Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
I don’t bother going back to bed. It’s nearly three. Trekking up the stairs and trying to get comfortable in bed again is an exercise in futility. Some nights, I don’t even make it to our bedroom at all.
Three months ago, Kenny presented us with a rocking recliner, and it might be the greatest shower gift ever. Not only can I elevate my feet to rest, but it’s the one place in the house I can comfortably sleep. It’s well padded and extremely comfortable, and that’s where I go tonight, while Dalton brews chamomile tea.
I’m still settling into the chair when he brings the tea and cookies. Then he pulls up an ottoman, sits on it, and starts to massage my feet.
Tears prickle my eyes. Yep, my hormones are still out of control, though I’ve started to fear this is just the new me. Constantly tired and stressed and on the verge of either frustrated rage or sobbing tears. At least these tears are ones of gratitude, even if they are touched with a hint of guilt.
“I love you,” I say.
“I know.” He shifts to get a better grip on my foot. “I also know that you need to investigate this, and I’m going to try not to get in your way.” He lifts his gaze to mine. “But I need you to meet me in the middle, Butler.”
I nod. “Try not to be frustrated by what I can’t do, and try not to take it out on you when you slow me down.”
“I know you don’t mean it. Just like you know, if I’m slowing you down, it doesn’t mean I don’t think you can handle it. You just can’t expect to operate at full capacity with a five-pound parasite hanging off your abdomen.”
I place my hands on either side of my belly and lean down to whisper, “‘Parasite’ is a term of endearment. Daddy doesn’t blame you.”
“Not until they’re a teen and start pulling the ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ shit, and then I can pull the ‘Do you know what your mother went through?’ shit.”
“That’s supposed to be my line. Yours is ‘Do you know what your mother put me through while she was having you?’”
He laughs softly and reaches over to gently kiss me. Then he stops as my stomach tents. His fingers go to the spot, and when the baby kicks again, the look on his face washes away all my exhaustion. Another kick, and he laughs with delight.
“She’s going to come out fighting,” he says. “Just like her momma.”
I roll my eyes. “Or he is, like his daddy.”
“ She, ” he says. “Trust me on this. A little girl named Eric.”
Another eyeroll. We don’t know the baby’s sex. I didn’t ask because it doesn’t matter for anything except names, and even then, our short list is gender neutral. We’ve narrowed it down to Quinn or Riley. Or, at least, that was what we’d narrowed it down to yesterday. By tomorrow, we might change our minds. Again.
Dalton pauses there, with his hand pressed to where the baby is kicking, until they shift around and settle again.
“Nighty-night,” he whispers to my stomach. Then he looks at me. “That goes for both of you. If you get enough sleep, I’ll be less likely to pester you to rest tomorrow.”
“You know that threats aren’t like warm milk. They don’t help me sleep.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise. I could threaten to make you drink warm milk if you don’t sleep, though.”
I make a face. “Ugh.”
“Then go to sleep.” He pulls the blanket up, kisses my forehead, and returns to massaging my feet as I drift into sleep.
The next morning, Dalton “lets” me sleep until five minutes before Sebastian arrives. In other words, he fails to wake me in time to shower and such, but I’ll give him this because I probably wouldn’t have showered anyway and he has my clothing ready and a mug of hot chocolate waiting when he does rouse me. Then he helps me dress, which is very thoughtful and efficient but also humiliating.
Someday, I remind myself. Someday, in my relatively near future, I will be able to yank on clothing in thirty seconds again.
Sebastian doesn’t arrive until 8:34, clearly finding the sweet spot between annoying Dalton by being early and annoying me by being late. We eat as we talk. The young man doesn’t have anything to offer, really. Had he seen Kendra’s attacker, he’d have said so last night.
As he told us then, his focus was on Kendra. He saw a figure, dressed dark, possibly wearing a balaclava, which is issued to everyone for the winter weather. If he had to guess, he’d say it was a man, though he won’t rule out the possibility of a woman. The figure had been bent, dragging Kendra, so it was hard to tell sex or size.
Really, the most important thing he has to tell me is that he stopped by the clinic and Kendra is doing well. Sebastian might lack a natural conscience and struggle with empathy, but his brain has done an excellent job of filling in the blanks. He likes Kendra, therefore he is concerned for her well-being, and he knows I will be, too, and that it is considerate to check on her.
Dalton and I leave shortly after Sebastian does. Dalton heads to talk to Phil, as the town manager—we’d call him the mayor if that wouldn’t suggest he was our boss. Yes, Phil is still here. It’s been six months since he last reminded us that he’s only staying until the town is settled. I’d love to think Haven’s Rock and our mission have finally won him over, but I know the truth. He’s accepted that Isabel isn’t leaving, and as long as she isn’t, neither is he.
