the strength with which he safeguarded her. Glancing quickly at his expression, which was set and cold, she realized that he, too, expected trouble from Ted, and from the way he looked he was ready to handle it so she wouldn’t have to.
If Ted had any sense, he’d take one look at Ben and keep his mouth shut.
Leigh opened the door and led them inside. The situation Sela had been imagining wasn’t anything like what they found. Instead of an angry Ted, an exasperated and annoyed Mike, what she saw when they walked into the kitchen was the two men sitting at the table over cups of what looked to be weak coffee. Like Leigh, they were surprised to see Ben with her, but that didn’t last long. They had other things on their minds.
“Ted has some important information,” Mike said, indicating they take the empty chairs. The table sat six, so there was room for Leigh, too. She took the seat next to Ted, while Sela and Ben sat on the other side of the table facing them.
“What is it?” she asked Ted, her concern evident. Whatever had happened, this wasn’t about yesterday. As much as he disliked them, it had to be serious for him to come to them like this.
Ted didn’t look at her. He shook his head a little, then looked at Mike. “You tell them.”
“All right. Seems as if Lawrence Dietrich went to Ted with a cockamamie story about setting up an alternate community patrol because they didn’t like the way things are being done. I guess that’s to be expected, nothing is ever going to make everybody happy. But they met yesterday, and Ted noticed some things.”
Mike ran through it all, the guy who seemed to be wounded and was limping, what might have been a bullet hole in a bumper, the fact that none of them seemed to be upstanding citizens, and—most important—what Dietrich seemed to want most of all was for Ted to spy on the community patrol and keep him informed of what was going on.
Ben’s expression went even colder at Ted’s assessment that one of the men had been wounded. “Do you have names?” he asked Ted in a soft tone that raised the hairs on the back of Sela’s neck.
Ted still didn’t look at them, but he efficiently recited six names. She had never seen him less bellicose. If anything, he seemed embarrassed, though she couldn’t think why. Because he’d been interested in an alternate community patrol? She’d have been surprised if he hadn’t been.
Six names. That couldn’t be a coincidence, that six men had tried to steal the gas and shot at her and Olivia, and now six wanted Ted to spy for them.
“Harley and Trey checked out Lawrence’s neighborhood yesterday afternoon and didn’t find any damaged vehicles,” Ben said, “and Darren and Cam checked out a nearby neighborhood where Patrick lives. They were both at the top of the list of likely suspects, but I expect even tweakers are smart enough to hide any vehicles with bullet holes in them. If you hadn’t been alert, we still wouldn’t know. What was your assessment, Ted?”
He’d read Ted the same way she had, Sela realized, but he’d led men before and knew the approach to take to help Ted through any awkwardness he felt. They needed to work together now.
Until yesterday, Ben hadn’t known any of the community patrol volunteers, but he’d quickly judged those he deemed most competent, as well as those who could be labeled as little more than warm bodies. This was his military experience, allowing him to size people up and make the most of what they could offer. Sure enough, Ted straightened, and for the first time looked at them.
“Wesley didn’t seem too smart,” he said. “And he was at least halfway drunk, even that early in the day. What I saw was a small bullet hole, low on the bumper. He might not have noticed, or thought it wouldn’t matter since it was just his friends at the meeting. If I hadn’t been looking for evidence by that point I likely wouldn’t have noticed, either.”
Sela silently thanked God that Ben was here, because she wouldn’t have known how to handle Ted. Just then, beneath the table, his hand settled on her thigh. The touch, the gesture, told her without words that for the first time in a very long time, she wasn’t alone. They were a couple, something bigger and greater than any