Chapter 2
Sarah Meyer killed the engine and sat for a second with her hands on the wheel.
Home.
Outside, the night had settled in properly. The world had surrendered to November, and it wasn’t giving it back soon. Frost edged the windshield where the heater hadn’t quite reached. Her breath ghosted faintly in the cab.
Sarah closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat.
The hard part of Tuesday was over. Ten hours on shift. One domestic that had gone nowhere good. A call about a snowmachine that hadn’t come back when it should have—a kid who’d run out of fuel and pride. Paperwork still waiting on her desk that she’d deal with in the morning.
Right now she wanted five hours of sleep and maybe, if the weather held, to take Captain out this weekend. Just her, the horse, and enough open space to remember what quiet actually felt like.
Her radio erupted before she could reach for the door handle. “Sheriff.”
She picked it up without looking. “Go ahead.”
Dispatch came through. “Got a call from Marty Larsen at the Rusty Anchor. Says there’s a guy in there asking questions, and a regular took exception.”
Sarah pushed upright, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “And?”
“He says the guy put Dale Kincaid on the floor.” A pause. “Said he did it without breaking a sweat.”
Dale Kincaid was six-four, built like he’d been poured into his skin, and mean when he’d had enough whiskey.
“Anyone hurt?” she asked, reaching for the ignition.
“Negative. Says it’s under control now, but—” Dispatch hesitated. “Marty didn’t like the feel of it.”
“On my way.” She set the radio back in its cradle and started the engine.
Home would keep. It always did.
She threw the truck into gear and pulled out onto the road, tires crunching over packed snow. The town lay a few minutes out, lights scattered against the dark.
“Without breaking a sweat,” she muttered under her breath.
She should have known better than to think Tuesday was done with her.
She pulled in outside the bar and parked at an angle that gave her a clear line to the door. “Dispatch, unit one on scene.”
“Copy that.”
Walter’s cruiser rolled in behind her as she stepped out, gravel crunching under his tires. He got out of his vehicle, pulling his hat down against the cold. “Rusty Anchor,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Figured.” He slammed the car door behind him and followed her inside.
Marty was behind the bar with a dish towel in his hand, not quite drying the glass he was holding.
The chalkboard behind him still listed halibut chowder as a special from three days ago.
Coffee burned somewhere in the back, bitter and old.
Nobody ever admitted it was bad. It was hot, and in November, that was enough.
Kincaid had retreated to the back corner, rubbing his shoulder and pretending he wasn’t.
A couple at the pool table had gone still mid-shot, one hand braced on the felt, the other still holding the cue.
Two more at the window, hunched over longnecks, watching without looking like they were watching.
A room holding its breath in the aftermath.
“Marty?”
He jerked his head toward the stranger at the far end of the bar. The man sat angled away from the entrance, one hand resting on a folder. The other was wrapped around a cup of coffee. Working, not drinking.
City jacket. Boots that cost more than her monthly mortgage. The line of his shoulders said military. Or something close to it.
He turned and stood.
The world stopped making sense, and the room tilted almost imperceptibly beneath her boots.
Fifteen years disappeared. Hay tickling her nose in a barn loft. Summer laughter. A nineteen-year-old boy who'd kissed her once beneath a sky full of stars.
The stolen kiss she'd spent half her life pretending hadn't mattered.
Hudson Kane.
He'd been lean at nineteen, all long bones and restless energy, not yet grown into himself.
This man dominated the room.
Broad through the chest and shoulders now, with a stillness that came from knowing exactly what his body could do and never needing to prove it.
For one unprofessional second, her brain short-circuited.
The boy was gone. She'd have known him anywhere.
Hudson—
Training took over. The sheriff closed over the girl she’d been, sealing her away before Sarah could stare or say his name aloud. Years of learning to be the still point in any room locked around her.
She shifted her weight forward, onto the balls of her feet, resting one hand against her belt. Walter was two steps behind her, oblivious, already sizing up Kincaid. The bar was watching. Nothing about this could look different from any other Tuesday.
“Sir.” Her voice came out level and carried clean across the room. “Stay where you are.”
Hudson’s knuckles whitened, then eased. Something tightened at the corner of his mouth, pain or recognition, gone too quickly to name. His eyes gave her nothing. Whatever seeing her had done to him, he had it locked down tighter than she had.
Fine. Two can play at that.
“ID.” She held out her hand.
He reached inside his jacket and handed it over. His fingers brushed hers for a fraction of a second, and her heart stumbled. She ignored the warmth that lingered.
