Bounty (Walk the Right Road) Read Free

life.
    “Since when are you letting Green get to you? You’ve always known he’s an ass-kisser, and I still don’t know why you’re back with the new trafficking team. I thought you were done with that after the leak we had, after everything fell apart around us, when Lance Silver planted those drugs in my locker. We damn near killed ourselves trying to bring Lance Silver and Dan McKenzie down, and look at what happened to Maggie, to Richard and Marcie. We’re all lucky we managed to get out with our skins and keep our asses out of jail, so why don’t you tell me what’s really going on, why this girl’s murder has got you looking like a deer who’s just figured out she’s pinned in the scope of someone’s rifle, about to be the main course for dinner?”
    “What do you know about me, Sam? I mean, really, we worked together, we were partners, but you know nothing about my past or where I come from.” She chanced a glance at Sam, who shrugged. He really didn’t get it. Geez, were all guys this stupid?
    “I know all I need to know about you. Your past and where you come from are your business.”
    Okay, maybe he wasn’t stupid. He was just being a guy.
    “Well, you might change your mind about me if you really knew some of the juicy details buried in my closet,” she said. Now she was being coy, and she realized she’d cracked open the can of worms she’d sealed long ago. What the hell was the matter with her? She knew better than to play that game, especially about her past.
    Sam got up, slid open the door, and strode into Diane’s kitchen. She listened to him rummaging in the fridge and started to get up when he reappeared with two beers. He handed her one of the shiny cans, already cracked open, and then sat down and took a swig. His muscles flexed in his bare arms, and Diane flushed when she realized she was staring at his snug black t-shirt. She’d never thought of Sam in a romantic way—he was Marcie’s, and they had a baby. Diane was just being stupid because, on top of everything else, she was lonely.
    “It’s ten in the morning, Sam, and you’re bringing me beer.” She took a long swallow.
    “Just call it liquid courage. If you need it, I’ll get you something stronger.”
    “You may be sorry for asking, you know?” She took another swallow. He was right, as she felt the light buzz in her head that started to numb her fears. She needed the courage only alcohol could give.
    “Let me hear it, Diane. Nothing you can say would ever change my opinion of you. We all have a past,” Sam drawled.
    Wow, he sure was saying all the right things. She watched him, seeing him in a different way than as the partner who’d always had her back. “I wasn’t born here,” she began. “My mother was a sister wife, a fifth wife. She was only fifteen when she had me. I had seventeen brothers and sisters, but I was an only child to my mother. As a child, I didn’t know there was another way to live, because the house where I lived, the community I lived in, was run by one man, and my father was under him. I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. I was just a scared, stupid kid. You did what you were told, and women had no say in anything. You were told where to live, what to do, what to wear. For God’s sake, the kind of underwear all us girls and women wore was dictated by the man who headed the community. They called him the bishop.”
    Diane drained her beer and then watched Sam closely. It was the first time she’d seen his face so full of emotion. She squeezed the empty can, and Sam handed her a second beer. “Young girls weren’t safe, and my father decided when they married and when they were sent away. I knew my mother understood what he expected, and the wives fulfilled the obligation willingly, but I fought it, and my mother got beaten for it.”
    “Where was this?” Sam asked and then roughly cleared his throat.
    “Just across the Idaho border, a little spot nestled in a remote