The Bad Boy of Butterfly Harbor

by Anna J. Stewart

  “You think you can steal from me?” Rex Winters shouted at his son. “You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? Going through my things? My private space and taking what doesn’t belong to you! You tell me right now what you’ve done with them you good-for-nothing—” Rex grabbed Kyle by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the community center’s door.

  “Take your hands off the boy.” Luke tried not to think about the fact Kyle’s head had bounced like a soccer ball, or that the kid’s eyes had gone glassy for a flash of a moment. His own head had spun for that same moment—a moment where he imagined his own face on Kyle’s trembling body. “Now, Mr. Winters.”

  Rex Winters glared at Luke over his shoulder, pinprick bloodshot eyes all but spinning. “Who’re you?” Winters raked his eyes up and down Luke’s uniform, gaze flickering over the gun at Luke’s hip. “New deputy, is it? Bunch of useless—”

  “New sheriff. Remove your hands, Mr. Winters. Or I’ll remove them for you.” Control settled and his training kicked in, but in truth, Luke wanted nothing more than for Rex Winters to try something. Anything that would give Luke reason to...

  “Dad—” Kyle said, skittering eyes shifting to Luke.

  “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with you, Sheriff,” Winters slurred and leaned into his son. The smell of booze wafted off him in thick, throat-clenching waves. Kyle turned his head, squeezed his eyes shut. “My boy. My rights.”

  “It’s your son’s rights that interest me at the moment.” Luke could give Kyle that instant blast of relief, that brief incredible feeling as if someone—anyone—cared whether you lived or died. “You’ve been operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.”

  Kyle’s eyes went wide, as if he couldn’t believe someone had called his father on his actions.

  “Can’t prove nothin’,” Winters muttered. “The boy drove that truck here.”

  “That boy’s been here for over an hour,” Luke countered. “I know because my deputy’s been watching this building for the better part of the afternoon. I’ll say it one more time. Let go of the boy, and move away. Now.”

  Luke reached behind him and unlatched the snap holding his Taser. Then he held his hand up in the air as a signal to Fletch. The car door slammed across the street.

  Winters released Kyle. The teen slid down the wall as his father made a stumbling move toward Luke.

  Luke took a solitary step back as Winters hit the ground in front of him, tripping over his own stupid self, landing face-first hard enough to break his nose. Blood sprayed and dotted the ground, but Luke didn’t give the man time to let out more than a groan of pain before he stepped over him, wrenched one of Winters’s wrists behind him and slapped the cuffs on him. “Rex Winters, you’re under arrest—”

  “Look out, Sheriff!”

  Luke leaned back as he saw the raised arm and beer bottle in hand come arcing down. But it was too late. He closed his eyes as the glass smashed into the side of his head, spraying him with beer and blood.

  Pain exploded against his temple. Luke braced a hand on Winters’s back to stop from face-planting onto him. The sound of fast-moving footsteps told him Kyle was making a run for it. Blinking blood out of his eye, Luke struggled to stay on his feet, but the gray-hoodied figure darted out of sight, the jagged bottle dropping from Kyle’s hand as he ran off.

  Fletch cursed and grabbed Luke’s arm, hauled him over to the brick wall and shoved him down. He finished cuffing Winters before returning to Luke’s side. Luke waved him off, swallowing the dizziness and nausea against squeezed eyes. He should have known, should have anticipated Kyle’s reaction. Should have remembered...

  “I’ll call Ozzy,” Fletch said. “Have him put out an alert on Kyle—”

  “No.” Luke shook his head and caught himself before he toppled backward. Holly’s milk shake threatened to come back up and say hello. He took a deep, deep breath, then another as the pain settled and pounded. “No. Let’s get this guy to holding. We’ll deal with Kyle later.”

  “But—”

  “I’m the boss,” Luke reminded him as he swiped his hand across his forehead. “Lock him up. Tow his car to impound. Start the paperwork. Then we’ll worry about Kyle.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “JEEZ, SHERIFF, HOW big was the bottle?” Ozzy asked Luke as he and Fletch dragged a stumbling, semiconscious Rex Winters into the station.

