“You want me to move the kid and her booster to the Jeep?” Holmes returned to my side. “I figure CPS is more used to dealing with you, and I can handle the bookings. If that’s fine by you.”
“Sounds good. Let me search the car before we head out.” It was a routine thing, another by-the-book necessity.
“I’ll settle the kid then help.”
That was what I needed. I needed Holmes’s involvement here, especially if things went south. She moved a still-tearful Lilac to the Jeep then came back. I checked the glove box and under the seats, while Holmes popped the trunk.
“Uh, Chief,” she called from the back of the car. “You’re going to want to see this.”
I was fresh out of prayers for divine intervention as I walked over to her, and all my muscles went tight at the look on her face. I peered down into the trunk.
Not drugs, thank God, but a dozen or more cans of spray paint, all colors, and some dirty rags.
“Think he could be our vandal?” Holmes asked.
Oh, fuck, I hope not. “You’ll have to do some careful questioning,” I allowed. “And bag all this as potential evidence. I’d get a call in to that friend of his, see if you can make him squeal.”
“I’m taking lead on the investigation?” Holmes’s head cocked to the side, her eyes wide and thoughtful.
“You are.” I nodded. By the book, by the book, by the book. That was going to have to be my mantra to get me through the next few days. And I had to think minute to minute, task to task, not get too far ahead of myself, not think what was going to happen when Mason found out, or what he’d do if Jimmy turned out to be our vandal. I’d already sent one of his brothers to prison for pranks gone way out of hand. What would he do if his other one ended up serving time? And what the fuck was he going to do when he learned that Jimmy suspected we were seeing each other?
My gut hardened, stomach turning to cement. We need to talk. Had he already known? Had he wanted to warn me? He’d said no one knew about Portland, but that was clearly a lie. I was torn between guilt and anger and frustration at the whole damn situation. There wasn’t any possibility where this didn’t all blow up in my face in the worst possible way.
Twenty-Three
Mason
I woke up to Nash being gone, which honestly wasn’t that huge of a surprise. He’d come to me a wreck, and I hadn’t been much better—getting teary during sex had to have freaked him out as much as it had me. So it was no wonder that he’d skipped out on my request to talk.
And it wasn’t like I could go track him down. I had to get to the tavern, get the bread started, then beg more time from Adam and Logan to go see my dad in the hospital. I hadn’t told Nash about that last night because he had more than enough on his plate. But when I’d taken Dad to urgent care, the doctor had taken one look at his leg and his blood sugar levels and sent us on to Coos Bay for admission. I didn’t even want to think about the bills, and the stress of trying to run the restaurant and dealing with Dad and whatever the hell was going on with Jimmy and Francine had been weighing on me long before Nash had shown up last night.
But Nash had needed me, and that had broken my heart even as I thrilled in seeing him with all his defenses down. He’d finally allowed me in, just like I’d craved, right as I had to let him go. Irony was a cruel bitch.
I was working a batch of sourdough rye into buns when my phone went off. Unknown number, and I normally wouldn’t answer it, but a niggle in the back of my mind said it could be about Dad.
“This is Mason,” I answered formally, bracing myself for bad news. Across the kitchen, Logan gave me a quizzical look.
“Mason Hanks? This is Sylvia at the county jail. Do you accept a call from James Hanks?”
Oh, fuck. Jimmy, what the hell did you do? “Yeah,” I said, temples pounding before Jimmy even came on the line.
“Mason?” Jimmy’s voice sounded broken, same it always did when he got in more trouble than he could handle. “You’ve gotta help me, man. It’s bad.”
“What happened?” I really, really didn’t want to know, but playing ostrich wasn’t going to help the situation any.
“They took Lilac! They took her from me and Francine.”
“Wait. Slow down. Who took Lilac?” I dropped the dough scraper onto the metal work table with a clatter. Not giving me the pretense of privacy, Logan’s eyes went wide.
“That rat bastard you’re sleeping with. Flint. He took Lilac.”
