His father’s voice resounded through his head. It was always there somewhere deep inside him. It whispered to him that he wasn’t good enough. It was screaming now.
He’d lost Mouse. And he couldn’t blame anyone but himself.
He turned to go, but something made him look back at the house one last time. Maybe there was something he could do for her. Not because it would get her back, but because he did owe her. He owed her for all those years when he kept her at arm’s length even as she opened her soul to him.
The door banged open, and he heard something horrible.
There was no way to mistake the sound.
Gunshot.
Bo took those rickety steps two at time. He hit that crappy door at a full run, throwing his body into the house. He had to sidestep the now ruined box of the coffeemaker Beth had bought. He kicked it to the side.
“Mouse!” He screamed her name, his heart pounding in his chest. Terror absolutely threatened to overwhelm him as he looked at the skinny man in the center of the room with the revolver pointed at the stairs. Bo could smell the acrid scent of discharge and hear the scrambled hurry as Mouse tried running up the stairs. He got a flash of a slender man in a T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap as he raised the gun again toward the fleeing woman. He wouldn’t miss this time. Bo could see it. In that one point two seconds he had to make his decision, he could see that the bullet would tear through his Mouse and she would fall, and Bo realized that it didn’t matter if she slept every night for the rest of her life in Trev McNamara’s arms. He loved her. She was half of his heart, and she could stop him from acting on it—but not from saving her.
He did the only thing he could. He rushed at the asshole with the gun before he could fire again.
There was a shout and a terrible stinging sensation in his right bicep, but Bo just remembered everything he knew about taking down a man.
Play it smart, Bo. Rush from your legs up. Send the power from the bottoms of your feet through your shoulder. Take him out at the waist. Breathe and hit him hard.
Bo hunched down and planted his shoulder squarely in the other man’s abdomen. There was a whooshing sound as the man hit the floor, the air obviously leaving his body. Bo got to his feet, springing up and kicking the gun out of the asshole’s hand.
“Mouse, call the sheriff.” Bo stared down at the man. Damn, he was really more of a boy. Austin? Allen? He recognized the young man on the floor. He was from another town, but he often came into Deer Run with his mom and sister. Fuck. That kid couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“You’re bleeding. Oh, my god, you got hit, Bo.” Mouse tore down the stairs. Her eyes were wide with horror as she pushed up the sleeve of his shirt.
He was bleeding, but it wasn’t serious. He could see that it wasn’t anything beyond a scratch. He kept a boot on his assailant’s chest. “I’m fine, honey. Go on and call Lou. Tell him he has a guest coming in.” Bo felt his eyes narrow. “I hope you like checkers.”
He heard Mouse on her little cell phone and finally was able to breathe again. She was fine. The danger had passed. And now he could see that shooting wasn’t the only thing the jerk had done. It looked like he was into graffiti, too.
Get Out
It was spray-painted on the wall of the parlor in a horrible lime green. It was the same color the hardware store had on sale the week before. He was a cheapskate criminal to boot.
“Are you the idiot who spray-painted Trev McNamara’s truck at the sheriff’s office this morning?” Bo asked.
What did this kid, who hadn’t even been big enough to enjoy football when Trev was a high school god, have against the man? And this kid wasn’t even from Deer Run.
“I ain’t talking.” The words came out in a hateful sputter. The kid tried to move, but Bo had fifty pounds on him. And now that he really looked at the young man on the floor, Bo could see just how fragile he was. The kid had moved past lanky and into gaunt. Bo searched his memory. Austin. His name was Austin, and he lived in a trailer park with his mom. He was bussed in to the county high school. He’d always been a little on the small side. He wasn’t an athlete, but now the kid looked downright sick. There were scabs on his face.
“What did Trev ever do to you?” Bo asked, his voice softer now. He wasn’t about to let the little asshole up, but he wanted to understand what had brought this kid so low.
“Trev? Who is that? Are you talking about the druggie quarterback? What does he have to do with anything?”
“If you’re not here to piss off Trev, then why the hell are you here?” A cold feeling started in Bo’s gut.
The boy shook his head. His skin was a pasty white, like it hadn’t seen the sun in a very long time. “It’s a job, asshole. I was supposed to spray-paint the truck and then break in here and fuck some stuff up. It’s just a job.”
“Who hired you?”
The boy’s skin flushed, and his eyes widened. “No one. No one at all. I was just looking for drugs.”
“That’s not what you said a minute ago.”
But his head was shaking now. “I lied. I didn’t mean it. I was just making shit up. I was looking for drugs. I heard the lady who lives here has a lot of drugs.”
Mouse? He could barely talk Mouse into taking ibuprofen when she had a headache. She’d read something about potential liver damage. No one in the state of Texas would mistake Mouse for a drug user. “Bullshit. You’re scared. Who are you scared of?”
“I ain’t talking. Not to you. Not to the cops.”
Whoever had hired the little fucker had him scared shitless. He wasn’t going to move. Bo had to hope Lou could muster up the energy to look somewhat threatening, but he doubted the sheriff would be able to get the kid to talk.
“Bo?” Mouse’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
Bo turned his head, never letting up on the pressure keeping the criminal on the floor. Mouse’s face was stark white, and it took everything he had not to pull her into his arms and promise her everything would be all right.
He couldn’t do that. She wasn’t his, not in that way. But at least he could say the words. “It’s going to be okay. Why don’t you call Trev?”
Bo could hear the sirens in the distance. Mouse ran to the door to let the police in, though he could have told her the door was kind of hanging on by a single nail at this point. No need for formalities now.
He hated it, but when the chips had been down, it hadn’t been his father’s voice that helped him. Never. But it hadn’t been Aidan’s, either. In that moment when he needed guidance, it had been Trevor McNamara’s patient voice that had come to him. Trev had spent hours teaching him the game when no one else had thought he could learn it. Trev had been the reason he’d made the varsity team his junior year. He’d never quite understood why Trev had been so kind to him, but it had stuck with him, even after all this time. Even under all the bitterness, there was still some warmth for the man.
“I ain’t talking.” The kid was crying now.
Nope. He wouldn’t talk. But that didn’t mean Bo wouldn’t figure out what the hell was going on.
“Seriously?” Trev stared at the door. It wasn’t where he’d left it. When he’d left this morning, it had been where doors customarily rested, in the doorframe. Now, long after the sun had gone down, the door was sitting on its side on the porch.
Beth smiled at him, a hammer in her hands. She’d changed into a pair of overalls and a little collared shirt underneath. She had slung a tool belt around her waist. It was pink and slightly prissy looking. It didn’t quell his desire for her. It just made him want to shove his tool where it would do the most good. “There was a little incident a couple of hours ago. I took care of it, but the door suffered. I’ve already reset the mountings. Now I just need a little muscle to get the sucker in place, and it’ll be good as new.”