Free Before That Night: Unfinished Love Series: Caine & Addison, Book 1 by Violet Duke Page B

EIGHT
     
     
    ADDISON AND EVERYONE in the diner breathed a collective sigh of relief when the local news anchor led the ten o’clock news with the a confirmed report that little Billy Baker had been found, crediting the Amber Alert that had been issued right after his disappearance this morning.
    While the only thing that they could report was that Billy was unhurt and with authorities north of Flagstaff, and that his father, who had kidnapped him out of his mother’s home had been arrested. The reporter on scene noted that police from both jurisdictions had been crucial in tracking Billy’s father’s movements, but ultimately, it was an eye witness that helped track down their exact whereabouts.
    Normally, they didn’t turn on the TV audio in the diner, but with so many regulars knowing the Baker family, and half the off-duty cops on the force stopping in to grab a quick bite, they’d kept tuned in for every update throughout the day.
    Earlier, when a breaking news update had reported the start of a police standoff with Billy’s father, Addison had felt her stomach drop. She had no clue whether Caine was up there or not. Or if he’d been called out to an even more dangerous case.
    Worrying about him was pretty much a nightly habit for Addison, but tonight, more so than usual.
    The rest of the night seemed to move like molasses.
    At one a.m. sharp, Addison turned the open sign on the door to closed, and spent the next half hour closing up, while the kids slept curled up on the small loveseat sofa in Joe’s office instead of out in the van.
    Silly though it probably was, she’d felt compelled to keep Kylie and Tanner with her inside the diner the entire night. She just smiled and told everyone the kids had asked to stay at the diner since it was a Saturday night and that their aunt was having a boring old dinner party. Thankfully, Bernadette’s kids were still going strong with the delivered meals for Bernadette so even nearly two years later, Addison had yet to run into even a single scare over her cover story being blown.
    For the kids, Joe’s office sofa was a nice change every once in a while. And last summer when the heat had insulated the van to the point of it being uncomfortably warm well past ten p.m., that very sofa had been a godsend. The swamp cooler that Addison ran off a generator she kept in the van usually did the trick in keeping the kids cool, but for about two weeks straight, the heat index had been so high, she hadn’t trusted leaving them out there.
    Since it’d been a hectic night for the officers, conversely, it was a pretty slow night for them at the diner, so Addison had told Shirley to go on home a little early. Same with Ryan when she saw him smiling over a text from whatever lucky girl the Casanova was dating this week.
    She was just about through tallying receipts and checking on supplies for tomorrow’s vendor deliveries when she heard a knock on the glass door. “Addison?”
    She ran across the diner. “Caine?”
    Addison quickly peeked through the closed blinds before unlocking the door to let him in. “Caine. What are you doing here? Is everything okay?” She quickly scanned him head to toe to see if she could spot any hint of an injury.
    He looked perfect, as always.
    “Billy’s safe,” he said straight away.
    She nodded. “We heard. It was on the news.”
    “Oh good. Yeah, I forget how efficient those reporters are. I wanted to make sure you knew.”
    Touched, she squeezed his hand. “Thank you. We were all relieved that everything ended peacefully.” She frowned. “We heard Billy’s father might have been high. No officers got hurt, right?”
    YOU didn’t get hurt right?
    She covertly scanned him from head to toe one more time.
    “No. Thankfully, everyone walked away without a scratch. A bunch of us were called out on cases closer to home so I wasn’t actually on the scene, but I know several of the officers who were there from sports leagues and things so I