The Best Bride (54 page)

Kyle grimaced. The Ragged Elephant was a trendy boutique at the mall. Teenagers loved the exciting new fashions, but the store had more than its share of trouble. “Let me guess. Shoplifters checking out the new fall line.”

“You got it. I'm holding the kids in my office. They're pretty young and scared, but I'm not going to let them off.”

“I understand. I'll be right there.”

He hung up, then reached for his cap. As he walked down the hallway, he called out to Travis. “Shoplifters at the Ragged Elephant. I'll radio you and let you know how many I'm bringing in.”

Travis followed him into the hallway and nodded. “I really want school to start,” he said. “The teenagers are getting restless.”

Kyle pushed open the door and glanced back. “Ten more days.”

“How would you know?”

Kyle grinned. “I've been counting 'em myself.”

He didn't bother waiting for a reply. Instead, he walked to his patrol car and headed for the mall.

Twenty minutes later, he took the escalator to the second floor and turned toward the boutique. Several teenagers were standing in groups on the sides of the walkway. The young boys gave him challenging looks, but the girls smiled and said hello. He nodded at all of them. Today, nothing was going to interfere with his good mood. He loved Sandy—all was right with the world.

He entered the store. Wilson Porter hurried to greet him. “Kyle, I'm really glad you're here.” The short overweight forty-year-old who managed the boutique motioned toward the back of the store. “They're crying. I hate it when they cry.”

“They usually do,” Kyle reminded him.

“I know.” Wilson sighed. “Why can't they put things on layaway? But no. They have to try and steal them. Don't they know everything is tagged electronically? Do they think I'm stupid?”

“They don't think.” Kyle pushed open a door marked Private and entered the back storage room. There was a short corridor to the left. He turned there and walked to Wilson's office. He waited while the manager unlocked the door. Kyle stepped inside.

Three girls sat around the small room. Two looked up at him. He didn't recognize them. They must be summer kids. Glenwood didn't get a lot of tourists, but there were a few families who came up from the city and rented houses in the woods. These girls were young, maybe thirteen. Two were blond, one with short straight hair, the other with long curly hair to her waist. Both had obviously been crying. The third, the one who hadn't looked at him yet, had brown hair.

“Who wants to tell me what happened?” he asked.

As he spoke, the third girl raised her head. Kyle stared at her in disbelief. “Lindsay?”

Her face was wet with tears, her eyes red. She flinched
when he said her name. “Wh-what are you doing here?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“I got a call about some shoplifters.”

The tears flowed faster. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I didn't mean it. Please don't tell my mom.”

“Your mom is the least of your problems,” Kyle said, stunned by what he was seeing and hearing. “What were you thinking of? This isn't a game, Lindsay.”

She seemed to fold in on herself. She pulled her knees up to her chest and dropped her forehead to her knees. “I'm sorry,” she said again.

“You know this guy?” the short-haired blonde asked. Lindsay nodded miserably. “Cool.” She looked at Kyle. “We didn't mean anything by this. Can't you talk to him and explain that?” She jerked her head toward Wilson.

Wilson glared at her. “Didn't mean anything? Honey, I've had my eye on you all summer. I know you took those dragon earrings a couple of weeks ago.” He went into the hallway and returned with a shopping bag full of clothing. “This is what they were trying to steal. All this? Can you believe it? Not only do they think I'm stupid, they're greedy, too.” He glared at the girls, then turned to Kyle. “I want to press charges. Against all of them.”

* * *

“But it was an accident,” Lindsay said for the third time. “I swear.”

Kyle stared at the young girl in front of him. She was no longer the vamp in training who had trailed him the first month she'd been in Glenwood. She was a frightened child who didn't understand the consequences of what she'd done. But she was about to learn in a big way.

He leaned toward her. “You were the one carrying the bag, Lindsay. How was it an accident?”

“I didn't know they'd stolen the stuff,” she said.

