Page 69 of Finding Noah

He studied the side of my face for a moment, then two, before grumbling unintelligibly and turning away. “All right, fine. I'm just sayin'—”

“Yeah, uh … yeah, I appreciate it,” I quickly said. “I just … we're friends. That's all.”

“Okay. We can—”

His words were cut off by the dispatcher, Hannah, coming through the squad car's speaker.

Patrick answered the call.

“Hannah, Kinney here.”

“Patrick, there's a shoplifter at The Fisch Market.”

He nodded, already throwing the door open. “On it. Headin' over now.”

He hung up the call and climbed out of the squad car. Exhilaration thrummed through my limbs as I jumped from the vehicle. After we slammed the doors shut, he hit the lock, and together, we walked over to The Fisch Market—the grocery store Dad was partial owner of.

Right inside the window, I could see him holding the arm of a guy, someone I vaguely recognized. Maybe I'd seen him around town. He was a handful of years younger than me, I guessed. Sixteen or seventeen, maybe eighteen at most. And he was angry.

Patrick pushed the door open and sauntered right over to where Dad stood behind the cash registers. From fifteen feet away, surrounding the ends of the aisles of shelves, onlookers stood, whispering and undoubtedly gossiping about the young troublemaker.

How many times had they whispered about me?

“Handle them,” Patrick muttered to me, waving a hand gently in the direction of the crowd of people.

I nodded and wandered over.

“Come on, guys,” I said. “Nothing to see here.”

“He tried to steal a six-pack of beer,” one of the ladies who worked with Mom at the library said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What's going on with kids these days?”

“Oh, please, Harriett,” Rosie—Mayor Fischer’s aide—mumbled, rolling her eyes. “Like your kids never got into stuff when they were younger.”

“Oh, excuse me,” she fired back. “Jeffrey spray-painted one lamppost, and now we have to pay for that for all our lives? What about the things your son got up to?”

Rosie dropped her jaw, appalled by the accusation. “What are you talking about? He never—”

“Oh, I guess we’re just going to conveniently forget about the toilet-paper incident. I see.”

“Ladies,” I said, holding up my hands, “please. Get back to your shopping.”

They grumbled a bit and seemed reluctant at first but eventually nodded, turning away to scurry with the rest of the shoppers while shooting lingering glances over their shoulders in the direction of Patrick, Dad, and the kid who'd apparently been trying to swipe some beer from the fridge.

Been there, done that, I thought. And I didn’t get away with it either.

But I'd known I wouldn’t. I'd been trying to get caught.

Maybe this kid had been too.

I wandered over to find Sergeant Kinney and Dad standing over him, their arms crossed. Patrick was quite a bit shorter than Dad, but both of them were taller than the boy in front of them. I knew how intimidating that was.

So, instead of standing before him, I took a spot beside him.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Just trying to decide if we should write young Mr. Morris up or not,” Patrick said.

The boy looked up at Patrick. “My dad will kill me.”