Kids on the Doorstep / Cop on Loan: Kids on the Doorstep / Cop on Loan

Tears pricked her eyes again but she sniffed them back. She was close. She could feel it.

A fresh flood of anger followed. Damn you, Jason. Where the hell have you taken my kids?

Renee reluctantly drove away, refusing to believe that her children were far, that Jason had taken them to a place where she’d never find them. She tried to ignore the guilt that rose to slap her in the face whenever she let herself remember that she was the first one to walk out on their children.

It wasn’t her proudest moment but hitting rock bottom usually isn’t. Admitting to herself she was an alcoholic trapped in a loveless marriage was a tough pill to swallow, and even as she was committed to sobriety the price had been pretty steep.

Ten long years of missteps and mistakes with Jason, a man who had less depth than a cartoon character. It was enough to make her want to hide in shame over every bad decision she and Jason had put their girls through but she’d vowed things would be different once she got out of rehab.

Only to find them gone. Renee imagined Jason made the decision to take off shortly after she told him she wanted a divorce. He’d known this was the best way to hurt her. And damn, he knew her well.

Every day without her girls felt like knives in her heart.

Chapter Two

THE FOLLOWING MORNING just as he always did, John rose at 5:30 a.m. to start the day and for a split second, as he set the coffee to percolating and stoked the coals in the fireplace to a fresh blaze with kindling and a small piece of seasoned oak, he almost forgot that he wasn’t alone. But when a person had been a bachelor as long as John there were some things that didn’t slip your notice. Such as the prickling feeling at the back of your neck when you know someone is behind you, staring. He turned and found Taylor standing in the archway, scratching her leg with her toe, her eyes fixed on him.

“Go back to bed. It’s too early.”

“You’re up.” She pointed out as she scrubbed at her pixie nose with her palm, her gaze wide and expectant.

“I’m a grown-up. You’re still a kid—” practically still in diapers “—and kids need their rest. Don’t you want to grow up big and strong?”

She thought about it for a second before nodding but then said, “But I can’t rest if I’m not sleepy. Can you, Mr. John?”

Not really. He didn’t much see the point in lounging in bed if he wasn’t tired, either. But if he didn’t send her back to bed with her sisters, he’d have to find something to entertain her with and he didn’t have a clue as to how to entertain a five-year-old little girl. He eyed her speculatively. “You hungry?”

She nodded eagerly. “Are we having more of them beans?” she chirped as she followed him into the kitchen. “They were real good. You’re a good cooker, Mr. John.”

“I don’t know about that, and stop calling me Mr. John. Just John, okay?”

“Okay,” Taylor agreed easily, plopping into the chair she’d taken last night. “What’s for breakfast, then?”

“Oatmeal.” He caught her expression falter and he added quickly, “Or eggs. Take your pick.”

“Eggs, please. I like them all mixed up. Do you like them that way? Chloe doesn’t like eggs so maybe she could have the oatmeal. But me and Lexie like eggs a lot. Chloe didn’t like the way Daddy made his eggs, she said they tasted funny. I didn’t think so but sometimes he made her a special kind. Maybe she didn’t like just his special eggs because when Lexie made eggs she ate ’em right up. Do you make them special, Mr. John?”

The dizzying speed of the child’s twisting and nearly nonsensical dialogue almost had John staring in confusion as he tried to decipher even a quarter of what she’d said but something in that monologue had struck a chord of alarm. “Special eggs, Taylor?”

“Yeah, sometimes he made Chloe her own eggs but—” Taylor’s little face scrunched in distaste “—they always made her tummy hurt afterward. Maybe Daddy wasn’t a very good cooker.”

“Maybe not,” John murmured, though he was starting to feel a little sick to his stomach himself. “How come your Daddy always made Chloe her own special eggs?”

Taylor shrugged. “I dunno. But Daddy yells at Chloe a lot.”

“Why’s that?”

“He just does.” Taylor’s expression dimmed with sadness and John felt something in his chest pull. Her voice dropped to a scared whisper. “She gets lots of spankings.”

Chloe was hardly more than a baby. No one should be raising a hand to her little body.

