Rookie K-9 Unit Collection, Volume 2 by Lynette Eason

Author:Lynette Eason
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

The drive to Tristan and Mia’s place took minutes.

It seemed to take a lifetime.

By the time they pulled up in front of the brick rancher, Ariel’s stomach was in knots, her mind filled with memories she’d been trying really hard to let go of.

Mitch at his best and at his worst. A man she’d thought she knew well who had turned out to be a complete stranger.

Someone who’d wanted her dead?

Who’d paid someone to make sure she and her child didn’t live?

She shuddered.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tristan said as he opened his door.

“I’m glad one of us thinks so,” she responded.

“It will be. Nothing can last forever. Eventually, we always get to the other side of our troubles.” He glanced at his sister. “I remind myself of that every day. Come on, let’s go inside. I have to get Jesse. We’re working the graveyard shift tonight, and I’m hoping to take him to your house. He’s trained in arson detection, and he might be able to sniff up something that everyone else has missed now that everything has settled down.”

“Graveyard, again?” Mia cut in. “Are we ever just going to be a normal family with a normal schedule? The kind where the parent is actually home with his kid?”

“Eventually, but things are kind of crazy right now. You know that, Mia,” Tristan responded, a hint of weariness in his voice.

Ariel had a feeling they’d had this conversation many times before and that it had accomplished absolutely nothing.

Talk was sometimes cheap. She remembered bottling up all the words she wanted to say in those final days of her marriage, shoving them down and keeping quiet, because it was the only way to keep the peace. That was something she’d coveted. Peace.

She hadn’t had much of that when she was a kid. Her father had been an alcoholic, coming home at all hours of the night, tripping over things, breaking things, apologizing with slurred words and heaving sobs. By the time Ariel was nine, her mother had died of cancer, and she’d become her father’s weekend caregiver, keeping the secret that her mother had kept for a decade because her father was a well-liked businessman, a deacon at church, a weekend drinker who went a little too far a little too often, but a good guy who’d loved his wife and his daughter.

He’d died while she was babysitting for a neighbor. It had been a Thursday night. Not a drinking night for him, but he must have decided he wanted to drink anyway. He’d emptied a bottle of Scotch and then gotten in the car to buy some more. He drove off the road before he reached the liquor store, flipping his car and dying instantly.

Another memory Ariel tried not to dwell on, and one of the reasons she’d married young. Her great-aunt had taken her in after her father’s death, and when she’d died, Ariel had been alone. She’d longed for someone she could connect with. She’d been desperate to have people she could call family.

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