Page 33 of The Risk

If she hadn’t been in the system, she never would have lost her kids.

If she hadn’t lost her kids, she never would have taken too much crack.

Candy wouldn’t be dead right now.

If Charlie had just had Rob’s back like a fellow officer was supposed to, everything would have been different.

Well, Charlie’s sister was going to end up in the ground rotting just like Rob’s had. She didn’t have kids to lose, though. So he was going to have to make it good.

Maybe the boyfriend’s kid?

That was a possibility.

And good old Charlie had those two babies now, too. But that would involve hurting Charlie’s new wife. Rob had always respected Rory Price. He didn’t know what she was doing with Charlie. She could have done so much better. Half the guys at the TSP had had a thing for that smoking hot blonde at one time or another.

Why the hell had she settled for Charlie?

He would never understand it.

But no. He wasn’t about to hurt some innocent baby. Or kid.

Charlie’s daughter was right there.

That was always a possibility.

But ultimately, it was Charlie’s sister who Charlie was going to lose.

What was it his father used to preach? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise.

Well, in this case… it was a sister for a sister.

And that was the way it was supposed to be.

Pretty girl was living on borrowed time. She should just enjoy the boyfriend while she could. It was only a matter of time until Rob finished what he had started.

He had to. He didn’t have any real choice now.

29

Chantal waswith her own mother visiting with Genny’s mother when Greer called. Chantal had been closest to the landline at the Hiller house and had grabbed it out of habit. She’d answered the phone at the Hillers’ place countless times before.

Greer was practically beside herself. Her best friend Hala’s brother, Hala’s only family since the loss of her father, mother, and sister in a tragic car accident when Hala was eighteen, had been in an accident.

Along with his almost five-year-old son.

Greer was on her way to the hospital now. She was going to be there for Hala. She just needed someone from the ranch to swing by Aubrey’s house and get Ayla. Ayla needed to be there for Hala, too. Greer was insistent on it.

Ayla, who had suffered a spinal injury when she’d been eleven, didn’t drive. Chantal had picked her up to help Aubrey out before.

Aubrey and Genny and Giavonna were her closest friends in the world. But Ayla, Greer, and Hala were her friends, too.

“I’m going to get Ayla and get her to Greer,” she told her own mother. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. I’m going to stay as long as they need me.”

“Then you can drive me,” Gene’s mother Gayle said. “Hala is going to need us all. Poor thing. This is going to be bringing back memories for her. And I’m going to be there.”

After Hala had lost her parents and sister, Genny’s mother had stepped up. Helped Hudson plan the funerals for more than half of his family. She mothered Hala whenever it was needed, Chantal thought.

That was the way the Hillers were.