down, feelings are running pretty high. Poaching is the Marine Patrol‟s responsibility. But keeping the peace is mine.”
She didn‟t need a lesson on the island economy or police jurisdiction. “What does any of this have to do with Zack?”
“Your boy here met the ten-thirty ferry with a cooler full of lobsters. He was selling them to tourists for four bucks apiece.”
She‟d been braced for something else. Drugs. Alcohol. Those would fit the pattern. Shoplifting, to support her son‟s
suspected habit. Fighting, because they were new in town and Zack looked different, was different, from other boys. But . . .
“Lobsters?” Incredulity strained her voice. “Where would he get lobsters?”
“That‟s what I asked him,” Caleb said.
“Zack?”
He jerked a shoulder, eyes on his boots.
“Did someone give you the lobsters to sell?”
He was silent.
“Because if you‟re protecting someone, they don‟t deserve your loyalty.”
Something flickered across his face and was gone, too quickly to be identified. He didn‟t look up.
Frustration tightened her jaw. “He‟s not a poacher,” she said, wanting to believe it. “We don‟t even have a boat.”
“I wondered about that,” Caleb said.
“He would not necessarily need a boat,” Morgan murmured.
The two men exchanged a long look.
“I wondered about that, too,” Caleb said. “He one of yours?”
“The evidence would seem to point that way.”
Incomprehension swam in her head. She narrowed her eyes. “ One of yours? How many children do you have?”
He flashed his teeth at her. “Only one. And I do not intend to lose him again.”
Zachary watched from under his lashes while they talked about him as if he wasn‟t there. His stomach churned with a
combination of guilt and greasy panic. His eyes burned.
They couldn‟t prove anything. It‟s not like lobsters came painted with lobster serial numbers.
But maybe Big Cop would lock him up anyway. Maybe it would be a relief. Ever since they‟d come to this stupid island,
Zack was finding it harder and harder to control himself. If they threw him in jail, at least he could stop trying.
His mom was in full doctor mode, pressing, prodding, trying to get at the root of the problem. But she couldn‟t fix this. She
couldn‟t fix him. Nothing in her medical books, no online diagnosis Zack had ever found, offered him any help, any hope at
all.
So he kept his mouth shut and prayed Em would do the same.
She was just a baby. Too young to be charged, too young to be believed. Too young, he thought with another lurch of guilt,
to be mixed up in his shit. To her, the furtive trip to the beach had been a game, an adventure. Anyway, he‟d been careful not
to let her see anything that would scare her. She‟d been a hit with the tourists, too. Grown-ups who wouldn‟t give Zack the
time of day had stopped to talk with Emily, charmed by her big brown eyes and that stupid doll she carried everywhere.
His gaze slipped past her to the man who claimed to be his biological father. Big Bad Ass in black. Zack sneered. He
hadn‟t looked so tough with Emily clinging to his leg.
The man turned his head. His eyes pierced Zack, skewered and held him in his chair like a bug pinned to a piece of
Styrofoam.
Zack‟s heart pounded. Like the man could read his thoughts, like he could see inside his head.
Shit.
He dropped his gaze hastily, his blood drumming in his ears.
Through the roaring in his head, he heard the man say, “The boy is not under your authority. This is not your concern.”
“It is if he‟s stealing,” Big Cop replied.
“He‟s not your responsibility either,” his mom said to the man in black. “Zack is my son. Let me talk to him.”
The cop leaned back in his chair. “Maybe it would be best if you both talked to him.”
His mother sucked in her breath like she did before she launched into a lecture. Emily ducked her head, hiding her face in
her doll‟s hair.