Читать книгу From Father to Son - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 9

CHAPTER ONE

MAYBE IF I WENT BACK to bed and started over.

Detective Niall MacLachlan looked down at the dead body sprawled on the kitchen floor and knew that no do-over was possible.

The body was not a murder victim. It was the corporeal shell of his landlady.

He attempted no resuscitation. He knew dead when he saw dead. Rigor mortis had set in. The old lady must have gotten up during the night. Niall knew she hadn’t been sleeping well. Heartburn, she’d told him, but she kept nitroglycerin at hand.

This wasn’t what you’d call a tragedy. Enid Cooper had turned eighty-eight in April. She’d lost two inches in height from crumbling bones and had confessed to Niall that she hurt all the time. Her worst fear had been ending up in a nursing home.

Maybe, he thought, her last emotion had been relief. He’d like to think so.

She had family who would mourn, he guessed. He didn’t know them, had been careful to avoid any introductions, but he’d seen a young woman with two little kids come and go. She’d mowed the lawn this spring and summer. Niall had kept his distance, but had paused a couple of times to admire her. She was a small, curvy package with fabulous legs. She was also, however, a mother and likely a wife. He suspected she would be Enid’s heir, too.

Which made Enid’s decision to kick the bucket very bad news for him. He was a selfish son of a bitch to be thinking about himself right now, but he had time to kill while he waited for the appropriate authority to take over. Beyond tugging down the hem of Enid’s nightgown so that her birdlike, liver-spotted legs were decently covered, there wasn’t anything he could do for her.

He’d signed a new one-year lease not six weeks ago. This would be his second year living in the tiny cottage tucked on the back of the large lot, behind Enid’s 1940s-era bungalow. Living here had worked out fine for him. Enid ignored him and didn’t mind that he ignored her. She was deaf as a post and didn’t like to be bothered with her hearing aid, which she said whined. Niall played the bagpipe. Your average landlord or landlady did not consider him an ideal tenant. Enid and he were a match made in heaven. He didn’t like to think what was going to happen now.

A uniformed officer arrived and Niall explained that he’d come to check on Enid because the kitchen light wasn’t on. This time of the morning, she would have long since had breakfast and tea. Enid tended to linger over her tea. He’d knocked on the back door, gotten no response and felt enough alarm he’d gone back to his cottage to get the key she had given him in case of emergency.

“I’d hate to die and not be found for so long I shrivelled up like a mummy,” she’d told him. “I don’t much like that idea. So if you don’t see me around, feel free to check.”

He could do that. She’d asked little enough of him. Rental payment once a month—which he deposited directly into her bank account as getting out was hard for her—and the understanding that he’d keep an eye on her from a distance.

Enid had been dead for a few hours, but the mortician would get his hands on her before she began serious decomposition. Niall hadn’t told her that in the incessantly damp climate of the Pacific Northwest, corpses didn’t dry up leatherlike. He didn’t tell her that what did happen to them was a whole lot more unpleasant than mummification.

He hoped that if she was opposed to being embalmed she’d have discussed it with her family.

It was with relief that he escaped after a silent goodbye.

As luck would have it, the first person he saw when he arrived at the public safety building that housed the police department was his brother Duncan. Captain Duncan MacLachlan, only one rung below the police chief who was currently under fire for publicly making a racist remark and who was at risk for being fired. Even though Duncan was a hard-ass, he backed his officers and was known for being fair, smart and the soul of integrity. The general hope was that the city council would give the job to him, rather than hiring from outside the department.

Niall had very mixed feelings for his brother.

They were a hell of a lot closer than they’d been even a year ago, though. Duncan had mellowed when he’d fallen in love. Niall had watched the process with bemusement.

Duncan had pushed through the doors on his way out, and the two of them stepped aside so they weren’t in the way of traffic. Although barely midmorning, it had to be eighty degrees already. A humid eighty degrees.

“You just getting here?”

“I found my landlady dead.”

Duncan nodded without apparent surprise. “What’ll that do to your lease?”

Niall grinned. Trust his big brother to hold no sentimental feelings whatsoever. Except where Jane was concerned, of course. Niall shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out.”

Rather than offering another brisk nod and continuing on his way, Duncan kept standing there. He was wearing one of the suits that made him appear more like a politician than a cop, and he had to be looking forward to the air-conditioning in that big SUV he drove. But instead of heading for it, he shifted his weight, hemmed and hawed.

