Delores Fossen - Texas-Sized Trouble

There were no parking spots nearby, so Lawson kept driving until he found one at the end of the street. The August heat slammed into him the moment he stepped from his truck, and he hated to admit it, but it almost felt like some bad omen. Maybe like one of Vita’s foretellings that he dismissed but still gave him an uneasy feeling. He shook that off, went up the steps to the building, but the door flew open before he could even reach for it.

And the smell of booze came rushing out at him.

Lawson quickly saw the source of the smell. Three teenagers, two girls and a guy, who were trying to come out the door despite the fact that he was directly in front of them. They were giggling and wobbling but tried to straighten and look sober when they spotted him.

“Shh,” the guy said to the others. “Just keep walkin’.” His attempt at a whisper could have probably been heard as far away as Kansas.

The guy, who had stringy long blond hair, was on one side of one of the girls—a brunette with her head down—and he had his arm hooked around her waist, obviously supporting her weight. The other girl, a blonde, was doing the same thing on the other side of the middle girl.

Even though the trio was trying to get by, Lawson didn’t move. “Are y’all all right?” he asked.

It didn’t matter what they said because he already knew the answer. They were drunk. And clearly underage. A bad combination. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst was the flashbacks that hit Lawson like a mean kick from a rodeo bull.

Brett.

It all came back—the handful of parts that he could remember, anyway. The party. The drinking. And yeah, Eve, Brett and he had been underage, too. They’d been so sure they weren’t doing anything wrong, that it was something plenty of kids did. Kids like these. But it had been wrong, and Brett had died.

“We’re doin’ just fine, man,” the guy said, or at least attempted to. He missed a couple of syllables and slurred the ones he did manage to say. Even the smile he tried was off the mark and looked as if someone had yanked up the right side of his mouth with an invisible fish hook. “’Kay?”

No, it wasn’t okay, and Lawson felt the anger slide through him. It wasn’t anger directed at the kids but rather himself. Yeah, and Eve, too. The trifecta of Eve, Brett and him usually led to his piss-poor attempt to completely shut out what he’d failed to shut out for the past eighteen years.

And he failed today, too.

The anger was there all right, but Lawson tried to keep his touch gentle when he put his fingers beneath the middle girl’s chin to lift it. His heart felt as if it stopped until he saw her eyelids flutter open.

Alive.

Thank God. But she wouldn’t stay that way if she got any more booze in her or if her blood alcohol was already too high.

Most people wouldn’t have thought the worst-case scenario in a situation like this, but since Lawson had been there, done that in the worst-case department, he knew how fast things could turn ugly.

“All of you live here in this building?” Lawson asked.

That got the attention of the girl on the end. “You a cop?”

“Yeah,” he lied.

Her eyes widened to the size of hubcaps, and she suddenly looked as if she might puke. Good. That would get the booze out of her stomach. The guy did puke, and when he turned his head to do that, he let go of the brunette in the middle. If Lawson hadn’t caught her, she would have probably splatted on the floor. He hooked his arm around her, moving her away from the puking—which was only getting worse because the blonde girl started barfing her guts out, too.

There was nothing worse than the smell of booze-vomit, so he took the semiconscious girl several yards away to the massive stairs in the center of the foyer and he had her sit down. At least she stayed upright. Mostly, anyway. She drifted into a slow lean until her arm was against the banister.

While he took out his phone to call an ambulance and the real cops, Lawson turned back to the two pukers. They obviously didn’t have the mobility issues of the nonpuker, though, because they ran out the front door. He didn’t go after them but was about to go through with the ambulance call when he heard the footsteps on the stairs. Lawson soon spotted a young woman making her way toward them. She didn’t look much older than the brunette, but at least she wasn’t drunk.

“What’s going on?” she asked. But she got her own answer because she groaned, then made a face when she got a whiff of the brunette and the puke. “Idiot,” she muttered to the girl. She caught hold of her, pulling her to her feet before she looked at Lawson. “Are you a cop?”

He frowned because he was reasonably sure he looked nothing like a cop. Hell, he still had some cow dung on his boots from the stockyard he’d visited earlier, and he was wearing one of his prize rodeo buckles.

“You know this girl?” he asked. Yeah, it was a cop maneuver, answering a question with a question, but he wanted to know what was going on.

The newcomer nodded. “She’s a sorority sister.” She rattled off some Greek letters. “And she’s my roommate.”

“Sorority?” His frown deepened. “As in college?”

She was no longer giving him an are you a cop? look. She was staring at him now as if he was an idiot. “Uh, yes. We’re staying here temporarily until our sorority house is ready.”

All right. So, maybe the brunette wasn’t underage after all if she was in college. But that immediately led Lawson to something that didn’t fit.

What was Tessie doing here if this was for college students?

Maybe there was still a boarding school along with the sorority sisters? Or it could be that Tessie was indeed college age. Since he’d never seen a picture of her, it was possible that Eve had adopted her when she was four or five instead of an infant.

“I’ll take her back to the room, and I’ll call the janitor about the throw-up,” the young woman said. “I’ll make sure she’s okay. Just please don’t arrest her. Wellsmore College has a no-drinking policy, and she could get in big trouble.”

Lawson wasn’t letting her off the hook just yet. “There were two other people with her, and they were also drunk. A guy and a girl, both blond.”

“Idiots,” she repeated. “I know them, too. They’re the ones who threw up?”

He nodded. “Someone will need to check on them.”

“I’ll make some calls,” she jumped to answer. “Just please—no arrests. If my mom hears about stuff like this going on, she’ll make me move back home.”

Lawson really didn’t want to let this slide, but the young woman did seem to be on top of this, and that “idiot” label hopefully meant she was going to give all three of them some grief over this screwup.

He finally put his hands on his hips. “When she sobers up, tell her I’ll be keeping an eye on her, and I will put her butt in jail if she does this again.”

She gave a shaky nod, and even the brunette attempted some kind of an agreement to that. It came out as a groan-belch-nod, but Lawson thought he’d gotten his point across. That’s why he didn’t stop the other woman from taking the brunette up the stairs.

However, it was only after he’d allowed them to leave that he remembered he hadn’t accomplished what he’d come here to do.

Find Tessie. Attempt a rift-mending. Go home.

He was about to call out to the sober girl to ask her if she knew Tessie, but the front door inched open. The pukers hadn’t returned though. This was a redhead in her thirties. She was wearing yoga pants and was carrying a baby in her arms. She was in midsmile—aimed at the baby, whose cheek she was touching—but she “ewww’ed” when she noticed the puke. She sidestepped it on her tiptoes and froze when her attention landed on him.