“What? Why?” Oh, this was bad. I didn’t doubt that Flint had had a reason, but why the hell was I having to hear this from Jimmy? Shouldn’t he have called me straightaway?
“A stupid traffic stop. Something about my driving,” Jimmy said vaguely. His words were just this side of slurred, the way he got when he was coming off a drunk.
“Were you drinking? Jimmy, you can’t get another DUI—”
“Think I don’t know that? You’re as bad as Francine. That bitch went and hit me in front of that chick officer and now we’re both in jail and they’ve got Lilac—”
“You were drinking and fighting with Francine and you had Lilac in the car?” I went from concern to white-hot anger. How dare he endanger Lilac? Sadly, I wasn’t shocked. I’d been half expecting a stunt like this since I’d come back to town. And judging from Logan’s hard expression, so had he. He started putting finished rolls on a baking tray while I stepped away to pace.
“Don’t you go all high and mighty on me. I figured out your dirty little secret—you’re fucking around with Flint.” Jimmy’s voice was as nasty as I’d ever heard it.
“You be quiet.” I was painfully aware of the fact that half the jail could probably hear this conversation. “I’m not fucking Flint.”
The lie rolled off my tongue easy enough, but it left an acid burn in my throat. Not anymore, at least. Not ever again. The baking tray clattered against the counter as Logan dropped it, gaping at me. He wasn’t going to believe me anymore than Jimmy did, but at least he wasn’t a fucking gossip like my brother.
“You’re a damn liar. And now you’ve got to convince him to drop these BS charges, let us out of here.”
“I’m not gonna be able to get you out of a DUI.” That much I knew for certain—no way did I have that kind of pull over Flint. If he couldn’t even warn me that this was going down, no way was he being swayed by anything I said.
“Then get me a damn lawyer. They can’t take my kid.” Jimmy’s voice cracked. “You can’t let them have Lilac.”
“Who’s them? Who has Lilac right now?” I paced away from Logan and the work table, fighting the urge to race for my car straightaway, fetch Lilac, protect her from this awful mess.
“CPS. That’s what they said at the station. They were calling the county DHS office, getting her in the system.”
Oh, fuck. Nash, why didn’t you text me? This was super bad. Bile rose in my throat at the thought of Lilac in foster care. “I’ll call them. See what I can do about making them give her to me, but I’m going to have to wait on the lawyer—”
“What the fuck? Why?”
“Jimmy. I’ve got to make my priority Lilac. And I can’t be sure that they’ll release her to me if I’m paying for your lawyer. I need to talk to some people, sort this out.”
“You can’t let Francine’s folks get her. They’re nuts.”
“I know.” With Dad in the hospital, I was pretty much it for Lilac. Francine’s family was a mess, worse than my family, and no way was any social worker with half a brain giving Lilac to one of them, even if Francine’s folks agreed to take her. “Let me see what I can do. You’re going to have to trust me here.”
Jimmy made a scoffing noise. “Trust you? You’ve been sneaking around, making fools out of the whole family, fucking the damn chief of—”
“James Nolan Hanks.” I channeled every bit of my father’s stern voice, the I-mean-business one. “You stop spouting nonsense where anyone can hear. I’m not helping you, not one bit, if you can’t be quiet a
nd listen.”
Not that it would make a difference. The damage was inevitably done. If Jimmy thought he knew, then that probably meant Francine did, too, and that woman had never learned to keep her mouth shut about anything. She was undoubtedly telling anyone who would listen in the holding cell.
“Whatever.” Jimmy’s tone was the verbal equivalent of an eye roll. “Just get me out of here. Get me my kid back.”
“Stop with the orders. You fucked up here. And now I’ve got to clean up your mess.”
“I’m sorry.” Jimmy’s voice broke again, and we ended the phone call with some sloppy tears and apologies from Jimmy that I didn’t delude myself into thinking he meant. Only thing Jimmy was truly sorry for was that he’d been caught.
“I’ve got to go,” I said to Logan as soon as I hung up.
“I figured. What the hell did Jimmy do anyway?”