She flipped the credentials open and read them as if she didn’t already know exactly whose name was going to be printed there.
Deputy United States Marshal. Hudson Kane.
Sarah closed the credentials and handed them back. “Deputy Marshal.”
Two words. All the space she was willing to give it.
“Sheriff.”
She turned her attention from him, letting the room breathe again under her control. Kincaid had straightened up. Walter had a hand on his arm that looked casual but wasn’t.
Over by the back window, Hal Jackson set his beer down a little too carefully. Hal had been old when Wyatt was in high school, and he never forgot a face. He recognized Hudson. She kept her expression neutral.
“Anyone injured?” she asked.
“No,” Marty said quickly. “No, nothing like that. Dale just—” He glanced at Kincaid and thought better of finishing.
Kincaid spat something under his breath that didn’t quite make words.
Sarah looked at him. “You want to press charges?”
“What? No.” He straightened, dignity reassembling itself in uneven pieces. “Guy just got lucky.”
Sarah didn’t look at Hudson.
“Mm.” She let the silence stretch. “Then you’re done here.”
Kincaid’s mouth pinched, but he nodded.
Walter waited, one hand resting lightly on Kincaid’s arm.
Sarah turned to Hudson. “Your version.”
“Kincaid didn’t like the questions I was asking.”
“What questions?”
Hudson’s gaze held hers. “About a man I’m looking for.”
“And that put Dale on the floor?”
“He took a swing.”
She glanced at Kincaid. “You hit him?”
Kincaid swore under his breath and she looked back at Hudson.
“I moved.” Hudson didn’t look away from her. “He didn’t.”
“You want to press charges?”
“No.”
God. She remembered that calm. The absolute certainty of it. She locked the thought down.
“Anyone else involved?”
“No.”
“No weapon?”
“No.”
Hudson’s answers were clean, without defensiveness or wasted detail.
It matched what she’d already seen. That didn’t make it sit any better.
“You’ll come by the station tomorrow morning,” she said. “Eight o’clock. You can make a formal statement and explain why a Deputy United States Marshal is conducting an investigation in my jurisdiction without notifying my office.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. For a second she thought he’d push back—cite federal authority, remind her that he didn’t answer to her.
“Understood.” He didn’t argue or attempt to charm his way around her.
“Good.” She stepped back, opening the space between them. “Walter.”
Her deputy moved on the name alone, guiding Kincaid toward the door. “Let’s go, Dale. I’ll give you a ride home.”
Kincaid muttered, but he went. Sarah stayed where she was.
Hudson picked up the folder from the bar. His hand stayed on it half a second longer than it needed to. He didn’t say it, whatever it was.
“Eight o’clock.” He turned and walked out.
Cold air swept through the bar before the door closed behind him. Sarah felt the absence of him immediately. What the hell?
“Marty.”
He straightened.
“What was he asking about?”
“A man.” Marty wiped the same patch of glass again. “Had a photograph. Been showing it around.”
“Anyone recognize him?”
Marty hesitated. “No.”
Sarah looked straight at him.
“Nobody said they did,” he amended.
Her gaze moved across the room—past the pool table, the window, the empty corner where Kincaid had been. One man near the wall looked away a beat too late.
She didn’t push it. “All right.”
Relief flickered across Marty’s face.
Sarah called the scene in to dispatch and headed for the door.
The station was quiet when she arrived. She hung her hat on the back of her chair, shrugged out of her jacket, and sat down.
The laptop hummed awake beneath her hands.
Hudson Kane.
The record appeared. Deputy United States Marshal. Active. Verified. No surprises there. She worked through the system.
Assignment logs. Case notifications. Interagency coordination. There was nothing tying him to Aurora Cove.
No notice that a Deputy Marshal was operating in her jurisdiction. No request for local assistance. Not even a courtesy notification.
She searched again, more carefully this time. Same result.
Hudson Kane was exactly who he said he was.
What she couldn’t find was any official reason for him to be here.
Sarah leaned back in her chair. That wasn't necessarily a problem. Federal operations didn't always come with an invitation for the local sheriff.
But Hudson had been in her town long enough to put a man on the floor of the Rusty Anchor and he hadn’t even picked up the phone.
Her gaze settled on the screen for a long moment before she closed the laptop.
Tomorrow.
Eight o’clock.
Whatever Hudson Kane had once been to her didn’t matter anymore.
She intended to keep it that way.