the lock and opened the door.

Drea glided into the living room like a woman on a mission. “You can thank me later because I brought coffee and cinnamon rolls with cream cheese filling. It’s to celebrate getting your kitchen done.”

“About that,” Naomi began. “How’d you keep it to yourself?”

“Why does everyone think I have a problem keeping a secret?”

“Uh, because you do. Hand over that latte before I have to hit you with something.”

Drea twirled in a circle. “Do you like the job Colt did?”

“I love it.”

“Great. I hope he and Zach do half as good a job on my place.”

Naomi snickered. “I’m not sure Colt or Zach do anything halfway.”

“Zach certainly doesn’t.”

“What does that mean? Wait. You guys slept together? If that’s true, then what in the world are you doing here so early?”

“Zach had to get up early and be at Bree’s house to babysit. And since I was awake…”

Naomi held up a hand. “Well, if you have deets, we need to get settled first. If I had barstools we could sit at the counter. Sorry. For now, the table will have to do.” She took her pastry over and plopped down, sipped her coffee, and got comfortable. “So let’s get this thing with Zach squared away.”

“It was so wonderful with Zach last night, just like old times. I’d forgotten what a gentle man he is.”

“Wow, you work fast. That just makes me wish I hadn’t handled things badly with Colt.”

Drea’s eyes widened. “Wait. He didn’t try to get you into bed just because he did all this, did he?”

“No,” Naomi answered, determined to keep what had happened to herself. “I think he’s incapable of accepting any kind of love. You know, the three of us didn’t have ideal childhoods. That plays into the way we turned out.”

Drea pinched off a portion of the sweet roll. “That’s one way to describe my mother murdering my dad. Look, I get Colt wasn’t raised in a normal environment, but he’s a grown man. And he isn’t stupid. He should be able to realize a good thing when he sees it. That’s you.”

Naomi smiled at Drea’s fierce loyalty. “It’s not that simple. I moved here because I was running from a lot of bad memories back home. I think Colt’s been doing that since he was eighteen.”

Drea scrunched up her nose. “I do sort of understand that. I might’ve done the same thing, except that Shelby and Landon took us in. Caleb and I might’ve stuck close to Pelican Pointe but then look at Cooper. He hit the road as soon as he could and basically had to be dragged back here, sort of like Simon did to Colt.”

“Which is why I think Colt doesn’t feel like he has a connection to anyone. He’s drifted in the Army for so long, he’s spent his life…detached. He can’t see what’s right in front of him, not even the relationship he has with Simon or Cord.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“I’m not sure I have one, other than not giving up on him. But I am sort of regretting the fact I went bold like I did. Usually I sit back and wait, let the guy take the lead. Maybe I should have done that. But to be honest, when I woke up in the hospital, I realized that I’ve spent years in a shell. Now here I am in this little bitty town without any family whatsoever and I think I need to make a few changes to correct that. Or at least, alter the way I think.” She paused before getting to the point. “I hope you don’t freak out like Colt did, but I think of you as a sister. Even though we haven’t known each other that long…”

That’s as far as Naomi got before Drea caught her up in a hug. “I feel the same way. You always make time for me. Unlike Hannah, who is always so busy with their vineyard we rarely get a chance to hang out anymore. But…if you were ever considering widening your circle, Hannah would be someone you could depend on, Eastlyn, too. They make great sisters-in-law.”

“This isn’t a sorority with snooty requirements. I’m not holding auditions for friends or sisters. Everyone’s welcome in the Naomi tent. Okay, I’ve had way too much sugar. I’m starting to get maudlin.”

Drea looked around the kitchen. “You’ll feel better when we get you unpacked.”

Naomi’s eyes brightened. “Really? I would, wouldn’t I?”

“How else are we gonna work off these sweet rolls? Unless you don’t feel like it?”

“Are you kidding? I’m on a sugar high. It’s better than an IV drip.”

They started with the boxes in the garage marked “kitchen” and started unwrapping dishes.

Drea oohed and ahhed her way through box after box. “You have great tastes in old things. Are these plates Franciscan?”

