SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,34
“That’s my skim board, my new volleyball, and my favorite sweatshirt.” He yanked it off the sand. “They were in my car. Arrest these punks.”
Mad turned to the teenagers, only to catch sight of a female backside as the person belonging to it began to limp away. “Harp,” he called. He’d come after her to figure out what was going on in her head. They’d been kissing, touching, both enjoying themselves, then she’d wigged out on him. Her choice to stop at any time, of course, but she’d looked…afraid? Angry? That’s what he had to find out.
She’d taken off like a bear was on her heels and he’d been unable to leave things so…uncommunicated again.
“Harp!” he called once more. Starting her way, he was stopped by a hand on his arm.
“Look, dude.” Temper spiking, he swung around—and instead of one of the teenagers, faced Geoff, wearing a fierce expression.
“You gotta arrest them, Mad,” the other man declared, half a six-pack dangling from his fingers. “This is my damned beer too, and no way they’re twenty-one.”
“Look, Geoff—”
“They think they’re going to get away with it.” He glared at the pair. “But this is my stuff. They broke one of the locks on my car and took my stuff. You can’t ignore that.”
Shit.
“Aren’t you Mr. Law and Order around here?” Geoff continued, clearly on a roll. “Detective Do-Right? My taxes pay for you to seek truth and justice. I demand my money’s worth.”
Christ, this was why Geoff was not part of their regular poker crew.
“Look, I have something else…” Glancing back, he saw that Harper had taken the opportunity to get farther away from him. She was already splashing through the tide pools on her way back to their party cove.
“Mad—”
“Oh, all right,” he said with ill grace, then pointed at the miscreants. “You two are coming with me.”
The pair and the posse made it back to the beach where his other friends were gathered around the fire pits as it turned full dark. He called a patrol officer to meet him in the parking area, all the while running his gaze over the crowd, trying to pick out Harper.
To put her on notice they were due for a talk.
No luck.
Setting his jaw, he ordered Geoff to play deputy and herded the annoying kids along the outbound trail until it opened onto the tarmac, dimly lit by tall lights. Sure enough, there was his friend’s car, one door half-open. The other vehicles looked unharmed.
And then there was Harper, with a long-tailed shirt open over her swimsuit, leaning against her grandfather’s old truck, one foot cradled in her hand. Not unharmed.
His stomach lurched. With a short command to Geoff, he ran toward her, and crouched down to get a better look at the injury. A cut, one-and-a-half inches long. Still oozing blood. “What do you need?”
“Uh—”
“Is your tetanus inoculation up to date?”
“Inoculation?”
“It’s not an option,” he said, shooting her a look. “Your old doctor, Doctor Shaeffer retired, but Dr. Ames bought her practice. We could—”
“I’m not going to the doctor!”
“The emergency room then.” He took her foot in his own hand and bent over the wound. He had first aid training and he didn’t like the way the blood was so…so…red. “We’ll load you up right now and—”
“Mad, I’ve been to twenty countries alone. I’ve got the stomach flu in at least three of them, strep throat in two, sprained my wrist in Spain, got pneumonia…well, that’s a whole other story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Sure you are,” she said, glancing over as a Sawyer Beach patrol car pulled into the lot. “Go play cops and robbers.”
Frowning, he stood up. “But you need medical assistance.”
“That I’m perfectly capable of getting myself if deemed necessary.”
From across the lot, Geoff yelled his name and gestured him over. Torn, Mad held up a finger, then looked back at Harper. “Stay here for just a minute. Then we’ll go together.”
“I’m fine.”
“Harp—”
“I’m fine.”
Geoff called his name again as the officer climbed from his car. “Crap. Just wait thirty seconds.”
“Don’t need to,” she answered, turning to open the truck’s door.
“Harp,” he ground out. “Why do you have to be so damn independent?”
From her one good foot, she hopped onto the seat. “Because I’ve only had myself to rely on.”
“But—”
Geoff hailed him again and he shot the man a dark look. Harper started the engine. Accepting defeat, Mad stalked over to the waiting men.
Geoff’s angry expression had eased as he finally seemed interested in something besides crime and punishment. He peered around