Going Home (Nugget Romance 1)

by Stacy Finz

He turned back to the counter.

  “You have to give us an emergency contact.”

  Without even thinking, he wrote down his name and his telephone numbers.

  The second week of November, Jake Stryker started his new job with Nugget PD. Finding that stockpile in the Lumber Baron’s basement had finally lit a match under Rhys to make the hire. Frankly, he’d wanted someone younger. Someone more likely to have the fire in his belly.

  But between the meth lab and the fact that he now had a desolate development with million-dollar homes to patrol, Rhys also wanted a person with experience. And true to Stryker’s word, the boys down in LAPD’s Rampart Division had given him glowing reviews.

  They’d also given him a nickname.

  Jake had been known as the Silver Fox because of his graying hair, his way with the ladies, and the fact that he’d landed a few bit police roles in Hollywood movies. Rhys could see why. Jake was straight out of cop central casting—a good natured Dirty Harry. He’d already turned heads in Nugget.

  When Rhys got to the station, Jake was already there, chatting up Connie. He liked that Jake was early.

  “I’ll just check my messages and we can go,” Rhys called from his office.

  “Where you guys off to?” Connie asked.

  “I’m taking Jake on a tour of Sierra Heights.”

  “Ah . . . Where the other half don’t live.” Connie poured coffee into a to-go cup and placed it on Rhys’s desk. She’d donated a fancy European coffeemaker that ground and brewed to the office after upgrading her personal one. Her sister lived in Seattle and had turned her into a coffee snob. She ordered their beans from some specialty roaster in Oakland. It seemed like a lot of trouble to Rhys, but it was damn good coffee.

  “Okay,” Rhys said. “We’re out of here. Radio if anything comes up.”

  Before hitting the road, Rhys took Jake over to the Lumber Baron to show him the basement. Sometimes Maddy hung on the porch while the crew went in and out. He glanced over, but no sight of her.

  Colin was working in the yard. When he spotted Rhys, he turned off the table saw and flipped up his goggles. “Anything yet?”

  “Nope. You mind if I show Officer Stryker where you found the stuff?”

  “No problem.” Colin slid the goggles down and went back to cutting trim.

  Rhys led the way down a flight of steps to the cellar door and reminded himself to tell Maddy or Colin to get a lock. It wouldn’t keep out anyone who really wanted in, but at least it would slow them down. The basement was fairly spacious with enough height for them to walk around without having to duck their heads.

  “That’s where we found the barrels of ether.” Rhys pointed.

  Jake toed the residue on the ground from where they’d dusted for prints. “So they’re fixing this place up, huh?”

  “Yeah. They’re turning it into an inn.”

  “Nice.” Jake felt the basement wall with the back of his hand. “This would make a great wine cellar. You thinking these guys will be back for their stash?”

  As a narc, Rhys had seen it happen dozens of times in Houston. Tweakers too stupid to realize they’d been raided, returning to the scene of the crime. “If they’re from around here, they may already know we took it. If not . . . yeah, they’ll be back.”

  They climbed out of the basement and walked toward the front of the Victorian. Rhys scanned the porch again and felt a twinge of disappointment.

  “You all moved in?” he asked as they crossed the square to where his truck was parked.

  “Yep. Had an efficiency apartment in LA, so I kept most of my stuff here anyway.”

  “How long you have the cabin?” Rhys clicked his key fob and they both piled inside the cab.

  “Oh, fifteen years at least,” Jake said. “I’ve been bringing my girls up since they were little.”

  “How many you have?”

  “Five—three in college.” He beamed and whipped out his phone. “That’s my oldest, Sarah. I got her that kayak when she graduated from high school. That one’s Janny—straight A student. Tara’s the baby, loves horses.”

  “Nice-looking family,” Rhys said, as Jake continued to show him picture after picture of his daughters.

  “Not a boy in the bunch.” Jake chuckled, but Rhys heard a little longing, too. “You have any?”

  “Kids? Hell no.”

  “So you came from Houston PD, huh?”