“Yep. My grandmother bought my mom a set for a wedding present, which ended up ruined in the fire. It took me five years to hunt down a complete set of replacements.”

A light bulb went off in Drea’s brain. “All this stuff…you tried to replace whatever your parents had and lost, and you’ve been collecting it, packing it away, for when you had your own house. Am I right?”

“Silly, huh?”

“No. It’s amazing. It must’ve taken patience to find all this stuff over the years.”

“I used to spend my weekends browsing online or going to flea markets and garage sales within two hundred miles of Lincoln. I once ended up in Chicago at a giant yard sale held in the parking lot at Wrigley Field.”

“Didn’t you ever get tired of that?”

“What?”

“Running after what you lost? It had to be exhausting trying to locate all this stuff from your starting point in Nebraska. I mean how many Franciscan dinnerware sets are there still around in Cornhusker country?”

Naomi dropped into a kitchen chair and put her head in her hands. “Oh, Drea, I was pathetic back then, this nerdy college student trying to recapture my childhood or at least what I remember of it, a snapshot of Mom in the kitchen wearing her apron or Dad coming in from the fields wearing his work overalls. I don’t even have a real picture of them. So instead of spending time with people my own age, I hung out at thrift stores. I’ve been doing it ever since. Ten years later, I’m as pathetic as I ever was.”

Drea put an arm around her shoulders. “That’s not true. This is cool stuff. It’s just…maybe you shouldn’t be quite so…focused on it. You’re basically living in the past.”

“Just like Colt.”

“Well, I suppose so. Don’t get me wrong,” Drea said as she unwrapped a large, glass, blue-ribbed water pitcher and held it up like an offering. “This stuff is gorgeous. If you ever wanted to leave your job at the bank and open a second-hand outlet specializing in Depression era glass, you’ve got it covered.”

“See? I’m pathetic.”

“No, you’re sentimental, Naomi. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

 

Colt slept until almost eight o’clock. He woke with Merlin peering down into his face while Deke scrambled to jump on the bed and proceeded to smack Colt’s cheek with his tongue.

“Stand down, guys,” he ordered as he tossed back the covers. “What do you say we get breakfast and go for a run on the cliffs, get rid of some of this energy?”

But as he got to his feet and stretched his back, he heard the pitter patter of raindrops hitting the tin roof. Looking out the window, he let out a groan. “Unless we want to get soaked, we’re stuck inside until it lets up.”

In the kitchen, he poured chow for the dogs and got coffee started. He was just about to dig out eggs and bacon from the fridge to make himself an omelet when someone banged on the door.

The dogs abandoned their dishes and set up a din.

“Shh. Quiet,” Colt directed, snapping his fingers to show he meant it.

Brent stood on the stoop wearing a uniform so wet it stuck to his skin. “Sorry to bother you, but that third frat boy who went on the run, I’ve got him out in the cruiser. There’s a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Turns out, he is a she, and a young one at that.”

“What? That was no girl at the beach.”

“Are you certain? Because I found her inside the lighthouse. She’d been squatting there for some time. But she was wearing the same kind of clothes you described. With her hoodie up, I couldn’t even tell she was a girl until I got up close and arrested her. I need you to take a look and tell me if maybe you got it wrong.”

Colt grabbed his jacket and stepped out into the downpour. He went over to the SUV and looked through the rain-spotted window into the backseat. But it was too foggy to see anything on the other side. He opened the door and stared into a thin toffee face with huge brown eyes on the verge of tears. She was shivering in the cold. Instinctively, he took off his jacket and spread it around her bony shoulders. “Take this, you’re freezing.”

Colt turned to Brent. “This isn’t the loudmouth from the pier. Maybe it’s his girlfriend, although she looks way too young to be that. She couldn’t be more than twelve.”

“I’m nobody’s girlfriend,” shouted the young female. “And I’m almost thirteen!”

Colt sent Brent a sidelong glance. “You want to do this here or the police station?”

Brent threw open the driver side door and settled behind the wheel. “If that isn’t the person who was at the beach, I need to find the frat boy before he harms somebody. I have Snipes and Samuels locked up. That only leaves Galen Pierce.” He got on the horn to update Eastlyn with that information.

