Page 15 of Only Her (K2 Team)
“Be careful, okay?”
“Always am.” Her voice had been so soft when she’d said that, and as he hung up, he rubbed his chest, over his heart. The damn thing had gone all fluttery on him. Other than his teammates, and his parents from afar, when was the last time someone had worried about him?
“Coming,” he yelled at another series of knocks. He stuck his room key into his wallet, and went to the door.
“There was a robbery at a convenience store three nights ago in Sac City. The description fits this kid,” the Fort Dodge police chief said, handing the couple’s photo back to Ryan after making a copy. “Got the APB about it this morning.” He flipped through some papers on his desk.
And wasn’t that just great? Cody exchanged a glance with Ryan. The game had just changed.
“Was the girl with him?” Ryan asked.
Finding what he was looking for, the chief scanned the sheet. “No, just the kid. He had a gun. Clerk said it looked like an old one.” He eyed the copy he’d made of the photo. “I’ll be sending this out to the other police departments around here, along with the boy’s name.”
Ryan stuck the photo back into his file folder. “That’s fine. Any description of their car?”
Reading the APB again, the chief shook his head. “Not a good one. Dark. Midsized. That’s it.”
Cody turned to a map on the wall. “Where’s Sac City from here?” He scanned the area around Fort Dodge. Kincaid had arranged this meeting with the chief. Otherwise, the cop wouldn’t be so willing to share information with two men who’d walked in off the street.
“On the way out to Storm Lake. Take 20 out of Fort Dodge.”
Cody found Sac City, a small dot on the map. More interesting was Storm Lake, which was larger and had a big lake. A tourist destination that would appeal to a couple of kids and one they might think they could get lost in. It probably never occurred to the brainless twits that it was December. Although there was no snow yet, it was damned cold in Iowa. Had they even thought to bring winter clothes on their little adventure?
Ryan got the address of the convenience store the kid had robbed, and they both thanked the cop.
The chief came around the corner and walked them out. “You boys are some kind of elite team from what I was told, but don’t be going and testing our tolerance, you hear? This isn’t the Wild West.”
“We’re just here to pick up the girl,” Ryan said. “What you do with the boy now that he’s gone and gotten into trouble is your business. We’ll alert the police in whatever town we find them.”
“Fair enough, but I’ll call on ahead, make sure they know you’re coming.”
He and Ryan shook hands with the chief, and then headed for the Range Rover, which Ryan had pulled rank on and was driving today.
“Damn kids,” Cody said as they left the police station, heading for Sac City.
“Yeah, now he’s screwed up his life, getting an armed robbery on his record. Stupid of her parents to forbid her to see him, too. If they’d left things alone, a month from now, the kids probably would have broken up. That age, they get easily bored.”
“True.” In high school, he’d had the hots for one girl to the next one. He’d been a jock, and that alone had been a chick magnet. As a kid with hormones raging through him, he’d never been able to settle down with a longtime girlfriend. There were just too many pretty girls throwing their sweet little selves at him, so he didn’t get this Romeo and Juliet thing going on with these two.
He wasn’t particularly proud of his behavior looking back on it. His parents hadn’t appreciated all the phone calls from girls asking to talk to him, but he’d considered the professors old-fashioned. Although he had fond memories of those years, as a man and somewhat wiser, he could see their point. If he had a daughter and found out she was calling some boy, begging him to sneak out and meet her somewhere, he’d definitely have a problem with it. A real big one. And if he ever caught his son sneaking out to meet a girl, he’d ground him for a month.
Not that he would ever have a son or daughter. Out of nowhere, a picture formed of a little girl the spitting image of Riley.Don’t go there, Dog.But it was there in his mind and refused to go away.
“You and Charlie planning to have kids?” he asked.
“Not right away, but yeah. I can’t wait to have a little Charlie running around the house, chasing Mr.Bunny while driving Charlie crazy. It’s gonna be fun.”
“Mr.Bunny?”
Ryan grinned. “Our rabbit.”
“Get out. You have a pet rabbit?” As Ryan told the story of how that came about, Cody’s mind drifted back to Riley. Although he hadn’t planned to, later tonight, when they decided where to get rooms, he would call her to find out how her trip to the dog park went. Just a friendly phone call, that was all. He snorted.
“Let’s see if we can learn something new,” Ryan said as he pulled into the convenience store parking lot.
Thirty minutes later, they were back in the car. The only new thing they had learned was that before pulling out an antique gun and demanding all the money, the kid had brought a bottle of water to the counter and had asked how far Storm Lake was.
After leaving the convenience store, they stopped by the police department, and after a phone call between Kincaid and the Sac City police chief, they were allowed to view the videotape confiscated from the store’s security camera. Sure enough, it was their boy.
