Low Country Dreams

by Lee Tobin McClain

  She bit her lip, then nodded. Behind her, her brother ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up on end. Had Josiah developed a drinking problem, or started using? He wasn’t just nerdy and self-contained and brilliant, like he’d always been; his tension level was off the charts.

  “Where’s your mom now?” Liam asked the boy.

  A panicked look came into the boy’s eyes.

  And Liam was thrown back into his past, to the day his own mother had disappeared for good. He’d been just a little younger than this kid. Why should he expect the boy to be coherent? He hadn’t been.

  “He doesn’t have to answer your questions,” Yasmin said, her voice firm. “This isn’t an investigation. We’ve got it covered.” That last was shaky-sounding, like she wasn’t necessarily confident that she did have it covered.

  “If there’s something wrong, it would be better for us to get involved right away.” He watched her lift her chin to argue, weigh the options and decide against it. She was rattled—he could tell by the way her teeth worried at her bottom lip. “I realize you’re in charge of a women’s center,” he went on, “and you don’t need men, at least men like me. But there are things I can do, like putting out a call for someone missing, that even you can’t match.” He heard the sarcasm in his own voice and clamped his mouth shut. It was wrong to dig up past conflicts when there was a hurting kid right in front of him.

  “I’m taking him home with me,” Yasmin said, lifting an eyebrow as if daring him to argue.

  “Do you have his parents’ permission?”

  “Are you going to drag him into the station if I don’t?” she challenged. “I’m a certified foster parent, remember.” She turned to the boy. “Come on. Let’s go where it’s more comfortable and you can get some sleep.”

  As Yasmin gathered her things, and her brother and the boy shuffled around in the hallway, Liam debated whether to call for backup and make this a formal case. He remembered with crystal clarity what it was like to be a kid caught up in official police business when all you really wanted was your mom. Yasmin was probably taking the right approach, trying to make the boy feel better by bringing him to a home environment.

  The kid was clinging on to a backpack. Had both arms wrapped around it, like it wouldn’t be safe enough just sitting on his back.

  The action pulled out more of Liam’s memories. He knew that was why the kid was hugging it, because he’d done the same himself. His own backpack had been a treasured link to his mother, her neat “Liam O’Dwyer” written in permanent marker across the label.

  So...maybe he wouldn’t call this in, not unless the kid wanted him to. He cleared his suddenly tight throat. “You okay going to her house for now?” he asked the kid.

  “Shut up,” Yasmin’s brother said.

  Yasmin put her arm around him, her forehead wrinkling.

  What was that about? Josiah was a couple of years older than Liam, so four years older than Yasmin, and undeniably a little odd in a chess-genius kind of way. But his social skills had always been okay.

  “Shut UP!” Josiah said again, louder.

  Yasmin wrapped her other arm around him in a quick hug, then said something to him and gestured back toward the church. But Josiah shook his head, his mouth tightening, eyes narrowing.

  Liam left Josiah to Yasmin and knelt in front of the young teen. “If you tell us what you know about your parents, we can start looking for them.”

  The kid pressed his lips together and looked away.

  “He needs rest,” Yasmin said. “Come on, honey. I’ve got an extra room waiting for you.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed and he glanced over, his shoulders rigid, his jaw clenched.

  Liam’s radio crackled. “Dispatch to 33-12. Are you 10-4?”

  He hesitated only a beat and then keyed his radio. “10-4, Dispatch. No checks needed.” Then he turned back to Yasmin. “I’ll walk you guys there.”

  “That’s okay,” Yasmin said, looking up at her much taller brother. “Josiah will be with us.”

  “But someone’s trying to kill me,” Josiah growled.

  Whoa. Liam looked at Yasmin again. “What’s going on?”

  “He doesn’t mean it,” she said in an undertone.

  He inhaled her perfume. “I’ll walk you home,” he said.

