Low Country Hero

by Lee Tobin McClain

  LIAM LOOKED AT the woman he’d used to love, standing there with her brother and some kid, and wished old Mrs. Jackson next door wasn’t quite so observant and quick to leap to conclusions. When she’d called in a disturbance, said there were a couple of men skulking around the center, he’d rushed to respond, worried Yasmin was at risk.

  Looked like a false alarm.

  He and the other officers joked that as much as Mrs. Jackson knew about what was going on in town, they’d soon have to give her a badge. But truthfully, Liam was glad for it, glad to live in a place where people watched out for one another.

  More than anything, he wanted to be appointed police chief in this place. To devote his life to taking care of it, and to show he was worthy of doing that.

  But it was hard to stay focused on his goals with Yasmin in front of him. She was medium height and curvy, with coppery skin and blond-streaked hair she’d taken to wearing in long, wild curls. Daughter of a Safe Haven blue-blood mother and a biracial physician father who’d died young, she’d grown up with all the financial advantages, but he didn’t begrudge her that, nor envy her. Her family had its share of problems.

  What did make him mad was the chip on her shoulder when she was the one who’d dumped him. He gestured toward the two-story house next door. “Any idea what Mrs. Jackson was worried about?” He reached the church’s front steps, tore his eyes away from her and tried to see into the building.

  “Everything’s fine.” She glanced back into the church.

  “Hey, Josiah, good to see you again,” he said to Yasmin’s brother, who was backing into the church. Then he focused on the kid. “Who’s that?” he asked Yasmin, keeping his voice low.

  She bit her lip, shook her head rapidly. “Client confidentiality. And speaking of clients, I need to take care of this one, so...”

  She started to back in, letting the door close, but a loud, angry voice came from inside the center. Sounded like there was some guy inside, which made sense of the whole “disturbance” thing. Liam climbed the rest of the way toward the church doorway and looked in. The same voice came, less angry.

  It was Josiah.

  Liam frowned. “You okay, buddy?”

  Josiah didn’t answer, but he didn’t look upset, either. Putting thoughts of Josiah and his issues aside to think about later, Liam shrugged and turned. And realized that Yasmin was only inches away.

  He sucked in a breath and there it was: her musky cherry perfume. He cleared the sudden thickness in his throat. “You sure I can’t help?”

  “Yes!” She stepped back and lifted her hands like stop signs. “We’re fine, Liam. Go solve crimes, or whatever.”

  Fine, dismiss him. Maybe a cop wasn’t important in the upscale world of a doctor’s daughter, but let someone steal her diamond tennis bracelet and she’d call the police, all right.

  Which wasn’t exactly fair, since Yasmin’s parents’ wealth was mostly gone and she wasn’t a superficial lady of leisure. He forced his mind to stay in the here and now. “Seems like there’s some kind of problem.”

  “One I’d like to take care of.” She turned away then, as the boy scuttled past her into the church. She looked back over her shoulder. “I’ll call 911 if I need anything.”

  Because God forbid she should call him directly. He looked at the lift of her chin, the pout of her full lips, and his body tightened. Even after everything she’d done.

  She was almost inside when the boy came up behind her. He stuck his head out the door. “You look like him,” he said. His voice cracked, and Liam couldn’t tell if it was from emotions or just the normal hormonal changes a boy’s voice went through.

  “Like who?” Liam asked.

  The boy held out a much wrinkled and mauled business card, and Liam took it. His brother Sean’s card, for his construction business. “Where’d you get this?”

  The boy cringed back, and Liam realized he’d been too abrupt, had sounded like he was making an accusation. Not to mention the fact that his uniform could be scary to a kid, especially one who was for some reason at a women’s center without parents.

  Kids, innocent victims of their parents’ problems, always got to Liam. “Sean’s my brother,” he explained gently to the boy, holding up the business card. “He’s on his honeymoon. Maybe I can help.”

  But the kid wasn’t talking now. He crossed his arms tight over his chest. You had to look close to see the fear in his eyes, but it was there. Liam was familiar with it—the stark “my life has blown up” terror, and the bravado that hid it—from the inside.

  “I know about client confidentiality,” he said to Yasmin, “but that must mean he’s been here before. With his mom?”

  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 about this kid’s age. Why should he expect the kid 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 she had 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. But she wanted to handle this herself. “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 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 an official 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.

  Liam’s heart ached. 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, Grade Six” 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. 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.”

  “No need,” Yasmin said, looking up at her much-taller brother. “Josiah will be with us.”

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

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

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

  If there was any chance Yasmin and her group were at risk, he had to protect them. 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 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 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. 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, might lose her ability to even manage herself, 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—”

  “Shhhh!” 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, that 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 shown 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 job 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 what you saw tonight? Not the details, but just give me a little to go on.”

  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. “I just want to know if there’s a crime that’s been committed, that we need to be aware of. 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.

  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.”

  Don’t miss Low Country Dreams by Lee Tobin McClain!

  Copyright © 2019 by Lee Tobin McClain

  ISBN-13: 9781488034190

  Low Country Hero

  Copyright © 2019 by Lee Tobin McClain

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