He reached up, tugged my beard with two fingers. “That’s a terrible plan.”
“Best I got,” I said, and meant it.
He looked at me, then, really looked, and I saw the man I’d always wanted him to be: unafraid, a little broken, but finally fucking honest.
I pressed my forehead to his, shutting out everything else. “The McKenzies protect their own,” I said.
He laughed again, and the sound was better than church bells. “Always?” he asked.
I held him tighter, making sure the whole world could see. “Always.”
And that was the only promise I ever needed to keep.
Chapter Twenty
~ Floyd ~
In the years I’d worked in law enforcement, I’d learned to read faces—danger, deceit, desperation, all the little signals that people sent out like pheromones when they thought they were about to lose something. But the look Levi gave me as he shuffled into my office was none of those things. It was the raw, undiluted terror of a kid who’d already lost everything and was now waiting to see what else could be taken away.
He plopped down in the chair across from my desk, arms folded tight against his ribs. The way he hunched over made him look even skinnier than his file photo. His eyes were fixed on the battered nameplate on my desk, and every so often he’d twitch like a rabbit that thought it might be able to outrun the hounds if it just kept still long enough.
Ransom stood behind my desk, hands jammed in his pockets, body a solid, familiar presence against the institutional blue of the wall. He didn’t say anything, but the tilt of his head told me he was watching Levi as closely as I was.
The silence spun out. I let it. There’s a kind of power in not being the first one to talk.
Levi broke. “Do you have those… what do you call them… tip lines here?” His voice was higher than I expected. Kid couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and forty, but it sounded like he’d already smoked a pack before breakfast.
“Like Crime stoppers?” I said. “We don’t, not exactly, but we get anonymous calls sometimes. People use blocked numbers, or write letters. Why?”
He shrugged, the motion so big it nearly swallowed his neck. “Just wondering.”
I waited.
He kept going. “Say someone wanted to report something, but didn’t want to get in trouble, or have it come back on them. Could they do that?”
I looked at him over the top of my reading glasses. “Depends what they’re reporting.”
He flinched, eyes darting to the floor. “I don’t have anything to report. I was just… I dunno… asking for a friend.”
Ransom snorted, the sound low and disbelieving. I shot him a glare; he held up a hand in mock surrender.
“Your friend have a name?” I asked, but kept my tone light. I’d seen enough nervous kids to know when to ease off the gas.
Levi shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. “Doesn’t matter. Forget I asked.”
I let that hang for a beat. Then: “How about this, Levi. Why don’t you tell me what happened, and I’ll decide if it’s something you need to be worried about.”
He didn’t answer. His hands worked at the frayed knees of his jeans, twisting the fabric until the threads started to snap.
I said, “Your mom—Vivian—she said you’ve been in trouble at school. You know she’s worried about you, right?”
That got his attention. He looked up, defiance in his eyes, but there was a crack in the veneer. “She doesn’t care what I do. She just wants to have something to bitch about.”
I could’ve argued, but I didn’t. He wasn’t wrong.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What if… just say… someone saw something. Like, a break-in or whatever. Or maybe an assault. Would you have to tell everyone who said it? Would there be a record?”
I felt Ransom’s eyes on me, sharp as a knife. I said, “If you’re a witness, I have to write it up. But it’s not like we broadcast your name on the radio. Why, you see something?”
