Wild Horse Springs. Jodi Thomas

behind in school and living on the fringes of right and wrong when Charley Collins at the Lone Heart Ranch took him in. Anyone could see that the kid had a heart bigger than Texas, but he was proud and had a stubborn streak.

      “What do we do?” Tim asked in a dull tone, as if he really didn’t expect her to answer.

      “You’re right. We have to fix this. Thatcher saved Pop’s life once. He might have been only fourteen or fifteen then, but he ran through gunfire to get Pop to safety. Pop will do his job, he’s always played by the book, but he’ll help where he can, too.” Her logical mind began to put all the pieces she knew together. “Why would Thatcher steal food? I’ve heard Charley’s place is going great.”

      “He swears he didn’t. Says he was just bringing the canned goods back, but he says he doesn’t remember who he got them from. Wouldn’t even tell the sheriff if it was a man or woman who must have stole them in the first place. Just says he can’t say.” Tim laughed. “While Luther was out cold, Thatcher put the food back on the shelf, so there is some confusion as to exactly what was taken.”

      “So there is no evidence of a crime?”

      “Right, unless you count the shiner on Luther’s face.” Tim hesitated. “L, you were in law school once. You’ll figure out something.”

      “I never took the bar, remember. I decided to be a writer. Only that doesn’t seem to be working out so well for me. I don’t think taking customer complaints at the mall counts as training.” She didn’t want to go into all the reasons she was failing. Part of her wanted to simply say she was failing to thrive out in the real world.

      “Come home.” Tim ended the silence, his voice already pulling her. “Thatcher needs you and I miss you.”

      “I’ll see if I can get off by noon tomorrow. I’ll be there by five.”

      “Great.” Tim hesitated. “How about staying with me this time? I’ve completely remodeled my folks’ old place on the lake. You’d like it. Plus, your pop knows you’re an adult. He’d understand. You could just say we’re having an adult sleepover.”

      “I’ll think about it,” she answered. Tim had asked before, but she wasn’t ready for any commitment between them. Staying over at his place meant sleeping together. “I’ll call when I’m close to Crossroads so you can meet me at the county offices.” She hung up without saying goodbye, then sat very still thinking of Tim, not Thatcher.

      She’d grown up with Tim O’Grady, gone skinny-dipping in the lake with him when they were ten. Spent a thousand hours talking with him. He was her best friend.

      A friend with benefits, she thought, though she could count their nights together on her fingers. Of course she loved him, but not in the way he wanted her to love him. When they occasionally slept together, it was more out of a need not to be alone than passion. She hated that she thought of his loving as vanilla, but somehow she wanted more. Everyone said they were right for each other, a match. Only everyone was wrong.

      Tim loved her, really loved her, but she couldn’t love him back. They never talked about it, but somehow they both knew the truth, and that one silent truth broke both their hearts.

      She’d go home. She’d find a way to help Thatcher. But this time she wouldn’t sleep with Tim. Even though it felt good for a while. Even though they both understood the silent rules.

      She wouldn’t sleep with Tim because she couldn’t bear the look he’d give her when she had to walk away. Every time. Always.

CHAPTER FOUR

      Tuesday

      WEAK AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT filtered through the blinds, reminding Dan Brigman another hour had passed without sleep, and the day was only getting worse. He’d barely had time to hug his daughter before she was storming up the steps toward the third floor of the county offices. The tapping rain off and on all afternoon had already given him a headache, and having Lauren show up to interfere with his job wasn’t helping.

      He’d left the sexy singer yesterday after lunch, looking forward to seeing her again before midnight, but a call came in an hour after he got back to the office that ended that possibility. Since four o’clock yesterday, he’d had to arrest a kid he cared about for assault, then field a dozen calls from people telling him how to do his job. Midnight passed with him sitting up in the third-floor lockup with a teenager who refused to talk about what he’d done. Now, after he’d had no sleep for nearly thirty hours, his daughter arrived, demanding to know if he’d lost his mind.

      At this point, Dan wasn’t sure his ears still worked. The whole town could take turns telling him how to be sheriff, and he still wouldn’t let Thatcher Jones out until the judge set bail. Once he knew how much it would take, Dan had already decided he’d pay it himself.

      His daughter was running through facts he already knew about the crime, so Dan simply followed one step behind as she headed upstairs.

      “Now calm down, Lauren,” he finally commented when she breathed. “We’re doing all we can. The judge says he can bail out if he’ll give a statement, but Thatcher isn’t cooperating.”

      “Did you offer him a lawyer?”

      Dan huffed. “I did. He said he didn’t need a lawyer to tell me that he’s not talking. He can do that himself.”

      She wasn’t listening, and he didn’t blame her. If they were doing all they could do, Thatcher Jones wouldn’t still be locked up in the first place. His daughter always thought the world had to be balanced and fair, but it just wasn’t.

      If it had any fairness at all, he’d be sleeping off a wild memory and not putting in a forty-hour workday.

      He almost swore. If the world were fair, he would have picked up that singer, Brandi Malone, last night like he’d planned, and not be stuck babysitting Thatcher. The kid was so wild he probably would have gnawed through the steel bars if he’d been left alone.

      Dan unlocked the third-floor door, deciding that Lauren’s anger was all his fault. He’d raised her. “We’re working on it. We’ll figure this out,” he said as she stormed past him.

      Before he opened the second door to the county lockup, he waited for his daughter to calm. The sound of Tim O’Grady tromping up the stairs echoed through the building. Tim was like the Ransom Canyon County Offices’ resident ghost. He came, night or day, if he thought something was happening. He claimed it helped him with his writing, gave him ideas, but since his last two books were postapocalyptic thrillers for hormone-crazed teens, Dan didn’t see that his research at the sheriff’s office was doing much good. The young writer was interesting, though, and he’d been Lauren’s friend since they could both walk, so Dan tolerated O’Grady even if it did irritate him that Lauren called him Hemingway.

      Of course, Dan wasn’t the least bit surprised that Tim was with her today. He’d probably called her to notify her about Thatcher.

      Finally, Lauren turned and faced him. “Why is he in jail, Sheriff? Give me the facts.”

      Lauren only called him that when she was too angry to remember he was her father.

      “He won’t talk. No one believes he stole food from Luther’s old truck stop, and nobody believes his story about not remembering how he got the backpack full of can goods obviously from the store.”

      Thatcher must have heard them because he yelled from twenty feet away, “I ain’t telling who I got the stolen groceries from, and that’s final. I took them back, isn’t that good enough? I’ll rot in this place before I talk. And I didn’t attack Luther. He insulted me and my whole family. I’m not arguing that my no-name dad and run-off mother were trash, but that don’t give him the right to remind me.”

      Lauren stormed into the next room, which had one cell on either side of a wide-open space in-between. “Stop talking like an idiot, Thatcher. We’re trying