  “Yep,” Rhys pulled out of the square, hopped on Highway 70 and turned onto Sierra Heights Road. He drove through the scrolled gates, past the empty security booth. “I worked narcotics, but my goal is homicide. I’m guessing it’s even tougher in LA than it is in Houston. You don’t think you’ll miss it?”

  “Nope. It sucks the life out of you.” Jake stared out at the huge homes. “Wow. I see what you mean.”

  “Yep, sort of our version of Bel Air.”

  Jake continued to gape. “In all my years living here, I never checked this place out. So, what’s the deal?”

  Rhys headed for the clubhouse, explaining that the developers had run out of money, stiffed their subs, who subsequently filed liens against the property. He parked and Jake followed him out of the truck.

  “They can’t sell any of these houses until the liens are lifted?”

  “Right,” Rhys said. “In this economy I don’t know who’d buy them anyway.”

  He showed Jake the common grounds like he’d done with Maddy. The pool, the golf course, the pro shop. “Honestly, with our lack of resources we can’t worry too much about vandalism. As far as I’m concerned that’s the developers’ problem. My fear, however, is that this place will become an encampment for squatters and I don’t want them making trouble for our residents.”

  Jake nodded. “The power and water must be shut off. It’ll be freezing soon. We’ll have to watch for chimney smoke.”

  Rhys jiggled the rec room door handle to make sure it was still locked. “I’d like this to be part of Wyatt’s beat, but the kid’s pretty inexperienced. So maybe you could patrol the subdivision with him a few times, tell him about things like chimney smoke, show him the ropes.”

  “Sounds good,” Jake said. “I also think you and I should hit some of the back roads in these mountains, see if anything leads to our meth friends.”

  Just as they were heading back to the truck, Rhys’s radio crackled and Connie’s voice came over the air. “Chief, we’ve got a two seventy three-point-five up on Shadow Lane.”

  “You got a house number, Connie?”

  “It’s the McCall place.”

  Ah crap! He knew the house. Last he’d heard, the family had moved away; only Mini lived there now.

  “On our way,” he told Connie.

  “Spouse reported being badly beaten,” she warned.

  Mini getting married was news to him. “Send paramedics, okay?”

  “Will do,” she responded and signed off.

  He pulled his portable police beacon from the floor of the backseat, attached the flashing light to his roof and took off, siren blaring. The Southside quarter, right outside town, hadn’t changed much. Rows of run-down Craftsman bungalows. Not too long ago, he would’ve prescribed a wrecking ball. But Maddy’s optimism for Nugget was rubbing off on him. Because, now, looking at Shadow Lane, he could actually see potential. The modest-sized homes with their front porches, tapered square columns, and gabled roofs had character. With a little TLC this could be a good neighborhood for young families.

  When they got to the McCall house, a naked man crouched behind a corduroy couch on the porch, holding his bleeding head.

  “What the hell took you so long?” The man kept darting his eyes around, as if expecting someone to haul out of the house at any second.

  Jake immediately headed for the rear in case someone tried to bolt out the back door.

  “Come down, sir,” Rhys ordered from the street.

  Seemingly satisfied that the coast was clear, the man got up and staggered down the steps, grabbing
for the railing.

  “EMTs are on their way.” Rhys quickly checked the man’s head, determining the wound to be superficial. Just the same, he could have a concussion, so Rhys told him to wait in the truck. The thought of the guy’s bare ass rubbing on the leather seats made Rhys cringe and kick himself for taking his Ram instead of the department rig.

  That’s when Mini came barreling out the tattered screen door. Barefoot, she might’ve tricked the scale to one eighty. Other than the pink streaks in her bleached-blond hair and the jowls, she hadn’t changed much in twenty years.

  “Mini, you stay right there.” Rhys kept his hand on the butt of his gun, but didn’t draw.

  “I’ll kill that son of a bitch.” Waving an empty wine bottle in the air, she pounded off the porch like a charging rhinoceros.

  Jake rounded the corner, weapon ready.

  “Dammit, Mini. I told you to stay put.” Rhys grabbed her arm and knocked the bottle out of her hand.