I gave him the condensed version. “Do you know anything about CPS? How I can get Lilac back?”
“You’ll have to ask them to be an emergency placement.” Logan’s childhood best friend was a social worker of some ilk in Portland, so I knew he’d have good info for me. “And you should brace yourself for it taking some time.”
“Fuck.”
“Mason? Are you really sleeping with Flint?” Logan shook his head. “Because if you are…that’s going to complicate things in the worst way.”
I groaned. I wanted nothing more than to unload the whole truth on my friend, but I had to think of Lilac. The lie slipped off my tongue easier the second time. “Nope. Nothing going on with Na—Flint.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” Logan came over and gave me awkward pat on the shoulder. “Just watch yourself, Mason. This could all go south in a hurry.”
“I know.” I ran my hands through my hair. God, I hated this. Hated how powerless I felt. “And my dad’s still sick. All Lilac has is me.” I could hear my brother’s desperate helplessness in my own voice, and it made my stomach churn.
“And you’ll do right by her.” Logan sounded way more convinced than I felt. “Adam and I will hold down the fort here. You focus on your family.”
Focus on my family. That was what I should have been doing all along, not fucking around with Nash in an affair that had been doomed from the very start. And now, because I hadn’t kept my head, I might lose the most important piece of that family, and I’d only have my stupid self to blame.
Nash
My day was shit. First there was booking Francine and Jimmy, then the trip to the county seat to dump them in jail pending an arraignment and bail setting. While there, we’d had to meet up with the social worker at the county DHS office and deliver a still-sobbing and scared Lilac.
My ribs felt kicked in, heart bruised and battered, and I couldn’t fully look at the kid. I’d gotten her a blanket and some books from the box we kept for situations like this, but she hadn’t touched either. I knew the social worker, Maureen, a kind, middle-aged woman who’d gone to high school with Easton, and I knew she’d do right by Lilac, but that didn’t make me feel one lick better about this whole mess.
“You’ll investigate relative placement?” I confirmed as we took care of all the details in her office while Lilac glanced stone-faced at the toys in the corner.
“Of course. You know we always start there. But this family…” She shook her head. “Well, we’ll have to see. There’s a history here.”
I wanted to stick up for Mason, put in a good word, tell her to not lump him with the rest of his family, but I couldn’t, not without endangering his case before it even got started.
“Make her call Uncle Mason.” Lilac threw herself at me right as I was about to leave.
“Now, now.” Maureen soothed as she pulled Lilac away. “I’ve got lots of calls to make. And I promise you, we’ll find you the perfect place—”
“I want Uncle Mason. And Mama. And Daddy.”
God. My chest ached with each teary onslaught, bringing fresh guilt.
“I know you do. Let me tell you about what’s going to happen. Step by step.” Maureen hugged her tight, making a shooing motion for me to go.
Each step as I walked down the hallway killed me, the tears echoing in my brain. Jimmy might have brought all this on himself, but it was Lilac who would pay the real price, and that was eating me up, more than it usually did in these cases. And Mason. He’d pay the price, too.
I ached for him, needed to go to him. Needed to warn him what was about to come down on his head, but of course I couldn’t risk that. We’d have to talk soon enough, but not while I was on duty. Not when I was walking this by-the-book tightrope of making sure I handled any conflict of interest the right way.
God, I’d known this day was coming. The thing between us had always been destined to blow up in a career-and-life-threatening way, and still I’d walked down this road, knowingly. Happily, even. I’d have to live with that a long, long time.
But I didn’t have the luxury of stewing on it. Back at the office, I had the Hinkie shooting to tend to, and it was late before I headed home, the long day pinning me down like cement pylons on my shoulders.
I left the back gate unlocked, and I wasn’t surprised one bit when the knock sounded on my back door ten minutes after I got home. I abandoned my microwave meal on the counter and opened the door.
“What the ever loving fuck, Nash?” Mason burst in, without any preamble. He looked like shit—still hadn’t shaved and his clothes were all rumpled, flour on his pants, grease stain on his T-shirt, and eyes were as tortured as I’d ever seen them.
