“No.”
“I think she’s using again, Gunther. If she does show up, it’s probably best not to let her in.”
Gunther nodded reluctantly. Alana shifted beside him to peer over her shoulder and look at the windows. “If you still need help with the windows, Cody Burton would probably be glad for the work,” she said.
“I’m not sure that’s—” Lucas started.
Gunther was already nodding. “I’ll call down there tomorrow,” he said.
Lucas slid a look Alana’s way. She gave him a quick smile, then returned her attention to Gunther.
“I’m very sorry to hear they stole your wife’s engagement ring,” she said quietly.
Gunther sat quietly for a moment. “It wasn’t worth much, but it’s everything to me.”
“I understand,” she said.
Didn’t she see what she was doing, getting involved when all she’d do was leave? As they got up to leave, she tapped her finger on a stack of plastic DVD cases sitting on the table by the door. “Do you want me to take these back to the library for you?”
“Thank you. That’s very kind.” They declined cookies for the road and got back in the truck.
“Where to next?”
“The Burtons. Colt and Cody both have curfews, Colt because he’s on parole and Cody because he’s doing community service.” He backed down the driveway to the road. “Generally speaking, I don’t send suspects back to the scene of the crime.”
“Cody didn’t break into that man’s house and steal his wife’s engagement ring. He’s got no way to get it to Brookings to pawn it.”
“He’s got friends with cars. His brother has a car.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He’s not that kind of kid.”
“He’s working for you because he was convicted of theft.”
“Not from someone he cares about, and if he’s helping Gunther on his own time, he cares about him.”
Steel lay under the pale skin that blushed so easily. “So he’s not giving you any trouble?”
She didn’t answer right away. “No,” she said finally.
“You had to think about that,” he said.
“Sometimes trouble is just people being people,” she replied.
They bumped up the ruts to the trailer sheltered by budding trees. Music blasted from the bedroom end of the trailer, competing with the dialogue from a kids’ show coming from the open living room window. He took the steps to the door and knocked. The door was wide open, and the smell of macaroni and cheese drifted through the open door. Three little boys sat in a row on the sofa, absently eating mac and cheese from mismatched bowls. One of them looked up at the sound of Lucas’s knock on the door frame.
“Colt! Run!” the kid screamed.
Adrenaline spiked in Lucas’s brain, and before he registered movement, his hand was on his weapon. “Get behind the truck,” he barked at Alana.
Wearing jeans and a muscle T-shirt with the armholes cut to the hem, Colt emerged from the back of the trailer. “What the fuck, little man?”
“Hands!” Lucas barked, keeping the door open with his left hand as he flipped the snap off his holster with his right. “Hands!”
Colt’s eyes widened, and Cody emerged from the kitchen, the mac-and-cheese pot in one hand and an incongruous blue plastic serving spoon in the other.
“Whoa,” Colt said, raising his hands. “Hey, he was just joking. It’s a game. It’s just a game!”
“Lucas.”
Alana’s voice, soft and yet commanding, flexed into the air, slicing open space for him to hear the little boy giggling. No danger. No threat here. He lifted his hand from his weapon and watched the tension ease from the situation.
“Not funny,” he said to Colt as he stepped into the trailer. “Not fucking funny. That’s what you’re teaching your little brother? To run from the police?”
Colt’s sullen face was his only answer. Cody set the pot on the crate doubling as an end table. “Go into Mom’s room,” he said to the little kids. “You can watch the rest of the show in there.”
“Mom doesn’t like it when we get food in her bed,” the budding comedian said.
“Sit on the floor,” he said with far more patience than Lucas would have shown.
It took a minute to relocate the three imps, but Lucas didn’t move. “You stay here,” he said, when Colt turned toward the hallway. He glared at Lucas while Cody situated the kids, shut off the music, and came back down the hallway. He pointed the remote at the television and turned off the dancing sponge.
“You said you weren’t—”
“Hello, Cody,” Alana said with a cheerful edge that cut Cody short. His mouth snapped shut. “This must be your brother. Alana Wentworth. So nice to meet you.” She held out her hand to Colt, who stared at her, then at Cody, with an astonishment all too familiar to Lucas, before giving her hand one firm shake.
“What are you doing here?”
Time to get this situation under control. “You both have curfew,” Lucas said.
“And we’re both home,” Cody said.