Chapter 13
Thirteen
I’m going to hell on a full scholarship.
—Sage’s secret thoughts
Sage
Luckily, I was in the triage area of the emergency room today instead of the actual ER.
Being in the triage area meant that I saw any patients before they went back to be seen. I took their vitals, decided if they were emergent enough to be sent straight back, and sat the ones that weren’t.
Even better, today had been a fairly slow day.
Not that I would be admitting any of that aloud.
It was always best to pretend like you didn’t notice than acknowledging it.
Because if you acknowledged it, shit tended to go downhill.
I was balls deep into my investigation of Sarah and Ismael Pollard when I heard a throat clear.
I looked up, expecting to see a patient, and found Gentry standing there instead.
I would not admit how freakin’ excited it made me to see him.
Then the panic set in.
“Is Neo okay?”
Gentry and I were currently working opposite shifts so that one of us could be home with Neo in case something happened.
If he was here…
“He’s fine. I fed him before I left to grab lunch,” he said as he placed a plastic sack of food down on the desk in front of me.
“While I was there, there was a woman who told me about how bad the hospital sucked to work at, and how their food was nothing better than school cafeteria food. She kind of implied that I should bring you lunch.”
I wilted slightly.
I wouldn’t admit to myself that I had wanted him to want to bring me lunch.
Then I berated myself because why would he? He wasn’t anything to me.
Hell, I wouldn’t even call him a friend at this point.
More like acquaintances, no matter what our previous marriage license said.
“Oh, hello, Officer.”
I gritted my teeth when I looked to the side to see one of my least favorite nurses, Camille Rhodes, standing there looking way too done up to be a nurse at a county hospital in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, she was wearing diamonds, for Christ’s sake.
No sane nurse would wear her entire diamond collection to work as a nurse.
But apparently, Camille hadn’t gotten that memo.
Gentry made my entire day by nodding his head at her but not speaking.
Camille looked taken aback.
“Are you here to give me a lunch?” I asked sweetly.
I’d asked for a bathroom break over an hour and a half ago.
I was informed that they were ‘short-staffed’ and that I could ‘go on my lunch break.’
I knew that Camille wasn’t there to offer me that break. She was there because she’d seen Gentry.
“Oh, um…” Camille started.
Using her appearance as the excuse I needed, I snatched my food and signed out of the charting system.
I gave Camille a little wave, then went to announce to the charge nurse that I was taking lunch.
All the while, Gentry stuck close.
I held out the food to him when we reached the end of the hallway that would lead to the break room. “I have to pee something fierce. Hold this. Then we can go outside and I can tell you what I’ve discovered so far.”
Before he could say yes or no I shoved the food at him and dove into the bathroom.
I was groaning with relief moments later.
I took so long using the restroom that when I got out, I was slightly embarrassed.
“Feel better?” he asked, amusement lighting his eyes.
“I had to pee when I got here today,” I admitted. “They’re supposed to give me a break every hour and a half, just for five minutes, in case I need to do anything. But when I get shoved into the triage room, mostly everyone forgets I’m there. When I call back for a cover, they’re always ‘busy.’”
“Hmm,” Gentry said as he kept my food in his hands and started walking out of the hospital. “How long do you have?”
I looked at my watch. “In a perfect world, I’d have forty-five minutes. In this world, I probably have thirty minutes max before someone is out here looking for me.”
I took a seat and he placed the bag in my lap.
He took the seat beside me and stretched his long legs out in front of him. His arms went to the bench at my back, one stretching out behind me, and the other going at an angle so the only thing resting was the back of his arm.
It was a normal move, and something that in no way should’ve appeared as sexy as it was.
I also shouldn’t find his current running shorts and a sweatshirt attractive, but I did.
Even his knees were sexy.
“Tell me what you found,” he ordered.
I unwrapped a generic turkey sandwich and took a bite.
I grimaced when I tasted tomato, then chewed quickly before spreading my sandwich apart and removing the tomato from both halves.
I tossed it into the bushes for the birds and went on to explain to him what I’d found.
“All of the parents had a connection.” I wiped my mouth and pulled out my phone. “All three went on playdates at the local playground on Saturday mornings. They played parkour with a city park employee.”
