The Harborer (Fall River #4)

Chapter 1

Trivialities

Deputy Sheriff Shane O’Brien was seven miles north of Fall River, his home base, ready to wrap up a ten-hour shift at the end of another grueling workday.

And just in time. An early October storm was moving in, and the gun-metal-gray sky threatened to dump a blizzard-load of snow.

“Ten-hour shift” was a laughable description, though.

Each of his shifts seemed to stretch way beyond ten, like today’s, which was verging on sixteen.

The worst part of these long shifts? Most of his working hours were spent solving problems that could be taken care of by someone besides him.

And it wasn’t that he had an over-inflated image of himself or a runaway ego that needed constant tending, but damn it, he was a trained law enforcement officer and a member of the local search and rescue team.

Weren’t there more important things for him to do—like save lives and nab bad guys—than track down idiot tourists pitching tents in the middle of trails because those were “the most scenic spots”?

The morning had started with a call from a panicked parent.

“There’s an elk herd in the school parking lot, and no one can get their cars out!

” Shane had been the closest deputy to the scene and had had to reverse course while he’d been out on patrol.

No surprise, by the time he’d reached the school, the herd had moved on and so had the parents.

Normally, Sheriff Chesterton would have gone along with Shane’s suggestion to wait, but that same parent was one of the sheriff’s chief donors.

With his re-election campaign in full swing, Chesterton had folded like a cheap camp chair in a windstorm.

Yesterday, it had been old Mrs. Danvers complaining about a raccoon staring at her from outside her kitchen window.

“He won’t stop looking at me, and he won’t leave!

” This was the same woman who reported squirrels congregating on her lawn.

During the last big snowstorm, she’d accused her neighbor of purposely directing his snowblower so it threw the white stuff on her driveway.

Shane had ended up shoveling it for her.

Grumbling about it wasn’t going to make a difference, though. Besides, the extra work gave him another opportunity to show his superior he could meet any challenge while balancing his time with Search and Rescue, even if those “challenges” could have more accurately been labeled “trivialities.”

Of course, clocking more hours left no time to expand his social life beyond the usual handful of childhood buddies and their significant others.

Hell, he didn’t even have time to take care of a dog—not that his landlord would allow one, but still, it would have been nice to think he could come home to some tail-wagging once in a while.

Thirty-two years old and single, sometimes it felt as though he was caught in a hamster wheel. Go, go, go and never get anywhere.

Shane stuffed down his frustration—he’d had a lot of practice at it lately—shifting his attention to what he could control.

Right now, he needed a shower. He needed a beer.

He needed sleep. Not necessarily in that order.

At least this stretch of road was quiet, so he’d be back in Fall River in ten minutes.

After two more shifts, he’d be ready for his three days of downtime.

Maybe. If he didn’t get called out by Search and Rescue, which, with bad weather moving in, was a real possibility.

There was an upside if it happened, though.

He’d be out of his cramped, lonely apartment, serving someone in need while pulling crisp, clean mountain air into his lungs.

Driving down this ribbon of road flanked by deep timber on either side often elicited unwelcome thoughts of his father, and this time was no different.

Was Dad out there somewhere, as yet undiscovered?

Or was he living his best life—one that didn’t include his wife and sons—laughing his ass off in Costa Rica or some other tropical paradise?

Memories stirred up powerful, unrelenting emotions that Shane struggled to wrangle into submission—maybe because his fatigue had exposed his unfilled cracks.

His radio sprang to life, jolting him from his black mood and saving him from meandering farther down the moldering path that was Memory Lane. “431, copy a crash.”

He keyed his radio. “431.”

Donna clipped in her typical tone. “Vehicle versus elk, Hwy 550, mile thirty-nine. Black Ford pickup, heavy front damage. Injuries unknown. EMS en route.”

“Copy, vehicle versus elk.” He repeated the location. “En route from Fall River, five-minute ETA.” He flipped on his overhead lights and made a U-turn.

“10-4. You’re primary. Animal Control notified.”

“Affirmative. Start a tow, priority.”

“Tow started. Advise on scene,” Donna said.

“431 responding.”

Dispatch: “10-4.”