John stiffened at the anger pouring through his veins at what he was hearing and moved to the fridge to grab the eggs. He’d heard enough and by the time he filled the sheriff’s ear with what he’d learned, there was no way in hell those kids were going back to that son of a bitch. He offered a smile to the little tyke even though he was itching to put his fist through the wall, and went through the motions of cooking up a batch of mixed-up eggs that weren’t special in any way.

GLADYS DIDN’T LOOK VERY GOOD, John thought as he brought her a cup of coffee.

“You sure you don’t want to go see that doc of yours?” he asked.

She waved away his concern. “I’m fine. Just a little winded is all from the excitement last night. I just don’t know what to do about those poor babies. I don’t even know if they’ve been in school or what kind of lives they’ve been living. I’m just beside myself.”

“What about the mother? Do you know where she might be? Maybe I could place a few calls.”

Gladys made a look of distaste. “Oh, don’t waste your time with that one. I only met her once but she never made much of an impression. A little snooty and standoffish if you ask me and we never really hit it off. Not that I was close with Jason, mind you, but at least he was family. I’ve known him since he was a boy. Never had much of a character. Nothing like you and Evan. If you boys had been anything like Jason your mama would’ve lost the ranch the moment the tax man had started calling. No…I knew from the time he was a young man he wasn’t going to amount to much but I’d hoped I was wrong. There’s no satisfaction in being right in this instance.”

“So you think the mother just took off or something like Jason did?”

Gladys sighed. “I don’t know but what kind of mother would leave her babies behind? I can only imagine,” she said, her voice catching as the ghost of an old pain reappeared.

John agreed privately but allowed the quiet to dull the edge of Gladys’s long-ago loss. Even after all this time Gladys felt the agony of her stillborn son. He supposed that was a hurt that never truly healed. Not even with decades of time as a balm.

“So what do we do?”

Gladys looked at him sharply then sighed. “We? Oh, Johnny, this isn’t your problem. I’ll figure something out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’re in no shape to be tending to three little kids. And frankly, I don’t care what you say, I think you need to see your doctor. That surgery might’ve taken more out of you than you realize.”

Gladys was silent for a moment and John had a feeling she was wrestling with her pride, which was no small thing. She wasn’t accustomed to being dependent on someone else and it was probably killing her. But it was a temporary thing and she realized this, too, and finally nodded in agreement.

“You might be right,” she conceded with a sigh. “And I’ve been thinking about what you said about contacting the authorities. Maybe that’s the best thing to do. I don’t think Jason or Renee were doing a great job with these girls. Chloe is most definitely going to need an antibiotic for that cough and something tells me she’s been sick for a while. The poor baby has no color to speak of. They ought to have to work to get them back. Maybe it’ll teach them a lesson in being parents.”

“So you’re saying you’re okay with me calling the sheriff?”

“Yes, on one condition…the children stay together. They need each other.”

“I’ll make the call,” he said, moving to grab the phone. “And then I’m taking Chloe to the doctor.”

RENEE PULLED TO A STOP and took a cursory glance around the ranch that bordered Gladys’s property. She’d waited two agonizing days, but by 11 a.m. the third day Renee figured she ought to start poking around. If Gladys had gone on vacation, she might’ve left instructions with a neighbor to watch the house for her. Either way, Renee might get some kind of information that might be useful in finding Jason and the kids.

She was nearly to the door when a deep voice startled her.

“Didn’t you see the sign?”

Her heart jackhammering in her chest, she stammered a bit as she turned, her gaze catching the sign he was talking about. Trespassers Will Be Shot. No Exceptions. She swallowed and got straight to the point. “I’m sorry…I’m looking for Gladys Stemming but she doesn’t seem to be home and I wondered…”

“What do you want with Gladys?”

She frowned at his tone. “I’m Renee Dolling. Uh, well, she’s my aunt, by marriage, and I—” Why was she explaining herself to this man? Renee straightened. “Has she gone on a trip? If so, do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Dolling?” He repeated, a sudden shrewd light entering the hard stare coming at her from beneath a dusty and worn baseball cap. Little ducktails of dirty blond hair too long to be fashionable stuck out from under the hat as if to clearly state he had no time for such niceties as regular haircuts. And his sun-darkened face had a boyish charm that was completely at odds with the stern expression pinching his mouth as he said again, “Did you say your name was Dolling?”