The Sheriff's Daughter. Tara Quinn Taylor

son’s number.

      And this time she held on while the rings sounded on the line.

      “Hello?”

      “Ryan?”

      “Sara?” She was thrilled that he recognized her voice, until it dawned on her that he’d have caller ID.

      Whoa, girl, she cautioned herself. Hang on to the emotion here. You can’t afford not to.

      “Are you busy?” It was the polite thing to ask. And at least now she knew what he was going to call her—Sara. As if they were friends.

      Of course, the people who worked for her called her that, as well.

      It meant nothing. Except that she wasn’t mother. Or Mom. Or Ma. Or even Aunt something.

      “I just finished having my cereal and I’m heading to bed.”

      “You were on duty last night?”

      Did he know it wasn’t healthy to eat right before bed?

      “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights.”

      “Do you sleep the other days, too, to stay on schedule?”

      “Nah, I stay up on Saturday, so I can be on schedule with the rest of the world when I’m off.”

      He’d be working that night, when the rest of the city had been partying all day and many people would be shooting off illegal fireworks—after drinking.

      There’d be drunks on the road. Fights. Car accidents.

      “Do you wear a vest?” Her father rarely had.

      “Yeah. They’re mandatory.”

      “And you call for backup before you get out of your car?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      She was ma’am, now. Sara paced her small study, glancing out the window at a backyard in need of mowing.

      She’d chosen the house for the white picket fence and flower garden that took up one corner and most of the back of the lawn. The colorful blooms were magnificent. And they needed weeding.

      Her son needed to get some rest.

      “I’ve been reading those articles you told me about.”

      “And?”

      “I… Is there anything we can do, I can do, to help find out if anything else happened that night?”

      She’d been stripped of dignity, of an ability to love openly, of confidence in a sexuality that still hadn’t blossomed. She’d spent more than twenty years tormented with guilt over the possibility that three young men had gone to prison instead of college because she’d lied about her age. If she’d been a willing participant in what had happened…

      The idea that there might have been another cause for what had happened that night than just alcohol, reckless choices by a stupid, recalcitrant, rebellious girl and male violence was one she couldn’t let go of.

      “You could talk to your father. He was the investigating officer.”

      “I already have.”

      The pause on the line was telling. She simply wasn’t sure what it implied. Didn’t trust her judgment where this young man was concerned.

      “You told him about me?” Ryan’s voice was less confident as he asked this question.

      “Yes.”

      “What did he say?”

      “That he’s positive nothing else happened.”

      “You asked him about the bones? Did he say if he’d ever made a connection between them and what happened to you?”

      “No.” She slowed herself down. Picked some lint off the new maroon-and-rose coverlet on the daybed. “I didn’t tell him anything you said about the night of the party.” She hadn’t been ready to push him that far.