LITMIR.BIZ

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Chapter Three

      Kade pushed back from the laptop perched on Ida June’s worn kitchen table and rubbed the strain between his eyes. Hours of poking into every law-enforcement database he could access produced nothing about a missing mute boy named David. He’d chased a rabbit trail for the past hour only to discover the missing child had been found.

      Hunching his shoulders high to relieve the tightness, he glanced past the narrow dividing bar into Ida June’s living room. Davey still slept, curled beneath a red plaid throw on the 1970s sofa, a psychedelic monstrosity in red, green and yellow swirls that, ugly as sin, proved a napping boy’s paradise. In sleep, Davey had released his beloved book to fall in the narrow space between his skinny body and the fat couch cushion. Sheba lay next to him, her golden head snuggled beneath his lax arm. She opened one eye, gave Kade a lazy look and went back to sleep.

      “Traitor,” he said, softly teasing. The boy had taken one look at the affable dog and melted. Sheba could never resist a kid. When Davey went to his knees in joyful greeting and threw his arms around her neck, Sheba claimed him as her own. He’d shared his lunch with her, a sight that had twisted in Kade’s chest. The kid had been hungry, maybe for days, but he’d shared a ham sandwich with the well-fed dog. Whatever had happened to Davey hadn’t broken him. It may very well have silenced him, but his soul was still intact.

      Kade rubbed a frustrated hand over his whiskered jaw and asked himself for the dozenth time why he’d gotten involved. He knew the answer. He just didn’t like it.

      Leaving the pair, he poured himself another cup of coffee and went to finish the laundry. At the moment, Davey wore one of Kade’s oversize T-shirts and a ridiculously huge pair of sweats tied double at the waist. Now, when he awoke, Davey’s clothes would be as clean as he was.

      Once the boy had been fed, cleaned and his clothes in the washer, Ida June had barked a few orders and gone to work at the little town square. With Kade’s less-than-professional assistance, she’d been erecting a stable for the town’s Christmas celebration. She’d promised to have it finished this week, and leaving Kade to “mind the store” and “find that boy’s mama,” Ida June had marched out the door with a final parting shot: “Promises are like babies squalling in a theater—they should be carried out at once.”

      He was still smirking over that one. His mother’s aunt was a colorful character, a spunky old woman who’d outlived two husbands, built her own business and half of her own house, drove like a maniac and spouted quotes like Bartlett. And if anyone needed a helping hand, she was there, though heaven help the man or woman who said she had a soft heart.

      Kade removed Davey’s pitiful jeans and sweatshirt from the dryer and folded them next to clean socks and underwear before tossing the washed sneakers into the stillwarm drier. He set them on tumble with one of Ida June’s fragrant ocean-breeze dryer sheets and left them to thump and bang.

      He wasn’t much on shopping any more than he was on doing laundry, especially at Christmas when the holly, jolly Muzak and fake everything abounded, but a single man learned to take care of business. The boy needed clothes, and unless Sophie Bartholomew or Ida June offered, he’d volunteer.

      Sophie. The wholesome-looking teacher had played around the edges of his thoughts all day, poking in a little too often. Nobody could be that sweet and smiley all the time.

      “Probably on crack,” he groused, and then snorted at the cynical remark. A woman like Sophie probably wouldn’t know crack cocaine if it was in her sugar bowl.

      His cell phone jangled and he yanked the device from his pocket to punch Talk. With calls into various law-enforcement agencies all over the region, he hoped to hear something. Even though he was a stranger here, with few contacts and no clout, his federal clearances gave him access to just about anything he wanted to poke his nose into.

      It had been a while since he’d wanted to poke into anything. When he turned over rocks, he usually found snakes.

      He squeezed his eyes shut. The year undercover had skewed his perspective. He wasn’t looking for snakes this time. He was looking for a boy’s family.

      One hand to the back of his neck, the other on the phone, he went to the kitchen window and stared blindly out at the gray sky as the voice on the other end gave him the expected news. Nothing.

      He figured as much. A dumped kid might be big news in Redemption but to the rest of the world, Davey was another insignificant statistic.

      Acid burned his gut—an ulcer, he suspected, though he’d avoided mentioning the hot pain to the shrink. Being forced by his superiors to talk to a head doctor was bad enough. No one was going to shove a scope down his throat and tell him to take pills and live on yogurt. He didn’t do pills. Or yogurt. He’d learned the hard way that one pill, one drug, one time could be the end of a man.

      He scrubbed his hands over his eyes. He was so tired. He couldn’t help envying Davey and Sheba their sound sleep. He ached to sleep, to fall into that wonderful black land of nothingness for more than a restless hour at a time. The coffee kept him moving, but no amount of caffeine replaced a solid sleep. He took a sip, grimaced at the day-old brew and the growing gut burn. Yeah, yeah. Coffee made an ulcer worse. Big deal. It wasn’t coffee that was killing him.

      In the scrubbed-clean driveway outside the window, a deep purple Ford Focus pulled to a stop. The vehicle, a late-model job, was dirt-splattered from the recent rain, and the whitewalls needed a scrub. Why did women ignore the importance of great-looking wheels? The schoolteacher, brown hair blowing lightly in the breeze, hopped out, opened the back car door and wrestled out a bulging trash bag. Curious, Kade set aside his mug and jogged out to help.

      “What’s this?” he asked.

      The afternoon sun, weak as a twenty-watt bulb, filtered through the low umbrella of stratus clouds and found the teacher’s warm smile. There was something about her, a radiance that pierced the bleak day with light. Kade’s troubled belly tingled. She attracted him, plain and simple—a surprise, given how dead he felt most of the time.

      Her smile widening, Sophie shoved the black trash sack into his arms. She had a pretty mouth, full lips with gentle creases along the edges like sideways smiles. “Davey needs clothes.”

      “You went shopping?” She’d barely had time to get here from school. And why the hefty bag?

      “No.” Her laugh danced on the chilly breeze and hit him right in the ulcer. “I know kids, lots of kids, all sizes and shapes, who outgrow clothes faster than their parents can buy them. I made a few phone calls and voilà!” She hunched her shoulders, fingers of one hand spreading in the space between them like a starburst. “Davey is all fixed up.” Perky as a puppy, she hoisted another bag. “This has a few toys in it. We were guessing size, so I hope something fits. The rest can go to the shelter.”

      “Bound to fit better than what he’s wearing now.” She was going to get a kick out of his impromptu outfit.

      “How is he?” she asked as they carried the bags inside.

      “Exhausted.” Kade dumped his bag in a chair inside the living room and hitched his chin toward the ugly couch. “He’s slept like a rock most of the day.”

      “What did the doctor say? Have we heard any news on where he came from? Where’s Ida June?” Shooting questions like an arcade blaster, Sophie moved past him into the room. A subtle wake of clean perfume trailed behind to tantalize his senses. Sunshine and flowers and—he sniffed once—coconut. She smelled as fresh and wholesome as she looked.

      Amused by her chatter, he slouched at the bar and waited for her to wind down. “You finished?”

      “For now.” She stood over Davey and Sheba, a soft smile tilting her naturally curved lips. “Is this your dog?”

      “Was until this morning.”

      She gave him that happy look again. She was lucky. No one had wiped away her joy. Life must have always been good in Sophie’s world.

      “A

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