Winn never went anywhere without hers. Even when she went to Mom and Dad’s house for a family dinner at the ranch, she brought along her badge.
I’d spent a week sleeping in Vance’s hotel room with no badge in sight.
“Oh my God.” I wrapped my arms around my waist, my head spinning.
Everything he’d told me I’d kept from Winn. He’d asked me to keep it quiet and I’d agreed. What if I’d made a huge mistake?
The day I’d found Cormac on that river, I’d assumed he’d say hello. I’d assumed we’d talk about the weather before going our separate ways. I’d assumed he could be trusted.
And I’d trusted Vance.
I’d blindly believed Vance because he’d told me everything I’d wanted to hear. My stomach pitched.
“You’re such a fucking idiot,” I snapped at my reflection, then I bolted, grabbing my keys before I sprinted for the garage.
And while I drove to the police station, I pretended that I wasn’t betraying Vance.
CHAPTER TEN
VANCE
The moment I stepped across the threshold at the hotel, I felt a prickle of awareness. Of wrongness. There’d been a knot in my gut ever since I’d left Lyla’s house this morning.
It untied.
Not because I didn’t have to worry. But because I could stop dreading the inevitable.
Winslow Eden stood next to the mahogany reception desk, her eyes trained on me as I walked across the space.
Beside her, Eloise sat taller, her eyes narrowing. Jasper’s face was granite, his frame locked and hands fisted. He looked ready to leap in front of his wife and shield her from danger. Again.
Wasn’t that a fucking shame? That these people thought I was a threat?
When I was ten feet away from the desk, Winn pushed off its edge, closing the distance between us. Wearing a black button-down and a pair of jeans, her dark hair unbound and falling over her shoulders, she shouldn’t have been imposing. But her badge was unmistakable. And that gun.
This was a woman who was not afraid to use it.
We stopped three feet apart. She tilted up her chin to keep my gaze.
“Chief Eden.” I dipped my chin.
“Officer Sutter.” Her voice was cool. Calm. Lethal.
So she knew I was a cop. It didn’t come as a surprise but it still fucking sucked. Shit.
“I think we’d better have a conversation,” Winn said.
I glanced longingly to the lobby’s fireplace and the leather couches arranged around a coffee table. Not a chance we’d be having that conversation here, would we?
“Your car? Or mine?”
Two hours after I’d arrived at the Quincy police station, I stood from the chair that had been my captor and extended a hand across Winslow’s desk.
“Appreciate you hearing me out,” I said.
She stood too, shaking my hand with a nod. “Lyla was upset when she came down earlier. She deserves the truth.”
“She does. If it’s all right, I’d like to be the one to tell her.”
“Tonight.” Winn arched an eyebrow, a silent threat. If I wanted to be the one to tell Lyla the truth, the clock was ticking.
“Tonight.” I took my coat from the back of the chair and tugged it on. Then I strapped on the backpack I’d taken hiking with me.
Winn hadn’t let me drop it off in the room. Instead, she’d hauled me directly to the station in her unmarked rig. I’d expected her to sit my ass in an interrogation room, but she’d shown me no mercy and chosen her office for this conversation instead.
Only cops understood that a chief’s or captain’s office was worse than an interrogation room.
A file with my name on it had been sitting on her desk when we’d walked in, left out in plain sight for me to see. But she hadn’t touched it since we’d come in here. Probably because we both knew what was inside.
My demons.
Cormac. The shooting.
Rather than tell me what she knew, she’d asked for my story, then she’d listened. When I was done, she’d delivered the ass chewing of all ass chewings.
I’d always thought my captain was the best at cutting a man down, but damn, Winn could give him lessons.
She’d lectured me for not contacting her in regard to Cormac. For not sharing information about a criminal. For potentially contaminating a crime scene. She’d put me in my damn place and hadn’t minced words in the process.
The fucking hell of it was, I liked her. Still. I liked her. That ass chewing had been done with respect. Poise.