  “Big enough.” The headache slamming against Luke’s skull was going to be with him for a while, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t dealt with before. Explosions and flying glass were nothing new—hadn’t been in the service, certainly not while he’d been on the bomb squad. Growing up with his father had been a great training ground.

  Fletch had defied his orders—somewhat—by calling for an EMT unit. They’d been on scene in minutes, setting Winters’s broken nose, writing up a report and addressing the three-inch gash in Luke’s scalp. He’d ignored their insistence he go in for X-rays. He’d already spent enough time in hospitals, the past eighteen months especially.

  “Knew that boy of mine wasn’t no coward.” Winters’s eyes rolled back in his head. Luke took more pleasure than he was comfortable with in slamming the cell closed. Immediately, Karma herself visited as the noise echoed in his own head to the point he swayed. With white knuckles, he gripped one of the cell’s bars as he stared at his first arrest as sheriff. “You can’t hold me here!” Winters bellowed as he collapsed on the wafer-thin mattress.

  “Sleep it off,” Luke ordered and closed the door into the holding area. “What’s going on here?” He frowned at the new batch of cables and tech manuals open around Ozzy’s desk.

  “Troubleshooting,” Ozzy mumbled. “I swear it was working great this morning. But when I got back from lunch, I tried to log in and the entire system’s locked up. Some malware program I’ve never seen before. Don’t know how it got into our system. The only emails I’ve opened have been from state agencies.”

  So much for running the registration on the gun he’d found in Kyle’s pack or familiarizing himself with Rex Winters’s file to see if he’d violated any stipulations in his former dealings with the law.

  “What are we going to do about Kyle?” Fletch asked, handing Luke a couple of aspirins and some water. “He assaulted an officer.”

  Luke ignored the question but downed the pills as he withdrew to his office. He came up short when he noticed the transom window slightly ajar, mud caked on the ledge. He pulled the latch shut, pushed it open with one finger. He frowned. Circling to his desk, he saw another clump of dirt near his chair, another under his desk.

  “Boss?” Fletch asked as Luke headed outside. “What now? You should be sitting down.”

  “Need to check something.” Luke walked behind the station, shoved himself through the thicket of bushes to a small clearing. The ground was lower here, but not so low someone couldn’t reach the window. In fact, he didn’t have to do anything except look straight ahead to see into his office.

  He poked his fingertips under the frame of the window, which popped open with little pressure. He bent down to examine the ground and the fresh footprints, two sets, along with a couple of bicycle tracks and uneven indentations.

  “You going to share with the rest of the class?” Fletcher asked from behind him.

  “Someone was in my office while we were gone.” Luke squatted down to peer under the raised foundation and spotted a large tree trunk lying on its side, something wedged under it. He dug into the ground and pulled out a filthy, familiar butterfly, minus its chain.

  Luke pushed himself up, then braced his hand on the wall for a second, squeezing his eyes as the world tilted around him. “Those footprints, there.” He pointed behind him as the nausea churned.

  “Couple of kids, maybe.” Fletch moved closer. “Not very big at all.” He put his own si
zable boot next to one, pulled the window open until it stopped. “Yeah, definitely kids. An adult couldn’t squeeze in this opening. Someone playing tricks on you?”

  “Sure looks that way.” Luke walked back inside as the pranks over the past few mornings began to make sense. “Ozzy, I need you to check my computer.”

  “For what?” Ozzy blinked as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him.

  “My email. Just do it, please.” He waved Ozzy into his office and waited while his deputy accessed the system. “Check the trash and spam folders. Anything there?”

  “Hang on.” He inserted a USB drive. “I’m going to run a restore program...bingo! The malware file was sent from your email address.”

  “Thought so.” Luke’s headache got worse. He shoved the butterfly into his pocket. “When?”

  “Two hours ago.” Ozzy squinted at the screen. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Because I wasn’t here two hours ago. Were you?”

  “No, sir. I ran to the diner for lunch. But I wasn’t gone long.”

  Long enough.

  “It’s going to take some time to get the system up and running again. And it looks as if the program deleted a bunch of emails. I’ll see if I can restore those, as well.”