“Parkour?” He sounded surprised.
“Yes, it’s something that usually the younger crowd is interested in. It’s where you jump over things and stuff like that.”
“I know what parkour is,” he admitted. “I just didn’t realize that we had an organized parkour planned meeting.”
“It’s apparently really popular,” I said. “It’s taught by a local. I haven’t found that local’s name yet, though.”
He pulled out his phone and called someone.
He put it on speaker and stole one of my chips.
The phone rang and a woman answered with, “City of Bear Pass Recreation Department.”
“Cilia, this is Deputy Ryan. Do y’all have an organized parkour thing for the city’s youth?”
“Oh, yeah,” Cilia answered, sounding overly excited.
“It’s a big thing around here, too. We took two months or so off for the regular parkour teacher to be on maternity leave, that then turned into bereavement leave after her son was stillborn.
The youth of Bear Pass were in an uproar not having their parkour time.
It was apparently very, very popular. I’ve never seen so many crying kids in my life as parent after parent came in asking when it would start up again. ”
That actually sounded really cute, though sad.
“Who teaches it now?”
“It’s kind of just a fill in as you go thing as we wait for Mrs. Marren to come back.
Sometimes it’s the city manager that fills in.
Heck, one time we even got the city’s secretary to fill in, though she wasn’t very happy about it.
One time it was a random park manager, one of your friends, I think.
Creed? The teacher is supposed to be back in a week and a half if all things go well. ”
“Names?” he repeated, sounding terse.
Cilia shot off the names of the people who covered it, including the woman that’d been on maternity leave.
“Anything wrong, Deputy Ryan?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “Just doing some research.”
He wrote the names down in a book he’d pulled out of his pocket, then took a photo of the names and sent it via text to Black.
His writing was small, blocky, and very man-like.
I loved it.
“Kelly Waller,” I mused as I read one of the names. “She doesn’t seem the type to volunteer her time.”
“Probably wasn’t volunteer,” Gentry admitted. “She’s being shared between the sheriff’s department and the park and recreation department. There’s not enough stuff for her to do at both places, so she kind of sits in the lobby of both departments and fields everyone’s shit as they come in.”
“Ahhh.” I nodded in understanding. “At least she’s not in your department full-time.”
He gave me a look that was clearly unamused. “If there was one person I could erase from my life right now, it’d definitely be her. I can’t believe Black gave her that job. I mean, I understand feeling a sense of obligation to find a job for your brother’s daughter but…”
“You can say niece,” I teased as I took a healthy bite of my sandwich.
The garlic and mayo combination melted on my tongue.
I groaned. “So good.”
He studied my mouth where I knew a large glob of mayonnaise waited but kept talking despite the distraction that was my messy self.
“I’m telling you that she’s not his niece.
A niece can be a best friend’s daughter, for Christ’s sake.
What Kelly Waller is? That doesn’t count.
If you’d seen Black and her in the same room, you would never in a million years think that they have a familial connection.
And the crazy thing is that Black is close to his brother, Elesio.
I see him at least twice a week when Black and him go out to lunch.
Kelly Waller doesn’t even acknowledge her own father. ”
“Was she raised by him?” I wondered.
“Nope.” Gentry handed me a napkin.
I took pity on him and wiped my face free of the mayo and garlic sauce concoction.
“That’s probably why,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t explain why Black hired her. If he dislikes her, and they don’t feel that familial connection, why would he go out of his way to give her a job?”
“He loves his brother,” Gentry explained. “And his brother asked him to.”
I took another healthy bite of my sandwich.
“This sandwich is the best sandwich I’ve ever tasted,” I found myself saying. “Where’s it from?”
“The Mercantile.”
I snapped my fingers. “I’ve been meaning to go there. I’ve heard lots of good things about it, but I haven’t had a chance to get inside of it yet.”
“Worth every overpriced penny you spend,” he said. “You gonna finish that?”
I brought the sandwich closer to my chest. “Maybe.”
His eyes sparkled as he shoved his notebook back into his shorts pocket before he put his arm back behind me and along the back of the bench.
“Been meaning to talk to you about something,” he said as a rumble of thunder startled me out of my happy, quiet thoughts.
