Page 69 of Shelter for Morgan

When she’d offered to take him his schoolwork, she found out that his mother didn’t want any contact at all until they’d made a decision of whether or not they’d send him back to school at all.

So she’d spent her lunch looking through the school accident reports wondering how he’d gotten hurt.

No, he hadn’t said exactly how he’d been hurt, but she had a feeling that it was on campus.

“Miss Rafferty, are you looking for extra work?”

She lifted her head and looked at Officer Munder standing in the office doorway.

“No,” she dropped her gaze back down to the open binder on the table, “I’m just trying to get to the bottom of something.”

“Is there something I can help you with?” She heard his footsteps across the floor. It was hard to miss because he polished his boots so much they squeaked a little as he moved.

She turned the next page and looked for Benji’s name on the reports.

Nothing.

“If it’s a question about an accident or an injury on campus, I can assure you that I know about it.”

She wanted to ask him but there was something that bothered her about the interaction she’d seen between the officer and Benji that day outside her classroom.

She didn’t quite like the feel of it.

“No, no thanks. I just wanted to look up a few things.”

“Like…”

She knew she had to give him an answer.

A good one.

“We did a civics lesson in my class and the students were talking about rules at the school. Like running in the halls.”

He leaned heavily against the table. “So you’re looking to see who got hurt from running in the halls?”

Yeah, he didn’t sound like he believed her.

“Education, Officer Munder, doesn’t always make sense, it just is.”

“Right.”

He tapped his fingertips against the table and when she glanced toward his hand, she saw his holstered gun.

“I want you to feel like you can come to me if you need anything.”

She looked up at him and couldn’t muster up a smile.

“Thank you. I… I will.”

As he walked out of the room she couldn’t help but feel… uneasy.

She’d never lied to a police officer before, but she just couldn’t see herself going to officer Munder with anything. Every time she saw him, she wanted to walk or run in the opposite direction, but on the campus where she worked, there was just so much open ground that she didn’t think she could hide from him, so she was forced to hold her feelings back and get back to work.

There had to be something in the records that would explain what had happened to Benji.

If he wasn’t going to be able to tell her, then she’d have to find out a way to discover it on her own.

She knew she might be overstepping the parameters of her job, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Benji needed her to keep digging.

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