Chapter 8
eight
Deputy Murdock had his feet on the desk when they walked in—a deliberate statement if Bear had ever seen one. He dropped them to the floor when he recognized Greta, but the look on his face wasn’t welcoming. More like a man settling in to hear a complaint he’d already decided wasn’t worth his time.
“Ms. Dougherty.” He reached for a notepad, slow and unhurried. “What can I do for you tonight?”
Bear hung back near the door and let her take the lead.
It was her shop. Her report. He crossed his arms and watched Murdock’s face while Greta laid it out—the slashed trailer tire from the night before, the forced gate, the pry marks on the equipment shed, and tonight’s break-in.
The overturned filing cabinet, the smashed display case, the missing laptop.
She described the spray-painted message on the wall without flinching, her voice flat and factual.
Murdock wrote. Slowly.
Bear watched the deputy’s pen move and counted backwards from ten in his head.
“And you have no idea who might have done this,” Murdock said. Not a question.
“I’ve had a competing outfitter trying to poach my client list for three years.
I’ve been asking questions about my missing sister.
There’s a flyer on my window with a reward attached, and someone decided to tear it in half and leave it on my desk.
” Greta set her hands on the counter, flat.
“Those are all separate reasons someone might want to scare me off, Deputy. Any one of them. Or all three.”
Murdock kept writing. “Could’ve been kids.”
“It wasn’t kids.”
“Kids get into all kinds of mischief, Ms. Dougherty. Vandalism is—”
“That message wasn’t mischief.” Her voice stayed level, but her knuckles had gone white. “Someone was inside my business for long enough to search through every drawer, destroy a filing cabinet, spray-paint my planning wall, and arrange a flyer on my desk. That’s not mischief. That’s a message.”
Murdock looked up for the first time. “You got any evidence to support that? Photos? Video from your security system?”
“My security system was bypassed. Someone knew the layout of the shop and knew to disable it.” She pulled out her phone and slid it across the counter—photos she’d taken before they left. “Those are the pry marks from Tuesday night. That’s tonight’s damage. And that’s the wall.”
Murdock looked at the photos with the enthusiasm of a man reviewing a grocery receipt.
Bear’s jaw locked.
He’d been in this room before. Different rooms, same energy—the institutional patience of authority deciding a complaint wasn’t worth the paperwork. He moved forward, putting a hand on the counter. “Deputy—”
Greta’s hand hit his chest. Not hard. Just there. Flat palm, right over his sternum, and when he looked at her, her eyes said don’t. Said it clearly and without room for argument, the way only someone who’d been dismissed by cops their whole life knew how to say it.
He stopped. Stepped back. Let her hand fall away before it lingered long enough to mean something.
The front door banged open.
Lila stood in the threshold in her clinic clothes—stained scrubs, a fleece she’d clearly grabbed on the way out the door—her hair disheveled and her face the color of old milk.
She was still wearing one exam glove on her right hand, half-peeled back at the wrist, like she’d pulled it off mid-thought and forgotten to finish the job.
Her gaze swept the room and landed on Bear.
“Thank God,” she breathed.
He straightened. “What happened?”
She crossed to him quickly, dropping her voice.
“Luke. He got into a minor accident on Route 7. He was over the limit, they took him in, and—” She stopped.
Pressed her lips together, composing herself.
“Goodwin’s here personally. He’s not going to let it slide, Bear.
And I can’t—I can’t get Luke out of there alone, I need someone who can—” Her voice broke on the last word.
She swallowed it fast, but the damage was done.
Lila. Who hadn’t asked Bear for anything in four years.
He looked at Greta.
She’d already turned. Her chin was up, her posture back to that soldier-straight set she used when she was refusing to let anyone see inside her. “Go,” she said.
“Greta—”
“I can finish the report.” She still wasn’t looking at him. Her hand was back on the counter, and she’d turned her body back toward Murdock like Bear was already gone. “Go help Lila.”
He didn’t move immediately. Murdock was leaning back in his chair with the demeanor of a man who would lose the photos on his phone, misplace his notes, and file the report under general vandalism before the week was out. And Greta would be standing at this counter alone while that happened.
But Lila’s face said Luke was spiraling, and the look in her eyes was a quiet, desperate asking that Lila Garrison never showed anyone.