  “Can you do it from your computer?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll get remote access. Don’t worry. I’ll get it fixed.”

  “Someone’s declared war on you,” Fletch said.

  “So it would seem.” And given the escalating weapons they were using, he could only imagine what his two nemeses would come up with next. When was that aspirin going to kick in?

  “You should go home, boss. Get some rest.”

  “Whether I’m there or here, I’ll be doing the same thinking.” He’d only feel worse at home.

  “Then, sit your backside down on that sofa.” Fletch pointed at the worn leather seat behind the door. “Or get yourself down to the urgent-care clinic. I’m not losing two bosses in less than a week.”

  “I’m touched you care.” Luke did as Fletch requested and sat. Mercifully, the room stopped playing Tilt-A-Whirl.

  Cash wandered over and dropped his chin onto Luke’s knee, doggy eyebrows knitting in canine concern. Luke scratched the top of his furry head. “I’m fine, boy.”

  Even the dog looked skeptical.

  “You might want to clean yourself up.” Fletch shoved a damp towel into Luke’s limp hand. “Unless you want to get blood all over the fine upholstery.”

  Luke chuckled. The sofa he was sitting on was older than he was.

  “Got it!” Ozzy cackled. “Now all I have to do is...” The rest of his thought trailed off as he dashed to his own desk. A few minutes later he called out, “We’re back online! Wait...now what’s going on? Why have all our file names been changed?”

  “See if you can help him, would you?” Luke raised his hand to wave away Fletch. “Give me a few to get cleaned up. Then we’ll see what we can do about retrieving those lost emails. And close the door, will you?”

  * * *

  “MOM, MOM!” SIMON and Charlie crashed full speed into the diner, flushed faces and dirty shoes a sure sign they’d had an active afternoon. “You’ll never guess what happened!”

  “Did you get caught in a mudslide?” Holly bolted around the counter to heft Simon and then Charlie onto stools, but it was too late. She’d have to remop the floors. “What on earth have you two been up to?”

  “Nothing,” Simon said, and Charlie ducked her head, avoiding eye contact. “But did you hear? Someone cracked Sheriff Saxon with a bottle. There was blood everywhere!”

  “What—? Slow down, Simon.” Holly ran her hands up and down his arms. “Say that again?”

  “He was arresting Mr. Winters down by the community center,” Charlie explained, pushing her fist into Simon’s shoulder. “And someone smashed a bottle on his head. Simon and I went by and there was blood all over the sidewalk.”

  “Is the sheriff okay?” Paige asked as she and Ursula came out of the kitchen and stopped dead when she saw her daughter. “Charlotte Rose Cooper, those clothes are brand-new. Have you been slogging through mud piles or something?” She plucked at Charlie’s filthy yellow sweater.

  “No, ma’am.” Charlie’s chin went down again. “We were just—”

  “Exploring on our bikes,” Simon interrupted. “Mom, you should have seen him! The sheriff could barely walk! His whole face was covered in blood.”

  “How did you see him?” Holly asked, suspicion overtaking the disgust of what her son and Charlie had conveyed.

  “We were riding past the community center when the sheriff and Fletch were putting Mr. Winters in the car. Maybe this means Sheriff Saxon will go away now and Grandpa can have his job back.”

  Holly swallowed hard. That Simon was still holding on to that hope was her doing. She and her son needed to sit down and have a serious talk. Luke wasn’t the enemy. At least not the enemy he had been. “I doubt it,” she said. “Luke’s pretty tough.” She’d bet half a year’s rent Luke wouldn’t be going anywhere near a doctor or emergency room. Even growing up, he’d given the impression he didn’t rely on anyone else and preferred to take care of himself.

  Given the gun they’d found in Kyle’s bag at the Flutterby Inn, Holly was certain there was more to the story than her son had imparted. “I have a couple of errands to run. Paige, will you be okay for a while?”

  Paige looked around at the once again empty diner. “I’ll manage. Oh, I’ll supervise these two cleaning up the floor they just trashed,” Paige said. “Go. You two, march. Into the kitchen and get those shoes off. Pronto!” Their shoes squelched along the floor as they grumbled their obedience.

