LITMIR.BIZ

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you can’t,” he informed her. “Because you gave me your word.”

      Daniel heard another sound, louder and more guttural this time. He could picture the look on his sister’s angry face.

      He walked to his car and really hoped that he wasn’t being an idiot to believe that, despite everything, Elena was going to live up to her promise.

      Daniel got into the vehicle.

      “Really wish you guys were still here,” he murmured under his breath to the parents who were no longer there to hear him.

      He would have missed his parents no matter what, but being left to grapple with trying to raise a headstrong, overly intelligent sixteen-year-old teenage girl made everything three times worse. And it really made him miss his mother and father.

      * * *

      When Daniel walked into the sheriff’s office fifteen minutes later, he was surprised to see Joe there.

      Senior Deputy Sheriff Joe Lone Wolf was the reason he had this job. He’d known the older deputy by sight when they were both growing up on the reservation. But then his parents had moved him and his sister into town and the next time their paths crossed, Joe was a deputy, working for Sheriff Rick Santiago. Joe’s influence in the scheme of things increased a great deal when he wound up marrying Ramona, the town’s veterinarian. Ramona also happened to be Rick’s sister. And when Daniel suddenly found himself in need of a job, Joe was the one who not only vouched for him but took Daniel under his wing, teaching him everything he needed to know. It wasn’t the job he had dreamed of having, but it was one he felt he could do justice to.

      “I didn’t know you had the night shift tonight,” Daniel said to the other man.

      “I didn’t. I traded Rodriguez for it. I had a feeling, when you went to answer that domestic disturbance call coming in from the better part of town, that you might wind up coming back.” Craning his neck, Joe looked around behind Daniel. “So where’s Elena?”

      It was unnerving the way that Joe seemed to know about things before they became public knowledge. “She’s home.”

      Joe’s eyes never left his face as he rocked back in his chair. “Let me guess, she promised to be on her best behavior.”

      “I don’t think that girl has any ‘best behavior’ to fall back on anymore,” Daniel responded. There was no missing the disgusted note in his voice. “But she gave me her word that she wouldn’t leave the house until I got back.”

      Joe laughed dryly. “Then I guess you’d better hurry back before Elena’s tempted to break her word again.” And then he looked at Daniel, studying him. “Why did you come back?”

      “Well, I wanted to log these in at the station,” Daniel answered. The next minute, he was going out the front door.

      “These?” Joe repeated, following the younger man out.

      Daniel paused to reach into the backseat and take out the carton he’d used in order to carry all the liquor bottles out of Matthew McGuire’s house.

      “These,” Daniel repeated as he carried the carton crammed full of bottles back past Joe and into the sheriff’s office.

      Joe uttered a low whistle as he looked at all the semi-filled and three-quarters-filled bottles stuffed into the carton.

      “What was the kid doing? Competing with the Murphy brothers’ saloon?”

      Daniel glanced down at the bottles in his arms. “I’m guessing these belong to his parents.”

      “Speaking of his parents, just where are these fine citizens?” Joe asked him.

      Daniel thought back, trying to remember. “According to what Elena told me through her clenched teeth and her hostile attitude, I gather that Matthew’s parents are away for the week, touring a couple of colleges with his older brother.”

      Joe smile was grim. “In other words, when the cat’s away, the mice’ll play.”

      “And get drunk,” Daniel added with a deep, disapproving frown.

      “Evidence?” Joe asked, nodding at the liquor bottles and curious as to exactly what Daniel planned to do with all of them.

      “My first thought was to get these things out of the kids’ reach,” Daniel confessed. He put the carton down on his desk. “When Matthew’s parents get back into town, they can come by the station and get them.”

      “My guess is that they’re not going to be happy about that,” Joe commented.

      Joe took a couple of the bottles out of the carton one by one and looked at the labels. He wasn’t a connoisseur when it came to alcohol, but he could see that there were some very expensive bottles in the carton.

      “I’m counting on it,” Daniel told him. “Maybe his parents will think twice before leaving Matthew alone with all this temptation again.”

      “What did Elena say about you doing this?” Joe asked.

      Daniel blew out a breath. “Not anything I feel like repeating right now,” he answered.

      Opening his desk’s middle drawer, he took out a pad and a pen and began to write down the various names that were on the labels.

      “Here, let me do that,” Joe told the younger deputy, taking the pad and pen away from Daniel. “You go on back to your sister. Like I said, the sooner you get yourself back home, the less tempted she’s going to be to fly the coop again.”

      This was where Daniel would have wanted to say that since Elena had given him her word she’d stay home, he felt confident that she would be there when he walked in through the door. But the truth was that he wasn’t confident she’d be there. Not confident at all.

      Joe was right. The sooner he got home, the more likely it was that he’d still find Elena at home. Because if she decided to take off again, this time he wouldn’t be able to just shrug it off or let it slide. This time, he was going to have to come down on her.

      Hard.

      And that would do even more harm to their relationship, causing it to splinter and break apart that much more. Maybe even irreparably, because he was only able to hold on to his temper for so long before it exploded on him.

      “Thanks, Joe, I owe you,” Daniel said, heading for the door.

      “Damn straight you do,” Joe called out, his voice following the other deputy as Daniel went outside to his vehicle.

      How did it all get so confused and heavy-handed? Daniel couldn’t help wondering as he got in behind the wheel of his car again.

      How did he and Elena go from being practically best friends to being these people who kept snapping at each other and regarding everything the other person did as being suspect?

      He wished he knew. Daniel couldn’t even remember how it all had started to unravel. All he knew was that somehow, it had. And not just slowly but with what felt like lightning speed. One day he was Elena’s confidant, her shoulder to cry on, the next day, he was her enemy, part of “them,” otherwise known as a grown-up. And everyone knew that grown-ups or adults were the ones who stood in the way and impeded anything that even remotely looked like fun.

      Elena stopped telling him things, stopped confiding in him, stopped looking at him the way she used to. These days, she wasn’t proud of him. She was just leery of him and it showed in everything she did, everything she said to him.

      How did he go about changing that back to what it had been?

      And just as important, how did he get Elena to realize that getting an education was the only way she would ever get out of Forever?

       Chapter Two

      Shania

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