It wasn’t exactly running down drug dealers, but at least this call was more exciting than dealing with Mrs. Danvers’s endless, trivial complaints. And maybe he’d be saving a life after all.

An hour later, Shane crossed into Fall River and cruised down Bowen Street—the town’s main drag and only paved road. Despite the dreary, chilly day, townsfolk trundled along the sidewalks, past the mostly shuttered shops and restaurants, and they waved at him as he went by.

A few blocks later, he parked in the lot behind the Sheriff’s Office and entered the building, where a familiar volunteer manned the front desk.

Shane gave him a nod. “Gunderson.”

Holt Gunderson returned the greeting. “O’Brien.

” Gunderson was a ranger with the National Park Service and a full-time Fall River resident who occasionally filled in for the Sheriff’s Department.

In his late twenties, he was a few years younger than Shane and just as single, so when the sheriff had approached him about volunteering, Gunderson had accepted.

And thank God. Being short-staffed sucked.

And with Sheriff Chesterton hyperfocused on his re-election campaign, their woeful state of personnel wasn’t going to improve anytime soon.

The volunteer deputy leaned back in his chair. “I hear you had to deal with a messy crash on 550.”

“Depends on your definition of ‘messy.’ A delivery truck had a run-in with an elk. It totaled the vehicle. The driver was lucky he wasn’t injured, though he was plenty shaken. Understandably.” A trained EMT, Shane had checked the guy out and cleared him.

“What happened to the elk?”

Shane pulled off his official beanie. “The driver said it disappeared over the embankment. I looked, but I didn’t find any trace.”

“There’s nothing but dark timber around that area,” Gunderson noted. “No wonder you didn’t find it.”

Gunderson was right, but not locating the animal gnawed at Shane. Stuff like that always did. “Hopefully it survived without any serious damage.” And if it didn’t, he prayed it wasn’t suffering even now as it succumbed to injury.

“Donna says Allen was the wrecker on scene?”

“Yep. I hung around until he arrived and loaded up the heap. He took the driver too.”

Micky Allen owned Fall River’s garage. He was the town’s lone mechanic, and he also ran the only towing service for miles. A big chunk of his work came courtesy of the sheriff’s department.

Gunderson twiddled a pen. “Good. Allen might be an idiot of epic proportion, but he knows what the hell he’s doing when it comes to anything that has wheels.”

Shane nodded his agreement. He’d grown up with Micky and was way too familiar with the nonsense the guy got up to. When Micky had offered the driver a lift, though, Shane had slumped in relief. Micky would make sure the driver and his twisted hunk of metal got where they needed to go.

Donna poked her head out of the little office that housed Dispatch. The look on the older woman’s face broadcast she had bad news. “I know you’re technically off-duty, but you’re the only patrol deputy I’ve got.”

Shane gave her a chin lift. “I still have to write up my report on that crash. What’s up?”

“I just got a call from Bruno Keating. He wants to file a formal complaint against Mountain Coffee, and I was hoping you could check things out so we can maybe—”

Donna said “deflect” at the same time Shane said “derail.”

Bruno Keating was the owner of Dells, a dive bar on a parallel street.

He was also an Aspen attorney with bleached platinum hair, a spray-on tan, and a Napoleon complex.

He had vied for a position on the city council and lost to the owner of Mountain Coffee.

Bruno believed he had an ax to grind, and he was doing his damnedest to grind it.

“What’s his problem with the coffee shop?” Shane asked.

“He says their sidewalk A-frame sign is three feet over where it should be.”

Shane stared at her.

Gunderson snorted. “I suppose he’s taken measurements down to a sixteenth of an inch.”

Donna’s expression was one of apology. “I know you’ve been putting in a lot of time lately, so I hate to ask.”

Shane grinned. “No problem. I’ll take care of it.”

Her eyes rounded, and her mouth curled up in a hesitant smile. “Really? You don’t mind?”

“Not since it’s you doing the asking.” He gave her a wink and spun on his heel.

This was another of those small-town trivialities that would normally chafe at him like a bad rash, but this one was different. This one would take him right to Amy Caufield’s door.

