Finding Their Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’m really sorry about this, but I need to borrow some money. Whatever you can spare. I’ll pay you back. I promise.”
    He put out his hand, intending to return the gun and take whatever handout she might offer in exchange.
    A sudden, shrill, heart-stopping scream filled the store.
    “Damn.” He didn’t need a degree in law enforcement to know how incriminating this looked to the young woman standing a few feet away, swaying as if she might pass out.
    Charlene let out a low groan and shook her head from side to side. He was probably going to go to jail, which meant he wouldn’t be able to complete the task his uncle had laid out for him. According to Joseph, if Eli didn’t do this right, his kids—his two daughters and the son he’dloved and raised as his own—would never know the man he might have been.
    Boobs, er, Charlene suddenly grabbed his shoulders and gave him a little shake. “Go. Out the back door. My car is unlocked, but the key’s in my purse so don’t think about stealing it. I’ll handle Pia.”
    “I’m not a car thief.”
    “Good,” she muttered. “Here. Take these.” She pried the gun out of his hand—a freakin’ pellet gun, he realized—and exchanged it for a wad of pink ribbons with balloons attached. “Lose even one and I’ll shoot you myself. Now, go.”
    He was a good cop. He knew how to take orders. He’d never ridden herd on a bouquet of floating balloons, but he’d figure it out as he went. Pretty much the way he did everything in life.
     
    C HAR KNEW THERE WAS NO such thing as coincidence. She’d witnessed enough strange and unbelievable touches of grace in her life and in the lives of her friends to know that Eli Robideaux hadn’t stumbled into her store by accident. He was here for a reason, just as he’d landed in her hands that night so many years earlier.
    She didn’t know what his presence meant or foretold, but he obviously needed her help. And she couldn’t say no, any more than she’d been able to avoid what happened between them that night in Pierre.
    And you need him, too, chickadee.
    She ignored the voice.
    “Pia,” she said, returning the unloaded pellet gun to its hiding spot. “Deep breaths. Slow and steady. That wasn’t what you think.”
    “He…but…you…I saw…He’s an Indian,” Pia whispered.
    Char didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with this young woman’s probably deeply ingrained bigotry. Native American tribes and whites in the Black Hills had a long, turbulent history, and while Char did her best to help break down preconceived notions and assumptions, she couldn’t dictate her personnel’s fears—irrational though they might be.
    “Eli’s an old friend and I was showing him my gun when you came in.”
    She hurried around the counter, pausing to grab the folding step stool from the corner. “Here,” she said, pushing the two-foot ladder into Pia’s hands. “One of Megan’s balloons got away. Would you mind catching it while I get my things together?”
    Pia hesitated. “You know him? For sure? He looked like a homeless person.”
    Char snatched her purse from under the cash register and double-checked to make sure her keys were inside.
    “We were in school together,” Char said, stooping to pick up her journal, which had fallen on the wrong side of the counter when Eli threw his little hissy fit. She stuffed it in her purse and cleared the distance between them. “Eli was Homecoming King when I was a freshman.”
    Pia didn’t look impressed but she did open the stool, march up the steps and grab the wayward balloon’s lifeline. She leaned down to hand it to Char. “Here.”
    Pia, who was in her early twenties and worked at Native Arts solely to flirt with male travelers and earn enough money to fund her shoe addiction, glanced toward the dooronce more. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call the cops?”
    “He is a cop, Pia. On the reservation.” The last she’d heard anyway. “He’s on some