Autumn Blue by Karen Harter Read Free Book Online Page B

the ground. A guy in a big brown jacket. He wasn’t going down easy. Adrenaline shot through Sidney’s bloodstream.
     “It’s Tyson!”
    Micki reached out and held her arm. “No, Sidney. I don’t think so.” They stopped a safe distance away in the middle of the
     small parking lot between the two buildings. Leon Schuman and several coworkers spilled out of their office to observe the
     incident from the side porch. A dark-haired officer with a broad back and shoulders—unmistakably Deputy Estrada—jerked the
     captive’s arms behind his back to be cuffed, causing his face to drag on the gravel. The body on the ground let out a plaintive
     cry.
    Tyson! It
was
her son lying there, pressed to the ground. She ran toward him on legs like ribbon, but just before she reached him another
     deputy caught her, firmly holding her back. Estrada yanked the boy roughly to his feet. Tyson’s eyes were wild and fevered,
     his hair a shaggy mess. “Ty!” He looked directly at her, blinked, and dropped his head. His cheek was bleeding. Estrada thrust
     him past, pushing and dragging him across the parking lot. She had never seen that brown canvas jacket. The sleeves were too
     long; thick rolls of fabric were bunched at Ty’s wrists. Just before they reached the awaiting patrol car, Ty defiantly jerked
     his arm away. Estrada grabbed it again, roughly shoving him forward and then pushing her son’s head down into the backseat.
    Micki was at her side, supporting Sidney’s elbow when the car door slammed.
    “Please, let me talk to him.” The deputy hesitated before reaching inside the driver’s door and lowering the window partway.
     There were a thousand questions to ask. Why did he run? Where had he been? How had he been eating and sleeping, surviving
     the cold autumn nights? She lowered her head, resting it on the upper rim of the window opening. “Ty,” she said softly.
    The cuffs made him lean forward awkwardly. He didn’t look up. “I just wanted to tell you I’m okay,” he muttered.
    Her tears threatened to choke her, but she wouldn’t let them come. Not yet. “Tyson, we’re going to work this out. You cooperate
     in every way. Do you hear me?”
    “I won’t stay in jail. I can’t. I’d rather die.”
    A chill ran through her body. This was something he had obviously given a lot of thought. “Nobody said you’re going to jail,
     Ty. A lot depends on you.” She really didn’t know how true that was. After all, he had committed a felony by pulling that
     pellet gun. “Now you be good. I’ll do whatever I can to help, but you have to quit making stupid mistakes. You got yourself
     here; now you’d better decide if you’re going to do the right things to get yourself out.” He finally looked up at her. He
     had the dark eyes and long lashes of his father. The eyes of her perdition. “I love you, Tyson.”
    He tried to speak, but all that came from his quivering lips was a stifled “Ma . . .” She saw his face screw up like it did
     when he was small, like the times his little heart was broken by a father who found a better life and simply lost interest
     in the family he had started. Ty whipped his head away from her. A blade of dry grass stuck in the back of his dirty, tousled
     hair.
    Sidney’s tears came then. Micki held her, kept her knees from hitting the ground as the bulletproof window slid up and the
     patrol car rolled away.

7
    S IDNEY WAITED for almost three hours in the austere Winger County Juvenile Detention building before being allowed to see her son. How
     long did it take to
book
someone anyway? The place was eerie, with no daylight in the wide, echoing corridor except for the slice that ventured through
     a tiny oblong window at the far end. She sat against the wall in the middle of a row of vacant green plastic chairs that must
     have been there since before she was born. When a uniformed deputy finally escorted her to a visiting room, she passed him
     Sybil Tanner’s card.