“I was arrested again when I was eighteen,” she confessed. “I helped someone get out of a bad situation when she was trying to get away from a guy who was wailing on her. I was charged with breaking and entering after I picked the locks on his apartment so she could get her things. I didn’t do any jail time for it, only got probation, but I didn’t want to take any chances that it would interfere with the liquor license.”

Judd got that. Didn’t like it much, though, because she was bending the law. “You trust Daisy?”

“Absolutely. We’ve been friends for years now, and she spent time in the system, too.”

The system. Such sterile little words that always made Judd’s stomach tighten into a rock-hard knot.

“Daisy didn’t have it as bad as we did,” Cleo went on, and she immediately waved off that answer with a gesture of her hand and another smile. “Thanks for coming.” She paused. “Are you okay?”

Okay was a little word, too, but it could open a big-assed conversation that he didn’t want to have so he settled for a nod.

“When I called Buck, he mentioned that you’d had a bad time a while back,” Cleo added.

Now his gut tightened for a different reason. Buck was Buck McCall, the last foster father Judd and his brothers had had after a long string of foster dickheads and assholes. The same applied to Cleo, since she’d landed under the care of Buck, and his then wife, about the same time as Judd. Buck was decent, as solid as they came.

And apparently he was also a blabbermouth.

“I’m fine,” Judd said once he got his jaw unclenched. When he got back to Coldwater, he’d be having a chat with Buck about keeping private shit private.

“Don’t be mad at Buck.” Cleo obviously noticed the jaw reaction. She fluttered her fingers toward the photo. “He remembers how close we were, and he didn’t get into specifics. He only said you had been through a rough patch. Your brother Nico also mentioned it. Again, no specifics.”

Judd had no intention of filling her in on those particulars, but he got a nasty flashback of himself falling down drunk. Literally. He’d ended up at the bottom of his porch steps.

“You talk to Buck and Nico often?” he asked, wondering if that’s why she’d left that voice mail. Buck was recovering from cancer treatments. Also, he was no spring chicken, and it didn’t take a cop’s eye to see that the man hadn’t been looking his best. Too pale, and just the day before, Judd had walked in on him napping. Buck wasn’t a napper.

“Nico and I talk every now and then,” Cleo explained, “and he’s stopped by a couple of times to see me.”