  * * *

  YASMIN DIDN’T WANT to be the kind of woman who needed a man’s help to get along in the world. In her work, she often saw that kind of dependency go terribly, terribly wrong.

  All the same, she was grateful for Liam’s presence, no matter how much it hurt.

  He was big and strong, knowledgeable about the town, packing heat. Safe Haven was just that, safe, but she’d had a weird feeling about tonight even before her brother had pounded on the church door and she’d opened it to see the angry, vulnerable teen he had with him.

  Her heart ached for young Rocky. He’d been through so much—she knew it from his mom’s frequent visits to the center, when she’d dragged Rocky along.

  Yasmin hadn’t been able to help them, not one bit, because his mom had always gone back to her abuser. Frustration about her center’s lack of resources and about Rocky’s mother’s weakness threatened to overwhelm her, but she stiffened her spine.

  Tonight, things were going to change. She might not be able to save the women’s center, but tonight, she was determined to save this one child.

  One person at a time, one good deed at a time. That was her motto ever since Josiah and his problems had come to live in her house.

  “I think they’re over there,” Josiah said, waving toward a row of palmettos lined up in front of some Main Street shops. “They have weapons.”

  “Who’s over there?” Liam’s voice was calm, but his eyes scanned the area Josiah had indicated. “I don’t see anybody. Why do you think—”

  “Shhh!” Josiah hissed.

  Liam didn’t react except for tensing his jaw.

  In the old days, she’d have clung on to that strong, muscular arm. She’d have asked his advice about Rocky, explained her brother’s diagnosis, how he now saw things that weren’t there. If only she hadn’t done what she’d done to push Liam away. It had been for his own good, but she hadn’t known how the evenings would stretch on without his company, how she’d long for his strong arms around her. How often she’d grab her phone to text some funny detail from her day before she remembered and backspaced out the message.

  “They’re listening,” Josiah was saying to Liam.

  “Let’s just get home, Joe,” she said to her brother. “Then we can talk about it.” She’d found that confronting Josiah about his delusions was counterproductive. Treating him with the same respect she’d held for him when he’d been well was the best way to handle his bad days.

  She looked over at Rocky, who trudged half a step behind them, staring at the ground, clutching his backpack. She longed to hug him and tell him everything would be okay.

  Except she didn’t know that.

  What she should do was to interrogate him, to find out what had happened to his mom and whether his stepdad was on the loose. But she had a good sense about kids. Rocky couldn’t handle much more tonight.

  Why had Josiah brought Rocky to the center? The fact that the boy had showed up there wasn’t a huge surprise, since he’d come several times with his mother. And Josiah tended to wander the town, so having him arrive at the church was no big deal, either.

  But for them to arrive together, and upset, and without Rocky’s mom, that scared her. They didn’t know each other. What had brought them together? What had they seen?

  What had they done?

  “You work at the library, right, Josiah?” Liam spoke casually, conversationally.

  Josiah gave a grunt of assent, and a little of the tension tightening Yasmin’s shoulders eased up. Helping Joe get a j
ob at the library had been the best thing she’d done for him. If anything could bring reassuring normalcy to her brother’s life, it was the world of books and Miss Vi, the ancient, straight-backed woman who ran the Safe Haven Public Library as carefully and firmly as if it were the Pentagon.

  “That Miss Vi, she’s really something,” Liam continued. “She laid down the law for me and my brothers when we came to town. I was about your age,” Liam added, turning back to address Rocky.

  “Miss Vi is good,” Josiah said.

  Liam nodded. “That she is. I’ll never understand why...” He paused for effect. “Why my brother Cash put a frog in the drawer where she kept the checkout stamps.”

  A smile tugged at Josiah’s mouth, and when Yasmin glanced back at Rocky, he looked marginally less upset.

  “She jumped a mile high when she opened that drawer and saw that frog. And when it hopped up onto the shoulder of her dress...” Liam chuckled.

