Where was Eli? That was her most urgent thought.
As rapidly as the vehicles moved, she saw and registered each insignia—the Creek’s small municipal force, the Montana state police, the sheriff’s department—not Eli’s SUV, but one of the cruisers.
Where was he?
The two rigs bringing up the rear moved at a slow, solemn pace: the van marked Wild Horse County Coroner and the ambulance.
No lights, no sirens.
No hurry.
Brynne bit her lower lip and pressed her face closer to the breath-fogged glass, straining to see farther down the street, but the window frame and the sign next door—Nellie’s Nails—blocked her view.
And that was when the first what-if struck her.
What if the call all those police were answering was “officer down”?
And what if that officer is Eli?
What if he’s been shot or stabbed or God knows what else in the line of duty, and that coroner’s van is for him?
Sickness surged, scalding, into the back of Brynne’s throat and, for a long and treacherous moment, she actually thought she might faint.
She set her cup down and grasped the wide windowsill until her head stopped spinning and her breathing slowed enough to rule out hyperventilation.
At her feet, poor Waldo wailed piteously, aware of her distress and frightened by it.
Brynne scooped the cat up, a dizzying process all by itself, and snuggled him for a few moments. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Everything’s okay, little guy. I promise.”
Waldo probably wasn’t convinced, given that his ruff was damp with Brynne’s tears by that point, but he stopped yowling at least, and that was a mercy.
As she showered, she wondered who she could call—Sara? Melba Summers? Connie Sue Hildebrand, the day receptionist at the sheriff’s headquarters?
Brynne hadn’t come to a decision even when she was dressed in her “day off” outfit of jeans and an old college sweatshirt—Bailey’s was closed on New Year’s Day, though the cleanup crew was downstairs, making plenty of noise as they worked.
Figuring one of them might know what was happening, she hurried down to the restaurant’s kitchen, where the commercial dishwashers were running at capacity, and steam from the sinks coated every surface in condensation.
There were no people in evidence, so Brynne proceeded to the dining and bar area, up front.
Her crew—three waitresses and two cooks, all being paid double time—were standing on the sidewalk, huddled against the cold, talking on cell phones and gesturing to each other.
Again, Brynne felt sick.
A single name thrummed inside her like a second heartbeat, Eli—Eli—Eli.
She made it to the door, called everybody back inside where it was warm. None of them had bothered with a coat.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, her gaze moving from one face to another.
The consensus?
Nobody knew.
Brynne’s knees threatened to give out, and Miranda, her second mother, took her by one arm and dragged her to a chair.
“Put your head between your knees, Brynne,” Miranda commanded, once she’d been seated. “Harry, run to the storage closet and get a brown paper bag.”
“I’m all right,” Brynne protested, but weakly. Her breathing had gone fast and shallow again, just as it had upstairs, when she’d first realized Eli’s SUV wasn’t in the speeding convoy.
“You’re not all right,” Miranda argued. And then she laid one strong hand to Brynne’s nape and forced her head down. “Now do as I say.”
Miranda had worked for Brynne’s parents for some twenty years by the time the business changed hands. She’d helped raise the Baileys’ only child, in fact, and she had a certain authority because of that.
That and her naturally bossy nature.
Someone brought a glass of ice-cold water after the blood had returned to Brynne’s brain, and she sipped it gratefully, embarrassed by her behavior, by what she’d revealed.
She had a thing for Sheriff Eli Garrett.
Most likely, nobody was surprised, however. No one who had witnessed that midnight kiss couldn’t have any real doubts.
When Eli’s SUV finally shot past the restaurant like a belated bullet, Brynne gave a great, gasping sob of relief, and Miranda took her into her arms and hugged her hard.
“There, now, you see? That man of yours is just fine,” she said.
That man of yours.
Oh, no. No.
She could not love Eli Garrett. She simply could not.
Except, she did.
She’d loved Eli in high school—okay, kindergarten, but nobody needed to know that—she loved him now, and she’d loved him for all the years in between.
She was doomed.
* * *
“ABOUT TIME YOU got here,” Melba told Eli, when he reached the vacant lot behind Russ Schafer’s motel.
Melba was a tall, slender Black woman, with short dark hair and golden brown eyes. She’d met Dan when they were both in the navy and kept pace with him from basic training right on through the SEAL program. They’d married while Dan was in law school and Melba was walking a beat on the mean streets of a major city, had two kids—both girls—and split up when Dan graduated and entered the FBI.
Evidently tired of city life—and possibly because she needed a place to hole up and lick her wounds—Melba had eventually returned to the Creek, her hometown, with her young daughters, looking for work.
She’d purchased her late grandmother’s house, where she’d been raised, applied for a job with the sheriff’s department, gotten it, and had rapidly proved her worth. She was smart and fit and so far beyond competent that there wasn’t a word for it.
Once, when she and Eli were on a long, boring stakeout together, Melba, who usually played her proverbial cards close, had answered the question Eli had wanted to ask, but hadn’t.
“I don’t know that any woman ever loved a man more than I loved Dan Summers,” she’d said quietly, almost brokenly. “But nothing was ever enough for that man. He aced the SEAL program, so he had to get a law degree. That didn’t suit him—he graduated at the top of his class and had job offers from all over the country, you know—it wasn’t exciting enough. So when he joined the FBI, I figured it was time to get off that merry-go-round because he wasn’t ever going to stop reaching—reaching for the next thing. He couldn’t just settle down someplace, work a job he could be proud of, be a husband and a father. Oh, hell no, not Dan Summers! He was too big a hotshot for that.