She brushed too-long hair from his sweaty forehead and willed her tears away. Better to be angry. Furious.
“I’ll get whoever did this to you,” she whispered with an intensity she hadn’t felt since Janey’s rape. “I’ll crush them.”
“Shannon?”
She turned around. Dad. Who had called him? Dave? Good. He’d done something right.
“Tom’s bad.” Her voice cracked and she moved into her father’s arms. As usual, though, she ended up comforting him more than receiving comfort. Dad had fallen apart after Mom’s death, too, but that time it had been Janey who’d held the family together. These days, with Janey living in Ordinary raising her own family, the job had fallen to Shannon.
She called the twins to tell them what had happened and then held her father while he cried. She’d deal with her own grief later.
* * *
“FRANK?” SHERIFF CASH KAVENAGH stood behind his desk in the Sheriff’s office in Ordinary, Montana, and stared at the man who was technically his father. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Francis Kavenagh might have shared his DNA with Cash, but he hadn’t given much else of himself to his son.
Autumn sunlight streaming through the office’s open door limned Frank’s once-broad shoulders. He was shorter than Cash remembered.
Behind him, cars drove by on Main Street. A junker Cash didn’t recognize sat at the curb. Frank’s?
One of Main Street’s shop owners walked along the sidewalk, but didn’t glance at the stranger. Thank God. A brisk November wind blew in. Another ordinary day in Ordinary. Or not. Cash’s father was here.
Cash’s eyes weren’t deceiving him, though. Nor was his nose. It was Frank, all right. He still wore the same old lady-killer cologne—Kanøn—applied with a heavy hand. It had been popular thirty or more years ago.
“Why are you here?” Cash asked again, the belligerence in his tone unintentional. He came by his attitude toward Frank honestly. Life had taught him to distrust the man.
“I wanted to see you.” Frank’s voice had weakened, didn’t have the authority it used to.
Pushing sixty, he looked closer to seventy. He’d been vain about his thick head of hair, but most of it was gone, the remaining yellow-gray like an old bedsheet. Sort of matched the tone of his skin.
“I told you to never come to Ordinary,” Cash said.
“I know.”
“Get in here and close the door before someone sees you.”
Frank did.
Broken veins dotted his cheeks and the creases of his nostrils.
“You look like hell. I guess the hard living finally caught up.”
Frank winced. “Yeah.” He stepped toward the desk. “Can I sit?”
Cash nodded. He didn’t want the man here, should boot him out, but— He seemed unwell. Cash didn’t care, but couldn’t turn him away.
“I tried to talk to your mother.” Frank fell into the chair with a sigh that started in the soles of his shoes. “She wouldn’t see me.”
“She’s happy now.” Cash sat down on the business side of the desk. “She got herself a good husband the second time around. Leave her alone.”
“I figured that out.” In a gesture so familiar it hurt to watch, Frank ran his hand over his head as if fixing his non-existent hair. “I need to tie up certain things. Make them right.”
“‘Tie up things?’ What is this, some kind of deathbed confession scenario?” Despite the joke, unease circled in Cash’s gut.
A cynical smile spread across Dad’s face, colored with sadness. “Yes.”
Cash froze. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Cirrhosis of the liver. End-stage. I wanted to see you before I…go. To apologize for the way I treated you and your mom.”
“It’s been twenty years.”
“I know.”
“You couldn’t have apologized before now?”
“I should have.”
“I thought you didn’t care.”
Frank stared at him. “For a long time I thought I didn’t, about either you or your mother.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Frank met Cash’s bitter smile with a grim one of his own.
“I know I don’t deserve a thing from you—”
“You got that right.”
“—but I want you to know that you and your mom were the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“It sure didn’t feel that way.”
Frank glanced away and nodded. “It took losing you two for me to realize it.”
“So, what do you want from me? Money?” Man, that bitterness was giving everything Cash said a real hard edge.
“No, son. Nothing. I came for you, not for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was a rotten role model. You never got married and had kids.”
“That has nothing to do with you.” So what if Frank’s concerns echoed his own? He’d tried to find someone to settle down with—honest to God he had—but that was nobody’s business but Cash’s. Particularly not Frank’s.
Frank had never appreciated Cash and his mom, yet Frank thought he had to right to criticize Cash for not having married yet?
You’ve been worried about that yourself a lot lately.
So what? That’s my right. Not Frank’s.
Besides, Cash was only thirty-six. Who knew what could happen in the next few years?
Frank raised a placating hand. “Okay. I’m sorry. For everything.”
Frank’s dry-eyed apology moved Cash more than tears would have. What he wouldn’t have given for this sincere, humbled man to have been his father twenty years ago. Cash resisted the apology.
“You’re a dollar short and a day late. I don’t need anything from you.”
“I can see that, Cash. You’ve done well for yourself. I asked around.”
“Who did you talk to?” Someone here in town? Cash felt a moment’s panic.
“Don’t worry. I did it long distance. You have a good reputation in the area.” Frank stood. “You’re a better man than I was. I’m proud of you.”