I looked over to him to find him staring up at the sky.
“What?”
He gestured toward the sky. “When the winter hits, that car you’re driving isn’t going to cut it.”
I frowned. “The guy that sold me the car assured me that it would be perfectly adequate in the winter.”
“That guy was lying out of his ass,” Gentry grumbled. “You’ll make it around town—if they plow—but if you need to go anywhere else? That car ain’t gonna get you anywhere.”
Sometimes when he talked, his accent slipped out.
I loved it.
The short time that I’d talked to him when he was trying to get my mind on other things besides rapists and dead men, he’d told me that he was originally from Florida and then joined the Army and had been based everywhere.
When I’d pointed out that he had a bit of a Southern accent, he told me that I was hearing things.
But seriously, what northerner had ever said “ain’t gonna” in their life?
It was cute.
The smile slipped off my face when a nurse came out to sit on the other side of Gentry.
She was one of the worst ones.
Her name was Tanny, and she liked to go for married men. She liked to see if she could get the married men to give her the attention when they were in the rooms with the men’s wives.
I knew this because I’d heard her talking before with her other stuck-up jerk nurse friends and Tanny said that it was a fun game that she liked to play.
When Tanny’s smile came out, Gentry fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
I gritted my teeth and took a vicious bite of my sandwich, trying to ignore the conversation that Gentry was having with Tanny about the weather.
And somehow, my car got brought up again, and it only made me angrier.
First, the woman flirted with a man who was supposedly married to me—because this town was too fucking small for her not to have heard about my morning. I’d heard it several times myself around the staff. That had to be why she was doing this.
She fucking loved the chase, but she also highly disliked me. Mostly because I made three times the amount that she did. Something that she pointed out any chance that she could.
Secondly, I didn’t like the fact that I was so na?ve about snow and cars that I’d bought a vehicle that wouldn’t be able to get me around half the year. That was exactly what I’d needed. A car that couldn’t drive me where I needed to go for six months of the year.
The bad thing was, I’d specifically asked the man I’d bought the car from if the car would be good in the winter, and he’d told me yes.
Straight to my face, no hint of a lie. Just straight to my face, told me that my small car would be perfect for the winter here.
I didn’t like feeling dumb.
I probably would’ve been fine had it only been Gentry telling me that the car wouldn’t make it in the winter, but then Tanny had to add onto that conversation.
“Oh, she’ll learn.” Tanny lightly slapped Gentry’s arm with a knowing smirk on her face. “The hard way, most likely.”
I gritted my teeth and stuffed the last bit of sandwich into my mouth even though I was so full I could barely stand it.
The remaining chips followed suit, and I was gathering up my trash moments later.
Standing, I gave both Gentry and Tanny a level look before saying, “Where I’m from, we had maybe one day a year where there was snow.
And people didn’t drive in the snow if they could help it.
So…how was I supposed to know this car wasn’t good enough?
I asked the man I was buying it from. He told me that he’d been living in Montana since he was a boy. He said it would be fine.”
Gentry narrowed his eyes at my stiffness.
He eyed my hands that were full of the trash from my lunch, then looked up at me.
I let my gaze bounce from one asshole to the other before I turned around and walked inside. Before I reached the door, I called, “Thanks for the sandwich, hubby.”
I didn’t know what it was about Tanny that rubbed me the wrong way, but I had a feeling she was behind every irritating thing that happened in the hospital that day.
Hell, most days.
She was always there, because she was stuck up the charge nurse’s ass and asking for the good patients. She loved to piss women off and couldn’t stand when men didn’t give her attention.
Hell, I’d seen plenty of firefighters come through here that thought she was the dirt on the bottom of their shoes, and it made her irrationally angry for the rest of the day when they didn’t smile at her or treat her playfully.
Most likely, their wives caught on to her actions and told them that they needed to clean their act up or else.
There was always this one female firefighter who came in that clearly hated Tanny and never missed a beat when Tanny started pulling her shit.
It always made my day to see because Tanny always stumbled over herself to leave when she arrived.
Maybe I’d get lucky today and that firefighter would make her way into the ER to bring in a patient.
Nothing would make me happier than to see Tanny brought down a couple of notches.