* * *
“Don’t worry, Ellie. They’ll find Ryder,” Sadie said. They were sitting on the front porch, wrapped in plaid blankets.
“It’s getting dark, and he’s been gone for two hours.” Ellie hugged the blanket around her; the temperature dropped at night on the water. “He was only wearing a T-shirt when he left. He doesn’t know the area.”
Her gaze went to the dark woods across the road. In the distance she heard people calling Ryder’s name. She felt sick to her stomach, responsible for Ryder overhearing Nate talk about the case.
“If something happens to Ryder, Nate won’t be able to forgive himself.” Ellie was as worried about him as she was about Ryder. “He hasn’t said anything to me, but I think he blames himself for Brodie’s death.”
“You can’t read him?”
“No.” She’d attempted to read his mind during their last dance at Sadie and Chase’s wedding. Her argument for breaking her privacy rule at the time had been that she’d save them both from embarrassment. If she’d sensed he’d been the least bit interested in her, she’d planned to ask him out. “Some people have stronger walls than others, and all I get is a whisper of feelings and thoughts, but with Nate, it’s like running up against solid concrete.” She glanced at Sadie. “It’s actually a nice change. When I’m with him, it feels like I’m standing in this quiet circle of calm while all around us the world is caught up in a violent windstorm.” She shrugged, embarrassed she’d voiced the thought.
Sadie gave her a knowing smile. “You like him, don’t you? No, don’t bother denying it. I know you as well as you know me.”
“I do, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing can come of it. Nate has made it abundantly clear that we’ll never be anything more than friends.”
“You might not realize it, but for Nate, that’s a big deal. He doesn’t have women friends.”
Ellie smiled at her cousin’s attempt to make more of this than there was. She was just like their grandmother, looking for signs that Nate felt something other than friendship for Ellie. “So what are you, then? You and half the women in this town.”
“I’m not talking about married women and women old enough to be his mother or his grandmother. I’m talking about the gorgeous, available women who flock to the man like bees to honey. I’ve yet to meet one of the women he’s dated, and I use that word loosely. Nate is the poster boy for heartbreakers. Although, in his defense, I’ve never heard him pretend that he’s open to anything more.”
“No, he makes it pretty clear he won’t let anything come between him and his job. But I get it, given what he does for a living. It has to be all-consuming when you’re dealing with matters of life and death.”
“You know who you’re talking to, right? Chase was just like Nate. The job was all he thought about. Nothing and no one mattered to him more than his career. Until he met me and Michaela.” Her cousin smiled.
Sadie and Chase were head over heels in love, and Ellie couldn’t be happier for her cousin. But Nate wasn’t Chase. “Nate seems more, I don’t know, almost obsessed. Like he lives and breathes his job. Or maybe it’s just this case.”
“I’ve only known Nate since he was investigating Brodie’s murder, so I can’t really say. All I know is that Chase is worried about him. There’s a darkness in Nate, which sounds crazy to say because he’s always kidding around, and he’s the life of the party.”
That was it. That was what Ellie sensed in him, a darkness. In many ways, he was Chase’s polar opposite.
Sadie continued. “Chase says he’s never met another law enforcement agent who can get in a criminal’s head as easily as Nate does. He thinks it’s because after Nate got out of the military, he rode with an MC—motorcycle club.”
“I didn’t know that. I didn’t know he was in the military either.” There was a lot she didn’t know about him.
“He was a sniper with Special Operations. One of the best, according to Chase.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t need to use that talent tonight,” Ellie said, her eyes going back to the woods. “He had a gun. I saw it under his jacket.”
Sadie tugged the blanket closer around her. “More out of habit than anything else, I imagine.”
“Or maybe he’s worried that trouble has followed him here. The man he arrested was supposedly high up in the organization that supplied the drugs to the Whiteside Mountain Gang.”
“Don’t even go there. You’re just worried about Ryder and letting your imagination run wild. Come on.” Sadie shrugged off the blanket and stood up. “I should check on Michaela.”
They’d put Michaela down in the judge’s room. Ellie took one last glance at the woods before following Sadie inside. The judge put a finger to his lips when they opened the door to his room. “She just went to sleep,” he whispered from the chair where he’d been reading. The soft glow of the lamp on the side table provided the only light in the room.
Asleep in the playpen beside the bed, Michaela noisily sucked her thumb.
“Where’s Grandpa?” Ellie whispered. Joe and the judge had been playing with Michaela when she and Sadie had gone to sit outside. Ellie had used the baby to distract them. Her grandfather and the judge had wanted to join in the search for Ryder.
“His lawyer phoned him back. He took the call in his room. If you’re staying up here, I’ll go check on him.” The judge laid his book on the table.
“What’s going on?” Sadie asked when Jonathan left the room, closing the door behind him.
Ellie joined her cousin on the end of the bed. Keeping her voice low so as not to wake Michaela, she filled Sadie in on what Joe and the judge had been up to. “I asked Grandpa to hold off on the lawsuit, so I’m guessing that’s what the phone call is about.”
“Why didn’t you want him to go ahead with it?”
“First of all, I think it would be hard to prove elder abuse. The judge disagrees with me. He says what my mother is doing is the very definition of elder abuse. But my biggest concern is it will make everything worse. There’s no way their relationship will recover from something like this. As much as I hate what my mother is putting Grandpa through, I know she loves him. And he loves her.”
“She has a funny way of showing it.”
“There’s more to this than we know, Sadie. I talked to my mother earlier today. It’s not about the money like I thought. It’s not about Grandpa either. I think…I think it has something to do with my dad and Bri.” She’d been mulling it over all day, and the more she thought about their conversation, the clearer it became that her mother was trying to protect her father and Bri. And there was only one thing she could be protecting them from.
Sadie frowned. “What does she have to protect them from? And what does the inn have to do with it?”
“You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you, Sadie. Not even Chase or Granny. You have to promise me.”
“Of course. Nothing you say to me will leave this room.”