LITMIR.BIZ

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Douglas was round and plump, with wide hips and full breasts. She was a kind, giving woman with a heart as big as Texas. He doubted most folks ever noticed the sadness in her pretty blue eyes, a sadness that he understood in a way no one else in her life did.

      He ran the back of his hand gently across her cheek. She closed her eyes and quietly sighed.

      “Could we talk, later?” he asked. “I promise I’ll explain everything. But right now…” He glided his hand down her neck, across her shoulder, and opened his palm to cup one breast.

      Right now, he needed to forget. He needed to lose himself in this beautiful, loving woman. There would be time enough later that evening to tell her about the unidentified skeletons of two toddler boys. Skeletons that might be the remains of his son Blake and her son Shane.

      The minute J.D. entered police headquarters, he spotted his daughter. She rose from the chair where she sat alongside a tattooed, nose-ringed boy with scraggly brown hair and a surly expression.

      When a uniformed police officer said something to her, Zoe cried, “But it’s my father. Please, let me tell him what happened.”

      The officer nodded. Zoe came running toward J.D. and hurled herself at him. Instinct took over and he put his arms around her in a comforting, fatherly way.

      “I wasn’t drinking,” Zoe told him. “I swear to God, I wasn’t drinking. Not even a beer.”

      The young officer, who looked all of twenty-five, lean, blond, and clean-cut, walked over to J.D. “Special Agent Cass?” He offered J.D. his hand. “I’m Officer Karns. Ryan Karns.”

      “Yeah, I’m J.D. Cass.” He shook the man’s hand. “So, what’s going on here?” He glanced from Zoe to Officer Karns.

      “Your daughter isn’t under arrest, but we had to hold her, of course, until a parent could pick her up,” Karns said. “The boy she was with was speeding not two miles from here, and when a patrolman tried to pull him over, he raced off doing close to a hundred. Lucky for him and your daughter, he didn’t wreck.”

      “Dawson just panicked, J.D.” Zoe grabbed his arm. “He’d been drinking a beer and he didn’t want to get a DUI. That’s why he ran.”

      J.D. glowered at his daughter.

      “Whatever possessed you to go off with that boy?” J.D. glanced at the sulking young hunk who glared back at him.

      “Dawson’s my boyfriend,” Zoe snapped angrily.

      “Like hell he is. You’re fourteen. You’re not old enough to have a boyfriend.”

      When she opened her mouth to protest, J.D. gave her a warning stare and said, “Not another word out of you.”

      “Young lady,” she mumbled under her breath.

      “Is my daughter free to go?” J.D. asked Officer Karns.

      “Yes, sir, she is.”

      “No, damn it, I won’t leave without Dawson.” Zoe planted her hands on her slender hips and shot her father a challenging glare.

      “You’ll leave,” J.D. told her. “Either under your own power or thrown over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Your choice…young lady.”

      “I’m afraid Dawson isn’t free to go,” Officer Karns explained. “Not only was he speeding, but he was driving under the influence, endangering himself and others. He failed the breathalyzer test. He had a BrAC of 0.09.”

      “He was just drinking beer,” Zoe told them, adamant in Dawson’s defense.

      “Whatever he was drinking doesn’t matter,” J.D. informed her. “A reading of 0.08 is considered intoxicated, and the number drops even lower for anyone under the age of twenty-one. Dawson’s sixteen.”

      “We’ve contacted Dawson’s parents. They’re out of town, so we’ll be holding him at the Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center until they get back in town.”

      When J.D. refused to help Dawson, Zoe began mouthing off again, threatening all sorts of outlandish things. The wayward teen was his parents’ problem, not J.D.’s. He had enough trouble with Zoe.

      In the middle of his daughter’s tirade and just as J.D. was at his wits’ end, he heard a calm, soothing female voice ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

      “Evening, Dr. Sherrod.” Officer Karns’s shoulders drooped wearily, as if he, too, were at the end of his rope. No doubt he had counted on J.D. being able to control his fourteen-year-old daughter since he wasn’t sure how to deal with the hysterical girl.

      Apparently, Audrey Sherrod had been visiting her uncle and had just walked out of his office. However, it wasn’t Garth Hudson who accompanied her, but Chief Mullins. The chief gave Audrey a quick, fatherly peck on the cheek and whispered something to her, then nodded to Officer Karns and headed for the exit.

      Dr. Sherrod’s question had startled Zoe into complete silence. She stood there staring at the woman as if she were an alien who had just stepped out of a spaceship from Mars.

      “I…uh…I don’t know if you can help.” Karns looked from Audrey Sherrod to J.D. “It’s up to you, Special Agent Cass.”

      J.D. surveyed the woman from head to toe. Sublimely cool and controlled, Audrey looked him right in the eye. Despite the unseasonably hot and humid September day and the warm pink flush on her cheeks, she was perfectly groomed, not a silky brown hair out of place, her makeup flawless, her slacks and sweater unwrinkled.

      J.D. didn’t want her help. Didn’t need her help. But he was in no position to be rude. All he wanted was to take Zoe home and ground her for the rest of her life. Well, at least until she was thirty. Apparently Dr. Sherrod was well-known and respected here at police headquarters and no doubt on as friendly terms with the chief as she was Officer Lovelady, the chief’s daughter.

      “If you think you can help, then by all means help.” J.D. resented Dr. Sherrod’s interference. Resented it like hell. “I didn’t realize that your area of expertise included soothing smart-mouthed, disrespectful teenage girls.”

      Audrey’s hazel brown eyes glimmered as she settled her gaze on him, a sure sign she recognized his comment as an insult as well as a challenge. Turning up her haughty little nose, she said, “There is usually a reason behind such behavior.” She turned to Zoe. “Hi, I’m Audrey Sherrod. I’m a professional counselor and occasionally I work with the police in an advisory capacity. If you think I can help you, then tell me how and I’ll see what I can do.”

      Zoe kept staring at Audrey for several moments as if she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Finally, she said, “I’m Zoe Davidson.”

      “Nice to meet you, Zoe. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

      “Dawson is the one who needs help, but my father won’t help him.”

      “I see.” She glanced at J.D., a questioning look in her eyes. “And what do you expect your father to do?”

      “Get Dawson out of this mess,” Zoe replied. “My dad’s a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent. He could take care of this for Dawson if he wanted to, but he doesn’t like Dawson because he thinks I’m too young to have a boyfriend.”

      “How old are you?”

      “Fourteen.”

      “Hmm…I had a boyfriend when I was fourteen, and my father didn’t like him.”

      Zoe smiled at J.D. triumphantly. Great. Just what he needed. A damn female shrink who apparently agreed with his daughter.

      “Ryan, what are the charges against Dawson?” Audrey asked.

      Officer Karns rattled off a list of offenses, everything from reckless driving to resisting arrest, with half a dozen other complaints in between, including DUI,

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