Page 1 of Justice for Radar

Prologue

Justice…

“K, I’m going to take this stuff and grab the truck and I’ll be around to pick you up.” Billy leaned down to kiss me, and I smiled, kissing him back.

“Sounds good,” I murmured, and he gave me a wink before heading up the sidewalk.

This whole trip had been one big fantasy, I swear to God!

It felt like I had been single for like forever, even though it hadn’t been long at all… such was my last relationship. I had been lonely and had dared to try a dating app on my phone and I have to say, it was the best decision I had ever made.

I had met Billy on the app several weeks back while he was on a job in Houston, Texas. We’d talked for weeks and weeks before he had come to my town. We’d hit it off so well, that I had done something Ineverdo, which was having sex on the first date. Let me tell you, it had been incredible!

About two weeks later, he had asked me to fly down to Florida to join him, because let’s face it, I can work from anywhere and worked from home, anyway. If I had the money I would have said yes in a heartbeat and then he’d said,“Who said anything about you paying for it? No, I want you to join me. I’ll pay for everything… just say ‘yes.’”

I’d taken the leap and had said “yes.” I mean, I had never been to Florida, and it sounded like an adventure. He’d flown me on a one-way ticket and now we were supposed to drive back. I was so excited to be here with him and to see different parts of the country. It was like a dream come true.

I waited for him to pull around in his truck. A few minutes stretched into ten, then into close to twenty… I tried calling him but there was no answer…

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.

What was going on?

What had I done?

1

Radar…

“Papá.”

I turned around on my barstool at the lunch counter, away from my laptop, at my youngest daughter’s call.

“What’s up, baby?” I asked her.

Lucia had turned eighteen, had graduated from high school, and was just slumming it around Ft. Royal for the summer before she started classes at one of the local community colleges. She was a smart girl, taking the next year to get some prerequisite basics done before deciding on what she wanted to do for the rest of her life… which that wasn’t always how things went. Still, she was a planner, my youngest, and she got that from her older sister, who had been a planner too. I think they ultimately got it from me once I’d gotten my act together. They certainly didn’t get it from their mother; either their birth mom or the woman I’d been with who had been around to raise them.

While I didn’t miss their junkie birth mom, the loss of their stepmother still hurt. Both me and them.

Lucia came up in her cute little apron and jerked her head back behind her. I followed the nod of her glossy black hair, and my eyes went right to the subject.

Another thing my kid got, that I was sure came from her stepmamma and how she’d been raised by her while I worked too many goddamned hours, was a heart of fucking gold.

My eyes fell at one of the two-seater tables in the front window, to the rolling carry-on suitcase tucked under it, and the backpack taking up one seat. They finally drifted up the toned and pretty nicely tanned leg of the woman sitting opposite the backpack, and the muddy tracks of makeup on her face that she wiped at with a napkin as she silently cried. Her hands were shaking.

“What’s the story there?” I asked, as Lucia slipped around the lunch counter to set her pitcher of water down.

“She’s been here a week, week and a half,” Lucia said. “Her name is Justice, but everybody calls her Jussy. She’s a real sweet lady.”

“So, what’s with the waterworks?” I asked, frowning slightly.

“That’s a long story, but to sum up, she met a guy on one of those dating apps, a contractor type. They hit it off, and he flew her down here. They were supposed to leave today and he’s left her.”

I blinked at my daughter.

“I’m sorry, you wanna repeat that?” I asked, shocked, in disbelief, like I was really fuckin’ sure I hadn’t just heard her right.

“You heard me,” she said, and she looked across the dining room with a concerned frown furrowing her brow.

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