He had to give her credit. She dressed faster than any woman he’d ever known. Barefoot, wearing jeans under her nightie, carrying her sweater and shoes, she followed him through the kitchen.
“Ouch,” she muttered as she stepped on the staples he hadn’t pulled yet.
He stopped at the door so abruptly Duke crashed into the screen and Alana crashed into him. “If you come with me, Tanya and Matt will know we were together.”
She stepped back, but then her chin lifted. “I don’t care. Having another woman along might help.”
In his experience, introducing another woman into situations like these very rarely helped. Matt Linden didn’t say there was a car accident, or a traffic stop. He said situation, which meant it walked that fine, shifting line in the sand between official police business and family circumstances. “Fine, but you do exactly what I say, when I say. Got it?”
“Like the ride along. Got it.”
The trip out took fifteen minutes. He kept the lights and sirens off. No need to announce his breakneck trip out of town to every citizen of Walkers Ford. Matt had called his cell rather than use the radio, which meant none of this was on the scanner. The windows of Cody’s trailer were dark when they blew past, no car parked out front. Alana’s head turned to examine the scene.
“It’s a school night,” she said to no one in particular.
Cody had made sure the kids were fed, in bed, before doing his homework and going to bed himself. Taking on a father’s job before he was old enough not to need a father himself.
He didn’t take on other people’s problems anymore. He did his job, and yet here he was, worrying about Cody on his way to get Tanya out of whatever situation she’d stumbled into this time.
The road surface transitioned abruptly from blacktop to gravel. He let up on the gas until the balding tires caught in the dirt, then he braked when they crested the hill. Matt’s squad car, one of the newer, nimbler Dodges, was angled across the road in a textbook-perfect slant to prevent another car from taking off. He braked to a halt behind and to the right of Matt’s car and hurled himself out of the Blazer.
Tanya rambled in and out of the squad car’s headlights. She looked like hell, blond hair matted and hanging in snarls around her face. She wore a black men’s tank top with a flannel shirt over it and jeans that hung on her frame. Her face, starkly illuminated by the harsh headlamps, had the shrunken look of dehydration. She’d stop eating before she stopped drinking, which explained the skeletal look of her shoulder, bared when the flannel shirt slipped. She was barefoot again.
It was maybe fifty degrees out.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Sorry, Chief,” Matt said. “I was driving around when I saw her crossing the field.”
Lucas spun and looked in the direction Matt pointed, but didn’t see Tanya’s truck. “She was on foot.”
“On foot,” Matt confirmed. “She’s obviously under the influence, but she wasn’t driving. Since she’s your cousin and Chief Nelson’s daughter, I figured I better call you before I did anything else.”
“She try to run?”
Matt shook his head. “She’s just wandered around, muttering to herself.”
Lucas watched Tanya bite at her nails and roam in and out of the lights like a moth attracted to a light. She was agitated, shaking.
“Shut off your lights,” Lucas said quietly. “She’s high on painkillers. Normal activity makes them agitated. The flashing lights are worse.”
Matt reached into his open window and turned off the red-and-blue lights. “What do you think we should do?”
Lucas stepped forward, into the headlight’s beam. Tanya looked up, blinking rapidly. Her eyes were feral in her paper-white face, all humanity leached from her expression. She jerked her head back and her hair slipped enough to reveal a livid bruise on her cheekbone.
“Well, hey,” she drawled. “What brings you out this way?”
“You,” he said.
She laughed. “It’s always me, isn’t it? A thorn in your side. The black sheep. The prodigal daughter.”
If he remembered his Bible verses correctly, the prodigal son returned home, ashamed of his behavior, but he doubted Tanya would appreciate the correction. “Let’s get you home. It’s cold out here.”
“Not as cold as it is at home.”
Her sad tone twisted something deep in his gut. “We’ll start a fire,” he said and reached for her as she shambled past.
She twisted away. “You call him, Mattie? You call my cousin and tattle on me?”
“I was worried about you, Tanya,” Matt said.
“You didn’t used to worry.” She laughed, low and mean, her eyelids drooping in a parody of seduction. “No, sir. You didn’t used to worry at all.”
The tips of Matt’s ears reddened in the high beams. “I’m worried now,” he said evenly.
Lucas gave the kid credit for holding on to his temper, because Tanya was working his last nerve. “You worried about anyone lately, Tan? Anything other than yourself?”