I put off speaking to Kendra again—I don’t want her to feel as if I’m hovering in hopes she’ll remember something. First I’ll talk to those who were with her last night, starting with Anders, who needs to know what happened as soon as possible.
Right now, we don’t have overnight policing in Haven’s Rock. At some point, we’ll need it, mostly for the sake of having a town official available around the clock. With my pregnancy, we’ve decided to hold off. That means Anders—who often got the night shift in Rockton—doesn’t start until ten. I should be able to catch him leaving his apartment over the town hall. When I get there, though, I can see his blinds are drawn, which means he’s left for the day.
Storm and I pop into the town hall. No sign of him there.
Damn. We should have left him a report last night, so he’d know about the attack before he went out.
As chill as Anders is, the power dynamics are awkward. He was the deputy to Dalton’s sheriff, just the two of them, and then I came along, wedging in with a newly created position equal to his… and then shacking up with the boss. Anders and I are still equals, two law-enforcement officers working under Dalton, but I’m the one with the direct line to the boss. I hate anything that might make Anders feel out of the loop.
I’m turning to go find him when the door opens. In walks a dark-haired woman with light brown skin, leading a snowsuited toddler by the hand.
“Storm,” I say. “Look who’s here.”
The dog immediately lies down, and Nicole and I both laugh. At Storm’s size, she isn’t worried about being knocked over by a rambunctious two-year-old, but she knows the routine. As soon as she’s on the floor, so is Stephen, as the toddler screeches loud enough to set Storm’s ears back. He launches himself at her and drops onto her, mittened fists clenching fur as he buries his face in Storm’s side… and hopefully doesn’t bite her in his enthusiasm.
Nicole makes sure the door closes and lowers her voice. “I heard about Kendra.”
“She’s okay. Nothing happened.”
“Good. I still—”
Stephen shrieks and strangles Storm in another hug. Nicole waits for the noise level to drop and tries again, only to have him shriek over her. Nicole slumps her shoulders with a deep sigh, and I try not to laugh.
There are many reasons why I love having Dalton’s brother, Jacob, and his wife in Haven’s Rock for the winter, but one of the best is that I get a preview of my life to come. Not having younger siblings—and having avoided babysitting whenever possible—I lack experience with small children.
With Stephen in town, I’m learning fast. He’s recently learned to screech and loves the sound of his voice. He also has discovered the existence of the word “no,” which can be used whenever his mother tells him not to do something like screeching. And from Nicole, I’m learning that even with toddlers—maybe especially with toddlers—you pick your battles. If she tells him to stop screeching and he doesn’t want to, then she needs to enforce her decision, which means she might have to take him home when she wants to speak to me.
“Jacob took off this morning to get in some hunting while it’s warm,” she says. “Or that was his excuse. I really need to up my hunting—”
A shriek cuts her off, and she slumps again, her shoulders sinking dramatically.
“Hey, bud,” I say to Stephen. “How about throwing Storm’s ball for her?”
“Ball?” He perks up and looks around. “Where ball?”
I smile. “You need to find it. I think it’s hiding.”
He toddles off, snowsuit swishing.
I’m turning back to Nicole when the door opens tentatively. At first, it doesn’t seem as if anyone’s there. Then I see the head poke in about a foot below where I expect one. It’s Max, our second-youngest resident.
“Sorry,” Max says, looking from me to Nicole. “I was looking for—”
“Mac!” Stephen shouts. He can almost get Max’s name, but the X is a little tough. He races over and Max smiles and crouches with his hand out for a high five, which Stephen enthusiastically returns.
“I was looking for Sheriff Eric,” Max says. “We were going to walk Storm this morning.”
“Ah,” I say. “He’ll need to give you a rain check. Something came up last night.”
I don’t fail to notice Max’s gloved hand grip the door. I worded that as carefully as I could, but the last time “something came up,” it was Max being abducted for four days.
“It’s Kendra, right?” he says, his voice tight. “I heard something about that.”
I wave for him to come in as Stephen bounces, waiting to snag the older boy’s attention again.
“Kendra’s fine,” I say. “Someone knocked her down.”
I’m sure as hell not saying someone tried to drag her into the woods. To my growing list of tasks, I add “tell Dana she needs to speak to Max about Kendra before he hears the full story from anyone else.”
Max looks from me to Nicole again. “Do you want me to take Stephen for a while? So you guys can talk?”
I know “sensitive” isn’t always considered a positive trait in boys, but Max’s empathy always makes me smile… while hoping the world never drives it out of him. Not many eleven-year-olds would have realized that Nicole and I were trying to have a conversation, much less offered to help.
“Please,” I say. “Just for a few minutes.”
“I can take him for as long as you want. No lessons this morning.” He taps Stephen’s shoulder. “Wanna come outside with me? The bakery should have cookies, and then we can check out some feathers I saw in the snow. Figure out what kind of bird lost them.”