I admired the hell out of her for that. I bet the cops working in the bullpen outside her office admired the hell out of her too. They’d be fools otherwise.
“I should make a phone call to your captain,” Winn said. “Then tell you to get the hell out of my town.”
“You should.” But would she?
“My jurisdiction is Quincy,” she said. “The sheriff has county as well as search and rescue.”
Meaning beyond the town’s limits, her hands were tied.
Mine were not.
Winn smirked as she shrugged a shoulder. “I can’t stop people from going hiking.”
And if I was her only resource at the moment for tracking down the man who’d harmed Lyla, she wasn’t going to stand in my way.
“What about the FBI?” I asked.
Her eyebrows came together as she thought about it for a long moment. “I’ll pass the APB along to a local agent. If they choose to investigate, then I won’t stand in their way.”
Well, fuck.
I guess it would have been too good to be true for me to be left alone. But she couldn’t exactly lecture me on following proper channels while she ignored them too.
“All right.” I nodded, then opened the door and strode out of her office.
I felt eyes on me as I walked toward the exit, but I kept my gaze forward until I was outside the station.
The second the cool October air hit my face, I realized I didn’t have a vehicle. “Son of a bitch.”
Winter was coming and the days were growing shorter and shorter. It was only six but the sun had already set behind the mountains. Darkness had fallen over Quincy, and though I’d already spent most of the day hiking, I put one foot in front of the other and trudged downtown to the hotel. But instead of going inside, I dug my keys from my coat pocket and headed straight for my truck.
The lights at Lyla’s were on, glowing gold and bright from the abundance of windows. I parked in her driveway but couldn’t bring myself to shut off the engine.
Maybe I should have been angry with her for going to Winn. Maybe I should have felt betrayed.
But this was on me.
There were just too many fucking secrets.
How long had I kept them all to myself? Not even Tiff knew the full truth. We’d started dating after Cormac had disappeared, and while she’d gotten bits and pieces of the story, she’d never heard it all.
If I got out of this truck, if I knocked on Lyla’s front door, she’d understand why Cormac was so important.
Was she ready for that? Was I?
It had been four years, and fuck, I was tired of carrying this alone. I was tired of failing. I was tired of sleepless nights.
The best sleep I’d had in years had been this past week. Lyla and I had spent plenty of hours having sex, but when we’d exhausted each other, I’d crashed, not waking until her alarm went off at four.
Winn had told me to get my ass over here, but the real reason I was staring at this farmhouse was because I wasn’t ready to lose Lyla.
That would come soon enough. That would come when I returned home.
Or tonight, when she slammed the door in my face.
I shut off my truck and climbed out, tucking my hands in my pockets as I climbed the stairs to her porch. Then I pressed the doorbell and held my breath.
Footsteps sounded inside. Her face appeared in the glass insert of the door as she rose up on her toes to see who was outside. The moment she spotted me, her beautiful face hardened.
It looked strange on her lovely face. Out of place. And fuck me for being the asshole who’d made her smile disappear.
I was just as bad as Cormac for that.
Lyla hesitated, standing on her side of the door unmoving.
It felt like hours that I stood there, my shallow breaths white in the cold night air. Then finally, she flipped the dead bolt.
Thank fuck. The air rushed from my lungs as she stood in the threshold. Her feet were bare. Her toes would get cold. But I didn’t ask to come inside.
She wouldn’t let me anyway.
“Are you really a cop?” she asked.
My forehead furrowed. If that was her first question, it meant that she was questioning everything. That she thought I’d been lying to her from the start. Damn.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m a cop. I’m a deputy with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, in the Back Country Unit. I don’t have my badge. It would be useless in Montana, so I left it behind.”
It was more or less the truth.
Some secrets weren’t for tonight.
“I grew up in Coeur d’Alene. I’ve always loved the outdoors. Hiking. Fishing. Hunting. But I also wanted to be a cop. I guess you could say my job is the best of both worlds.”