Page 107 of Reckless Devotion

I offer her a small smile that feels painfully hollow. “I have one thing to do first, but I’ll be back by this evening. There is an emergency hearing to decide where Sunny goes.”

“We’ll be there,” Mason and Mia both say in unison.

I nod my thanks, my throat feeling tight, and stand to walk toward the lobby. Pausing halfway, I hesitate and then turn to focus on Mia.

“There is something else I need your help with, actually.”

If there is even a glimmer of hope, even a slither…

“Anything you need.”

***

The small town of Northvale in Oregon is exactly how you might expect it to be. Quaint wooden welcome signs stand under tall pines. There’s a sharp divide between the large plantation-style pre-Civil War homes that outskirt the river, and the more humble community of single-story cedar bungalows packed tightly around the small town center.

You couldn’t get further from New York City living if you tried.

I rest the alloy baseball bat on my shoulder and boot in the door of the town watering hole. I may be running on whatlittle broken sleep I could snatch on the five-hour plane ride, but there is no mistaking the blue-eyed, grey-haired guy slouched behind the bar.

A cigarette dangles forgotten in the corner of his mouth, and judging by the way he’s standing, he had been watching the hockey game playing on a TV screen mounted in one corner. Not anymore, though. He and every other patron in the dingy, stale, beer-scented wooden bar focus solely on me.

“Jeffrey Dale?” I step inside, clocking out of the corner of my eye that the bar extends to the left where an old pool table and various seats sit.

The older man stands upright, removing his paunch weight from the bar top. “Who’s asking?”

I swing the bat and smash the framed vinyl on the wall by the door, fury bubbling to the surface like thick tar as I turn back to face the man. “Never you fucking mind who.”

“What the fuck?!” Dale yells, whipping the cigarette from his mouth and chucking it to the floor, grinding it out with his boot. “I’m a fucking sheriff’s deputy, asshole.”

Chairs scrape, the sound of people rising from their seats filling the room, and for a moment, I believe I’m about to have a mass brawl on my hands. From what I know, small-town folk can be incredibly protective of each other.

What I don’t expect is the steady stream of patrons who head for the still open door, slipping past me while cramming hats onto their heads or tugging caps down lower.

The message is clear: even the townsfolk don’t like their sheriff deputy turned bar owner, who glares at me like he’s about to bust a vein in his head. The door behind me swings shut, leaving us alone at the same time as the man reaches for something under the bar.

“Bad idea,” I warn, using my bat to crash a table of half-empty glasses to the floor.

The man freezes, sweat glistening on his forehead.

“You see those dead cameras in the corners?” I point my bat to the three small white security cameras set up in each corner to cover the whole bar. “Notice anything different about them?”

I swing the bat back onto my shoulder and prowl a few feet closer, old wooden boards shifting beneath my sneakers. His eyes reluctantly dart in the direction of one camera, and his lip curls when he sees that the small green function light is on.

“It turns out you haven’t been paying your security provider bill, Jeffrey.” I tut in reprimand and take another step. “They were all too eager to accept the back pay you owed before they cut you off—all too happy to change your relay address for the footage, too.

“Who are you?” the man asks again, the red mottle on his insect-like face becoming more pronounced.

I ignore his question. “So if you shoot me, my attorney will have a nice shiny copy of the footage to play at my murder trial.” The man still doesn’t move, and I draw closer yet, giving him a slight angle so that if he does start shooting, I’m not giving him a bullseye target of my chest. “Put it on top of the bar.Slowly.”

I watch the man calculate in his brain, shadows rolling over blue eyes as he slowly starts to oblige, placing a shotgun onto the chipped and scratched bar. I reach forward and give it a shove so that it slides all the way to the other end of the bar and clatters onto the floor.

“On the couch.” I point the bat in the direction of a sunken black leather couch near a dart board.

He grumbles something unintelligible and walks around the bar, dragging the waist of his slipping jeans up below a rounded belly. He sits on the couch and I bring a wooden chair over and place it directly in front of him, flipping it around.When I take a seat and lean one forearm along the chair back, I keep the bat wedged above my head.

“Does the name Pepper Quinn mean anything to you?”

The way he rolls his lips and hesitates says it all. This piece of shit barely remembers the young girl he turned away when she needed him most.