Free Home to Sparrow Lake (Harlequin Heartwarming) by Lynn Patrick

barely off the property when Brian heard a vehicle coming down the street. He looked back. A black-and-white.
    “Cops!” He was already running. “Don’t follow me!” he ordered the others. “Go in different directions!”
    He sped down the sidewalk as fast as he could go, aware that the cruiser behind him had picked up speed. He feinted to the right, ran across a lawn and headed for the backyard.
    When he heard a deep male voice shout, “Stop right there!” he panicked and looked for a place to hide.
    A car door slammed. At the back of the property now, knowing the cop was after him, Brian took off down the alley.
    Where to hide?
    He couldn’t get caught. Couldn’t go to jail.
    Halfway down the alley, his chest twisting into a tight knot, he spotted a small stand of trees pressed up against a four-foot-tall picket fence. He didn’t stop to think, simply slowed and hopped onto the fence, then grabbed a low branch and hauled himself up into a maple tree. He climbed a bit higher into the canopy and flattened himself against the trunk.
    The slap-slap of leather on pavement followed. The cop slowed and stopped just yards away. Brian swallowed hard. He didn’t dare breathe. Didn’t dare move. This wasn’t just any cop after him. Even with only the moon as light, he recognized the guy.
    The police chief.
    His heart was beating so hard that surely Chief Novak could hear it. But the man below looked around, muttered something in a low voice and backed off.
    Brian didn’t breathe again until he heard the cop’s footsteps fade away.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    “M RS . G RANT CALLED first thing,” Janet said when Alex walked into the office the next morning. “Apparently our pranksters were up to no good again. They moved her lawn ornaments all over the place.”
    “Yeah, I figured.”
    Before Janet could ask him to explain, he went back to the break area to find Owen pouring himself a cup of coffee. Though it was Saturday, the citizens of Sparrow Lake still needed protecting. The officers took turns working a weekend a month, and Alex almost always checked on things. At least, when he wasn’t fishing.
    “Hey, Alex, what’s up?” Owen asked.
    “Nothing good.”
    “Ah, you heard about Mrs. Grant’s garden bunnies.”
    “I didn’t just hear about them,” Alex said, pouring coffee into a mug. “I almost caught one of the pranksters last night.”
    “Who?”
    “Brian Lange. Fast kid. He got away from me.”
    “So you want me to go to the house and pick him up?”
    “No. The thing is, I didn’t see him do anything.” Alex took a slug. Exhausted from the last week of prowling around town late at night, looking for the gang of three, he needed to mainline that coffee to wake up. “I spotted them a couple of houses away from the Grant place. But they split up and ran. After I lost Brian, I went back and realized that those deer Mrs. Grant loves were on the wrong side of her property. I figured that’s what they’d been up to. I just can’t prove it.”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “The only thing I can do.” The one thing that was going to ruin what he finally had going with Kristen. “I’ve already tried talking to Margaret Becker about her nephew, but she circumvented the conversation by telling me what a great help he was to her. She had nothing but praise for him, so I knew she didn’t want to hear it. I’ll have to talk to the person in that family who doesn’t seem to run on emotion. I’m going to talk to his sister.”
    “Oh, you mean the one you hauled in here last week?” Owen asked with a knowing smile.
    “The same.”
    “She’s not going to like it, either.”
    “No, but I think she’ll listen.”
    Alex feared Kristen wasn’t going to like him again, either. And just after he’d won her over. Well, at least a little. Connecting with her yesterday while delivering those meals had been the best time he’d had since moving to Sparrow Lake.
    Alex thought over his options.
    He could