“Ryan, don’t tell me you’re going to do what I think you’re gonna do.” He huffed, folding muscular arms across his chest.
“Don’t know what you mean. Are you good here? She didn’t say shit that was worth noting.”
“Aria—leave her. Trust me. Just leave her, or it will get worse,” he cautioned.
Aaron didn’t have kids, so I didn’t know why in the hell he expected me to take his advice.
He was as clueless as I was, and there was no way he could tell me what to expect from a teenage girl who could apparently do what she wanted because she was turning seventeen in a few months.
“I’m pretty certain about the getting worse part, so I’m going.”
He walked closer to me as Sean drove off with Lieutenant Rollings.
“Ryan, you should be coming with me to the station to process the witness statement. That is what you should be doing, not trying to get home in time to catch Aria in the act of whatever it is you think she’s doing.”
I’d never told him my plans. As usual with this guy, when it came to me, he’d guessed.
We’d known each other since we were in diapers. Our parents were friends, and we’d grown up like brothers. I was an only child, but he had two sisters and a brother. He was the youngest.
“Mrs. Rollings asked me out. That is all I have to report, and it’s not relevant to the incident.”
“No way.” Aaron chuckled.
“Yes.”
“What a fucked-up situation.”
“I agree. Aaron, I’m going—need to beat traffic.”
“I’m warning you, Ryan Donovan—you’re becoming that overbearing father type. I may not be a father, but I had sisters who were sixteen once, and it was not nice. They’re like wild creatures who take on their own lifestyles, parents be gone.”
That sounded like truth, but it didn’t help me at this moment. I left him, jumping back into the unmarked police vehicle I’d borrowed for my stakeout.
He said something but I didn’t hear. I took off down the road and headed home.
* * *
Ten to five.
Miraculously, I beat traffic. Granted, the way I drove helped. I knew how to push the limits from my speed racing days.
I parked a few doors down from my house, right outside the Johnsons’ place so I could get a good view.
Mrs. Parker had told me she’d seen Aria leaving the house twice this week with a spiky-haired boy wearing a leather jacket who looked like a hoodlum. Mrs. Parker was a seventy-five-year-old woman with a neat beehive updo who reminded me of Mrs. Drusilla.
Okay, that wasn’t really her name. I’d given her that name when I was ten. She reminded me of something from Dracula, and it didn’t help that her dentures either fell out or moved when she spoke.
She’d called me a spiky-haired hoodlum too, and I’d worn several leather jackets she hated. She would spy on me and rat me out to my parents. For a while I couldn’t stand people like that, but now I knew why they existed. It was an extra pair of eyes for parents—parents like me who needed at least ten eyes watching over my girl, who’d suddenly changed from the sweet angel she was into this makeup-wearing person with short skirts and mini things.
The year before, Aria had traded in going fishing with Aaron and me to hang out with her friends at the mall. Then she’d stopped going to watch any kind of game with me. We loved watching basketball and playing football on Sundays. We went camping, rock climbing, and sailed the open sea for whatever adventure we could find.
That had changed the previous year, though, just before she turned sixteen. Actually, it might have been a little before that.
Now I barely recognized her.
In horror, I watched as the door to my house opened and she skipped out wearing a skirt so short I didn’t think I could even call it a mini skirt. Her hair was down and super straight, like in one of those shampoo commercials.
As she floated down the steps leading to the garden, I saw the top she was wearing and nearly had a heart attack. It was one of those midriff things, but that wasn’t what nearly killed me.