“I was going to call you today,” he finally said.

Niall was entertained by the unexpected and unnatural sight of Captain MacLachlan looking irresolute.

“Yeah?”

“Jane wants you to come to dinner. Tonight or tomorrow?”

“Is there an occasion?”

Expression strangely vulnerable, Duncan met his eyes. “Jane’s pregnant.”

Niall found himself momentarily speechless. “This a surprise?” he asked at last.

Duncan shook his head. “No. I’m thirty-seven, Jane’s thirty-two. We didn’t want to wait too long.”

“My brother, a daddy.” Niall smiled broadly. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“How far along is she?”

“Three months. She wanted to wait until she was past the danger point before we let people know. You’re, uh, the first.”

Niall nodded, feeling honored even though—face it—there wasn’t a whole lot of competition here. Jane was alienated entirely from her family, and Niall was the only member of Duncan’s who had a relationship with him. Mom had made no effort to stay in touch with any of them, and Duncan had rebuffed Dad’s one attempt to reconnect. Conall hadn’t spoken to Duncan in close to ten years. That left—ta da!—Niall.

“I’ll be an uncle,” he said, disconcerted by the idea.

His brother shared one of his rare grins. “Yeah, you will.”

“Huh.”

Still smiling, Duncan clapped him on the back. “Dinner?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“I’ll tell Jane.” With long strides, he headed across the parking lot.

Niall stood where he was, watching him go. Well, damn, he thought, and felt a funny ache inside. He might have labeled it as jealousy, except he didn’t want any of what Duncan had.

Still, a baby MacLachlan. Who’d have thunk?

HOMICIDE AND MAJOR CRIMES detectives almost never fired a gun outside of the range, where they were required to keep their skills sharp. The telephone and the internet were their tools. They spent a lot of time on hold. They talked. They listened. They pretended to understand and sympathize with scumbags.

Which was probably why Niall was a little slower than he should have been reaching for his Glock.

During a belated lunch break, he had pulled into the bank parking lot with the intention of going in to deposit a check. Before he could get out of the car, his attention was caught by the sight of a guy hustling out of the bank gripping the arm of a woman who was walking really, really close to him. The incongruous part was that with both hands she clutched a black plastic trash bag, stuffed full. And—oh, hell—she looked scared out of her skull.

At the exact same moment Niall’s brain clicked into gear, the guy looked at Niall’s car which, while unmarked, shouted cop car. Plain maroon, but a big, powerful sedan. Grille behind the driver’s seat. Serious radio antenna. Then his eyes met Niall’s and he lifted a handgun.

Niall flung open the door and dove out at the exact moment the passenger window exploded.

He snatched his Glock from the holster and groped for his radio. “Shots being fired. Bank robbery in progress,” he managed to spit out before stealing a peek over the trunk.

Another shot rang out. Brick chips flew from the wall a few feet from his head.

Damn, damn, damn. The guy had dragged the woman behind a minivan in the lot. He had a hostage, and he was seriously willing to do anything to get away. Including killing a cop.

Niall hadn’t taken a shot yet. He wouldn’t until he thought he had a good one. God. Even aside from the hostage, there were other people in the parking lot, businesses across the street, passing cars.

Niall swiveled on his heels and saw a woman who had gotten out of her RAV4 standing not fifteen feet away with the keys in her hand, her mouth forming a horrified O. He gestured vehemently, relieved when she gasped and threw herself out of sight around the front of the vehicle. Other people farther away were gaping, too freaking stupid to realize a stray bullet could catch them. A man came running out of the bank yelling, but ducked back when a bullet chipped more bricks inches from him.

Niall’s car jumped when another burst of fire found metal. He dropped flat to the pavement so he could see the feet beneath the minivan. Black bag, too. He wondered if the teller had gotten a dye pack in it. He grunted. Man, this was going to be a mess no matter how it played out. The FBI would be all over it, and who wanted to deal with them? Although he wouldn’t mind if they showed up right now.

The feet were moving. Toward the rear of the vehicle. So it wasn’t the guy’s minivan, or the woman’s, either. The guy was figuring to bolt for cover behind another car. Make his way to his own, maybe. Time was his enemy. He had to get away before more cops arrived and he got surrounded.

Sirens sounded, but not close.