  Neighbors began pouring out onto the sidewalk, jockeying for a good view. McCalls had been creating spectacles in this part of town for as long as Rhys had known them. He’d hoped Mini would’ve turned out different.

  Rhys kept his voice down, but cross as hell, said, “Now I have to cuff and read you your rights in front of everyone, when we could’ve just had a conversation.” He did both.

  “What about him?” Mini bobbed her head at Rhys’s truck. “You cuff him, too?”

  “No. Unlike you, he follows directions.” He watched as two Cal Fire medics arrived and moved the victim from Rhys’s truck to the back of their van, where they applied first aid. “What the hell’s going on here, Mini?”

  “He won’t get a job, just lies around the house getting drunk. Won’t even put on his clothes.”

  “So you crack him over the head?”

  “No. I hit him for wrecking my car. I just got it paid off and he goes and rear-ends someone on his way to get a pack of smokes.”

  “When did that happen?” Rhys was thinking he couldn’t have gone out to get cigarettes in his freaking birthday suit.

  “Last night,” she answered.

  “You waited until this morning?” he asked incredulously and heard Jake snort.

  “I just saw the damage,” Mini said. “Went outside to water the plants and the whole front bumper’s trashed.” She stopped talking and gave him the once-over. “I heard you were back. You’re looking good, Rhys Shepard.”

  He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Mini, do you realize how much trouble you’re in?”

  “What? You’re actually arresting me?” she asked, as if bashing a guy over the head wasn’t a felony offense. Mini was probably under the mistaken impression that Rhys should cut her a break because of their past.

  In high school, besides Clay, she’d been the closest thing he’d had to a friend. They’d met their freshman year on the student quad. Mini had tried to bum a cigarette off him, he’d told her to get her own, and for whatever reason she’d taken that as an invitation to stick to him like glue. Despite his efforts to lose her, they’d eventually started skipping second-period Spanish together and smoking weed in the woods. They’d even hitched a ride once to Reno to see a Wilco concert.

  “I don’t have a choice,” he said.

  She tossed her head. “He’ll just drop the charges.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I dropped them last time. The bastard fractured my arm, so he owes me one.”

  “Jeez, Mini, you’re married to this guy?”

  “Hell, no! We’re just living together.”

  “Well, it doesn’t exactly sound like a love connection,” Rhys said.

  “It has its moments.” Her whole face softened, reminding Rhys of Mini’s knack for making the best out of a bad situation, like her alcoholic, abusive train wreck of a family. Maybe that’s why she’d been able to stay here; living like her parents did, when he’d had to get the hell out.

  “You want to get a beer sometime?” she asked. “Talk about old times?”

  “Ah, Mini, there’s nothing I’d like better,” he said, thinking that in that revisionist mind of hers she was already humming Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days.” “But right now I have to take you in.”

  “Whatever.” She gazed over at the paramedics’ van.

  He knew Mini was right. In a few hours, after his mad wore off, the boyfriend would call the attack a misunderstanding. Even though the district attorney could still file charges; without a victim, or a witness, the case would be too difficult to prosecute. And the whole damn cycle would start over again.

  Rhys walked Mini to the truck and helped her into the cab. Jake got in next to her. “I’ll tell you what,” Rhys said. “Enroll yourself in an anger management program and we’ll get that beer.”

  Rhys slanted a glance at Jake, wondering whether the older cop thought a police chief shouldn’t be associating with the likes of Mini McCall. But Jake was grinning his ass off.

  Chapter 10

  Maddy swayed back and forth in her new glider—a Colin Burke original—taking in the mountains and the trees.

  So far autumn had only brought scattered flurries of snow and an occasional overcast morning. But today, nothing but blue skies. The mild weather was especially fortuitous given that construction on the inn had already suffered the meth-lab setback, and in two weeks many of the workers would be away for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Maddy planned to spend her turkey day with Nate, Sophie, and Mariah at the Ponderosa. Without Dave, it would be surreal—lonely, but at the same time liberating. She’d hated celebrating with his parents. They’d turned what had been in her own home a convivial family holiday into a ceremony, expecting everyone to dress to the nines and eat with the right forks.

