Moving Target by J. A. Jance

his own injuries, about the doctors amputating his leg, about the foreclosure situation on the house, and about being held responsible for the hospital bill. She had blabbed about anything and everything. LeAnne was embarrassed to think that she had told someone else—a complete stranger—about Lance losing his leg when her son had yet to be told.
    It was at that juncture when LeAnne’s mother returned from the cafeteria with a cellophane-wrapped sandwich and a small container of yogurt.
    “What’s wrong?” Phyllis asked, handing them over. “You look upset. Did the doctor come by while I was gone?”
    “No, not yet,” LeAnne answered. “Just worried, I guess.”
    “About what?” Phyllis asked.
    Something in LeAnne snapped. “What do you think? I’m worried about everything. About Lance losing his leg; about probably losing the house and my job; about figuring out where we’ll live if I do; about paying the hospital bill, which I’m sure will be astronomical. What don’t I have to worry about?” The moment the words were out of her mouth, LeAnne was sorry. “Oh, Mom,” she said. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
    Phyllis sat down next to LeAnne and put a comforting hand on her daughter’s thigh. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “You have every rightto feel overwhelmed right now. You need to vent to someone, and I’m the person who happens to be here. Believe me, I can take it. As for where you and the boys will live? I’m sure we’ll manage. I’ve already told you you’re welcome to come live with me. It’ll be a tight fit, but it’s better than being out on the street or dumped into some kind of Section Eight housing.”
    LeAnne, concentrating on unwrapping the sandwich, said nothing. What her mother had said was true, but LeAnne didn’t want to do that. For one thing, she loved living in the Texas Hill Country, and she knew she’d hate the rain in Oregon. For another, it had taken her months to get her nursing license from Arizona validated so she could work in Texas. If she moved to yet a different state, she’d most likely be out of work for months again, assuming there was any work to be had. In this economy, jobs for qualified LPNs weren’t all that plentiful. Then there was Lance. How long would it take for him to recover from his burns or get fitted for a prosthetic leg or learn to walk on it?
    LeAnne bit into the sandwich. Though the bread was dry and tasted like cardboard, she knew her mother was right. LeAnne was in this fight for the long haul, and she needed to eat whether she wanted to or not.
    “By the way,” Phyllis said, “I talked to that nice Detective Hernandez yesterday after basketball practice. He was there picking up his son when I stopped by for Thad. Did you know his son and Thad are on the same junior varsity team?”
    LeAnne choked on a chunk of sandwich and spent the better part of the next minute coughing her head off. Nice? LeAnne couldn’t believe that her mother had referred to Detective Richard Hernandez of the San Leandro Sheriff’s Department as nice. He was the guy who had shown up on her doorstep some months earlier to place her son under arrest for what was referred to at the time as malicious mischief. Of course, the charges had escalated from there. Maybe the man had just been doing his job. Lance had done the crime, and he had also done his time, but in LeAnne’s book, Richard Hernandez would never remotely be considered a “nice” man.
    “Yes,” she said when the coughing fit subsided. “I was aware of that.”
    “He said he was sorry to hear about what had happened, about Lance’s accident.” Phyllis shrugged. “That’s what it said in the paper yesterday, by the way—in the San Leandro paper. That last week’s incident in which an inmate at the San Leandro Juvenile Detention Facility suffered serious burns had been determined to be an accident.”
    “It was not an accident,” LeAnne hissed through