This is nuts! Go outside. Call for backup!
Her heart thundered in her ears.
Holding her breath, she took one more step.
“Don’t shoot!” a voice yelled frantically as she reached the living room. “Please, don’t shoot!”
She froze.
The lights snapped on.
Looking haggard and scared out of his mind was a teenaged boy with shaggy black hair, a coppery complexion and fear in his dark, suspicious eyes. He was huddled in the corner of the couch, closest to the fire; a blanket was tucked around him and Jane Doe had curled herself into his lap.
“Please,” he said, his hands raising to the side of his head, the cat, startled, leaping off the blanket to dive under a nearby table. “You’re Selena Alvarez, right?” Before she could answer, he said, “Please, you have to help me!” His voice cracked with desperation and she felt something inside of her break as well. Still, she trained the muzzle of her gun straight into the face of Gabriel Reeve, the son she’d given up half a lifetime before.
Chapter 24
“You’re Selena Alvarez,” the kid said. His hands shook a little as he held
them over his head. “My mother, right?”
Oh, God. She was thrown back in time to the austere hospital and the feeling of sheer terror that held her, the pain of the birth, the bright lights, the doctor’s voice and the fear of the unknown of what would happen to her as she delivered the perfect little baby. She remembered his red face, the shock of black hair and his first squall, a sound that nearly broke her heart. Tears had flowed from her eyes and she had gasped for breath, torn between wanting to hold him and not wanting to see him at all.
What she caught was just a glimpse of a tiny face that seemed to stare straight into her soul before he was whisked away forever.
Now she stood, frozen, the weapon still pointed at him. “I don’t know,” she admitted, lowering her pistol, then putting it into its holster again and all the while feeling as if she’d been kicked in the gut, as if this surreal situation couldn’t possibly be happening. Not to her. “I think ... yes, maybe.” Oh, Lord, was she beginning to cry? Were hot tears filling her eyes? That would never do! She sniffed them back. “Gabriel Reeve, right?” But she knew it was he, had from the second her gaze found him; she was reminded of her cousin at that age, handsome in that gawky way of a boy becoming a man. Yes, this teenager more than resembled her cousin; Gabriel Reeve was the spitting image of the prick who had spawned him.
Before she knew what to say to him, he shot to his feet. “You have to help me,” he said again. “I’m in really big trouble.”
“I know that.”
“I’m innocent!” He seemed suddenly frantic. “That gun, the one my dad found, it was planted in my backpack. I swear.”
If he didn’t believe what he was saying, he was a damned good liar. She’d seen more than her share.
“I didn’t know how to get rid of it, or even what to do with it. So I didn’t do anything ... and then ... then I ...”
“Ran,” she supplied.
“Yeah. No one was gonna believe me. They never do.”
“So you came here because you thought I could help you?”
“Yeah. I came once before, but some guy was following me so I left.”
“Where have you been ever since?”
“By the falls. There’s some shacks down there. Empty. Cold. And the restaurant. Wild Bill’s.”
“Will’s.”
“Yeah, that’s it. There’s always scraps.”
She told herself not to be taken in by him; he could well be a con man or even a hardened criminal.
Or he could be telling the truth and is a boy on the run, falsely accused, having nowhere to turn ...
“Where’s my dog?”