“Did I?” If it had been right, everything else had gone wrong. “The kids’ parents have a lawyer. They’re planning on suing me or the sheriff’s department or Celeste. Hell, maybe they’ll sue us all. It’s a fucking cluster.”
Lyla scoffed. “They want to sue you? That’s bullshit. What were you supposed to do? Let them rob Celeste? Shoot her? Shoot you?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “But I’m being investigated.”
“What?” Lyla jumped off the counter, turning to face me with her eyes wide and jaw slackened. “You’re kidding.”
“Wish I was, Blue.”
“I don’t understand. How is this your fault?” She began pacing, her path the same as mine earlier.
“My boss is a captain who wants to become undersheriff.”
“Okay,” she drawled. “What does that mean?”
“He needs deputies who don’t make waves.”
And I did nothing but churn the waters.
“The captain loved Cormac. It’s the reason I didn’t lose my badge after all that shit that happened with Brandon. Cormac went to bat for me and the captain helped smooth it out.”
“But then Cormac . . .” Lyla didn’t need to finish that sentence.
Cormac went off the goddamn rails. “Things between me and the captain have been strained ever since. When he looks at me, he sees Cormac’s best friend. Cormac’s partner. He sees the trust he shouldn’t have given. It’s strange. We both hate Cormac for what he did. You’d think that would bring us together. But it’s been the opposite.”
With Cormac gone, I was the only guy for the captain to blame.
“I haven’t exactly been the most reliable deputy,” I admitted. “If I got wind of a lead on Cormac, I’d drop everything and take off, usually without giving any notice. I’ve used every minute of vacation time. I’ve got no sick days left. So I wasn’t on great terms to begin with. Then the shooting happened.”
“He can’t blame you for that, Vance.”
“No, he blames me for the trouble that came afterward.” The media attention. The potential lawsuits.
My temper.
“When I got the news that the kid was paralyzed, I didn’t exactly take it well. I was at the station. Captain called me into his office. Told me to take a few days off. So I went to grab a few things from my locker. Another deputy was in there. Made a comment about me being trigger happy.”
“Asshole,” Lyla muttered.
“That’s what I said. Then I broke his nose.”
“Ooh.” She winced. “I’m guessing that didn’t go over well with your boss.”
“Instead of a few days off, he told me to take a break until the investigation for the shooting is over. I’m not officially fired. I still have my badge. But I’m not welcome either.”
Lyla stopped pacing, planting her hands on her hips. “You did what you had to do.”
Any other cop would have done the same thing, regardless if they were on duty or out for a run. There’d been no way to know that the kid’s gun had been empty. “But I still regret pulling the trigger.”
“So what happens now?”
“I wait for the outcome of the investigation,” I said. “More than likely, I’ll be cleared. But if the captain wants me gone, he’ll find a way to make that happen. Either by sitting me at a desk, knowing I’d hate every minute of it. Or by making some excuse to let me go, like he’s downsizing the department.”
“Then he’s an asshole too,” she muttered. She wasn’t wrong. “What if that family sues you?”
“With any luck, that won’t happen. But if it does, I hire a lawyer. Go from there.”
I’d fight for my reputation. For my name.
Lyla’s molars ground together so hard I could hear them clenching. Then with a huff, she started pacing again. “This is a fucking mess.”
Yes. Yes, it was.
And now she knew why I had to go back to Idaho.
“It’s not fair.” She threw an arm in the air, her anger palpable. Fuck, but I liked that. That she’d get wound up on my behalf.
Tiff hadn’t. Not once. She’d been upset, worried. But never angry.
Lyla had a right to be angry. And goddamn it, so did I.
For weeks, I’d kept it hidden. I’d lashed out once, in that locker room, and it had basically cost me my job. So I’d kept it in. I’d tucked those feelings away. I’d refused to talk about the shooting because I was angry.
Or I had been. Something about the fury on Lyla’s face, her seething, made a lot of my frustration fade. She gave me the outlet I hadn’t realized I’d desperately needed.
“Come here, Blue.”
