Secrets in a Small Town by Kimberly Van Meter Page A

Gretchen was still unaccounted for. He had a scared little girl camped out on his couch and there was nothing he could offer her for comfort aside from a cup of warm milk. Hell, he didn’t even have any chocolate powder he could mix in. His house wasn’t made for guests. It was a space where he washed his clothes, sometimes ate and, most times, crashed when he was too tired to keep his eyes open a minute longer.
    He scrubbed his hand over his face, feeling each and every year of his life weighing down on him. That sick feeling in his stomach intensified when he thought of how much worse the situation could have been if Quinn had been taken, too.
    That sick bastard. Who kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach, much less the woman carrying your child? He couldn’t even fathom. In the eyes of the law, his father was scum, not worth the price of the bullet that ended his life, but to him, he’d been a fabulous father and one of the things he’d always taught Owen was to treat women kindly.
    “Son, you always got to watch out for the welfare of your woman. She’s the weaker sex and the Bible tells us we have to protect them,” his father had said one day when he’d gotten his tail chewed for throwing a rock in the general direction of an obnoxious little girl named Patty living on the compound with them.
    “Even colored girls?” he’d asked, wiping at his nose and glowering in Patty’s direction because she’d started the fight and then run to her daddy when he’d fought back.
    His father, leader of the Aryan Coalition, had straightened, glanced around before answering in a lowered voice so only Owen could hear. “Even colored girls, son. A man isn’t a man the minute he hits a woman. You got that?”
    “Yessir,” he’d answered glumly, still angry but not about to go against his father. “Don’t seem fair that she started it, though,” he’d added, glancing up at his dad.
    Ty Garrett had smiled. “Never is, son. It never is. Don’t change a thing.”
    Owen roused himself from the memory. It was hard to reconcile that image of his father with the one everyone else harbored. He shook off his melancholy. No sense in crying over the past. Not right now, anyway. He had bigger problems.
    “Gretchen…” he muttered to himself, checking one last time on Quinn, who was fast asleep. “If you manage to make it through the night, you’d better promise me you’ll break up with this bastard.”
    He turned off the lights and resigned himself to a restless night.

    O WEN GOT THE CALL AT 3:00 A.M . that Gretchen had been found alongside the road, bruised and bloody, unconscious from a vicious blow to the head.
    But she was alive.
    He listened as the police officer gave him as much information as he knew, which wasn’t a lot aside from the fact that she’d been beaten and left for dead like roadkill.
    “Danny Mathers did this,” he said in a low tone so as not to wake Quinn.
    “We’ll find him,” the officer assured him. “You can see her tomorrow if the doctor thinks she can have visitors. Is her daughter all right with you for a few days?”
    He glanced over at Quinn, a small bundle curled on his lumpy sofa, and he nodded. “Yeah. No problem.”
    “Good. If you change your mind, we can call social services but since you’re her emergency contact, we figured the girl was safe with you for the time being.”
    “What about the baby?” he asked, his throat tight, almost afraid to know.
    There was a long pause and then the officer said, “It doesn’t look good.” He rattled off a case number for reference in case Owen needed it later and hung up.
    Returning to his bedroom, he fell back into bed and wondered how the hell he was going to run a business without Gretchen at the office and with Quinn at his heels.
    Ah, hell, he thought just as his eyes fluttered shut.
    That reporter was coming tomorrow.
    Shit. The day had just officially gone from bad to worse.

    P IPER TOOK GREAT CARE in choosing her wardrobe