He waited. She fidgeted on the straight-backed chair he'd pulled up beside his desk. When the girls had realized he meant to bring them to the station, they'd all lost control. He'd had to hustle three hysterical crying preteens through the mall to the patrol car. The two blondes hadn't said much, but Lindsay kept apologizing. He'd called Travis with the details. As soon as they'd arrived at the station, he'd separated the girls. Travis and one of the other deputies were taking care of the two blondes, while Kyle had brought Lindsay with him.

He still didn't know what he was going to do with her. The part of him that cared about her, the part of him that understood how easy it was to get mixed up in trouble, wanted to ease her way. He thought about talking to Wilson. He could get the store manager to drop the charges. The other two girls were from out of town. They would be leaving soon and taking their trouble with them. Lindsay wasn't a bad kid. He could make Wilson understand.

But he wasn't going to. Not only because it was wrong to use his influence, but because it wouldn't help Lindsay. That was the hell of it. If she learned a hard lesson this early, she wouldn't make the same mistake again. If he let her off, then she would start to expect other people to always be cleaning up her messes. So he didn't speak to Wilson or tell Lindsay it was going to be okay. Instead, he glared at her, waiting for her to tell him the truth.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, still crying. Her long brown hair hung limply over her shoulders. She pushed it away from her face. She was pale under her tan.

“Doing what?”

“Treating me this way? I didn't do anything.”

“You carried a bag of stolen clothing out of a store. That's called shoplifting, and it's against the law.”

“But I didn't kn-know. I thought they'd paid for it.”

He didn't say anything.

She sobbed for several more minutes. He pushed a box of tissue close to the edge of the desk and then clutched the arms of his chair. He wanted to go to her and comfort her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and promise he would fix it all. He wanted to know that she would understand why he was doing this. That it was for her own good.

He hadn't thought doing the right thing would hurt so much. He hated watching Lindsay cry. Each tear, each sob was like a dagger in his heart. He'd come to care about Lindsay. He wanted to spare her the pain, but he knew doing that would only make it worse in the long run.

“Did you see either girl pay for the clothing?” he asked when she'd quieted some.

“No, but—” She looked at him. “I—I just didn't think they would have taken the things without paying for them. They gave me the bag and told me to start walking. What was I supposed to do? They're my friends. The first friends I've made here.” She wiped her eyes. “I was sc-scared, and I didn't want to say anything. Then that buzzer went off and that little man came after us. He was screaming that we were thieves, then he grabbed me.” She covered her face with her hands. “I was so humiliated. It was awful. I'm really sorry.” She looked up at him. “I swear I'll never do anything like that again. Please don't tell my mom, Kyle. She'll kill me.”

Lindsay wasn't the only one Sandy was going to want to kill. Her daughter's partners in crime had been girls she'd met at camp. The camp he'd encouraged the children to attend so that he could have some private time with their mother. Sandy was going to blame him for this whole damn thing. He didn't know how or why, but he could feel it in his bones. Things had been going too well between them. He wasn't looking forward to calling her.

“It's not just your mother, Lindsay. Mr. Porter is going to press charges. You're a juvenile and that will help. You have a clean record and people who will vouch for your character.” He was willing to let her be charged, but he had every intention of speaking for her at the hearing.

She blanched. “I'm going to prison?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Kyle? That's not true, is it?”

“You won't have to go to a detention facility. You'll be released into your mother's custody.”

“Custody? Like I'm a criminal? But I didn't do anything.”

“You carried stolen clothing out of a store.”

“But I didn't take it. It wasn't mine. I didn't even like the stuff they picked out.” She sprang to her feet and started pacing the office. “Kyle, please, you've got to help me. I really didn't do anything. I didn't want to help them. I didn't even want to be there. I thought they were my friends. I haven't had any friends since we moved here. Everything is so horrible. I hate this.” She stood in front of him and twisted her hands around and around. “Please help me. You've got to. Please?”

