Making It Right (A Most Likely To Novel Book 3)

by Catherine Bybee

  “I’m sorry I have to rush out.”

  “Don’t be. I completely understand.” Even if she was a little disappointed she wouldn’t be cuddling with the man that night.

  Gill wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “You’re a distraction,” she told him, not committing to the missing him words.

  He kissed her with a smile, warmed into the kiss before letting her go. “Okay, going now.”

  She walked him to her garage, opened the door so he could pull his bike out. “Be safe.”

  He pulled his helmet over his head, tucked his fingers into riding gloves, and kicked the bike over. With a wink, he backed out of her driveway and waved as he drove away.

  She watched until his bike disappeared completely, waited another minute before the noise of the Harley faded. When she turned to go back inside, her skin prickled, and she twisted around. None of her neighbors had stepped outside, but she was fairly certain someone watched.

  Mel had roped Jo into doing some crafty crap for the upcoming reunion all day Monday, and then Zoe came over to add her ideas . . . then there were cocktails, as in more than two, which was rare for Jo when in town. Mondays were routinely her day off, and since she’d met Gill, she was reminded to have a life of her own. If he could escape his duty with the FBI, she certainly could manage a day without carrying her gun or wearing her uniform at all.

  By Wednesday she was into her routine, her morning run over, the afternoon planned, which included a trip into Waterville with her squad car for the recall. Something about brake failure after fifty thousand miles. There had been enough cars in their fleet to warrant a recall for officer safety. Fitzpatrick was on call, and Emery was at the helm.

  All her plans went to hell with one frantic phone call.

  “Someone stole her. My Jezebel. Oh, my God. You have to find her.”

  Cherie was borderline hysterical.

  The call came in as Jo was passing R&B’s. She hit the brakes, which were not yet faulty, to take the call. “Cherie, calm down. Start from the beginning.”

  “Someone stole her, Jo. I let Jezebel outside to do her thing. She’s never long. I leave the back door open for her. She’s gone. Gone!” Cherie spoke in short bits and spurts. “The puppies are barking. She never ignores her babies.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “Half an hour.”

  Jo checked the time. Chances were the dog chased a squirrel or some such animal and ended up on the other side of the fence. In light of the dog issues, she couldn’t leave without checking around the neighborhood.

  “Keep looking for her, I’m on my way over.”

  By the time Jo arrived at Cherie’s home, which was on the other end of town, the timeline of the dog’s disappearance ran on forty-five minutes.

  From inside the house, Jo heard a couple of the dogs barking at the excitement. She walked around the back instead of knocking on the door. Cherie kept her fence secure; the automatic closing arm and heavy spring couldn’t be manipulated by the dogs.

  Cherie was at the far end of the yard, calling the dog’s name.

  Making sure the gate was closed behind her, Jo walked along the fence toward Cherie, looking for places the dog could have escaped.

  The woman was close to tears. “This isn’t like her. Even before the puppies, she wasn’t the one to run off.”

  Jo placed a hand on Cherie’s shoulder. “We’ll find her.”

  They walked the fence together. Toward the south corner of the yard, a second gate gave access to the field beyond. The latch was secure. “How often do you use this gate?” Jo asked.

  “Daily. I take the dogs on walks out in the woods to avoid my neighbors.”

  A path ran from the gate to a patch of trees. “Have you checked out there?”

  “To the tree line. I didn’t want to leave the puppies or miss it if she came back.”

  “She’ll come back,” Jo assured her.

  “This isn’t like her at all. I know my dogs. This is her second litter, and she’s a very good mom. Cried when I found homes for her last puppies.”

  Jo didn’t care for the sound of that. “Do any of the dogs wander off to a neighbor’s?”

  “The neighbors who called Deputy Emery on me? No.”

  Those same neighbors had called Jo, but she wasn’t about to tell her that.

  Jo opened the back gate. “You stay here in case she shows up. I’ll search the woods.”

  “Okay.” Cherie reached into the pocket of the windbreaker she was wearing. “Here, a treat for her.”

  Jo took the dog food and put it in the front pocket of her pants.

  It was spring in Oregon, which called for cloudy skies and misty weather most days. This one had a breeze that bordered on brisk. Under the cover of the pine trees, it was downright cold.

  Jo walked through an obvious trail, calling the dog’s name. Twenty minutes down the trail, Jo doubled back without luck.

  Cherie was on her back porch, the alpha at her side.

  “I called my brother.”

  “Good. I’ll drive around.”

  Cherie wiped a tear from her eyes. “I need to feed her babies.”

  Which meant bottles for the puppies and hours of time and effort. It was in the middle of the school day or Jo would solicit some of her runners to help.

  “You take care of the puppies, I’ll find their mom. Dogs don’t just disappear.”

  Only Cherie didn’t look convinced.

  Drew walked behind Tina, her ass keeping the attention of his eyes and the hardness in his dick. Not that he needed a visual for that. He was seventeen, the damn thing had a mind of its own.

  He placed both hands on her hips in a playful tickle.

  She laughed and skirted out of his reach in a playful way.

  He took the action as a positive sign.

