HE WAS IN over his head.
Unlike many of his law-enforcement counterparts who linked their egos and professional identities, Lucas was perfectly willing to admit when a situation was spinning out beyond his control. He was so in over his head. On the surface, everything was perfect. She was beautiful, intelligent, a slow, fierce burn in bed, and didn’t want so much as a date, let alone a commitment.
They’d hired her temporarily while they conducted a search for a new librarian. She’d thrown herself at a problem without hesitation, but it was nothing more than academic, a quest to get results. Building renovated, computers upgraded, future secured. He knew the type, had worked with them in Denver. He’d married one, a person who came through with plans and programs and never stopped to count the human cost. His wife had left Walkers Ford for exactly that reason. It was too personal, too intimate, too much history and connection to stand.
Life was breaking free again, free from the frozen earth of winter, free from the blizzards and howling wind and the long, dark nights.
There was one person in town he could count on to compartmentalize life. He poured the remainder of his pot of coffee into an insulated travel mug, pulled on his ball cap, clicked for Duke, and headed for the Blazer. The drive didn’t take long, just past Main Street into the newer subdivision, and then he was in his uncle’s driveway.
He knocked on the door and found his uncle up and dressed for the day. Regulation haircut, belt and shoes polished, khakis pressed, shirt tucked in. “Lucas, my boy,” he said amiably. “What brings you by?”
“I need to make a run into Brookings. Want to come along?” he said.
“Is this family business or police business?”
“Police,” Lucas said.
The old man’s shoulders squared up. “Let me get my jacket,” he said.
Ten minutes later they were on their way out of town. “What’s going on?”
Lucas explained about the breakin at Gunther’s house. “You’ve got a contact at the Brookings PD who knows something about the drugs?”
“I want to hit the pawn shops, see if anyone’s pawned the ring.”
Silence from the seat next to him.
“It was his wife’s,” Lucas said.
“And this is the best use of your time today.”
“It’s one way I’m going to use my time today,” Lucas said. “You talked to Tanya lately?”
Nelson flexed his hands on his thighs, the knuckles swollen and angry. Crippling rheumatoid arthritis had forced him to retire before his time. “No. I told her the last time she relapsed, we were done.”
“I saw her a couple of days ago,” Lucas said.
Nelson, no fool, snorted. “She’s what, eight-tenths of a mile from Gunther’s place? That was the right place to start.”
“She looked okay,” Lucas said, even though it wasn’t true.
“She let you into the house?”
Lucas was silent.
Nelson shook his head. “Weak,” he said.
Lucas wasn’t sure if Nelson’s flat summary was directed at him for not forcing his way into Tanya’s cabin, or at Tanya for becoming an addict. Or both. “She says she didn’t do it.”
“Of course she says that. Two most frequently heard phrases from my daughter. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t my fault.” He looked out the window at the rippling prairie grass, cross-hatching in the wind. “That girl never did learn to take responsibility for her choices.”
“I went to the Burtons, too.”
“Hmm. Which one?”
“I arrested Cody for shoplifting a few weeks ago. He’s doing community service at the library.”
“Following in his brother’s footsteps, I assume,” Nelson mused. “I put him away three, no four years ago, when he broke into the pharmacy.”
Twenty-two years old and a felony conviction that would stay with him for the rest of his life. “He got out a few weeks ago. I called his parole officer. He’s checked in regularly and is looking for a job.”
“Where’s he living?”
“At home.”
With Cody, and the three younger siblings, and the mother, working the second shift at J&H.
“That’s a lost cause,” his uncle said finally.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “Colt had been in and out of juvie by the time he was Cody’s age. So far Cody has stayed off my radar.”
“Maybe he’s just better at hiding what he’s doing.”
Lucas thought of Tanya, how well she’d hidden her drug use, right up until a random drug test at the academy turned up positive for painkillers. He could follow Nelson’s train of thought. If Tanya could hide drug use from her father, the chief of police, and from Lucas, who, by that time, was rolling onto the DEA task force in Denver, then Cody Burton could hide whatever he was doing from an overworked mother.