“I know you’re mad—”
“Mad. Mad? Mad doesn’t even begin to cover this.” He paced the length of my kitchen. “You couldn’t give me a heads up? A text? ‘Hey, I’m pulling over Jimmy.’ Something.”
“You know I couldn’t do that. And it was Holmes who pulled them over. It’s her investigation. I was just backup—”
“Bullshit. You’re the freaking chief of police. If you don’t want them charged, they don’t get charged.”
“You’re asking me to not charge your brother with a DUI after he failed a sobriety test? To let him off because…of what exactly?”
“No.” Mason yanked at his hair. “I don’t know. I thought I’d at least merit a call. Something. And you could have brought me Lilac. No need to involve CPS—”
“You’re asking me to break the law, Mason.” I slumped into one of the chairs at my kitchen table. “They endangered the welfare of a child. That’s a chargeable offense. I wouldn’t be doing my job—”
“And it’s always about the job for you, isn’t it?” Mason didn’t slow his pacing.
“You knew that. Before we ever started this thing. You knew that. The job has to come first,” I said dully, hating myself more with each word.
“You’re tearing my family apart. Don’t you care about that, even a little?” Mason’s voice broke, spearing me as surely as a bullet piercing the Kevlar I wrapped my heart in.
“Of course I do.” My voice was rough.
“Do you care about me?” Mason stopped pacing and whirled to face me.
“You know I do. But Jimmy made his choices, not me.”
“Lilac has to stay with an emergency foster placement overnight, did you know that? She’s alone and scared and with a strange family, and the most they let me do was bring the social worker some clothes and her bear. There’s going to be a hearing.”
“That’s standard procedure, yes.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say and not at all soothing, but it was all I had.
“Fuck standard procedure. You know me, Nash. You know she’d be better off with me than some stranger, and you couldn’t even tell the social worker that? Couldn’t get them to—”
“Are you seriously asking me to pull strings for you? Call in favors?”
“Yes. Okay. Yes.” Mason all but threw himself into the chair opposite me.
“I couldn’t do that. It would be a violation of every principle—”
<
br /> “Fuck your principles, Nash. Fuck them.” As fast as he’d sat down, Mason was up again.
I’d been working hard at staying calm, but now I felt my anger building. “My principles are all I have—”
“Fuck that. You had me.”
Had. Past tense. My heart cracked a little more. “What happened today with Jimmy has nothing to do with us and what we have—”
“What we have? You won’t introduce me to your mother, even as a friend. You’re ashamed of me. Ashamed to be fucking a Hanks. And you don’t think I’m worthy of—”
“I’m not ashamed of you,” I said firmly, even as I knew my guilt was a real, palpable thing. But I couldn’t have him thinking like that. My guilt and shame were my own deal. “You knew going into this that I wasn’t coming out.”
“Of course not.” Mason’s voice was bitter as three-day-old coffee. “If it’s not me you’re ashamed of, it’s you. And either way, there’s nothing between us, not now.”
“I know.” I rested my face on my hands, unable to look at him a second longer. “Jimmy thinks he’s figured it out.”
“That’s really why you didn’t call me, isn’t it? You were pissed at Jimmy, so you punished—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said sharply. “But if there’s even a whiff of conflict of interest…”
“Here come your damn principles again.” Mason shook his head.
“I’m trying to save your ass.” I rubbed my eyes. “Last thing I need is them thinking your case for the kid is tainted. Or them declaring a mistrial against Jimmy—”
“Can’t have that,” Mason snarled. God, I wanted to hold him, wanted to soothe his ruffled edges. This wasn’t like him, and I knew it was the stress speaking, but it still hurt. “You won’t be happy until my whole damn family’s behind bars.”
“Mason—”
“Don’t tell me it’s not like that. That’s the real reason you’ve held back—not because of the age difference or you not wanting to come out. It’s because I’m a Hanks. And that’ll always mean I’m trash around here.”
“Mas—”
Trust with a Chaser (Rainbow Cove Book 1) Page 19
