Read Lana's Lawman for Free Online Page A

complicated.
    She’d put it behind her, and for years she’d convinced herself she’d done the right thing. They hadn’t been right for each other then, and there was no reason to think things were any different now, despite the changes they’d both undergone.
    So why couldn’t she stop thinking about him?
    Lana looked out the window. Dusk was settling on her overgrown backyard, and she hadn’t heard a peep out of Rob since he’d gone outside with his football a couple of hours earlier. She adjusted the heat on the stove and walked to the front door.
    A gust of cool autumn air hit her as she opened the door. “Rob?” she called out.
    â€œOver here, Mom,” her son’s voice answered from the side yard.
    Lana stepped off the porch. She saw Rob and a neighbor boy tossing the football, and took comfort in the normal little-boyness of it. “Dinner in about twenty minutes. Noah? Would you like to have spaghetti and meatballs with us?”
    â€œNo, thanks, Mrs. Gaston. My mom wants me home.”
    â€œOkay. Maybe this weekend.” She turned her gaze back on her son. “Not too long, Robbie. It’s getting dark.”
    Rob snorted and glanced sideways at his buddy. “My mom thinks bogeymen come out of the bushes when the sun goes down. In Destiny.”
    â€œHey,” Noah said, “we did have a murder.”
    â€œExactly,” Lana said with a nod. She decided she liked Rob’s friend Noah. “Ten more minutes, okay? Then you can come in and set the table.”
    â€œOkay, Mom,” Rob answered distractedly. He and Noah were already tossing the ball again.
    Lana sighed as she stepped back inside. Sometimes she felt like she was losing her son. He was growing, getting more independent, testing his boundaries. She knew that was natural. But she missed the little boy who would crawl into her lap for kisses and beg to be tucked in.
    Five minutes later, as she was tasting the spaghetti sauce, a horrific noise reverberated all over the house. It started with a shrieking, like a wreck between two wooden ships, then turned into something that sounded like an avalanche pouring onto the roof.
    Lana dropped her wooden spoon, splattering red sauce all over the white linoleum floor. She ran out the kitchen door into the backyard and swiveled around. Nothing on the roof. She didn’t immediately see—
    Oh, no
, she thought as panic rose in her throat. The garage. Her feet felt like lead as she dragged them around the side of the house. The sight that greeted her was every mother’s nightmare. The garage roof was now in pieces on the ground. And Rob’s sneakers at the end of two denim-clad legs, frighteningly still, were all that was visible beneath the rubble.
    Lana, granted a strength and quickness she didn’t know she had, leapt to the site of the disaster and began clawing at the hunks of wood, loose shingles, and tar paper that covered her son. Like a crazed burrowinganimal, she sent heavy pieces of debris flying through the air as if they were wads of paper until she’d uncovered her son’s too-pale face. His eyes were closed, and he was bleeding from a scrape on his forehead.
    â€œRob? Rob!” Recalling some long-ago first-aid class, she fell to her knees and reached for the pulse point at his neck. But she was shaking so badly, she wouldn’t have known a pulse from an earthquake.
    â€œLana!” a voice behind her said. “Is he okay?” It was Sandra Sutcliffe, Noah’s mother. Noah stood beside her, white-faced. “I heard the crash and looked out the window—”
    â€œI don’t know. Dear God, he’s not moving.” But he was breathing. She could see the reassuring rise and fall of his chest.
    â€œI’ll call 911,” Sandra said.
    Other neighbors trickled over. Bill Watts from next door offered Lana a clean handkerchief to blot the blood on Rob’s forehead. There was so