“What about the girl?” Colt asked. “Maybe she’s a runaway.”

“I’ll call Carla Vargas to deal with her then. She specializes in lost kids.”

But Colt had another idea. He shut the door on the patrol car and skirted the hood. From the other side, he slid into the backseat next to the frightened child. “Tell me what you know about this Pierce guy. He has a gun and he’s dangerous to hang with right now.”

“Tell me about it,” the girl grumbled. “I was at the keeper’s cottage first, minding my own business, not bothering anyone until this jerk shows up yesterday. He kicked me out and I moved into the lighthouse. Then he comes banging on the door there. I’d locked his ass out to keep him from getting too friendly, if you know what I mean. But he promised to pay me a couple of bucks to walk into town and buy him food. That’s all I know.”

“When did he leave?” Colt asked.

The girl looked at Colt as if he were a very slow adult. “I. Don’t. Know. He was in the little cottage and I was in the lighthouse.” With her hands cuffed together, she held up two fingers. “Two. Different. Places.”

“What’s your name?”

The girl’s eyes narrowed into slits. “You guys are the big, bad, tough cops, you tell me. I know my rights. I don’t have to tell you nothin’ if I don’t want to.”

Colt sighed. “She’s a runaway all right. Let me grab my rain slicker from the house and I’ll go with you. Did you reach the social worker yet?”

“No, but I’ll keep trying to get hold of her. It is Sunday. I hope to God she and Murphy didn’t take off to Santa Cruz for the weekend. In the meantime, maybe I can pawn her off on River or Hayden to watch for a couple of hours.”

The frightened girl kicked the seat in front of her. “Hey, I’m always getting pawned off on somebody that don’t want me. Just take me back to the lighthouse and I’ll get my stuff and be out of this stinking town.”

“Stop kicking my seat,” Brent said sharply.

“I’ll stop if you take these cuffs off me.”

The last thing Colt heard before dashing back into the house was the police chief and the girl bickering back and forth in an attempt to strike a deal.

The dogs were ginned up maybe because his cell phone kept going crazy. He checked his messages. Most were from Simon asking about Merlin. A few were from Cord checking up on Deke.

Jeez, didn’t anyone trust him to take care of a dog? He wasn’t surprised to see that Naomi hadn’t bothered to text him.

Then an idea hit.

He keyed in a message for Naomi. Are you spending this rainy day in bed?

Nope. Drea woke me at dawn. We unpacked some of my stuff. Why don’t you come over and we’ll find something to do?

Love to, but Brent showed up with a little problem. I need to help him out. If you still want help unpacking, I might know someone.

You aren’t talking about Merlin and Deke, are you? Sure. I’m game.

Great. See you in a few.

 

 

“You have to promise not to run,” Colt said to the girl as they headed up to Naomi’s house.

“Depends on where you’re taking me. I can’t see crap out the windows. You guys aren’t pretending to be cops, are you? Maybe you’re a couple of pervs who like little girls. You guys legitimate cops or what? Maybe I should see a badge or something.”

“I’m the chief of police,” Brent snapped. “Have I given you any reason to think you’re in danger since you’ve been in my squad car?”

“Not yet.”

Colt tried to pick up the threads of the deal. “This is the only option you have at the moment. The other patrol officer is out looking for our jerk. You want those cuffs taken off, this is the way. The woman I’m taking you to just got out of the hospital. Don’t take advantage of that. Try to ramp up your nice. I’m serious. Are we clear?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Look, I could make this simpler for you. I could just go back to the keeper’s cottage and be out of everyone’s hair. It was nice there. I wasn’t hurting anybody by being there until the jerk showed up.”

“Something I don’t understand,” Brent began. “I searched that place after the altercation at the beach. I spent forty-five minutes looking around there and didn’t see you or anyone else on the premises. Why is that?”

“That’s because we high-tailed it out the back door and into the woods the minute we heard your brakes squeal. We waited in all them trees for you to leave and went back in. That’s when this guy started roughing me up and then kicked me out. Hey, I was glad to go. I didn’t like being around him.”