  Luckily, she’d never have to do it again.

  “Mornin’.” Rhys walked out onto the porch with his hair wet, sipping a cup of coffee. Ever since the Halloween festival she’d felt a little awkward around him. But since they lived next door to each other she needed to get over it.

  Maddy must’ve stared longingly at the steam rising off his mug, because Rhys said, “Lina made a fresh pot in the kitchen. You want a cup?”

  “I’d die for one.”

  “Aw, don’t do that,” he said, and popped back into the house only to return a few minutes later with a second mug.

  “Mmm.” She didn’t usually take sugar, just cream, but he’d sweetened the coffee and Maddy had to admit that it tasted delicious.

  “Nice swing.” He tipped his head to check out the gliding mechanism. “Colin’s?”

  “Yep.”

  “How much it set you back? Maybe I’ll get one before I leave—rent a place in Houston with a porch.”

  “He made me promise not to tell. For me: special deal.” She patted the space next to her on the bench built for two, and together they rocked while drinking their coffee. “The kids seem like they’re settling in.”

  He gave a half shrug, signaling he didn’t want to talk about it. She thought he was missing out on an opportunity to get to know them, but kept her mouth shut. In so many ways Lina and Sam reminded her of Rhys. Lina had his take-charge thing going on, overseeing Shep’s care as well as Betty had. And Sam was a natural-born flirt. The eleven-year-old could talk her into playing endless hours of Hangman while they sat on the porch. Maddy hated Hangman.

  “If it’s okay with you,” she said, “I told Lina I would take her and Shep to Reno the next time I go. She and Sam could use a few things.”

  “Yeah, sure. That’s really nice of you.” He grinned at her and damn if her knees didn’t knock. What was it about this guy?

  “You going into the station?”

  “Yep,” he said. “The new hire, Jake Stryker’s, been opening for me.”

  “That’s great. He’ll keep you from having to put in so many extra hours, won’t he?”

  “That’s the idea. How ’bout you? Going to the inn?”

  “Mm hmm.”

 
; He propped his booted feet up on the railing. “Maybe I should book now, before you’re flooded with reservations.”

  “Rhys, you get first dibs.” As she said it she had an unsettling thought. What if he was serious about booking a room in her inn? She doubted he’d stay there by himself. “You thinking of bringing a date?”

  He gave the question some consideration. “It’s a romantic place, right?”

  “Of course.” She couldn’t tell whether Rhys was teasing, but suddenly her stomach turned a little queasy. The idea of him staying in her hotel with a woman bothered her. A lot.

  “Well, then I guess I ought to. Maybe I’ll ask Portia,” he said, letting out a shout of laughter. She socked him in the leg. “What?”

  “Come on; don’t tell me you’re not seeing someone.” She waited, and when he didn’t respond, muttered, “Probably multiple women.”

  He did a double take. “How do you figure that?”

  She twisted herself sideways on the glider so she could face him. “You’re a player.”

  “I’m a player?” He sounded peeved.

  “I don’t mean it in a bad way. You’re single, good-looking. Why wouldn’t you date?”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t kiss and tell, sugar.” He started to get up, but Maddy pulled him back down.

  “Oh, no you don’t. Spill!”

  He looked at her challengingly. “Then you have to tell me the latest with Dave?” He said “Dave” like the name was a pair of dirty socks.

  “You first,” Maddy insisted.

  “Fine. But a deal’s a deal. Don’t renege when you find out I don’t have much to tell.” He put his coffee mug on the floor. “I’ve gone on one date since I moved back to Nugget—a coworker of a flight attendant Clay sees. That’s it. The end.”

  “Well, do you like her?”

  “Not much, no.”

  For some reason, that pleased her enormously. “How come?”

  He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. No chemistry I guess. Now your turn.”

  Maddy put her mug down next to Rhys’s and exhaled. “I filed,” she said quietly. “His lawyer must have gotten word to him in France, because he’s been calling me like crazy.”