“Am I supposed to go all gooey and soft now? After you neglected me and mom during the marriage and since the divorce?”
“I know. It’s not much, is it? But it’s true.”
He didn’t know what to say. The man looked bad enough to elicit sympathy, but all of those years of anger backed up in Cash’s throat. Choked him. Strangled every decent word he might have said.
Frank gripped the door handle and Cash’s heart rate kicked up despite his anger, the child in him preparing to watch his father walk out of his life again.
“I just hope you find a good woman to love,” Frank said. “And don’t waste the opportunity like I did with your mother.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” Cash countered. “There are plenty of women in town who’d be happy to take up that position.”
Cash wasn’t boasting. He knew it from experience.
“Good.” Frank opened the door to leave.
Cash held his tongue. They’d said enough.
“I know you won’t believe me, Cash, but I love you.”
With that Frank was gone.
In the weighty silence left behind, Cash breathed heavily, trying not to succumb to regret and maudlin sympathy. Frank had forged his own way.
Cash’s hands formed into fists and he leaned on them on the desk, hard, so he wouldn’t run after Frank.
Even so, when the doorknob turned, his heart lifted.
But it wasn’t Frank.
His deputy, Wade Hanlon, stepped in, ready to relieve Cash as he did every night.
Hating himself for it, Cash rushed past Wade out the door, looking both ways up
and down Main Street. Just past the edge of town a car veered off the road and rumbled onto the unpaved shoulder. A ball of dust enveloped it before it righted itself into the lane. The rusted old junker.
Dad.
When the dust cleared, Cash could just barely tell that the car he was driving was the old junker that had been parked in front of the station.
Dad didn’t have money.
Cash started to run. To catch it.
Dad. Stop.
He’d made it a block before someone honked, startling him to a halt. Timm Franck eased his old pickup closer and rolled down the window. “Hey, Cash, are you okay? What are you doing in the middle of the road?”
Had he actually run out into the street to chase Dad?
He’d just made a fool of himself on Main Street.
Had anyone else seen Frank? Had they realized he was related to Cash? These were Cash’s people, Timm a good buddy, but they knew nothing about his past. He intended to keep it that way. Cash settled on a lie. “I was trying to catch someone speeding through town.”
“On foot?” Timm laughed. “That’s a new one.”
“I saw a car rushing past, tried to get the plate number.”
Timm smiled. He’d bought the lie. “Wonder who it was?”
“I didn’t recognize the car. Someone driving through, I guess.”
He’d always promised himself he’d be a better man than Dad, but here he was, lying to a friend.
How could he stand here and behave so calmly when his stomach was turning somersaults? Because you learned a long time ago to bury emotion. Mom had done enough crying for the both of them and Cash had learned to be the strong one.
“See you later,” he told Timm and strode back to the office.
Everything was fine. He was fine.
* * *
SHANNON CALLED HER superior at the Domestic Field Division of the DEA in Denver.
“Have you found anyone to help me out?” she asked Sam Morgans.
“Nothing’s changed since you called yesterday. We’re working at max. I’ve got no one to send to Ordinary right now.”
“You’ve got me.”
“You’re on vacation—one I practically begged you to take. Remember?”
“I remember, but—”
“Stop. There’ve been plenty of studies. Police officers working in stressful positions need regular time away from the job.”
“I know. I’m on vacation, okay?”
“Good. Now rest. As soon as I have a team available, I’ll send them up to Montana.”
“But still not likely for another month?”
“That’s right. You enjoy your vacation. Got it?”
“I’ve got it. Thanks, Sam.”
Shannon cursed.
This sucked. Someone had sold her brother bad meth and they were still out there, selling that crap to others. Tom had said it was being cooked in Ordinary, Montana.
Despite the overdose, on that point, he had seemed lucid.
Whoever Dave Dunlop had spoken to in Ordinary had said there was no way the meth had come from there. “Look somewhere else” was about all Dave could get from them.
When she’d protested, Dave had said the cops knew their town. He couldn’t butt in.
So the local cops were a dead end.
Maybe Dave couldn’t do anything, and maybe the DEA had no one right now, but she was available. She could snoop around. And would. Vacation or not, Tom’s overdose trumped everything.
She got out of her car and entered the hospital. It was Thursday. Tom had been here since Monday. So had she, sitting with him every day.
She entered his room. No change. Tom, wake up. Please.
She stayed with him for a while but the whole situation ate at her. She was sitting here in a hospital room with her sick, and probably dying, brother while a meth manufacturer and drug dealer walked free in Ordinary.
No way.
Shannon stormed out of Tom’s room and did what she always did in times of stress. She took control.
A couple of hours later, she arrived at Janey’s house just outside of Ordinary. She had a quick meal then jumped into the shower to wash the city’s grime from her skin, along with her anger and grief, wishing like crazy this was a normal Thursday night and that this had been a normal week.
But it hadn’t been, and this was a bad time for wishful thinking.