Colt cleared his throat. “There are several reasons you shouldn’t go back there. One, is we need to catch this guy before he hurts someone. It’s only a matter of time. He might circle back there tonight. Do you want to risk it, not knowing what kind of mood he’ll be in? Two, you’re too young to be on your own. You’re obviously on the run from someone. Three, you need a bath and a change of clothes.”

“Are you saying I stink?”

“I’m trying not to, but someone in this vehicle needs a shower. And it isn’t me or Brent. Now let me finish. The fourth reason might be the most important. When’s the last time you had anything significant to eat? I’m talking about a real meal. You’re way too thin.”

The girl let out a sigh. “This guy you’re after gave me five bucks to buy some groceries yesterday. He kept most of what I bought, but I managed to swipe a couple of pieces of bread when he wasn’t looking. You don’t have to worry about me none. I’m great at taking care of myself, always have been.”

“Yeah, you’re a regular Oliver Twist or in your case Little Orphan Annie,” Colt wisecracked.

“Who are they?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Colt pivoted in his seat to look at their little delinquent and realized the girl wasn’t joking at all. She had no idea what he was talking about. “Has it escaped your attention that you are now sitting in the back of a police car?”

“I wouldn’t be if the chief here hadn’t come back this morning.”

“You’re sure this is okay with Naomi?” Brent proffered as he pulled to a stop in her driveway. “This kid is starting to get on my last nerve.”

“We’re about to find out. Keep trying to locate Carla because this could go bust at any moment.”

Colt went around to the other side of the car and pulled the girl to her feet. Though he uncuffed her, he held on tight to her arm in case she ran.

Naomi opened the door to gawk. All she saw was Colt take the cuffs off a sprite of a girl. “Who is this?”

“We don’t know yet.” Colt went over the details of everything they knew so far. During his explanation, he kept both hands on the girl’s shoulders. “This is Naomi. If you have any manners at all, you’ll introduce yourself.”

Silence prevailed as their runaway stiffened her spine in steely determination.

Naomi stared at the pre-teen for about three seconds before she stepped aside to let the girl enter. “She’s soaking wet.”

Colt leaned in and whispered, “She smells, too.”

“I’ll get a bath going. What’s her name?”

“If you get that out of her, it’s more than what Brent and I could do.”

“She looks anorexic.”

“Yeah. I knew you didn’t have much on hand, which is why I ordered a pizza for delivery. It should be here in a few minutes. But I’d get her washed up first. At least that way you can stand to be in the same room with her.”

Naomi slapped Colt’s arm. “It’s not that bad.”

“You won’t be saying that after about five minutes or so. Look, I gotta get going. Brent’s after the fourth frat boy. Keep an eye on mystery girl. She’s a slick one. Remember that when you’re dealing with her. I’d guess a runaway. Could be Northern California, could be somewhere out of state. The point is, she’s cagey, so be cagier.” He leaned in to plant a quick kiss on her lips. “If you have any problems, call me. I have no idea how long this’ll take.”

“Be careful.”

Naomi turned back to her guest, only to see her sway on her feet. “Food’s coming. The bathroom’s down the hall if you want to take a bath.”

“Your boyfriend says I smell.”

Naomi grinned. “He’s used to being blunt, a former military man with a slight chip on his shoulder. We think he worked for the CIA.”

The namedropping worked. She saw the girl’s eyes widen. “No shit?”

“No shit. Now, let’s get you into that bath and into some dry clothes.”

Twenty minutes later, the scrubbed girl appeared with a new attitude, wearing a pair of Naomi’s pajamas that swallowed her up.

“Sorry about the pants being too long and the sleeves being too floppy, but you’re a good six inches shorter than I am. Pizza’s here, a sausage and mushroom blend. Did Colt ask you what you liked before he placed the order?”

“Yeah,” the girl said, gobbling up her first bite.

“The reason I asked is because I don’t know too many teens who like mushrooms.”

“I knew someone once who liked that kind of pizza. I got used to the taste.”

Naomi slid a slice onto her own plate. “I happen to like it fixed this way.”

“Your boyfriend said you just got out of the hospital. Why were you there?”

“Bad case of the flu. I forgot to get my shot. Don’t worry, I’m not contagious now, though.”

