An unlikely alliance, p.21
An Unlikely Alliance, page 21
“Dana Preston.” This was the first time in a long time she didn’t preface those two words with “Detective.” Technically, she was still a detective. She’d gotten her six-month leave reclassified as “indefinite,” but she knew it was permanent. Dana wasn’t here to buy a vacation home. She was here to either launch a totally new life or get a wild dream out of her system.
“Why’re you staring at me?”
Dana took a small step toward Charlie. “I’m not staring at you.”
His chin rose and one hand came out of its pocket. “Yeah, you are.”
Dana took another step toward Charlie and let one of her own hands come out from a pocket. “No, I’m looking at the land around you. Why are you staring at me?”
“Am not,” Charlie countered. He scuffed the gravel with the foot that had been tapping. “Are you looking at Grandpa’s house?”
So it was family land. She’d gone back through the county records to see that the land had originally been purchased by Dwight Avery, Mason’s father. He’d been prosperous in his day, but Mason wasn’t. Barely scraping by, from the looks of it. Dana needed a motivated seller, one that might like very much to stay on the property and help with the upkeep. Mason fit that bill—she hoped. “Sort of,” she replied, reminding herself to keep the law enforcement edge out of her voice. “I’m looking at all of it, actually.”
“Why?” Charlie’s free hand rose to the handlebar of his bicycle, signaling that he could turn around and ride right out of there if he didn’t like the answer she gave.
Dana opted for something close to the truth. “Not sure yet, actually. I probably need to ask your dad, I suppose.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. “How do you know I’ve got a dad?”
Dana risked another step—which put her out into the road, so she kept one ear cocked for the sound of a car coming around the mountain road’s many bends. “Everybody’s got a dad. Just a question of whether or not they’re around. Or nice,” she added, remembering the last gut-wrenching abuse case she’d worked back in Denver. “Nice” most definitely did not apply. She had made sure “criminal endangerment” did.
“Mine’s here.” His chin rose slightly as he said that, as if it was something that needed defending.
“Is he nice?” It probably was a risk to ask, but Dana couldn’t help herself. Charlie’s answer might tell her a lot about who she’d be dealing with. Intel was never a bad thing, even when chasing outrageous dreams.
“He’s Dad.” A shrug and an eye roll accompanied the declaration. That could have meant anything from dads are never nice and sometimes they hit to he won’t let me eat ice cream for breakfast.
It struck her, watching the way Charlie stared at her with narrow eyes, that the boy looked too old for his body. Scruffy hair and gangly limbs but a straight spine. A little lost with a hard edge that didn’t belong on someone that small. As if someone had managed to stuff a thirteen-year-old inside his skin when no one was looking.
Maybe no one was looking. After all, the kid couldn’t have been more than seven or eight and he was wandering around near the road with no adult in sight on what should have been a school day.
Dana felt that tug, that relentless obligation that made the fellow officers in her old precinct nickname her “Mom.” The sense of duty that made her very good at her job.
And very nearly gotten her killed.
* * *
Mason Avery looked up from the workbench and felt his whole body slump. Charlie was gone. “Charlie? Charlie!”
His son was so good at disappearing the kid should pursue a career in espionage. Seven-year-olds should be cute and charming, not wily and exasperating. “Charlie!” he called again, dashing through the rooms of the large house in search of the boy. I should never have believed the bit about the stomachache. I should have insisted he go to school.
It was never a good thing to feel outsmarted by your own second grader, and Mason felt as if that was happening far too often lately. Our boy... Mason moaned to the memory of his late wife as he took the stairs two at a time up to Charlie’s bedroom. You were always so much better at this than me.
The huge property was securely fenced—and gated—but none of that replaced the constant supervision Charlie ought to have. Gone to the kitchen for a juice box was not the same as vanishing from sight while Mason looked down for half a minute to finish fitting a dovetail drawer joint.
Mason turned in desperate circles about the room, hands fisted in his unruly hair, looking for clues to where Charlie had taken off to now. Melony, I’m failing him. This is so hard.
Out the window, he spotted Charlie. He was far down the drive, all the way to the gate. And he was talking to someone.
Mason took the stairs three at a time down toward the front door and sprinted down the gravel after his son. The gate was always locked, but that didn’t stop the surge of panic that sped Mason’s steps. Charlie was developing a worrying talent for getting into things that weren’t good for him, and the woman on the other side of the fence didn’t look at all familiar. School official? Child services? Another annoying land developer looking to turn his land into a subdivision?