  Yasmin’s heart warmed toward him. He knew how to calm people down and put them at ease.

  He was good to the core, and if things were different...

  “No frogs, no poison!” Josiah said suddenly, firmly.

  Both Liam and Rocky looked startled. Rocky moved to Yasmin’s side, putting her between himself and Josiah.

  Liam looked over at Josiah with speculation in his eyes. “I’m sorry, buddy, I was just making conversation.”

  Josiah put both hands to the sides of his head and shook it.

  Yasmin wrapped her arms around her brother from the side, her heart aching. “We’re almost home.” Was she going to have to put him in the hospital again? He hated that more than anything.

  Just the feel and smell of her big brother brought tears to her eyes. He’d been her hero, ever since she was small. He’d protected her, taught her how to do math, taken her out to play when their mother was too stressed and depressed to deal with her. He’d been her rock through a childhood that hadn’t been easy, despite the material abundance.

  Now, she had to be his rock.

  The trouble with tonight was, she had to take care of Rocky, too, and deal with Liam, which presented a painful challenge even in the best of times. She was being pulled in too many directions.

  As they approached her house, though, Yasmin’s tight muscles relaxed and she let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She loved her cozy little home, with its pocket handkerchief front lawn surrounded by a picket fence. Yellow coneflowers had just burst into bloom, visible even at night against the cottage’s white siding.

  If she could just get inside, get Rocky and Josiah settled—

  “So guys.” Liam stepped ahead of the group, effectively blocking their way. He looked from Rocky to Josiah and back again. “Before you go inside, could you tell me if something happened tonight I should know about?”

  Rocky stopped abruptly and pressed his lips together, his whole body tensing.

  Josiah put his hands on Rocky’s shoulders. “No. No.”

  “Were there people threatening you?” Liam pressed.

  “Liam!” Yasmin put a hand up, ready to physically push him away to protect her brother and an innocent child. “Everyone’s tired. Leave them alone.”

  Liam didn’t budge. “Since Josiah mentioned threats, and Rocky is out after curfew without a parent or guardian, I just want to know if something out of the ordinary happened. The safety of this town is my responsibility.”

  “Rocky’s thirteen. You can’t interview him without parental permission.” Yasmin sidled past him, opened the waist-high gate and gestured for Josiah and Rocky to go through. She watched them walk to the porch and up the steps. Then she turned and stood in front of Liam, preventing him from coming into her yard.

  They were so close that she could smell his aftershave, and it reminded her of the days when she’d have welcomed his help with any situation she found herself in.

  But now he was dangerous to her. She had to keep her distance, to protect her own heart. To protect him.

  And to protect her brother. Because she was getting a strange feeling.

  Josiah’s doctors had been adjusting his meds. But they hadn’t gotten it right yet, because it seemed that the voices in her brother’s head were getting louder, more overwhelming.

  Her mother’s words echoed in her head: He gets so angry now. I’m afraid of him. He can be violent.

  She didn’t believe it, couldn’t. Not of the brother who’d been her idol for so long, helping her navigate life in their family and in their town.

  He’d always been a good person, loving in his own way.

  Mom just hadn’t been strong enough to deal with the changes in Josiah, so it was better that he’d moved from Mom’s little apartment in Charleston to live with Yasmin in Safe Haven.

  Yasmin was glad he was here, glad to help him in his time of need.

  But what if the voices had told him to do something awful?

  “I’ll back off for now,” Liam said, still close enough to make her breathless. “But this isn’t over, Yasmin.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  LIAM WALKED INTO the Southern Comfort Café early the next morning, scrubbing a hand over his face, his head pounding from a sleepless night.

  Don’t check on Yasmin before 8:00 a.m., he told himself. Just don’t.

  He sat down at the counter and Rita, his favorite waitress, read his mind and poured him a cup of coffee. “Want your usual?” she asked.

  He gave her a thumbs-up and was just picking up the local paper when his chief walked in.