  Holly grabbed her purse and avoided Ursula’s arched brow as she dashed out of the diner and hightailed it to the sheriff’s station to get the truth. Not, she told herself, because she was worried about Luke.

  * * *

  LUKE UNPINNED HIS badge before unbuttoning the blood-and-beer-soaked shirt. His shoulders and back tightened like dried-out parchment stretched too thin. Just this morning he’d realized it had been a couple of days since he’d even thought about taking any medication. The interaction with Winters proved he still had a ways to go until he was completely healed.

  His face went cold, as if the color had drained all the way to his toes. He braced his hands on the edge of his desk. He took deep breaths, five counts in, five counts out, trying to focus the pain and ease it away along with the throbbing in his head.

  Someone knocked on the office door and he stifled a groan. “I’ll be out in a minute!”

  “Luke?” Holly pushed inside, her voice wafting over him like an unexpected salve. Concern and uncertainty tinged the solitary utterance of his name. “I heard what happened. Are you—?”

  “Close the door.” He didn’t mean to sound sharp. The gossip mill was running faster than usual today. At the click of the latch, he turned, but could see by the shock on Holly’s face he was too late.

  “What happened to you? Are those...burns?” She stepped forward, eyes dropping briefly to his bare chest and shoulder, where the melted scars had indelibly marked his upper arms. He avoided her gaze, not wanting her to see the horror and disgust he suspected he’d find reflected in her eyes. Skin that looked like melted wax belonged in horror movies and novels, not on people.

  “Yes,” he said, having to walk past her to get his backup uniform shirt out of the small armoire next to the door. “There was an accident. When I was a cop in Chicago.”

  “What happened?” she asked again and because he’d promised himself never to lie to her, he didn’t hesitate.

  “One of the rookies I handpicked for the bomb squad had a really bad day.” Luke squeezed his eyes shut, but it was too late. The echo of Carter Owen’s “I’ve
got this, boss” blasted through his head as sharply as the pipe bomb Carter had been attempting to defuse. Luke’s hands shook as he replaced the hanger in the makeshift closet, feeling the ghost flames licking at his body as his own screams had mingled with those of his team.

  Except Carter’s. Because Carter was gone. Another someone who had paid the price for Luke’s mistakes. He’d known in his gut the kid was too young, too inexperienced, but the potential had been so promising. Why did Luke’s life lessons always cost someone else more than they cost him?

  “I’m so sorry.” Holly’s whisper scraped as sharply as those bomb fragments had cut into his flesh. “I can’t even imagine—” She broke off when he didn’t respond, as if she understood he didn’t want to take the discussion any further. She cleared her throat. “And today? Out at the community center?”

  “Rex Winters and I had a disagreement.” His stomach continued to roll as he shoved Carter Owen—along with his own failings—into the corner of his mind he kept locked tight.

  “Well, that I can see.” She set her purse on the floor in front of the sofa and retrieved the damp towel he’d left on the desk. Her nose crinkled as she caught a whiff of the booze on the shirt on the floor. “No, wait. Not yet.” She shook her head as he started to put on the clean shirt. “Let’s get you cleaned up first.”

  “I can do it myself.” He held out his hand, squeezed his fist tight when his fingers continued to shake.

  “Really? Got a mirror around here I’m not seeing? It’s me or the care facility. Take your pick.”

  “Did you and Fletch decide to gang up on me?”

  “No, but good to know at least he’s thinking.” She spun one of the chairs by his desk around and pointed. “Sit. I’ll be right back with a clean towel.”

  “Right back” was an understatement. He’d barely settled into the chair before she closed the door again. “Do you have wings on your feet or something?”

  “Mom feet.” Holly pressed the damp towel against his skin, dabbing and carefully scrubbing at the dried blood on his face and neck. He sucked in a breath, chilling his teeth as she pressed a little too closely to the wound. “Sorry. As much time as Simon spends with his nose in a book, he still manages to rack up cuts and bruises in spades. They stitched you up pretty well. Looks nasty, though.”