Autumn Blue Read Online Free PDF

doing his job. Mr. Bradbury had obviously changed his mind about retiring for the night.
     He was stooped over, popping dead heads from the mums growing outside his picket fence and casting furtive glances across
     the road.
    “You wouldn’t mind me taking a look in his room, then?”
    She straightened, inflating herself to her largest stature, trying for the life of her to avoid being intimidated by the badge,
     the gun on his hip, his broad chest and shoulders, and those austere eyes. “Yes, I would mind. My girls are inside and I don’t
     want them upset. What are you looking for, anyway? You know he turned himself in right after the incident at Graber’s Market.
     The only thing he took was a bottle of wine and he didn’t even make it out the door with that.”
    The store proprietor had been watching Ty via strategically placed mirrors, saw him tuck the Mad Dog 20/20 inside his jacket,
     and tackled the boy before he made it out the automatic sliding door. The bottle shattered. Sidney was shocked when she learned
     that her son had then rolled onto his back, pulled his pellet gun out of his pants, and pointed it directly beneath Mitch
     Graber’s chin. Mitch backed off, thinking of course that it was a real gun, and Ty ran out the door. Sidney had heard the
     patrol car sirens from her bedroom that warm August night, never suspecting for one moment that her son was the cause of them,
     thinking that he was just in the woods out back cooling off after a heated argument in which she insisted that he would indeed
     be attending his freshman year of high school, whether all the teachers were idiots or not.
    The deputy smirked. “I’d turn myself in too if I needed somebody to tweeze all those glass splinters out of my chest.”
    “Well, I’ll bet you got a good laugh out of that down there at the Sheriff’s Department,” Sidney retorted. “He probably looked
     like he’d been shot, with all that Mad Dog bleeding into his jacket. You all must have been rolling on the floors.”
    The deputy’s smirk disappeared. “Look, Mrs. Walker, I’m just trying to do my job here. I’m not the bad guy. Your son’s crime
     got real serious the minute he pulled out a gun. He’s charged with attempted armed robbery and that’s a felony.”
    “But it wasn’t a real gun.”
    “Yes, ma’am, it was. In the eyes of the law, anyway.”
    “The thing shoots little plastic BBs. The boys around here shoot one another with them all the time.”
    “Even threatening someone with a squirt gun is a crime nowadays. Anyway, the judge released Tyson to your custody with strict
     stipulations, including that he was to go nowhere but school and home until his sentencing hearing. Now he’s on the run and
     I have reason to believe he’s committed another crime.”
    Sidney’s heart sank in her chest. “What kind of crime?”
    “A burglary in town.”
    She shook her head. “Ty wouldn’t do that. He’s not a bad boy, Deputy.” But she immediately wondered. Who was the angry young
     man who had taken over sweet, compassionate Tyson’s body?
    “That’s why I’d like to take a look inside. To see if he might have stowed any of the stolen items in there.”
    “He hasn’t been here,” she stated firmly, sliding her body directly in front of her door. “Believe me, if he had, I would
     know it. I’m not going to let you come into my home with that gun on your hip and scare my daughters.”
    His full lips pulled into a straight line and he gazed at her as if pondering his next move.
    The front door suddenly opened behind her, and before Sidney could stop her, Sissy was on the porch, eye-to-eye with the deputy’s
     Glock, or whatever he packed in his black leather holster. Her youngest daughter peered up at him with a sweet smile. “Hi.”
    “Sissy, you go on back inside,” Sidney said.
    She began to back up. “Are you the sheriff that came to my class?”
    His face softened slightly. “I might be. Who’s your