Song of the Surf (Pacific Shores Book 3) (15 page)

The woman nodded slowly and picked up the bag.

“Thanks.” Justus dropped one hand against the boy’s shoulder. “Now, let’s have a little talk, shall we, before I call the police.”

The boy swallowed visibly.

“What’s your name, kid?”

The boy’s eyes narrowed and his jaw jutted off to one side. He refused to meet Justus’s gaze and tried to affect an indifferent stance by folding his arms, but was brought up short with the reminder that one of his wrists was cuffed to Justus.

“Okay, so you don’t want to tell me your name. Fine. I’ll just call you Kid. How about you tell me why you snatched my friend’s purse,
Kid
?” He deliberately put a little emphasis on the last word.

“I don’t got to say nothin’ to you.”

“Fair enough.” Justus scrubbed the back of his neck, trying to figure out how he was going to stall long enough to have Kylen be the one who showed up. Right now Kylen would still be at the wedding. To give himself time to think, he propelled the little thief across the waiting room to the vending machine. “You hungry?” He put in a dollar and punched in the number for a Snickers bar.

The boy eyed him like he might be half crazy. “First you cuff me and now you offer me candy?”

Justus shrugged and took a big bite of his candy bar. “Figure we might as well make our time together as pleasant as possible.”

“Fine. I’ll take the Junior Mints.” He shuffled his feet and wore an expression that said he half expected Justus to laugh and tell him it had been a joke.

What kind of a home had this kid been raised in? Justus nodded and inserted another dollar. “Good choice.”

When the boy had his Junior Mints, Justus led him back across the room to two chairs that were empty near one corner. He was itching to check on Dakota, but something told him that maybe he’d been brought to this time and place for a reason other than just helping her.

The kid plopped into one of the chairs with a sullen curse. “Call the cops already.” His box of candy remained untouched.

Justus took a leisurely bite of his chocolate and sank casually into the chair next to Mr. Personality. “All in good time.”

“Creep! You can’t keep me chained to your wrist forever, you know. My parents are going to be wondering where I am!”

Kid, they should have been wondering about your whereabouts long before now
. “Your parents…who are they?”

The boy huffed, and for a minute Justus thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he blurted, “People you should be afraid of, that’s who. My dad is going to go off on you when he learns about this, man.” Another string of curses followed as the boy tried to emphasize how scared Justus should be of his father.

“I think I liked you better when you were scared spitless because I’d almost just run over you.”

Sadly, the kid might be right about his parents’ reaction, but what the little punk didn’t know was that Justus had faced down, and lived to tell about, parents who were much scarier than his father likely was. In fact, in the long run, most parents ended up thanking him for the changes he helped foster in their children.

The nurse approached from across the way. “I thought you should know that Doctor Dallas happened to be on campus and is in with Dakota now. And,” her lips pressed into a thin line as though she couldn’t fathom a reason for her next words, “Dakota is asking for you.”

Justus saw another opportunity to stall in calling the cops. “Good. The kid here has something to say to Dakota, anyhow.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “No I don’t.”

Justus sighed, took hold of the half-size villain’s arm, and stood. Someone had better get a hold of this kid real soon or his attitude was going to lead him down all kinds of troubling paths.

“Come on, Kid, don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

With a begrudging grunt, young Mister Purloin dragged his feet beside Justus as they followed the nurse to Dakota’s room.

She lay under the covers, her hospital bed tipped up slightly and her face looking pale against the pillows. Her fine blonde hair splayed all around her. But her eyes opened when she heard them enter and she seemed a little more lucid than she’d been a few minutes earlier. A bag of what he presumed was saline and hopefully fever reducer dripped down a tube into her arm.

Her gaze flickered from him to the boy. “I thought someone took my purse. Was I dreaming?”

At the raspy quality of her voice, concern made his insides go soft. “I’m afraid not. But I got it back.”

She took in the boy by his side and her brow furrowed. “Isn’t he—?”

“Yep. Same kid. In fact, he has something he’d like to say to you.” He pegged the kid with his sternest look and raised his brows.

The kid only shuffled his feet and glowered at the floor. “Told you I got nothin’ to say.”

