“But there’s an issue.”
“Yeah. But profilers can get twitchy. Sometimes someone just ticks all the boxes, and it gets tied up in a bow. It’s just hard, when you’re that close to it, when you’re living and breathing it, to recognize it’s done and let it go.”
He put the razor down and turned fully to me.
“Sometimes, you can even miss it. You love the hunt so much, you don’t want to let it go.”
“Are you feeling that?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not too certain,” I noted.
“You were in this. Celeste was in this. The twins were in this. I don’t like the idea that I was back in the game again, and now I’m feeling hinky because I got off on it.”
I tipped my head. “Did you get off on it?”
“I’m good at what I do,” he repeated. “I’d started casting a net, looking for a place to retire. I’ll admit to feeling a little burnout. So I was thinking maybe getting out of the game and doing it early. Grace pushed that. In the end, I got out because Grace was done with me being gone all the time. She had a job. Advertising. She was a big shot. Made great money. She took three months maternity leave with the boys, only one with Celeste. We had a nanny both times. She was so serious about having me around more, she gave up her job, set up a small shop of local clients here in MP. Car dealership commercials and local store ads. Nothing like what she used to be doing, running huge campaigns for multi-national corporations. But Dad died, she saw the opportunity for a quieter life, I’d talked to her about having that in our future, she thought I’d like it. Thought it’d feel good, being home, where Mom had been. I saw that for Celeste. For me. And I thought she’d settle, and it’d make her happy. Us a family. So I did it. But that doesn’t mean a part of me didn’t want to.”
“I see that.”
“I look at a case, work up a profile, but then I send that off. I’m hardly ever in the field. I’m very rarely involved in an active investigation. And if I’m gone, it’s to consult in a police station conference room or give a lecture.”
“Right.”
“So like I said, maybe.”
“Perhaps you should be sheriff,” I said quietly.
“Harry’s a good man, and he’s waited a long time. It’s his turn.”
I nodded.
He came to stand between my legs and put his hands to my thighs.
“It’s not the first time I’ve had it, and the feeling fades, babe.”
“Okay.”
“We’re clear for Christmas.”
“Okay, Cade.”
“I love you.”
I blinked.
My heart rejoiced.
My mind reconjured images of family in houses all around us on the lake.
Then I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
“Okay to that most of all, scarecrow.”
Those beautiful lips in that thick, dark beard formed a smile.
And he kissed me.
Fifty-Five
Balls
The day Tony Romano burned himself to death in a cabin outside Ash Peak, David was taken out of the ICU.
When I visited him the next day, he looked at me.
And then he apologized that there was going to be a delay in finishing the powder room.
And yes, if the name Tony sounded familiar, that’s because it was.
And not because it’s a common name.
No, it was because, when Megan took the lectern in the chambers during the big town meeting, she’d thanked the man at the front who’d stepped aside for her.
His name was Tony.
It was that Tony.
He’d been first up to say something to the council and commissioners about Sheriff Dern.
Yes.
He had balls that big.
And now…
He was dead.
Fifty-Six
The Picture
I had a lot on my mind.
Christmas had come and gone, New Year’s had come and gone, with Camille and Joan doing duty to Joan’s family for the first holiday but flying up to ring in the new year with us.
Jess had been disappointed at the plethora of presents I’d laid on him, sitting among the new jeans and flannels and top-of-the-line, solar powered, tactical GPS watch, complaining, “You’re loaded, you couldn’t buy me a Humvee?”
(He, of course, had been kidding and that was his alpha-man way of expressing gratitude. Or, at least, that was how I decided to read it.)
Celeste, on the other hand, had not hidden in the slightest that she’d been delighted.
She now had her own Chloe.
And Givenchy padlock ankle boots.
And…other.
Lots of other.
Bohannan had grumbled, “We definitely should have talked budget.”
But he didn’t mean it.
I knew this because he bought me a heavy gold charm bracelet that had six identical charms on it. They were all stars. Each had a little diamond. And each had a letter.
F. C. B. J. J. C.
So I guessed I did have my own tribe, my own family, a true home where I belonged, and if I ever doubted, I just had to look at my wrist.
I loved that he made himself the B.
I also started bawling.
“Estrogen always mucks up the works,” Jace complained as his father held me and stroked my back. “She carries on like this for long, we’re never gonna get through the thousand presents she bought each of us.”
“Like you’re not taking notes for when you get your own babe,” Celeste retorted.
“I am,” Jace concurred. “Find myself a woman who makes good cupcakes.”
At that, I pulled loose of Bohannan’s embrace (not entirely, obviously), and informed him, “You’re cooking for the next three months.”
“Works for me,” he replied. “I rock in the kitchen.”
Since I had Christmas dinner all planned, it would take until the next night to find out that he didn’t lie.
And since Bohannan clasped it on me Christmas morning, I hadn’t taken that bracelet off.
No, that wasn’t the “a lot” I had on my mind.
Part of that lot was what happened late that very morning when Bohannan showed in the door to my office at my house.
I didn’t move back there.
In fact, I was fully moved into The Big House, clothes, books, Emmys and everything. I’d listed my home in the Hollywood Hills. And Bohannan and I were planning to take a springtime vacation to Paris.
Not to mention, just the week before, Bohannan had approached me with the news that Jess and Jace were feeling it was time to take the next step through adulthood.
That being making their own space.
Jace wanted to move up to the log cabin. And Jess wanted to know if he could rent my house from me.
When we’d had a family meeting about this, Celeste was all in because, “The boys’ house is rad. Or it will be, after an industrial cleaning. And I can move in there when I graduate!”
Even though I didn’t go test out this theory, from her words I knew I was correct about the whole, that-house-smelling-like-a-used-sock thing.