Nope, he didn’t mind one little bit.

He took a minute in the restroom to wash up and try to flatten that one stubborn sprig of hair on his crown.

Then he was back on Bowen Street in his own truck, driving past the general store, which housed his studio apartment upstairs.

As he crept along, he peered inside Mountain Coffee.

The place had closed at two and was buttoned up tight, but it didn’t stop his caffeine addiction from rushing to the fore.

A mug of strong, aromatic coffee would really hit the spot right now.

The store served the best java in town, and he knew this because he stopped in nearly every day to fill his insulated tumbler.

Caffeine was the fuel that got him going at the ass crack of dawn or woke him up in the middle of the night when he got called out, and too often what he got was the watered-down dregs from the Sheriff’s Office or convenience stores.

But it wasn’t only the rich, bold aroma and the full flavor that made him a frequent flyer at Mountain Coffee.

The store’s owner served her brew along with her smile, which was one of the prettiest he’d ever seen.

Amy Caufield was his favorite business owner in town.

Amy was his favorite woman in town. Amy was his favorite person in town.

She didn’t know it, and neither did her live-in boyfriend—who was none other than Micky Allen—and Shane intended to keep it that way.

Not that he had a thing for her because he didn’t.

He couldn’t. Like so many of the women in Fall River, Amy was taken.

Never mind that the guy who claimed her didn’t deserve her.

Didn’t change the fact that she belonged to him, and she was completely off-limits.

There were certain lines one never crossed, and trying to take another man’s woman was a line made of forged steel. Besides, Amy wasn’t the type to stray. No, her loyalty was the superglue that kept that couple together, despite the fact they were a terrible fit. And everyone in town knew it.

Chrome flashed in the skinny space between the coffee shop and the business beside it as he passed.

A vehicle was behind the buildings. Turning off on the closest side street, he turned again into the alleyway, where he spied a battered white SUV parked behind Mountain Coffee.

This was an old Pathfinder, and it didn’t belong there.

He pulled in behind it and threw his pickup into park.

No one was supposed to be at Mountain Coffee this late in the afternoon.

He loped cautiously toward the back door, which stood ajar, setting off a series of internal alarm bells in his head. Voices drifted out, and he paused to listen.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you guys jumping through these hoops for me.”

Shane recognized that voice instantly. Amy. What was she doing here at this hour? And where was her Explorer?

A male voice rumbled something about his boss wanting to be sure she had everything she needed.

“And tell your boss I’m so sorry to hear about the accident. I’ll give him a call in a few days and see how he’s doing.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that,” said the dude.

Then the door flew open, and a fireplug of a dark-haired guy cursed as he nearly walked into Shane. “Shit, man! Scared the piss outta me.”

“Sorry, dude.” Shane stood aside and let the guy pass, watching as he climbed into the Pathfinder.

When he headed through the doorway, his spirits lifted.

Amy stood beyond the open door in the shop’s vestibule, and she beamed him one of her gloriously sunny smiles, making his heart pound a little harder than it should have.

“Shane! What are you doing here?” Eyes like polished mahogany danced with delight.

“I saw a vehicle behind your shop and thought I should check it out.”

She shook her head, and glossy black strands caught in a ponytail swished across her slight shoulders. “Deputy Shane, do you ever take a break?” she teased as she motioned him inside.

He grinned. “I could ask you the same thing, Barista Amy. It’s way past your quitting time. And where’s your car?”

“I walked. You don’t miss anything in this town, do you?”

He shrugged, a herky-jerky movement that made him aware he was a little flustered. “Just doing my job.”

“And you do it well. Come on in.”

That one smile and her friendly words held the power to sweep away all memory of his shit day, replacing it with warmth and a strange hope he had no business feeding.

It occurred to Shane he shouldn’t follow her inside, where it would just be the two of them.

Yes, he needed to talk to her about Bruno’s complaint, though that was somewhere near the bottom of his list of reasons for being here right now.

Something about her spun him up, drew him in, and he couldn’t find the will to turn away.

And in that moment, he didn’t give a goddamn.

He caved to the pull of Amy’s orbit and followed her like a puppy chasing down a treat.