In that moment Justus wished he had the right to give the kid’s skull a good rapping. Especially since a troubled look tightened Dakota’s face.

Instead of manhandling the kid, he leaned over Dakota and brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. He spoke to get her mind off the boy’s unrepentant attitude. “How are you feeling?”

Her nose wrinkled. “Better now that the pain meds are kicking in.”

“Good. I was really worried about you. Just rest. I’ll be right here if you need anything.”

She sighed and nestled a little deeper into her pillow. Her eyes dropped closed and she murmured. “I kept trying to figure out who he looks like. It’s Riley.”

Next to him, the boy jolted as if he’d been stuck with a pin. Justus rubbed his jaw and studied the scrawny red head. That was what he’d been seeing. Yes. The kid really did resemble Riley.

Justus pulled him over to one corner of Dakota’s room and kept his voice low. “Riley Ross…Do you know her?”

The kid couldn’t have looked more dumbstruck if Justus had announced that he was an alien from outer space. But he recovered even if he did stumble over his words. “I-I don’t h-have any idea wh-who you are talking about.”

Justus eased out a breath. Riley’s brother? Most likely. He was even more glad now that he’d waited till he could talk to Kylen and not just dump the kid into the system. He glanced at his watch. It had been a little over an hour since he and Dakota had left the wedding. The reception was likely winding down. Maybe Kylen could find time to talk to him for a few minutes.

He slipped his phone from his pocket and pressed on Kylen’s number.

While he listened to it ring, he removed the cuff from his own wrist and ratcheted it around the arm of a chair, motioning for the kid to sit. With a grumble and a roll of his eyes, he plopped into the seat and then snapped his head back against the wall.

Satisfied that his charge wasn’t going anywhere for the time being, Justus stepped into the hallway.

“Hello?” Kylen finally answered.

Justus filled him in quietly. “Better bring Riley too. I think she might know him.”

The sound of a vacuum whirred in the background. “Okay. We’re almost done here and will be there as soon as we can. Marie and Reece just left to catch their flight, and Taysia’s cleaning up.”

Slipping his phone back into his pocket, Justus returned to the room. Dakota was sound asleep and breathing deeply. The kid had been crying but swiped madly at his cheeks. Justus gave him his dignity and strode to Dakota’s side as though to check on her.

Lord, help me to reach this kid.

The prayer stopped him. How many times had he prayed that prayer for one boy or another over the years? Too many to count. And how many had he reached? Far fewer than he would have liked. But God hadn’t called him to share the gospel so long as it “worked.” The call was simply to share.

He looked at the woman lying in the bed and swallowed. It was probably a good thing she’d turned him down for that date. Because he suddenly knew what his answer was. He couldn’t abandon his ministry to the boys God kept entrusting to his care. He’d be going back to work at Deschutes Rejuvenation just as soon as his vacation time was up at the end of the week. And – the image of Helene’s wide staring eyes flashed into his mind and he shuddered – he couldn’t take a woman into that ministry with him.

Relief mingled with sadness as he crossed the room and sank into the chair next to the angry adolescent. Maybe his own story would get through to him. He glanced once more at Dakota. She was still asleep so he didn’t need to fear her overhearing. He wanted her to hear this only when she was ready. He had so much remorse for all the pain he’d caused others in the past. He didn’t want to cause more with the telling of it.

He leveled his gaze on the boy. “When I was just a few years older than you I served four years of jail time.”

The boy’s eyebrows went up and he looked over, curiosity apparently overriding his desire to look like he didn’t care.

“Want me to tell you why? Forget that.” Justus shook his head. “Let me tell you why.” He took the still unopened box of Junior Mints from the kid, opened the top, and handed it back. “I grew up in a small town in Oregon a lot like Marinville. When I was fifteen my father, who was a sawyer, worked for a logging outfit. A tree he was falling snapped back on him. Widow Makers they call them.” Justus tipped his head against the wall. “Good name for them, I guess, because that’s exactly what that tree made of my mother. She went to work full time and then some. And I went to work full time being angry at God.”

The boy snorted. “God don’t exist, Mister.”

