Glenn left the coffeehouse in a very pensive mood. As he drove home he thought about his conversation with Joey's mother. Despite what he'd implied he actually was well aware that Joey was becoming more than a bit, well, infatuated, he supposed, with him. If he really thought about it he might have found it amusing up until this morning. Miriam Fairburn's quizzing him now made him think about how he felt about Joey.
Joey was just a kid in a lot of ways, young man or not. With that said, Glenn had to wonder exactly why that should make a difference. It wasn't as if there was some sort of law, written or unwritten, that said an older man couldn't care about a much younger one. And much to his shock he had begun to realize that in his own way he did care for Joey.
"Not that I'll do anything about that," he muttered aloud. "Even if there could be something between us I could not, would not, endanger him by letting it happen."
'But isn't that part of the reason you left the life you'd been living and came here, so you could find someone and have a real life?' a voice in his head said, playing the devil's advocate.
"Not some kid though," he replied to himself. "And especially not one who is going to be a cop." He stopped his dialogue long enough to turn onto the main road leading out of town. "I can see it now—'Guess what Joey, you're a cop and I'm the kind of scum you've vowed to hunt down and imprison'."
'You wouldn't have to tell him,' the voice pointed out. 'You're not that person now.'
"Aren't I? Maybe not as far as the people here are concerned, but the reality is that I'm a wanted criminal in just about any part of the world I can think of. Besides, what sort of relationship would it be if it was built on lies?"
'Maybe a good one. But you won't know unless you try.'
Glenn shook his head. "And that is not going to happen," he growled. He forced the annoying voice to shut down by turning his thoughts to what he needed to get in order to make the security on the Fairburn house as invulnerable as possible.
By the time he parked his car in the garage behind his home he had a mental shopping list. He hurried into the house, tossing his jacket at the hook in the mudroom, not caring that it missed and landed on the floor. When he got upstairs to his computer he booted it up and went shopping, using a credit card that had no connection to the man he now was. Everything he ordered would be sent overnight to a blind address in another city. Then he opened his email account and sent his hacker friend a message asking her to arrange for the goods to be sent from there to Miriam Fairburn's brother's garage. He knew she would do it and leave no footprints in the process.
Next he checked his email. There was only one, from his hacker. He opened it quickly with the hope that she had found out at least something about Miss Nye. He sighed deeply as he read it. What she had discovered was not good. Two years ago, one Virginia Nye had been rushed to a hospital, severely beaten and with a gunshot wound to the head. She died without regaining consciousness. The police report termed the death murder by person or persons unknown. Her then fourteen-year old daughter, who lived with her, was placed in a foster home in a neighboring city. She ran away from there a year later and had not been seen since.
'Ran or was taken by her father?' Glenn wondered angrily as he closed out the email. Then he made a blind deposit to the hacker's bank account for an amount that was three times her normal rate. She'd earned it and then some, he figured.
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