Niall rose to a crouch and crab-walked forward, rounding the hood of his car. He snatched a quick look, his finger tight on the trigger, and saw that the guy had pushed the woman out into view. She once again clutched the trash bag in front of her as if it were a shield. Niall had never seen such terror on anyone’s face. Was she a teller? An unlucky customer?

Wait. Wait.

The guy appeared. Not enough of him—he was using the woman for cover. He took a wild shot to pin Niall down, but it was the back window of the car that imploded. Good. He’d miscalculated which direction Niall would move.

Wait.

Niall had never felt so steady, so cool. He was thinking, waiting with extraordinary patience, willing the instant to come when he could kill this bastard without unduly risking the woman.

There. The woman stumbled. Niall pulled the trigger and the Glock jerked in his hand exactly as it did at the gun range. Bang, bang, bang. Blood blossomed; glass on the minivan exploded; the woman fell forward, then, screaming, began to crawl away.

The bank robber was down, broken glass all around him. His handgun skittered away across the pavement from inert fingers. He lay sprawled, unmoving.

Glock held out in the firing position, Niall walked cautiously forward until he stood only feet from the man. There was one hell of a lot of blood. Dead, he thought coldly. His second dead body for the day. At least he’d only killed one of them.

This was also, however, his second shooting resulting in a fatality in the past year. The first was a crazy guy who’d intended to slit Jane’s throat. Niall had gotten there ahead of Duncan, so he’d been the one to take the shot. He’d as soon this didn’t become a habit, he reflected, in that weird way a mind worked at a moment like this.

Sirens rose to a crescendo. Police cars slammed to a halt blocking both exits from the bank parking lot. Officers leaped out and took cover. A lot of weapons were drawn on Niall.

Something made his glance slide sidelong to the broken windows of the minivan, and a monster of fear rose in him. There was a child car seat inside. A Mercedes-Benz of car seats, it occurred to him, even as he realized there was a kid in that seat, slumped forward. Blood was shockingly red against the dandelion-pale fluff of hair.

Please God, don’t let me have killed that kid.

THERE WERE ONLY A FEW mourners at Enid Cooper’s funeral. Her contemporaries were gone, or in assisted living. A couple of neighbors were there, and Rowan Staley and her father. Not Mom; she and Dad had separated and filed for divorce.

At least Rowan had persuaded her parents-in-law not to attend. She had been able to leave the kids with them. Maybe at six years old Desmond had been old enough to attend a funeral, but why should he have to? It wasn’t an open casket; Rowan wouldn’t have that. Gran had had a thing about dignity; she would have hated the idea of everyone filing past gazing at her wrinkled, dead face.

Gran’s tenant, whose name escaped Rowan, was here, too. When she’d seen him coming and going at Gran’s, he’d never stopped to introduce himself or anything like that. A couple of times he had given a distant nod before disappearing inside the tiny cottage. Despite his unfriendliness, Rowan had actually been glad to know he was there. After her divorce, she’d had the wistful thought that she could live in the cottage, but it wasn’t big enough for her and the kids. And even though Gran had room in her house, she was too old and not patient enough to live with a rambunctious kindergartener and a wistful four-year-old. Never mind the dog. Gran didn’t hold with animals being in the house. Rowan hadn’t had any choice but to take the kids and move in with her in-laws, relieved that Gran would be safer having a law enforcement officer living right there behind her house.

She’d been told he was the one who’d found Gran. And he’d cared enough to come today to pay his respects. Rowan wondered if he would bother speaking to her or her father after the service was over. She was betting not.

The minister was talking, but it was like the sound of running water to Rowan. Pleasant but holding no meaning. He hadn’t even known Gran. She hadn’t attended a church service in at least ten years, maybe more. He was young, new. This was his standard spiel. His tone was filled with warmth and regret, which she appreciated even though he couldn’t possibly feel either emotion. This was like a stage performance for him, she supposed.

I should be listening.

Dad’s gaze was fixed somewhere in the vicinity of the pastor, but his expression was abstracted. He and his mother hadn’t been close; as she’d gotten older and crankier, she’d also become increasingly disapproving. Gran had been one hundred percent disgusted with her son’s recent conduct. But still. He must have good memories. Regrets that were way more genuine than the pastor’s. As mad as Rowan often felt at her dad, what if he died and she had to sit at his funeral trying to remember the last time she’d said “I love you?” Remembering the angry words they’d exchanged?