She kept pacing. “Your captain should be standing behind you. Singing your praises.”
“To be fair, the asshole I punched, the other deputy? It’s his son.”
Lyla giggled. It came so freely she slapped a hand over her mouth.
I chuckled. How was it we could finish this conversation in laughter?
Fuck, but I was going to miss her.
“Thank you.”
She dropped her hand from her mouth and shrugged. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You did.”
She didn’t even realize how much she meant to me, did she? How much I appreciated her standing in my corner?
“I hate how this happened, Lyla. I hate that Cormac hurt you and that’s why I came to Quincy. But I’m also glad I came here. I needed to come here.”
To find her.
Lyla changed course, walking over to stand between my knees. Then she rose up on her toes, taking my face in her hands to kiss my lower lip. “I’m glad you came too. You’ll find him. I know it.”
I wasn’t talking about Cormac, but I didn’t correct her. Because that felt too much like a goodbye.
So I kissed her instead.
And tomorrow, I’d say goodbye.
Tomorrow, I’d tell her it was time for me to go home.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LYLA
Vance’s heart was beeping. Short, quick beeps like the sound of my microwave when its timer went off.
We were in the coffee shop, sitting at his table. He was talking, gesturing to the maps spread open between us, but all I could hear was his heart.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I jolted awake, lifting off his chest. A dream. It was just a dream. Except I could still hear the beep, only not from his heart. It was coming from his phone.
“Vance.” I patted his shoulder.
He hummed, his hand drifting down my naked spine. He slipped past the waistband of my panties to cup my ass.
“Your phone.”
His eyelids cracked open, sluggish with sleep. But the moment he registered the beeping, his body stilled. Then he was gone, flying out of bed and racing from the room wearing only the boxer briefs he’d pulled on before we’d crashed last night.
He’d left his phone in the kitchen, plugged into the charger beside mine. I didn’t like the distraction of having it in my room, and Vance was more than willing to give me his undivided attention in bed.
I whipped the covers from my legs and stood, snagging Vance’s thermal from the floor and tugging it on as I hustled after him.
Moonlight streamed through the kitchen windows, casting us in silvers and grays. The clock on the oven read 3:23.
“What is it?” I asked, rushing to his side.
The glow from his phone lit up his face as he swept his finger across the screen.
The beeping stopped.
“Fuck.”
“What?” I stood on my toes, peering past his arm.
The video he pulled up was grainy black and white. It was from one of the game cameras he’d left in the mountains. He must have hidden it in a tree, because the lower left corner of the video was a close-up of pine needles.
Still, there was no mistaking the location. It was the stream where Vance and I had hiked. The place where I’d slipped and fallen in the mud. The spot where he’d found that fish trap.
Beside the water, crouched low, was a man.
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “Is it him?”
The man’s back was to the camera. It was too dark and fuzzy for me to make out his face.
Vance stared at the screen, unblinking, like he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he cocked his head to the side, his gaze narrowing. “He’s still here.”
My heart tumbled. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” He didn’t look away from the screen. Neither of us did.
On camera, Cormac didn’t make a move to take the trap from the water. Instead, he stayed low. The area was lit by the moon. It had to be why he’d gone to check the trap. It was bright enough.
One second he was crouched, the next he stood and twisted. Only his torso moved as he scanned an entire circle. Then his gaze shifted to the trees surrounding him, like he was searching. Like he could feel us watching him.
Whatever tracks we’d left behind had to be covered by the snow. There was no way he could tell we’d been there, right?
Except Cormac was so eerily still. So deliberate in every movement. The ground around him was covered in white, but I couldn’t make out any footprints. How had he gotten there without leaving a trail?
He stepped and I had my answer. His feet were in the water, where the stream rushed over his boots. With a quick grab, he took the trap and tucked it under an arm. Then he moved from one clear rock to the next, carefully picking his way out of the camera’s view.
“Damn it.” Vance set his phone aside, then raked a hand through his hair.
“Could he have seen the camera?”
“I don’t know.” His nostrils flared. “I doubt it, but something spooked him.”