Dalton has been teaching Max wilderness craft, which Max has been passing on to Stephen. Is the toddler too young for that? Sure, but no one’s telling Max that when he obviously likes passing on what he’s learned, and Stephen doesn’t care whether he understands it or not. What matters is that this older boy is giving him his undivided attention.
Nicole makes sure Stephen’s snowsuit is zipped up and his hood pulled over his hat. Then Max takes his hand. Storm rises with a questioning look my way.
Max sees Storm and says, “Can we take her?”
“Absolutely.”
I give Storm the signal to follow, and she lumbers off with the boys.
As we watch them from the window, Nicole says, “He’s so good with Stephen.”
“He is. That also reminded me that I’ll need to talk to Dana about what happened last night. Let her explain it to Max in whatever way she wants.”
“I’ll do that,” Nicole says. “Talking to Dana, not Max. Though I’ll also offer to talk to Max, being the resident expert on kidnapping trauma.”
There’s a lilt to her voice, and someone hearing her might be forgiven for thinking she’s joking. She’s not, and that lilt rings just a little bit false. Nicole recognizes she has trauma, and she’d really rather not. I get that. I get it so much, which is one reason we’re such good friends.
By the time I arrived in Rockton, Nicole had been missing long enough that there wasn’t even a case file for me to read, much less pursue. She vanished and evidence indicated she was dead. When we found her, she’d been gone over a year, kidnapped and held hostage in a cave. You don’t get over that. You just don’t.
“I can also talk to Kendra,” she says, voice lowering. “That’s why I came by.”
There’s a reason Nicole’s captor held her in that cave, and it’s the obvious reason a man holds a woman prisoner. If Nicole ever doubts how much progress she’s made, I only need to point out where she is today—married to a man she loves with a son they adore. Life can’t compensate us for past trauma, but in Nicole’s case, I like to think it put in a good effort.
“You can speak to Kendra,” I say, “but I’ll take Dana.”
“Why?”
When I give her a look, she says, “Oh, sorry, was that too blunt? Am I supposed to say you don’t need to do that and then we dance around it for a while until I finally need to challenge you?”
I sigh.
“You like the direct approach, so I am being direct, Casey. I can speak to Kendra and Dana, and if Dana likes, I can also speak to Max. Jacob will be back by noon. He can take over toddler watch.”
I want to argue, but her look won’t let me, mostly because she’s right.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll get back to the investigation. I also have to call a town meeting—”
“Nope.”
I cross my arms. “People need to know what happened.”
“Yep, and we can handle that.”
“‘We’ meaning…?”
“Isabel and I will talk to the women. I might ask Yolanda, but I wanted your take on that. I don’t know her well enough.”
“Does anyone?”
“She likes you.”
I snort. “Yolanda tolerates me. She likes most people here—she’s just not obvious about it. Enlist her help. She’ll want that, and she’ll make damn sure everyone takes the threat seriously. But let me talk to her.” I lift my hand against protest. “Not to take on more work, but because I already need to speak to her. She was with Kendra last night.”
“Fine, I’ll grant you that. I’ll speak to Kenny about talking to the men. He’ll know who to enlist.”
“Have him speak to me first.” I raise my hand again. “He isn’t only warning men of possible attack, but almost certainly letting the attacker know just how seriously we’re taking this.”
“Okay. You can speak to Yolanda and Kenny. But that’s it.”
I arch my brows. “May I also speak to potential witnesses?”
“If you insist.” Nicole puts her hat back on. “So how are you doing? And don’t say fine. This is your chance to whine. Take it.”
“I miss my ankles.”
She lets out a choked laugh. “I remember that.”
“Also booze, coffee, and sex.”
Her brows rise. “You can still have forms of sex, Casey. Do I need to have the talk with you?”
I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean. The rest is fine and, at the risk of TMI, Eric is very attentive. I just miss the part that got me here in the first place.”
“Just wait until you’re in labor. I may have grabbed Jacob and told him if he brings that thing near me ever again, it better be wearing a rubber. Two, just to be safe.”
I laugh and shake my head.
She puts on her gloves. “I always wondered why people seem to have babies three years apart. I figured it was to get the first one past the bottles and diapers stage. It’s not. That’s about exactly how long it takes to forget the horrors of pregnancy and birth.”
“Does that mean another nephew or niece might be in our near future?”
Her cheeks color, just a little. “Not quite yet, but at the risk of jinxing it, efforts are being made.”
“Anytime you want us to look after Stephen to help those efforts…”
“Uh-uh. You’re focusing on that little one.” She points at my belly. “We’ve got this.”
“Glad to hear it,” I say, and accompany her out the door. “Now, you wouldn’t have seen Will around, would you?”