She gave a shudder and stole a look sideways, to find that Gran’s tenant had turned his head and was watching her. Goose bumps chased over her skin. He had a craggy face, dark red hair cut short and flint-gray eyes. Eyes that were—not cold, Rowan had decided the first time she’d seen him. Remote. As if he stood a thousand paces from the rest of humanity. Didn’t know her, didn’t want to know her. Or anybody else.

It had to be her imagination. Maybe it was a typical cop look, cynicism to the nth degree. Or maybe he didn’t like her. Did he think she’d neglected Gran? The thought filled her with outrage. She glared at him, saw his eyebrows twitch, then he inclined his head the slightest amount to acknowledge her existence and turned his attention to the front.

Why had he been looking at her at all? Did he guess she was Gran’s heir and therefore his new landlady? Or would he have assumed he would be dealing with Dad?

Dad had been a little put out when the will was read and he found out his mother hadn’t left either her relatively modest savings nor her house to him, but to his credit he’d mostly been rueful.

“The two of you always were close,” he had said, shrugging. “And you’ve been trying to take care of her.”

Rowan wished now she had been able to do more.

Or maybe Gran had known. Guessed, anyway. Rowan hadn’t talked even to Gran about her marriage, or her shame at feeling relieved when Drew died. She hadn’t admitted how miserable she was living with his parents, who were entirely fixated on her children. Their Andrew, her husband, had been an only child.

“Desmond and Anna are all we have left,” one or the other of them said, too often. The hunger in their gazes when they looked at their grandchildren unnerved Rowan. There was too much need, too much desperation, too many expectations being fastened on young children who didn’t understand any of it.

The Staleys had been shocked when she informed them that she had inherited her grandmother’s house and would be moving into it with Anna and Desmond. She couldn’t cope without them, they declared, and they didn’t like it when she insisted that she could. It was true that she hadn’t been able to cope before this, not financially, anyway. She worked as a paraeducator—a teacher’s aide—at the elementary school. She didn’t make enough money to pay for daycare for Anna, as well as rent. But now she would be able to afford a preschool for Anna. She would own her very own home, and have rental income, as well, from the cottage.

Paid by the man with the russet hair and chilly gray eyes. She didn’t know how she felt about the idea of him living so close. Perhaps she’d scarcely see him. It hadn’t sounded as if he and Gran had much more than a nodding acquaintance.

Rowan hoped he liked dogs. She might be able to keep the kids away from him, but Super Sam the dog didn’t grasp the concept of boundaries. Thank heavens Gran’s backyard was fenced. The unfortunate part was, the cottage was inside the fence. The kids and tenant both would have to learn to close gates.

She stole another look at him to find that he appeared entirely expressionless. Somehow she felt quite sure he wasn’t thinking about Gran any more than Dad was.

Any more than I am. Rowan felt a quick stab of guilt. Oh, Gran. I did love you. I will be grateful for the rest of my life for this gift you’ve given me.

Freedom.

STILL SWEATING OVER the bank parking-lot shooting, Niall hadn’t gotten to sleep until nearly 3:00 a.m. This had been a hell of a few days. Only yesterday he’d had to face an Internal Affairs panel to justify his actions, as if he wasn’t second-guessing himself already, the way any good cop would. Then his sleep wasn’t restful, any more than it had been the past few nights. No surprise to wake filled with horror. The last images of the nightmare were extraordinarily vivid. In his dream he’d reached for the little kid with the pale fluff of hair, lifting the child’s chin to see dead eyes that still accused him even now.

Damn it, he thought viciously, scrubbing his hands over his face. Enough already.

Niall got up to use the john, splashed cold water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror.

Bad enough he’d shot and killed a man. He’d learned a lesson last year, when he’d killed for the first time: you paid a price for taking a life, even if taking it had been the right thing to do. Mostly, he thought it right and just he should suffer some doubts, be plagued by nightmares. Killing wasn’t something anyone should take lightly.

The little girl, though, that was something else. She’d come within a hair’s breadth of having her head blown off. God. What if it had been my bullet? As much as her face, that was the question driving him crazy.

Knowing sleep would be elusive, he went back to bed, where he lay staring up at the dark ceiling, hitting the replay button over and over and over until the tape should be wearing out. The gray of dawn was seeping between the slats of the window blinds before he fell asleep again.

