“He asked for me, too,” she said, her voice rasping. “I’m…his lawyer.”
“Shit.” Wes laced his hands behind his head. “This is bad.”
Rebecca peered past
his shoulder, no doubt seeing the flashing beer sign in the window of the bar before the car rolled forward. She glanced back to him, her features sagging into heartbreak. “Wes, this is a bar. Did you? Are you…?”
“I didn’t drink. I was pondering.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey.” He tapped her knee. “Things you don’t have to apologize for. My demon. Not yours. But I won. I’m stone-cold sober right now and completely focused on Steven.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she lowered her voice so only he could hear. “Wes, this is my fault. I let him go home. I waited. He shot his dad.”
Wes curled his fingers into his palms and took a breath, trying to beat back his own panic. “Those are things we are not going to think about right now, and this is not your fault. We have no idea what happened. All we know is Steven is in danger and may not make it out if we don’t help. We have to focus on that right now. Steven needs that.”
“Right.” She nodded and met his gaze, fear there, but a resolute look coming over her face. “I can do that.”
“Okay.” He reached out and took her hand and was relieved when she curled her fingers around his. “Can you give us any more information, officers, so that we know what we’re walking into?”
The male officer flipped on the siren, even though traffic was nonexistent at this hour, and sped toward the side of town near the youth center. Officer Clement turned and briefed them from the passenger seat.
“Shots were fired late this evening, according to neighbors. When medics arrived, the father had made it onto the porch but had lost a lot of blood from a bullet wound. They rushed him to the ER, and all we know is that he’s in surgery. When we tried to go inside, his son, Steven, pointed the gun at his own head and threatened to pull the trigger if we came any further. Our top negotiator has been talking with him, but he wanted to see his lawyer, who he said was you, Ms. Lindt, and his cooking teacher, you, Mr. Garrett. Normally, we don’t bring civilians into these situations, but we plan to keep you well away from the danger. We just want you two to talk to him by phone and let him know that you are nearby and willing to listen. We need you to convince him to put the gun down and come out.”
“So you can arrest him,” Rebecca said, her tone hard.
The male officer glanced at them in the rearview mirror. “Yes. He shot his father.”
“Has he said why he did it?” she asked.
Wes peeked over at her, finding no sign of the panic he’d seen in her eyes a few minutes ago. She was all business, looking more pissed now than anything else. Only the hard grip she had on his hand gave him any clue how tense she was beneath all that.
“He said he was scared that his father was going to kill him. But there are no signs of that from what we can tell. His father is a respected police officer, and Steven seems to have a history of problems.”
“His father is abusing him,” Wes interjected. “Rebecca had to file a CPS report today.”
Officer Clement’s mouth pressed into a grim line. “At this point, I’m less concerned with the why. I just want the kid to put the gun down and talk to us. We can sort out the rest later.”
Rebecca sniffed derisively and sent a look Wes’s way. He nodded. Message clear. No one was on Steven’s side right now except the two of them. They couldn’t mess this up. They needed to get Steven safely out of there so that he could have a chance to tell his side.
Wes gave her hand a squeeze.
They pulled into a middle-class neighborhood with rows of houses that all looked the same. A line of cop cars had cordoned off an area, all their lights flashing. A spotlight was trained on the front door of what Wes presumed was Steven’s house. Further out, Wes could see the bright lights of news cameras.
The cops parked behind the main line of vehicles and turned to them. “We’re going to walk to that van over there. We’ll set up the call from there. Just do everything we say, and we can get this ended with no one else getting hurt, okay?”
“Okay,” Wes agreed, but he had no intention of feeding Steven lines from whatever script the cops had. If Steven wanted to talk to him, Wes would talk to him—or just listen, if that was what Steven needed. Whatever it took to get the kid out of that house in one piece.
Wes and Rebecca were led out of the car, a good distance from the house and under the cover of darkness. Rebecca held on to Wes’s hand, and he caught the tremor there.
He leaned over, the officers a few steps ahead. “You okay to do this?”
She wet her lips. “I hope so. I’m talking myself out of a freak-out. I don’t want to mess this up, but all of this is a little too familiar. It could go sideways for me.”
Wes’s stomach flipped over. Shit. He hadn’t even thought of that. This situation was stressful enough, but police, guns, news cameras… All kinds of reminders that could make Rebecca think of Long Acre. “Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
She rolled her lips inward and then nodded, as if making an agreement with herself. “I don’t always have control over how these things affect me. Like at the speech. Or the night of the mugging.” Her gaze went to the ground, her posture stuff. “My head’s all messed up, Wes. Sometimes, too often lately, I…see things, and past and reality can get mixed up in my brain. Like seeing ghosts and losing a sense of what’s real and what’s not.”