He couldn't resist her plea. He rose to his feet and hugged her. Her slender body was trembling. “I'm sorry, Lindsay,” he said, smoothing her hair. “This is pretty ugly. Unfortunately, you're going to have to face the consequences of what happened. Your friends got you into trouble, and you're going to have to pay the price for that. You knew it was wrong to take the clothes, but you did it, anyway.”

She pushed away from him. “You're not going to do anything, are you?” she asked, her voice getting loud. “Why?”

“Because you have to learn. I know this is hard. It's damn hard for me, too.”

“I don't care about you,” she said. “You're not the one
in trouble.” He tried to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away from him. “Get away from me.” She sank into the chair. “Get away.”

He stared at her for a long time, then left the room. Conflicting emotions swelled inside of him. All he wanted was to do the right thing. Nothing else mattered. His heart told him to talk to Wilson and get the charges dropped. His head told him that was a mistake. With a flash of insight, he realized he was facing the double-edged sword of being a parent. Lindsay might not be his child, but he cared about her. The compassionate side of him wanted to make it easy for her. The logical side reminded him that she had to learn eventually and the lesson would be a lot less painful coming this early.

He walked into an empty office and stared at the phone. Putting Lindsay in custody was the second hardest thing he'd ever had to do. The hardest would be calling Sandy and telling her what had happened.

* * *

Sandy pushed open the glass doors and entered the sheriff's station. She was shaking—from concern and rage. How could Lindsay have gotten involved in something like this? How could she have shown such poor judgment? And how could she, as Lindsay's mother, have had no clue what was going on in her daughter's life?

She paused in the foyer and saw several people waiting. A couple, about her age, maybe a few years older, glanced up at her, then away. She wondered if they were one of the other girl's parents. Before she could go over and ask, a door opened and she saw Kyle. He motioned her to come with him.

“How are you holding up?” he asked when she got closer to him.

She tried to smile, then settled on a shrug. “Okay, I guess.
I'm sorry it took me so long to get here. I had to drop Nichole and Blake at Elizabeth's.” She followed Kyle down a long corridor to an empty office. When he'd shut the door behind them, she sank into the chair in front of the worn wooden desk.

“How did this happen?” she asked, then shook her head. “I'm sorry. You can't answer that, can you? I had no clue what she was up to. Are these the same girls she met at camp?”

Kyle hesitated before answering, then he nodded. “According to Lindsay, yes. She met them there, and apparently they've been hanging out together since they got back.”

Sandy let her purse slip to the floor. “I blame myself. I shouldn't have sent her to camp. She didn't want to go. I thought—”

She clamped her mouth shut. She didn't want to say what she'd been thinking. That sending the kids away had been purely selfish. That she was the worst mother in the world. She could tell herself she'd sent the kids to camp so they could have some fun and make friends, but the truth was much uglier than that. She'd sent her kids to camp so she could have some private time with Kyle. She'd wanted to have sex, so she'd sacrificed her children's well-being.
She
should be the one arrested, not Lindsay.

“It's all my fault,” she said.

“Bull.” Kyle pulled the chair from behind the desk and moved it so it was in front of her. Then he sat down. “You didn't tell Lindsay to steal anything. She's a smart kid. She knows better. She got caught up in the moment. She didn't think, and now she has to face the consequences of what she did.”

Sandy shook her head. “That's really easy for you to say. Lindsay isn't your child. Of course I know I didn't tell her to steal anything. That doesn't mean it's not my fault. Of
course I had something to do with this. I just have to figure out what. Did I ignore her? Should I have investigated her friends better?”

“You're making yourself crazy over this. It's not that complicated.”

“I met one of the girl's mothers,” she said, more to herself than him. “I guess I should have met both mothers. Or not let Lindsay go with them. But I can't keep her locked up forever.”

What had happened? Was it the move? Was this a late reaction to Thomas's death? She tried to fight off the ugly feeling that the root of the problem was her own selfishness. If she hadn't wanted to be with Kyle so much—