Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can - By Kat Martin Page 0,25

here.” Ty headed for his pickup, and Ben slid behind the wheel and started the engine, glad to be leaving the area.

“What’s your name?” he asked the boy as he drove up onto the freeway, heading back to Santa Monica.

“Ryan.” The kid’s battered features turned hard. “I won’t let you hurt me. I’ll run away as soon as I get the chance.”

“No one’s going to hurt you, son. I’m going to get you home.”

“I don’t have a home.”

Ben’s gaze swung back to the boy. “No mother or father? No relatives?”

The kid didn’t answer. Which meant there was someone. Just not someone he wanted to go back to.

“I’ve got a friend,” Ben said. “She can help you find a place, people you can trust to take care of you.”

The kid’s chin cocked up. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m telling you the truth.” Ben pulled out his P.I. badge and tossed it into the boy’s lap. “I’m looking for my own son. His name is Sam. You haven’t seen him, have you? Black hair like yours? Eyes more like mine.” He fixed one of his glacial stares on the boy. Ryan’s eyes were a much darker blue than his own.

The boy shook his head. “There were other kids around, but none with eyes like yours.”

“Where you from?”

The kid didn’t answer.

“That bad, huh?”

“If they make me go back, I’ll just run away again.”

Ben wasn’t sure what the authorities would do, but if the boy’s home life was really that bad, he figured they would put him in foster care.

“When you talk to them, tell them the truth. Tell them what it was like there. Don’t spare the details. I don’t think they’ll make you go back if it’s that bad. I think they’ll find you a better place to live.”

The kid looked up at him with so much hope in his eyes Ben’s chest clamped down. “You really think they’ll help me?”

“Yeah, I do.” Ben’s gaze strayed from the road back to the boy. He wondered what Claire would say when she saw he’d brought the wrong kid home.

* * *

“Get in the goddamn truck!”

Sam tried not to cringe at the vicious look on Troy’s face. “There’s a law against drunk driving,” he said.

“I don’t give a shit.” Troy reached over and cuffed his head. “Do as I say. Get in the truck before I kick your skinny little ass.”

Troy’s black Lab moved forward, his tail between his legs. Pepper whined and pressed against Sam’s leg. Sam moved far enough away that Troy couldn’t reach them. “Come on, Pep, we gotta get going.”

Pepper was Troy’s dog but sometimes Troy was mean to him, just like he was to Sam. He and Pep were friends. The black Lab stuck by him no matter what. Troy wasn’t usually too bad a guy, except when he got drunk. When he drank, he got crazy mean. Sam was afraid of him then, and Pepper was, too. Lately he had been that way a lot.

Sam climbed into the old white beat-up Chevy, waited for the dog to jump in, then slammed the door. He buckled his seat belt like his mom had taught him, even though Troy never used his.

The engine roared to life and the truck pulled out of the gravel lot in front of The Roadhouse, spitting up dirt as the car fishtailed back onto the highway. Troy had been in there drinking beer for at least two hours while Sam and Pepper waited outside.

Before that, they’d been staying with a lady Troy knew. She was nice. She baked them a cake and let Pepper sleep with him on the bed in her son’s old room. Then she got mad at Troy for getting drunk and told him they had to leave.

Sam almost wished he’d taken Pep and run off while Troy was in The Roadhouse, maybe hitched a ride with someone. But his mom was dead, and he didn’t have anywhere to go.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut as he thought of his mother lying there sick in her hospital bed. He remembered the day she died, how Claire had taken him home with her, how she had let him live with her for a while.

She’d said she would help him. She and his mom were friends and he had liked her a lot. He wanted to live with her more than anything, but she didn’t want him.

Not really. She had let them put him in some crummy house where the people believed their own