Tom still floated in his coma—and she still hadn’t told her sister.
She dialed Janey’s cell number. “Janey? It’s me.”
“How’s Tom?” Some kind of animated music played in the background.
“Not good. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Just a minute. The kids are watching a Disney movie. I can’t hear.”
A second later, it went quiet on the other end and Janey said, “What were you saying?”
“Where are you?”
“In the bathroom of the hotel room with the door locked.” She laughed. “It’s the only way I can have peace and quiet. About Tom?”
“He overdosed. He’s in the hospital. In a coma.”
She heard Janey gasp. “Oh my God. We’ll come home right now.”
“Oh, no, you won’t. I almost didn’t call because I knew you’d say that, but I had to tell you.”
“But—”
“No buts. Honestly, there’s nothing you can do.”
“Poor Tom. Life has been too hard on him.”
“It sure has.” Shannon changed the phone to her other ear and took a sweater out of a drawer Janey kept packed for her. “I’m staying at your place, okay?”
“Of course, but why are you there?”
“Tom got the drugs in Ordinary. I’m taking a look around.”
“Ordinary?” Janey’s voice held disbelief.
“Apparently the town isn’t the source. It isn’t being made here, but he definitely got it here.”
Shannon’s next bet was on the biker bar Janey used to complain about.
“I’m going to check out the biker bar in Ordinary first.”
“Biker bar? That’s gone. The Sheriff chased them out of town. They’re all over in Monroe now at a place called Sassy’s.”
“Okay, I’ll scope it out.”
“Shannon, be careful,” Janey warned in her big-sister voice.
“I will. I’m good at my job.”
“I know. I worry anyway.”
“I’ll see you when you get home Sunday.”
No matter what her sister said about being careful, Shannon was going to check out that bar. The distance between bikers and drugs was no big leap for imagination.
She hung up and spread her favorite lotion over her skin, then dressed in panties, a bra and a pair of jeans. She had just picked up the sweater when she heard something downstairs.
She stopped and held her breath.
Another noise. A creak on the stairs. Damn.
There was definitely someone in the house.
She finished pulling on her sweater and took her gun out of her purse. Hiding behind the bedroom door, she waited.
CHAPTER TWO
NAVIGATING A MINEFIELD of children’s toys, Cash crept across the veranda to the front door of the Wright house. With the toe of his cowboy boot, he nudged aside the cop car he’d bought for Ben’s third birthday.
Cash’s buddy, C.J., was married to Janey and crazy about his wife. They had a bunch of great kids C.J. adored. Cash was still single—children a daydream—and nothing but an honorary uncle to his friend’s children.
Now Dad was dying and Cash might be the end of the Kavenagh line. He wanted what C.J. had with Janey, a family life instead of the horror show his childhood had been.
&nbs
p; ‘I was a rotten role model. You never got married and had kids.’ Was it Dad’s fault?
Yeah. Maybe. He didn’t know.
The crisp wind that had arisen with nightfall spoke of autumn running into winter. He inhaled the scent of leaves breaking down on damp earth then exhaled on a sigh. If he had a bunch of kids, he might be in California visiting Disneyland, too, like the Wrights.
Instead he was here, investigating a light on in the upstairs window of what was supposed to be an empty house.
Hailey Hall babysat Janey’s kids sometimes. She would have a key to the house. Cash had caught her and her boyfriend, Jeff, in the weirdest nooks and crannies around town, making out like, well, teenagers.
He wouldn’t put it past those kids to use the place while it was empty.
He opened the front door and stepped inside. Time to teach them a lesson by scaring the wits out of them.
He looked for anything out of the ordinary, treading carefully in the darkness in case the intruders weren’t Hailey and Jeff. His gun sat like a metal backbone, tucked into the waistband of his pants.
This was only Ordinary, but crime touched even small towns. No sense taking chances.
Moonlight poured in through the kitchen window, illuminating groceries on the counter—including a white box from a bakery over in Haven. He lifted the lid and checked inside. Doughnuts.
Damn kids. They had some nerve bringing snacks. A plate, silverware and a mug sat in the drying rack along with one small pot. An empty tin of canned pasta and sauce had been thrown in the recycle box. They’d made themselves at home. He was going to give them a good piece of his mind.
Only one of them had eaten, though. Probably Jeff. Kid was growing like a weed.
Cash heard a sound from the top floor—a drawer opening and closing, maybe.
He climbed the stairs. In the dark, his hand touched a stuffed animal that one of the children had left on the railing. He rubbed the soft fur between his fingers. Yeah, a bundle of kids and a great wife to wake up to every day would go a long way toward dispelling this feeling he’d had lately of…of…holding his breath, of needing…something to happen, even before Frank showed up this evening.
Another noise, softer this time, pulled him out of his reflections. Snap out of it. Self-pity wasn’t usually Cash’s thing, but at the rate Hailey and Jeff were going, they’d have children long before he ever did.
No Ordinary Sheriff Page 2