Justus chose to ignore that and went on. “There was a group of guys in town that weren’t worth much. They were reprobates who did nothing but cause trouble and disrespected everyone, but I decided I wanted to be one of them. Mother was busy working two jobs and didn’t notice that I was gone from home most of the time. We did stupid stuff. Tipped over porta johns during the town fair, spray painted our sign all over town, and dared each other to jack loot from the local supermarket.”

The kid wiggled in his chair but otherwise held his silence.

“Pretty soon though, those things didn’t hold the excitement they once had. We started doing drugs and stealing booze.”

The kid rolled his eyes. “Jump to the part where you’re in jail. I like that part.”

Justus grinned. He liked this kid’s spunk. Channeled in the right direction, God could do a lot with it. But as his thoughts turned back to his story, all humor faded.

He rubbed his palms against his knees. “On the corner of First and Pine, old Mr. McKettrick ran McKettrick’s Convenience Store. Mick’s we called it. First day back after spring break, the boys and I decided to skip school and hit up Mick’s for some fun. He had a whole aisle of booze and we figured he’d be easier to get past than the security cameras down at Safeway.”

Justus closed his eyes, wishing he could will away the images that always came with the telling of this story. How many boys had he told it to over the years? But the images always remained, and in some ways that was a good thing. Because in the end the incident had been his salvation.

“Mr. McKettrick wasn’t the naïve old man we all thought he’d be, however. He’d served his country sneaking through the jungles of Vietnam and then had been on the police force in town for years. He knew a thing or two about delinquents.” Justus swiped a hand over his face. “It was my job to chat up Mick while the other guys each made off with a bottle of booze. But before any of my buddies could even make it halfway to the door, old Mick pulled out a sawed-off shotgun he kept under the counter. He just laid it on the laminate next to the register sort of casual like and cleared his throat. The spread on that piece would have covered half the store and we all knew it. But one of the guys – Marshall was his name – had already had a few drinks that morning. Where the rest of us would have just hightailed it out of there, Marshal decided the risk was worth it. He told Mr. McKettrick that he was going to walk out the door with his bottle of Nate Daniels and the old man could come and stop him if he thought he could. Mick grabbed up his sawed-off and before any of us could even think to blink he was around that counter and had it pressed right into Marshall’s chest.”

Beside Justus, the kid’s eyes were as wide as Justus felt sure his had been that day.

“I felt frozen to the spot, wondering what Marshall would do. Marshall wasn’t backing down and old Mr. McKettrick had done his fair share of killing and it seemed he didn’t want to add one more to his list. After a bit of yelling they finally stood just staring at each other. I was so fixated on hoping Marshall wasn’t going to do something really stupid and get himself killed that I didn’t even see David. He and Tom were the other guys who had snagged bottles of booze. David ran up behind Mick and broke his bottle over the old man’s head.” Justus ground his teeth, but then forced himself to finish the tale. “Mick’s gun went off out of reflex and Marshall never had a chance as close as the weapon was to his chest. So there’s Mick lying on the ground groaning and holding his head, and Marshall is dead and we all know it. And all of us are just staring from them to each other.” The telling of this tale never grew any easier. Justus pulled in a long breath and then let it out slowly.

Silence lingered until the kid prompted, “How’d you get arrested?”

Justus rubbed his palms together. “We heard the sirens then. Mick had pressed a silent alarm at some point, he told me later. Tom and David, they took off like lightning and I intended to be right on their heels. But then as I started to jump over Mr. McKettrick I noticed that not all the blood on the floor was coming from Marshall. Some of it was from a bad laceration on the back of Mick’s bald head. I knew if I walked out that door the cops wouldn’t get there in time to save him.” Justus shrugged. “I took off my shirt and did my best to stop the bleeding and that’s where the cops found me. Turned out Mick had surveillance cameras none of us knew about and the whole incident was caught on tape.”

“Did the other two get caught?”

Justus nodded. “All of us were convicted. David’s still in. Tom got out just a year or two after I did. But you know what the kicker is? Mr. McKettrick came to visit me every month while I was in jail. That man had more forgiveness in him than anyone I’d ever known. He talked to me about how bitter he’d been when he got home from ’Nam. And then he started telling me about Jesus and how his life had changed after he started serving God.”