Against the Edge - Kat Martin

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      Sam almost wished he’d taken Pep and run off while Troy was in The Roadhouse, maybe hitched a ride with someone. But his mom was dead, and he didn’t have anywhere to go.

      Sam squeezed his eyes shut as he thought of his mother lying there sick in her hospital bed. He remembered the day she died, how Claire had taken him home with her, how she had let him live with her for a while.

      She’d said she would help him. She and his mom were friends and he had liked her a lot. He wanted to live with her more than anything, but she didn’t want him.

      Not really. She had let them put him in some crummy house where the people believed their own kids were perfect and never did anything wrong. Kenny was older and he thought he was a tough guy. But Sam was smarter, and he wouldn’t let Kenny push him around.

      Kenny was a jerk and his sister was a tattletale, always making up stories that weren’t true. He liked Suzy and Tim, but they were afraid of Kenny and the Robersons, and they would never stick up for him or even for themselves. They would just stand there and look frightened.

      He didn’t want to stay in a place like that. He wanted his mom, but she was dead. He wanted to be with Claire, but she had forgotten about him.

      His throat ached. He closed his eyes so Troy couldn’t tell he was trying not to cry. Pepper whined and nudged him, curled up against his side.

      At least he had Pep.

      The only friend in the world he could trust.

      Eight

      To keep herself busy and not wonder if Ben would find Sam in East L.A., Claire went out to the carport and opened her storage locker. She had kept a box of Laura’s things, stuff Claire had put away for Sam when he got older.

      If she was right and the boy Ty found wasn’t Sam, they would need to continue their search. She had gone through the box right after Sam disappeared, looking for photos to give the police. Aside from pictures of Sam and Troy Bridger, she hadn’t found anything helpful among Laura’s possessions, but there was always a chance she had missed something.

      Carrying the cardboard box into the living room, Claire set it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa, retrieved a pair of scissors, cut the packing tape and opened the box.

      Sam’s baby clothes sat on top of a pottery plate with his handprint that Sam had made for his mom in kindergarten, and some crayon drawings he’d made that Laura had kept on the refrigerator.

      Beneath them, photo albums. The one with photos of Bridger and the latest picture of Sam’photos she had given the police’Claire picked up and flipped open.

      Most of the pictures had been taken with the inexpensive digital camera Laura carried when she took her son to the zoo or the time she and Claire had taken him to Disneyland last year for his birthday.

      They were in order front to back, oldest to newest. She flipped to the back, to the most recent shots, including a few Claire had taken: Sam hamming it up at Christmas, Laura and Sam having Easter dinner at Claire’s apartment.

      She ran her finger over that one and thought of her friend. In the pictures Laura looked so normal. They didn’t show the times she had drunk too much and passed out on the couch, the times she had forgotten to pick up Sam after his Little League baseball game.

      They showed the Laura that was smart and funny and a very good friend.

      Claire turned the page, realized two were stuck together and pulled them apart. She froze. There was a photo of Laura with Troy and two men, a picture she had never seen. She set the album down and ran into her bedroom, went over to her desk and grabbed a magnifying glass out of the top drawer.

      Back in the living room, she studied the photo more closely and saw that the two men looked a lot like Troy. Enough like him, in fact, to be the brothers Sadie had mentioned. Laura hadn’t said anything about the visit when she and Troy had been living together, but the resemblance and the men’s ages made it hard to mistake the relationship.

      She pulled the four-by-six glossy off the page and examined the men’s features. Same height, around six feet; same solid, no-fat build; same dark hair, same fair skin, same face shape and eyes. Troy’s were blue, she remembered, his best feature.

      It was what they were wearing that was even more interesting’identical drab green camouflage T-shirts. On the front was a fist and underneath the numbers 33/6. She didn’t know what the sign and numbers meant, but she had a feeling it was important.

      She set the photo aside and continued through the album but found nothing more.

      She closed the box and set the picture on the coffee table and looked at the clock. More than two hours had passed. Where was Ben?

      Thinking of him reminded her of the brief kiss before he had left. She hadn’t expected it. And as much as she tried, she couldn’t forget it.

      Male lips that should have been cold and hard but were warm and softer than she ever would have guessed. The way they sank into hers, the way her stomach flipped beneath her ribs.

      It hadn’t meant anything. Ben was just trying to distract her because she was so upset over Sam. Still, the heat of his mouth was a memory seared into her brain, and every time she remembered his kiss, a jolt of desire burned through her.

      Dear Lord, it was insane. She hardly knew the man. One thing she was sure of’sex meant about as much to Ben Slocum as brushing his teeth. His after-wedding roll in the hay had clearly been a one-night stand. Which she would guess was pretty much Ben’s modus operandi.

      As much as she’d like to find out what sex would be like with a man she was so strongly attracted to, she didn’t want to be tossed aside like an old sneaker the next morning.

      At the sound of the doorbell, she raced for the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. For an instant her heart soared. Just as fast, her high hopes plunged. The boy on her doorstep wasn’t Sam.

      “This is Ryan,” Ben said. “It’s a long story. We need to find a way to help him.”

      * * *

      Claire called the authorities as soon as she got Ryan’s battered face cleaned up with antiseptic, and the boy stuffed full of the extralarge double-cheese pepperoni pizza Ben ordered from Rusty’s. She was certainly getting more than her share of fast food these days.

      While Ben and the boy finished off the pizza, Claire talked to a friend named Mary Wilson who worked at the Department of Children and Family Services. She told Mary how Ben Slocum, a P.I. from Texas, had stumbled upon a ten-year-old boy named Ryan Lynn who was a runaway.

      According to Ben, Ryan’s home life was so bad the boy would rather wander the streets doing odd jobs for criminals than stay in the place he lived.

      Mary arranged to meet her, Ben and Ryan two hours later at the branch where Mary worked. There, the boy could be medically examined, and Social Services would make arrangements for him to be placed in a care facility until his situation could be investigated.

      They would try to locate his family and make an evaluation, find out what was going on that would drive a ten-year-old kid out onto the streets.

      Claire felt sorry for the boy, but Mary was good at her job, and she would fight for Ryan. And Claire thought that after his experiences fending for himself, he would do his best to get along in his foster home.

      “This is all going to work out, Ryan,” she said as they drove toward their destination. “There are people who care about kids like you. They’ll do their best to find a place you’ll be happy.”

      Ryan’s eyes welled, but he didn’t cry. Aside from his black hair and blue eyes, he didn’t look a thing like Ben. Different nose, different mouth, different jaw. Still, Ben had paid two thousand dollars to bring the boy to safety.

      It looked more and more as if Laura had been wrong. That Ben would make the kind of father Sam deserved.

      Claire

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