The sound of slamming doors, shrill, excited voices and a barking dog jerked him from sleep. What the…? With a groan, he rolled his head on the pillow to peer blearily at the bedside clock. Eight-thirty. He was going to kill someone.

Even half-asleep with his head pounding, he winced at that. Now that he actually had killed two men, those words didn’t come as lightly to him as they once had.

He sat up and put his feet to the floor. A woman was laughing, a low, delighted trill. A kid yelled something and the dog went into another frenzy of barking. There were other voices—several adults. The racket had to be at the next-door neighbor’s. Enid was barely in the ground. Her estate couldn’t possibly be settled.

He staggered from his bedroom into the combination living room/kitchen/dining room and separated the slats of the blinds on the front window enough to give him a view of Enid’s house. Then he stared in disbelief.

Oh, crap. Oh, hell. Oh…

A U-Haul truck had been backed into the driveway. The cargo door was already rolled up. A couple of people were currently hauling a mattress out of the truck and down the metal ramp. A dog was running in crazed circles on the lawn, chased by a boy and, trailing well behind, a tiny girl in pink overalls and purple shoes that, to Niall’s dazed eyes, seemed to be flashing sparkling lights. The back door of Enid’s house stood open. A woman was carrying a lamp in. She’d no sooner disappeared inside than a different woman came out empty-handed. She called something to the kids, who were too busy running in frenetic circles to acknowledge her.

It was the granddaughter. The curvy package with the fabulous legs, exposed almost as effectively in snug jeans as when she wore short shorts. Those were her two kids. The dog… Was it theirs? The husband was probably one of those men.

An expletive escaped Niall’s lips. They were moving in. An entire family was moving into Enid’s house, separated from his cottage by the width of a lawn and one old apple tree.

He kept staring, shock almost—but not quite—numbing him. There would be a swing hanging from the branch of that apple tree before he knew it. The dog would crap all over the lawn and set up an uproar every time Niall came and went. The kids would have friends over. Soon, there wouldn’t be two of them, there would be half a dozen.

This was his worst nightmare.

He’d have to break the lease.

And pay massive penalties, unless Enid’s granddaughter was as eager to see him gone as he was to go.

Uh-huh. And where would he be going to?

Maybe it was time he bought a house, he reflected. He could certainly afford to. But the idea had always filled him with uneasiness. It still did. A one-year lease was all the commitment he’d ever wanted to make. Actually owning his own house, his own piece of land, putting down roots… Making some kind of unspoken promise, if only to himself, to stay here, in his hometown....

He let the blinds spring back into place but stayed where he was, staring at them. Outside the pandemonium continued.

There had to be another rental somewhere that would be suitable. This was Sunday. Once everything settled down out there, he’d slip out and grab his newspaper. Maybe he’d spot an ad that said something like, Nice house, Privacy! No near neighbors!

Rural. That’s what he needed, Niall decided grimly. So what if it took him longer to drive to work, if come spring he had to fight the traffic congestion caused by tourists out to view the tulip and daffodil fields?

God help me, he thought, and stumbled into the tiny kitchenette to put on a pot of coffee. Clearly, going back to bed wasn’t happening.

AT FOUR-THIRTY IN THE afternoon, a firm rat-a-tat-tat on his door made Niall go on sharp alert. He’d been lying on his sofa brooding, feeling trapped. Would he never be able to come and go without risking the possibility of having to exchange neighborly greetings?

He swore under his breath and stood. It would be her, of course. No, maybe not. Maybe he’d get lucky and be able to deal with the husband. If there was one.

No such luck. Not only the woman stood on his doorstep, but her two children, the little girl latched on to her leg and gazing suspiciously at him, the boy’s eyes filled with curiosity. The dog was trying to shove between them and get in the door. Niall automatically stuck out a foot to foil the break-in.

His gaze traveled up—although it didn’t have to go very far—to meet the young woman’s. She was sort of a blonde, with big brown eyes. Bangs were pushed to one side, and the rest of her baby-fine hair was in a ponytail. Maybe her hair was really brown and she’d had it highlighted.... But Niall shook off that conjecture immediately. She wore no makeup, the bangs looked like she trimmed them herself, and she had a big splotch of what could have been mustard on her faded T-shirt. Which, he couldn’t help noticing, fit snugly over generous breasts. C cup for sure.