  “We’re supposed to be looking for a dog.”

  The entire distance team was asked to run in different parts of town, in pairs. They could train and try to find a missing dog.

  Drew actually liked dogs, and the searching in pairs thing was a complete win when Tina was playing nice.

  “We are looking for a dog.” Drew blew a whistle. “We’re also supposed to be running.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  Tina sat on the fence of rebellion. With a little work, the girl could be a perfect mix of naughty and sweet. But the naughty part also gave her an edge that sometimes turned on him in a negative way. She was one of the prettiest girls in school and she had a decent rack. And Drew liked boobs.

  Thinking about those boobs had him shuffling his legs in an effort to not embarrass himself with a raging hard-on.

  They were a good two miles deep in the woods, the backyard he’d grown up in and an open space between the dog lady’s property and his parents’. Everything connected eventually, but this part of the open space that surrounded River Bend happened to be the center of Drew’s childhood. Tina lived on the other side of town, where the houses were a little bigger and the people had a little more money than the rest of them.

  Tina whistled. “Here, doggie.”

  “Bet the thing is on the road to Waterville,” Drew said.

  “Yeah. Probably. But Coach Ward doesn’t ask us to do this kind of thing very often.”

  Girls liked guys who liked animals. “It’s probably scared.” He dipped his voice, pretended he really cared.

  Tina gave him a coy little smile. A grin that told him he was working it.

  “Maybe we should split up,” Tina suggested.

  “That’s not a good idea. It’s easy to get lost out here.”

  Tina stopped, looked around. She pointed behind them. “That’s the way back to your house.”

  Drew moved beside her, captured her hand, and moved it a foot. “More like over there.”

  “Oh.”

  When she dropped her hand, he kept a hold of it. Before too long, Tina la
ced her fingers with his.

  Holding hands was nice, but what he really wanted to do was make out, maybe get a little further.

  They walked a few more feet, neither one of them acknowledging their hand holding outside of a smile.

  “Prom’s coming up,” Drew said.

  Tina squeezed his hand. Her voice trembled a little when she spoke. “I know.”

  “Looks like it will be fun.”

  He noticed the color rise to Tina’s cheeks, the sparkle of hope in her eye. “It does.”

  “It could be lame, too.”

  She frowned.

  “Prom can’t be lame.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It would be lame if you didn’t go. Sitting at home on prom night when everyone else is dressed up and having fun.”

  Tina narrowed her eyes. “You can always go to prom, even without a date.”

  “Who said anything about a date?”

  She was frowning now.

  Drew kept a straight face, turned away, and whistled for the dog.

  As if reminded about their task, Tina called for “doggie” again.

  A few more feet and still holding hands, Drew tested the waters. “Do you have a date for prom?”

  Tina shook her head. “No, do you?”

  “No.”

  That seemed to make her happy.

  He waited a few steps, then asked, “If I asked you to prom, would you say yes?”

  She stopped. “If you asked me?”

  Drew stepped in front of her, looked down. “Yeah, if I asked you.”

  “If you asked me, I might say yes. Depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “How you asked me.”

  “How?”

  Tina shrugged. “Yeah, like will you ask me with flowers? Or will you put a sign in the school gym asking me? Make a big fuss during a track meet? You know, how you ask.”

  Drew cussed all the guys before him that had started the traditions of grand gestures to ask a girl to prom. “You know all the guys who do that already know the girl is going to say yes, right?” He made that up but hoped he’d said it in a convincing enough way that Tina would believe him.

  “Really?”

  He turned, her hand still in his, and kept walking. “You can’t tell your girlfriends this. It’s part of the guy code.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. So the guys who do all those crazy things wouldn’t do it if a girl is going to turn them down. When was the last time you saw that?”

  Tina mused that over for a moment. “Never.”

  “See.”

  “Hmm.” She walked, obviously weighing the truth in his words. “Ask me,” she finally said.

  Drew smiled. “Okay, I will.”

  She stopped. “No. Ask me now.”

  He took both her hands in his. He’d seen that in a late movie once. “Tina, will you go to prom with me?”

  Straight teeth flashed. “I’d love to go to prom with you.”

  Drew licked his lips and made his move.

  They’d made out before, at the beginning of the school year, but somewhere along the line Tina freaked out and stopped wanting to be with him.

  They were both a little older. Six months in high school made a difference, at least in his head. He wasn’t sure if Tina had been practicing on her pillow or watching some kind of porn on her phone, but her kissing had improved.

  He was raging within seconds of their tongues touching, but he kept his cool and let her get used to him being in her personal space.

  Tina wrapped her arms around his back and he had no choice but to move closer. The contact of his boner touching her stomach used to make her jump. Not now.

  He wondered why, but then she pulled back for air and kissed him harder.

  Tina had definitely changed. When he ran his hand up her back and touched the side of one of her boobs, she didn’t stop him.

  This was worth a trip to prom.

  Drew took it further, a full palm with a full boob. His hard-on screamed.

  It wasn’t until he reached for the edges of her shirt and lifted it up that he felt Tina hesitate.