“Charlie!” he yelled when he was still a ways away, hoping his son would turn around and come to him. He didn’t. More often than not these days, he didn’t. It was like Charlie was slipping down the mountain slope away from him, and all the prayer and care Mason could douse on him did little to stop the landslide.
Don’t yell, he lectured himself, slowing his steps and tamping down his frustration as he neared Charlie and the visitor on the other side of the gate. “Hey, buddy, you’re supposed to be on the couch in my workshop reading. Whatcha doing all the way out here?”
Charlie turned with an “Oh, hi” expression as if house escapes on supposed sick days were perfectly okay. “Talking to her.”
Mason was relieved “her”—whoever she was—was neither in a developer’s slick suit or a uniform. Still, that was little comfort. “And who are you?” It would have been smarter not to make that so much of an accusation, but Mason’s last bastion of good manners had been stomped out weeks ago.
“Dana Preston.”
Mason didn’t know what to make of the fact that no title came with the name. She didn’t say “officer” or “from the county.” Tall and fit with an efficient bob of blond hair, she was head-turning, but not in a “knockout beauty” kind of way. Her stance and the power in her eyes—even from here—demanded notice. She looked close to his age, which was a welcome change from the battalion of well-intentioned church aunties who occasionally forced visits on him. Those women always called first, and often brought cookies and casseroles to soften their list of concerned questions.
He walked closer to the gate. “Can I help you?” He was proud of choosing that over “What are you doing staring through my fence talking to my son?” But he still put a protective hand on Charlie’s shoulder—at least until Charlie shrugged it off with a “Daaaaaad” worthy of a grumpy teen.
“You own this place?” Ms. Preston cast her glance around as if she knew just how far the land and the fence extended.
Eyeing the land. The moment of him finding her nice-looking evaporated like a puddle in August. One of those. Mason was trying hard to hold on to the family land for Charlie’s sake, and it didn’t help that greedy developers kept knocking on his door. No stack of bills would ever be high enough to make him sell this place to become vacation condos. Ever.
Mason met her eyes with all the welcome of the well-locked gate. “I’m not selling.”
She must have worked hard to master that look of surprise. “How do you know I’m looking to buy?”
“You all are,” he shot back. “Nice touch trying to get at me through my son, by the way. Really adds to the charm.”
“He rode up to me and asked first, not that I’m sure it would make any difference to you.”
That wasn’t welcome news. Mason looked down at Charlie for an explanation.
“She started it,” Charlie whined. “She was just sitting there on her car staring at us.”
One corner of Ms. Preston’s mouth turned up at that. “I suppose I did start it. I was sitting on my car consulting my map and my notes and looking at your property. But I did not lure your son to the gate, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Mason pointed at her. “So you are looking to buy.”
She shifted her weight. At least she had the decency to realize she hadn’t made the best first impression. “I’d like to talk to you about it, yes.” Mason waited for her to push a business card through the chain link of the fence. Three others had tried that, and their cards were still lying somewhere in the grass.
“Save your breath, Ms. Preston. I’m not interested.”
He was about to grab the handlebars of Charlie’s bike and lead them both back to the house when she cut in. “I’d really like the chance to tell you what I have in mind. It’s not what you think.”
She could paint a picture of the world’s most luxurious dwellings and tout a mile-high stack of money for all he cared. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference. He turned Charlie’s bike around and started walking. “I’m not selling,” he called back over his shoulder without looking.
He heard the chain link rattle as she must have put her hands on the gate. He’d give her points for sheer persistence and guts. “I want to build a camp for kids. Ones who have lost a parent to violence,” she shouted to his turned back.
Mason’s steps halted even as he told himself to keep walking. Charlie’s eyes widened, and his son looked up with an expression that knocked the breath from Mason’s lungs. “You mean kids like me?”
Mason tightened his grip on the handlebar, counted to five and called “Absolutely not selling” over his shoulder without turning around.
Neither he nor Charlie said another word as they walked back to the house.
Copyright © 2022 by Alyse Stanko Pleiter
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ISBN-13: 9780369724960
An Unlikely Alliance
Copyright © 2022 by Toni Shiloh
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Toni Shiloh, An Unlikely Alliance