“I’ll be back,” he said to Greta. He put a hand briefly at the small of her back—barely a touch, just long enough for her to know it was intentional—and then went with Lila.
Scene 2
The paperwork took longer than it should have.
Bear stood at the front desk while a uniformed officer who looked too young for the job shuffled forms and asked Lila the same questions twice.
She answered all of them—didn’t flinch, didn’t rush him—standing there in her half-removed exam glove like she’d forgotten she was still wearing it, and gave clear answers until the officer disappeared into the back to retrieve Luke.
Bear said nothing. There was nothing useful to say.
Luke came through the metal door looking like a man who’d been emptied out.
Not drunk anymore, or not only that—the hour in holding had burned through the worst of it and left behind something bleaker.
His jaw had a fresh bruise where he’d caught something in the accident, and he moved with the careful deliberateness of a man who hurt everywhere and was trying not to show it.
He stopped when he saw Bear. “You don’t have to be here.”
“I know.”
Luke looked at Lila for a beat, something complicated moving across his face, and then looked away. “Let’s go.”
Bear drove Lila’s truck because Lila wasn’t in a state to drive and Luke was in no state for anything. Nobody suggested otherwise. The backseat was quiet except for Luke’s uneven breathing, and the road unspooled dark and empty ahead of them.
Lila stared out the passenger window the whole way. Her hands were in her lap, fingers laced, the exam glove finally gone. Bear didn’t ask what she was thinking. Didn’t try to fill the silence.
He got Luke inside and onto the couch without ceremony. Luke sat down hard and leaned his head back against the cushions, and when Bear pulled a blanket off the armchair and dropped it over him, he didn’t protest. Just closed his eyes.
That was the worst sign of all. Luke Garrison didn’t accept things quietly. He fought everything—help, sleep, care, consequence. The stillness wasn’t peace. It was surrender.
Bear found Lila in the kitchen. She’d filled the kettle and put it on the stove and was now standing in front of it with both hands braced on the counter, her back to the room.
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table and waited.
The kettle ticked as the water heated. Outside, something moved in the dark—wind in the trees, or a car somewhere down the block. Lila didn’t move until the kettle began to whistle, and then she pulled two mugs down from the cabinet without asking Bear if he wanted any.
She set one in front of him and sat down across the table with her own, wrapping both hands around it. She stared into the tea for a long moment.
“He’s been like this for months.” Her voice was quiet, controlled.
The voice of a woman who’d been holding herself very still for a very long time.
“Not just drinking—though it’s gotten worse.
It’s more like he’s just... stopped trying.
Like he’s waiting for something to happen that he doesn’t actually want to survive. ”
Bear held his mug. The heat came through the ceramic and into his palms. “Have you talked to him about that?”
“I’ve tried.” She shook her head. “He shuts down. Or he deflects. He’s very good at it.”
“He’s a soldier without a war,” Bear said. “Men like that either find a new mission or they turn inward.” He paused. “The inward ones are harder.”
“I know.” She looked up. “You were like that.”
“Yeah.”
“What changed it for you?”
He thought about his first night at the ranch, fresh out of prison, when all he wanted to do was run, and Boone had convinced him to stay.
“Time,” he said at last. “And someone who didn’t let me disappear entirely.”
Lila held his gaze for a moment, then looked back down at her tea.
He didn’t tell her the other part—that some men didn’t make it to the other side of it. That time only helped if a man was still around to use it. He didn’t think Lila needed to hear that tonight. She already knew it. That was the exact thing sitting behind her eyes and making them so tired.
She talked for a little while longer. Not about Luke this time—about their father dying, about the clinic, about the life she’d come home to hold together when her own plans had been pointing somewhere else entirely.
She talked the way people did when they’d been carrying something quietly for too long and suddenly had a table and a warm mug and someone who wasn’t going to flinch at what they heard.
At some point, the tears came. She pressed her fingers under her eyes and breathed through it and didn’t make a sound, and Bear didn’t make a big thing of it. Just stayed where he was.
When she was done, she set her mug down. “Thank you for coming.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
She almost smiled. “I know. That’s why I did.” She straightened in her chair, some of the composure coming back into her spine. “You should go. It’s late. You have Logan.”