  “Need to talk to you, buddy.” Ramirez patted his shoulder and then walked over to the booth in the back.

  Rita lifted an eyebrow. “You in trouble?”

  “I didn’t think so,” Liam said. Ramirez’s tone made him uneasy, though.

  “I’ll bring your breakfast over and see if the chief wants a piece of pie,” Rita said. “Pie for breakfast sweetens anybody up.”

  Liam hoped so, because the chief looked ready to bite the fork in half. He sat across from the man and immediately, Rita brought the coffeepot over. “I’ll be right back with some of that peach pie Abel made last night,” she said.

  “Do that, hon, but don’t tell my wife,” Ramirez said. “She’s got me on rabbit food.”

  The chief doctored his coffee with four packets of sugar-free sweetener, not looking at Liam. Then there was an uncomfortable silence, but Liam called to mind his older brother’s advice and didn’t break it. “Whoever speaks first loses,” Sean always said. Of course, Sean was the quiet type while Liam was normally a talker.

  The chief cleared his throat, glanced up at Liam and then stirred his coffee some more.

  Liam revisited his offensive guard days and kept his game face bland and unworried.

  “Real sorry, Liam, but I’m putting you on day shift for a spell,” the chief finally said, glancing up at Liam and then right down at the table again. “Mostly desk duty,” he added, “since I cover streets during the day.”

  “What?” Liam put his cup down hard, sloshing coffee. Day shift was for old guys or those who preferred easy, mundane work—neighbor disputes, retail thefts, community service. Not for ambitious single guys like himself. “Why?”

  The chief tore open two more packets of sweetener and stirred them into his coffee. “Mulligan’s gonna be doing the evening shift for now.”

  Liam’s muscles tensed but he bit back a sharp remark. Buck Mulligan was his rival for the opening of police chief whenever Ramirez decided to retire. Up until now, Liam had felt like he had the advantage: better college grades, academy standing and experience. That was why Liam had gotten his preference in shifts, while Mulligan had been stuck on day shift.

  What Mulligan had was the social ease that came with his affluent background. He’d grown up as the son of a local successful businessman and hadn’t h
ad the rough edges Liam had brought as an angry kid in foster care.

  Buck was also the man to whom Yasmin had turned when she’d decided to dump Liam. And why not? They were suited; they’d both grown up going to the country club, playing tennis and hanging out by the pool.

  The real mystery was why Mulligan had taken it into his head to become a cop. Or maybe not.

  It seemed to Liam that Mulligan’s biggest motivation in life was to get women, and you had to face it, the badge and uniform did help with that. Liam had enjoyed the advantage a few times himself, and turned down more offers than he’d taken.

  But why the chief would basically demote Liam and promote Buck...

  “What’s this about, sir?” he finally asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Rita brought their breakfasts, but Liam had lost his appetite.

  “Just trying out a few changes. Council’s idea.” The chief forked up pie.

  Liam narrowed his eyes. That didn’t sound like the whole story. And it didn’t sound good. Safe Haven’s chief of police was appointed by the city council, and to some extent Ramirez was controlled by them; they could ask him to step down at any time and appoint whomever they wanted for chief. Ramirez was a good man, but he cared about his legacy. That kept him from doing anything to antagonize the council.

  If those white-collar traditionalists thought a chief was best selected from their own kind, they were out of touch.

  Unfortunately, they were in control.

  “You’ve always had my support,” Ramirez said. “If you play by the rules, you’ll continue to have it.”

  “Play by the rules?” What was that supposed to mean?

  “Anything happen last night?” The chief lifted a hand to flag down Rita and pointed at his cup.

  Liam wasn’t sure whether the chief was changing the subject or implying that he knew something Liam had done wrong during last night’s shift. “It was a quiet night,” he said. “Helped Mindy Love change her tire. Gave the Smith girls a warning about curfew and sent ’em home. That’s about it.” And it was about it.