Page 64 of No Offense

“Yes, I did.” He stepped forward into the light so that he could see her face. Yes, she was definitely mad. Behind the lenses of her glasses, her dark eyes were pools of flames. Her lips were set into a firm line of disapproval, as well. “She nearly died. I felt they had a right to be informed.”

“She’s eighteen!” Molly cried. “She’s an adult!”

“She’s a runaway,” he shot back, “who swiped her parents’ credit card, fell in with a cult, got pregnant, trespassed, vandalized your library, and nearly died giving birth. If she were my daughter and someone found her in the condition that you did, I would want to know about it. So yes, I found her parents and called them.”

Molly had unfolded her arms and was now pacing up anddown the length of the outdoor hallway, still sputtering. It was clear that Mrs. Filmore had gone back down to her room, but Fluffy the Cat had stayed behind and was now sitting in the doorway to Molly’s room, calmly licking a front paw and regarding them both with wide amber eyes that seemed to say,Wow, buddy. You sure screwed the pooch on this one.

John couldn’t have agreed more.

“You do realize that legally, she has a right to her privacy?” Molly demanded.

“Of course. But she isn’t one of your library patrons, Molly. She’s involved in a criminal investigation.”

This stopped Molly cold. She swung an incredulous look at him. “Are you going to press charges against her?”

“Maybe, if that seems like the best way to get her to give up Beckwith. I think she knows where he’s hiding.”

“John, she’s been traumatized!”

“All the more reason for her to give up the person who traumatized her. I know you think because she’s eighteen, she’s an adult, but she isn’t acting like one.”

“Well, maybe her parents are partly to blame for why she acts the way she does,” Molly said. “Maybe her parents are awful, and that’s why she ran away from them.”

John had to admit that Molly had a point. Tabitha’s parents had seemed pretty awful—at least the father.

He wasn’t going to say this out loud, however. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t like it.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never called the parents of a child,” he said instead.

“I’ve threatened to, lots of times,” Molly said. “But I’ve never done it. Kids have a right to their own privacy—and their own autonomy.”

“I agree—until they start hurting themselves, or others. And it isn’t true that you’ve never called the parents of a child. You came to me today with compromising photos of my daughter taken by one of your young patrons.”

Molly stiffened. “That was different.”

“How is it different?”

“Because that was part of your investigation. That was to help solve it.”

“So was calling Tabitha’s parents. I have to work my cases the way I see fit. Sometimes my methods may not be pretty, but they tend to work.” Except when they didn’t... case in point, Larry Beckwith III.

“But Tabitha’s parents are probably who she was running away from in the first place, John! And now you’ve told them exactly where to find her.”

“You don’t know anything about her.” John thought it was possible that he was going insane. She wasmakinghim insane. “You sat with her while she was bleeding to death and drifting in and out of consciousness, but that’s not the same as having a conversation with her, because believe me, if you had, you’d call her parents, and a social worker, and a shrink, and all the help you could get for her, because whatever has happened to that girl, it’s made herbananas.”

Molly blinked, hard. “John,” she said, in what sounded to him like a tearful voice, “I think you should go now.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It’s late, and I have to be at the library in the morning for a staff meeting. I think you should go.”

Belatedly, he realized that she was genuinely angry. And also about to cry.

“Molly, you’re not actually going to let this come between us, are you? Because I thought we had a very nice time this evening—”

“We did,” Molly said. “Physically. But I’m not sure we connect on more basic levels.”

“What’s more basic than what we did in there?” he asked, jabbing a thumb toward her room. “Where, I’d like to point out again, I think wemore thanconnected.”