He became aware that, as he studied her, she was likewise inspecting him from his bare feet to his equally faded T-shirt. He thought she looked both wary and apprehensive. His mouth quirked slightly when he noticed that the little girl, who had moonlight-pale hair but Mommy’s soft brown eyes, had an identical expression on her face. Her clutch on her mother’s thigh tightened.

“I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” the woman said.

He actually did know hers, he’d realized yesterday even before being handed the program for the service. Enid had mentioned it a couple of times. It had caught in his memory only because Rowan was an unusual name.

“Niall MacLachlan,” he said. “I assume you’re Enid’s granddaughter.”

“Yes. Rowan Staley.” She had a beautiful voice. The trill of laughter he’d heard earlier had to have been hers. “These are my children, Desmond and Anna.”

The boy piped up, “Hi.” The girl only stared, her eyes narrowing.

Niall had the thought that he could develop a soft spot for her.

“Hello,” he said and then waited, meantime keeping a cautious eye on the dog who had made an enthusiastic, tail-wagging circuit of the yard and was now closing in again. The damn thing looked as if he’d been put together with spare parts. Niall had seen garden art in which rusting springs, trowels and what-not were welded together to form fantastical animals. The dog was even rust-colored.

“We’ve moved into the house,” Rowan said.

No shit. He nodded then couldn’t resist saying, “Pretty quick.”

Her eyes narrowed, increasing the resemblance to her tiny daughter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I was surprised, that’s all.”

“I’m Gran’s sole heir. There’s no one to object and no point in the house sitting empty while the will goes through probate.”

His answering stare was deliberately bored. She flushed, giving her a rosy-cheeked look. No elegant cheekbones here. She wasn’t plump, but she had a lot of curves packed onto a frame that couldn’t possibly top five-foot-two or -three.

“I’m now your landlady,” she said sharply.

The dog sprang forward, forcing woman and children to stagger aside, and flung himself happily at Niall.

“Sit!” he snapped. Apparently surprised, the animal dropped to its haunches. Equally surprised, his family stared at him. Niall said, “Have you looked into that ugly dog contest? There might be prize money.”

“That’s not nice!” the boy exclaimed. “Super Sam is…is…”

Something like a chuckle was welling up in Niall’s chest. He suppressed it.

Rowan looked as indignant as her son. “How can you say that? Sam’s…cute.”

The cute came out kind of weak. Niall let his silence speak for itself.

The little girl said in a sweet, high voice, “We love Sam.”

The dog leaped up, ran a wet pink tongue over her face and bounded off. After a small sigh, Rowan said, “Speaking of Sam. One of the things I came by for was to ask that you keep the gate closed. He doesn’t have an awful lot of common sense, and he, er, likes to dig holes, which some of the neighbors might not appreciate, so we really need to keep him confined.”

That was a nuisance, but not unreasonable. Niall nodded. “I can do that.”

“Thank you.” She was trying for crisp sarcasm, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Not her style, Niall thought.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“I haven’t yet had a chance to study the rental agreement,” Rowan said. “Once I have, perhaps we can talk about it.”

“What’s to talk about? Unless one of us doesn’t intend to honor it?”

She didn’t look away. “And which one of us would that be?”

“Depends on how things go, doesn’t it?”

Her lips compressed. “Yes. It does.” She backed up a step, taking her children with her. “Mr. MacLachlan…”

“Detective. I’m with Stimson P.D.”

He saw the moment she made the connection. “I read about you in the paper.” And, clearly, hadn’t liked what she’d read. She opened her mouth to say more, glanced down at Desmond and changed her mind. “What a pleasure it’s been to meet you,” she said, and this time the sarcasm worked better. So well, in fact, that he couldn’t help smiling.

His new landlady looked momentarily startled, then mad. She gave a nod that made her ponytail bob and her bangs swing, then steered her kids off the porch. Both their heads were turning to look back as she marched them across the lawn.

Still smiling, Niall closed the door. With luck, his all-too-close neighbors wouldn’t come calling again in the near future. The kid—Desmond—was right. Niall wasn’t very nice. He reflected that he’d been inspired by the hot pepper stuff orthodontists gave parents to apply to their kids’ thumbs when they wouldn’t quit sucking on them. A preventative measure.

His smile died, though, at the memory of overhearing his sergeant grumble about how his five-year-old had developed a taste for the damn pepper, and was sucking her thumb even more now.

Okay, not foolproof, but worth a try.