  He backed off. Disappointed but hopeful. “Too much?” he asked.

  “A little.” Her sheepish smile was a little adorable.

  “Can we still make out?”

  She nodded and lifted her lips to his.

  Drew backed her up to a tree, like he’d seen in that movie.

  Tina seemed to like it.

  He went back where he was, kissing her, one hand on one boob until he felt her nipple under the fabric tighten. Then he moved to the other.

  Tina kept her hand on his back until he pushed one down over his ass. At first she just let it sit there, and then she squeezed.

  He thought he was going to come, right there in the woods, completely clothed. He stopped kissing her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He saw stars. “This is really good.”

  When his hips pushed her into the tree, the light in her head must have turned on.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I can’t help it.”

  His words must have relaxed her. “I know. It’s okay.”

  There she was, looking all adorable at him. “We should probably stop. I don’t want to scare you.”

  “I’m not scared. Just not ready.”

  “We don’t have to rush.” How he wanted to rush, but he wasn’t stupid. Prom was over a month away. A lot could happen in a month.

  “Let’s head back,” Tina suggested. “That stupid dog isn’t out here.”

  They walked, hand in hand, for about a mile. Then decided to run so it looked like they’d followed all of Coach Ward’s instructions.

  About a half a mile to his house, Tina’s shoe came untied.

  They used the last bit of hiding in the woods to practice their kissing. Drew went straight for her boobs, and she grabbed his butt without him suggesting it. When they broke for air, his body protested, but his head knew he was getting there. They dodged off the path, taking a shortcut that would bring them out of the woods a few minutes later.

  They ran by a fallen log, and something caught Drew’s eye.

  He slowed down. “Tina, hold up,” he yelled.

  Drew stepped over the log and around the trunk of a big tree.

  He froze. “Christ!”

  “What is it?”

  Drew turned so fast he nearly fell over the dead tree on the ground. “Don’t look,” he yelled.

  But it was too late, and Tina started to scream.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Half the town was looking for that dog, Karl.”

  What a mess. What a fucking mess. Drew was holding a hysterical Tina in the backyard of one of the Emerys’ neighbors. Nearly every distance runner at River Bend High had shown up and needed to be kept back. Luke and Zoe were sitting with Cherie, keeping her from breaking down as much as they could. And Karl Emery stood beside Jo, hands on hips and words flying.

  “You shouldn’t have told the kids to look for the damn dog.”

  “Keep your voice down!” she said in a rough whisper.

  He stepped closer.

  “You’re overstepping your position, and now my kid is going to have nightmares for God only knows how long.”

  Jo’s eyes skirted over to Drew. The kid looked like he was keeping it together. Probably for Tina.

  Mr. Miller, Cherie’s brother, arrived with a giant bedsheet and proceeded to tack the thing up around the scene.

  Every time Jo’s sight landed on the dog, her stomach twisted.

  Jo put on her bitch voice, made sure Karl heard it. “Quit your pissing match, Karl, and put your cop hat on. I need my deputy right now, not a pissed off father of a nearly eighteen-year-old son. This is a clusterfuck of a mess, and the last thing we need right now is the town seeing us at odds.” Jo nearly never pulled rank, but she did now. “Put your personal feelings aside and do your job or gather your son and
walk away.” She’d already put in a call requesting Stan to help with the investigation. He was less than thirty minutes away and didn’t have the personal connection with Cherie Miller, her dogs . . . or have any children on her track team that she’d asked to help look for the dog.

  If Karl walked away now, she’d encourage a weeklong vacation for the man. Considering he’d been the one to make the dog mess bigger while she was out of town, he wasn’t on the top of the list of compassionate neighbors.

  Karl glared, obviously torn.

  “Jo?” Mr. Miller called her over to help block the scene from lookie-loos.

  When they were done, Jo forced her eyes on the scene. She needed her camera. If this were a person, she’d need to call in forensics from Waterville, or maybe Eugene. She considered it, even though the dog wouldn’t be considered a homicide. Animal cruelty and a misdemeanor if the culprit was found. That would be the extent of charges filed.

  The damage went way beyond that.

  It took a special kind of sociopath to steal a dog and hang it from a tree. The kind she didn’t want roaming among the citizens of River Bend. Knowing who was capable of this crime had become her number one priority.

  “Keep anyone from coming back here,” she told Karl. “I’m getting the camera.”

  She walked through the backyard of a home and to her car, parked in the street.

  Neighbors watched and muttered among themselves.

  By the time she returned, the number of people standing around had doubled.

  She needed to do this quickly. Snap a few pictures, remove the dog from the woods, question the neighbors, Tina, and Drew.

  Jo waved off approaching bystanders and moved to get the hard stuff done first.

  Karl waited, hands on his belt, anger in his face.

  She moved around the sheet and aimed her camera. Blocking out the image, she moved around the brush, snapped pictures of the ground.

  “This is awful,” Mr. Miller said by her side.

  Karl stood with his back to them.

  “Who could do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” Jo insisted.

  “Hi, Stan. You didn’t need to rush over,” she heard Karl greet the man before Stan walked around the sheet.