“What do you do?”

“I work at the bank. I’m a loan officer.”

“Does that pay well?”

“Yeah. It does. Why’d you hit the road?”

“You ever been in a place you hated, where you just didn’t fit in?”

“Actually, you just described my life after my eighth birthday. I lost my parents and all my siblings in a fire. I had to go live with an aunt and uncle I barely knew. They didn’t like me very much. And after a while, I didn’t like them very much either.”

“What did you do?”

“I stuck it out. I did my best to stay out of the house as much as I could. But obviously that doesn’t work all the time. I went to class every day, even though I didn’t have a lot of friends and was bullied at times because I didn’t fit in where I was. All the other kids knew I didn’t have parents, and they gave me a hard time about it. No one is crueler than a bunch of smart-mouthed brats who have everything and appreciate nothing.”

Because she saw genuine interest in the girl’s eyes, Naomi went on. “I got good grades in school and received an academic scholarship to the University of Nebraska. I packed up my old suitcase and got out of there when I was seventeen and haven’t gone back since.”

“Is all that really true or is that just a good story for my benefit?”

Naomi raised her right hand. “Every single word I lived. True story.” She paused a moment before adding, “If you don’t believe mine, then you’ll never believe Colt’s.”

“The boyfriend?”

“His name is Colton Del Rio. And he grew up in an orphanage in New Mexico. He never even knew his parents.”

“Get out!”

Naomi lifted her hand again. “God’s truth.”

“I can’t tell you my name because if I do, you’ll contact the authorities and the state will send me back. If they do, I’ll just run off again. It’s a vicious circle.”

“I don’t blame you then. I wouldn’t want to tell anyone anything either. But, how’d you land in the middle of this vicious circle in the first place? Can you tell me that much? Without telling me your name, what’s your backstory? We all have one.”

The girl kept eating without an answer, intermittently licking tomato sauce off her fingers. But finally she pushed her plate away and leaned back in the chair. “I haven’t had pizza in months. That’s first-rate stuff. I’ve passed by Longboard’s a few times since getting here. It smelled wonderful. This is the first time I’ve got to sample one of their pies.”

“Is that how long you’ve been gone? Months?”

The girl’s brown eyes flicked with emotion. “It’s a cold world out there on your own. It wasn’t always like this. But life started falling apart after my dad got killed in Afghanistan. I was just six, but I remember him.”

Naomi’s hand automatically slid across the table to link fingers with hers. “I’m so sorry.”

“My mom was holding it together pretty well for both of us after that. We were doing okay. But the day I got the news she’d been killed in a car wreck while I was at school, that’s when life exploded for me. The state tried to get my grandmother to let me live with her, the grandmother on my mother’s side. But she didn’t want me.”

“Why on earth not?”

“My mom got kicked out of the house when she married my dad. My mom was white, and my dad was black. Her mom and dad disowned her after that. They didn’t want a biracial kid like me stinking up the house. In fact, no one wants a half black anything.”

Naomi had to fight back tears. She squeezed the girl’s fingers. “I promise if you tell me your name, I will not tell anyone anything until you say it’s okay.”

“Except your boyfriend. No deal. You’ll tell him and then he’ll tell the top cop. Sorry, no can do.”

“But honey, you can’t live on the streets like you’ve been doing. It’s dangerous out there on so many levels.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been doing fine on my own. My momma didn’t raise no fool. All those foster families that take me in, no matter what they tell the social workers, they don’t want me either. If that story you told me is true, then you, of all people, should know how it feels to get bumped around from one lousy place to the next.”

“Don’t you miss going to school?”

“Yeah, that part I haven’t figured out yet. You have to have papers or something to get in school and I don’t have all that with me. That’s why I can’t stay in one place for too long.”

“Which is why as soon as my back is turned, you’ll sneak out the door, am I right?”

“I need to get my backpack from the lighthouse. Everything I own is in there.”

“Okay. We’ll drive over there right now and grab it. Will you stay here tonight, though? I have a guest room with a nice, comfy bed. It has to be better than sleeping on a cold, concrete floor inside a lighthouse.”