Eli sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. He looked around for Melba, remembered she’d gone to question Shallie Hollister about Russ’s sister, Bethanne.
Five minutes later, the cop convention had gathered in the department’s small meeting room. It was standing room only.
The discussion that followed raised a great many questions and very few answers. The municipals wanted Russ picked up for interrogation, and so did the state people. The coroner’s assistant, a fiercely intelligent young Asian man named Sam Wu, stated that the autopsy was underway and he would report on the results as soon as the coroner—Alec Storm, a retired GP—had finished his assessment of the victim’s condition.
Condition? Eli thought grimly. She was dead. That was the victim’s “condition.”
It took until noon to settle what could be settled, and then—finally—the crowd dispersed and Eli could breathe again.
Until the first media van pulled into the lot, that is.
As he’d predicted, the whole cluster grew into an instant crap circus, complete with flying monkeys.
Connie, a sweet-faced woman in her mid-forties, kept them at bay for a while. Eli left the department to check in with Doc Storm—Sam Wu’s promise aside, no information had been forthcoming from the town’s ill-equipped little morgue, conveniently located in the basement of the Sweet Rest Funeral Home. The media vans followed him.
Reporters hounded him as soon as he stepped out of the SUV, and he waved them off, ducked his head and burrowed his way to the main entrance, where Sam Wu waited to admit him, then relocked the door.
Oddly, given the circumstances, he thought of Brynne. Had it really only been last night that he’d kissed her? That everything in his world had been made right during those electric moments when their lips were joined and their tongues sparred?
Yes, it had. And before that kiss, he’d confronted the Lansings and damn near been torn to shreds by their dogs.
Now it was the first day of a brand-new year, a holiday for most people. Anything but for Eli and his deputies, not to mention Doc Storm and Sam Wu.
It seemed impossible that so much could happen in such a short time, and Eli wondered with a touch of sadness when he’d get a chance to breathe again. When he’d get to see Brynne Bailey, simply be in her presence, never mind when he’d get to kiss her again. Take her on a real date—somewhere fancy, like she deserved—instead of just a snowmobile ride.
He realized he was starting to feel sorry for himself, and that wouldn’t do.
He was the sheriff of Wild Horse County.
A young woman, a Jane Doe, had been murdered.
And the ball was in his court, whether he liked it or not.
* * *
BRYNNE HADN’T WANTED to impose—it was a holiday, after all—but after the restaurant had been restored to order and she found herself with nothing to do, or, at least, nothing she wanted to do, the worry she felt simply grew too great to bear alone.
She called Sara, asked if it would be all right to stop in.
Sara, told her to come right over. She was preparing a New Year’s Day dinner of standing rib roast and all the appropriate trimmings, and she’d like someone to talk to, since Hayley and Eric were in the living room playing video games with Dan Summers.
“Join us,” Sara said. “I’m hoping Eli will be able to fit us in at some point, but you know how it is, with his job and all hell breaking loose.”
Brynne wondered, with a whisper of shame, if Sara knew how much her friend was hoping for even a glimpse of Eli, for the smallest indication that he was all right. “What shall I bring?”
“Yourself and a few bottles of white wine,” Sara answered. “Eli’s bringing the red—if he remembers.” She paused, sighed with benign resignation. “If, indeed, he shows up at all.” A smile blossomed in Sara’s voice. “What am I saying? Eli will be here at some point because we have his dog.”
Brynne laughed, though her throat was tight to the point of aching. “Thank you, Sara. For letting me intrude.”
“You are not intruding, Brynne. Get over here, as quickly as you can, and don’t bother to dress up. I’m in sweatpants and an ancient T-shirt.”
“My kind of dress code,” Brynne replied, though, of course, it wasn’t. Her public image had always been the pretty girl who wore the best clothes she could afford; even her jeans were expensive.
Bottom line? She was over-cautious sometimes.
Hesitant to trust.
Clay, the only man she’d ever been truly intimate with, had accused her of withholding the sacred, secret parts of herself from him.
Screw you, Clay, she thought, remembering the inappropriate text he’d sent. You had access to my body, but you couldn’t be trusted with my soul. And you proved that.
Feeling a little better, Brynne washed her face, combed her hair and applied a touch of lip gloss. Then she spooned celebratory tuna into Waldo’s dish, and left him to enjoy his feast alone.
Downstairs, behind the bar, Brynne opened the cooler and took out two bottles of high-grade pinot grigio and two of name-brand champagne. She placed these in a box and carried them out back, to her car.
Brynne drove a kit car, a careful re-creation of a 1954 MG Roadster, totally impractical in a rural Montana town, but she didn’t care. She loved that bright red roadster, if only because it belied her proper-to-the-point-of-untouchable image—another idea of Clay’s.
He’d actually called her that, in the heat of their last argument. Untouchable.
That had been his excuse for cheating with his ex-wife.
And it had been pure bullshit.
She opened the small trunk and placed the box of wine inside, slammed the lid. Then, with furious motions of one arm, Brynne cleared the windshield of her car, loving it more than ever.
It was fast and it was beautiful.
It was also a middle finger to Clay and to anyone else who judged Brynne on the basis of her appearance and her quiet personality.
A strange, violent joy possessed Brynne as she slipped into the driver’s seat, extracted her keys from her purse and turned the ignition.
The engine, too big for such a small vehicle, gave a satisfactory roar.
She backed out of her short driveway, careful not to overturn the garbage cans placed at the curb by her cleanup crew, and pointed herself in the direction of Sara’s house.
Minutes later, she pulled into the wide circular driveway of a modest but beautiful brick house, with an old-fashioned porch and white shutters at the many windows.
Given Sara’s success as Luke Cantrell, creator of Elliott Starr, a Clint Eastwood–style lawman and inveterate seeker of justice, the casual observer might have wondered at the relatively small size of the place.