Chapter 16
Early the next morning, Sarah frowned at the second mug.
She lived alone.
She stared at it for a second longer than made sense before sliding it back into the cupboard. “Ridiculous.”
She hadn't slept well, that was all. After yesterday, Walter had insisted on regular patrol sweeps past her house. Every time a cruiser rolled by she'd woken, listened until the sound faded, then eventually drifted back to sleep.
I’m just tired.
She poured the coffee, spooned sugar, and sat down at the kitchen table. She wrapped both hands around it more out of habit than any need for the warmth. Her thumb moved along the rim absently. The heat pulled her somewhere she didn’t want to go.
His breath against her cheek in the freezing air. The solid weight of his body on hers.
Her face went hot.
No.
She set the mug down and reached for the reports stacked at the corner of the table. She flipped the top report open with more force than a dog-complaint file strictly required.
Sheriff first.
She read the same line three times without absorbing a word of it.
His hand had almost touched her.
Jesus.
She made herself read the line a fourth time. Got two words further before her brain slid sideways again. The difficult part hadn’t been stepping back. It had been wanting to stay.
She closed the report and picked up the next one.
Fence dispute. The ordinary machinery of other people’s lives. None of the words would stay still long enough to mean anything. She rubbed the skin between her eyes. Concentrate.
Ten minutes later, the phone rang. She picked it up with relief. Walter’s name flashed on the screen.
“Walter?”
“Sheriff.” His voice had none of its usual dry edge. “You need to get to the hospital.”
Her hand tightened as she glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even seven yet. “Who’s hurt?”
Walter gave a shaky exhale. “Petey.”
Petey, who’d known her since she was twelve years old chasing minnows off his dock and who’d never once forgotten to wave when she saw him in town. Petey, who’d told them without knowing it mattered that Jake Mercer had worked there.
“How bad?” She was already moving, reaching for her jacket with the phone wedged against her ear.
“Bad enough. Conscious. Talking, last I heard.” Walter exhaled hard down the line. “Fishermen found him around five.”
She drove faster than the road allowed and didn’t care, the sleety morning streaking past the windows, her mind running the same loop over and over.
They’d gone to the cannery. They’d asked questions. Petey had answered them, and now he was in a hospital bed because of it.
We stirred something up.
Somewhere around the turn onto Main, her mind reached for the last uncomplicated moment she’d had.
Hudson laughing. The sweet scent of hay. Bon Jovi trying to eat his sleeve.
“Seriously?” she muttered to herself.
The hospital came up on her right, lit harsh against the gray morning, and she swung into the lot too fast, parked at an angle that wasn’t quite straight and didn’t bother fixing it.
Her boots hit the sidewalk already moving.
The cold bit at her face for the four seconds it took to reach the doors, dragging her back into the version of herself this morning required.
By the time the doors slid closed behind her, she’d left the stables behind her in the parking lot, where it belonged.
Sterile air wrapped around her, carrying the dry heat of overworked radiators and the faint smell of disinfectant. A monitor chimed somewhere beyond the treatment corridor. Sarah barely registered it. Waiting room. Two nurses chatting. Walter was easy to spot at the reception desk.
She headed toward him automatically.
Halfway there, she realized she was still searching the room.
Hudson.
Of course he was here. The certainty of the thought caught her off guard.
He was leaning against the far wall, arms folded, talking to one of the nurses. When he saw her, he broke away immediately. His expression changed the instant he saw her.
Some small, clenched part of her released. It lasted less than a second, but it annoyed her that the morning felt fractionally less impossible.
“You’re up early,” she said, instead of what she was really thinking.
His dark hair looked as though he’d pushed a hand through it more than once that morning. “So are you. Owen called. I came straight over. Word travels fast through federal channels when something happens near an active case. How is he?”
“About to find out.”
Hudson nodded. “All right.”
Nothing more. No promise that Petey would be fine. He fell into step beside her as though there had never been any question.