Chapter 7 Annie #2
“Well, say something,” she said, suddenly embarrassed at the sweeping range of emotions she’d put on display in the last ten minutes. It had been a long time since she’d given another person such an uninterrupted look at the inside of her head.
“I’m just processing. I mean, it’s more words than you’ve said all put together since you moved to town.” He lifted her doughnut from the napkin and took a bite.
“And I’m glad you told me,” he said around the mouthful, “but that last part isn’t exactly true, is it?”
Annie snatched the doughnut back. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that bit about you not being able to do anything else. You could have been anything you set your mind to, Annie.” He gestured toward her with a hand.
“I mean, look at you. You’re smart, and funny.
And tough as an old boot.” He laughed. “But to be honest, I haven’t met many girls who prefer to spend their days out in the woods, getting muddy and torn up out there, tracking animals or going head-to-head with guys hunting and fishing where they’re not supposed to be.
It’s, uh… it’s kind of intimidating. In a good way. ”
Annie’s cheeks flushed with pride. It was a compliment she’d been paid before, one that she always heard as You’re just like your father.
Jake folded his hands together on the desk. “So, you left Bend because…”
Annie took an unsteady breath and condensed the months of heartache into one word.
“Breakup.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded, looked away. “Oldest story in the world. My husband and a younger woman.”
Jake’s mouth fell open. “You serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Are… are you okay?”
Annie shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’m still in that early phase where it feels like you’re at the bottom of a great big hole and you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to dig yourself out.”
Jake’s reply was quiet. “You will. As soon as you figure out how to put down the shovel.”
Annie turned to meet his eyes, and in them, she saw hurt.
Old and deep, perhaps mostly healed, but hurt nonetheless.
She leaned back in her chair and looked at him then, really looked at him: the young, handsome face, the slender cross tattooed on his forearm, the fingers interlaced on the desk.
With a lump in her throat, Annie realized that the happy-go-lucky man beside her had once had his heart broken, too.
“You?” she asked quietly.
Jake’s shoulders rose and fell. “Long time ago.”
Annie waited.
“High school sweetheart,” he said after a beat, looking away.
“Bought a ring and everything. Found out about the other guy the day before I was planning to propose.” He coughed and sat a little straighter in his chair.
“I don’t know. Time goes by and you figure maybe everything really does happen for a reason.
I was just a kid. A selfish kid. The breakup forced me to reflect on a lot.
I realized I wanted to live life for something more than myself.
My faith got a whole lot more real, and this”—he waved a hand around at the small office—“best job I could think of to do some good for the town.”
He smiled, but there was sadness in it.
“I’m sorry,” Annie said.
Jake stretched a hand across the desk, as though he might cover hers with it, but he seemed to think better of it at the last second and dropped it instead.
“Thank you,” she said, to cover the awkward silence that followed. “I guess neither of us meant to air all our baggage at once like that.”
The phone on the desk chirped loudly, startling them both.
Jake snatched it up. “Yello?”
Annie watched as his expression grew serious, then crumpled completely into slack-jawed disbelief.
“Ben—Ben, slow down, tell me where you are… Okay… And, and you’re sure?
You’re absolutely positive she’s dead?… No, you drop Layla off with Delores and meet me back out there, we’ll park up at Lewis Ridge and hike down to the spot…
All right, I will, and, Ben, don’t breathe a word of this to anyone else, you understand?
I’ll take a statement from you when we get up there. ”
Jake hung up the phone and stood, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair and sliding an arm into it.
“I need your help.” He turned to Annie again. “Can you identify claw marks on a body?”
Annie’s voice failed her, and she nodded.
“Then I need you to come with me. Ben Gannon just found a dead hiker down below the eastern Lewis Ridge trail. He thought she fell, but when he got up to her, he said her body was all torn apart. He thought maybe a bear or cougar had gotten to her, but then he saw…” Jake hesitated with one arm in his jacket.
“What?” Annie asked, though she wasn’t certain she wanted to know.
“Bruises. Bruises around her neck. Like… like hands.”
Annie’s breath caught in her throat.
Again came the thought she had carried with her through the snow. I didn’t sign up for this.
Jake zipped his jacket and nodded to the back corner of the room. “Grab my camera, will you? It’s there in the filing cabinet. I need to give Doc Porter a quick call and have him clear his schedule for an autopsy.”
Annie found the Nikon in the bottom drawer and slid the strap around her neck with her eyes on Jake. The phone was pinched between his ear and shoulder as he relayed details and curt instructions to the doctor while scribbling out a note on the desk.
She’d never seen him like this. Restrained. Assured. In control. This was a completely different Jake Proudy. This was the officer who had graduated top of his class at the academy, the lovable, goofy boy-next-door shoved aside by the man of action.
“You ready?” he asked over his shoulder as he hung up the phone.
Annie nodded, though she wasn’t sure she would ever be ready for what they were about to see at Lewis Ridge.