Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

“Beer is fine,” Jo said.

“How is my bike running?” Lee asked Gill.

Gill sat on one end of the sofa and patted the space beside him while he looked at her.

“Like a dream. One of these days I’m going to convince you to sell her to me.”

“Wait,” Jo said. “That bike isn’t yours?”

Gill shook his head. “Whenever I’m this close to Lee, he makes sure I get her out to stretch her legs.”

Lee laughed, and Jo found herself looking at the man’s legs. Legs that obviously didn’t work for walking on.

“Someone has to,” Lee said, chuckling.

“I refuse to drive that thing,” Consuela said as she brought their refreshments.

“Did you think I drove it all the way out from Oregon?” Gill asked Jo.

“I didn’t even think about it.” She was slightly disappointed the hog wasn’t his.

Gill twisted the top off one of the beers and handed it to her.

“Gill told me you’re training this week,” Lee said to Jo.

“I am.”

“Thinking of joining the Feds?”

She shook her head. “Nothing like that.”

“Jo’s the sheriff of River Bend, Oregon.”

Lee swept her again with his stare. “Young for a sheriff.”

“It’s a small town.” Jo felt she should just as soon have that tattooed on her forehead for all the times she’d said that during this trip.

“Jo’s father was the sheriff before his death.”

Lee lost some of the grin he’d been wearing since they arrived. The man was attractive enough, with what looked to be a burn scar on the left side of his face that covered a quarter of his cheek and half of his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s been ten years, it’s okay.”

Lee stared at her now. “So your father passed, and you stepped in.”

Gill placed a hand on her knee and kept it there. Unlike when they were surrounded by those at Quantico, he didn’t hold back the fact they were more than just acquaintances around his friends.

“You could say that.”

“Did you know you were going to be a cop?” Lee asked.

Jo glanced at Gill before answering. “No. It wasn’t on my bucket list.”

Lee nodded a few times before turning his attention to Gill. “Interesting.”

There was some kind of nonverbal communication going on between the men, but Jo wasn’t clued in to what it was.

“How do you two know each other?” Jo asked, trying to get the conversation off of her.

“One of those biker fundraisers put on to raise money for kids at Christmas,” Lee said.

Gill laughed. “Lee had this badass wheelchair with a Harley plate. I knew we had to meet.”

“Gill?” Consuela called from the kitchen, her hand on a tray. “Can you put this on the grill? Five minutes each side, no more.”

Gill patted Jo’s knee and pushed off the couch. “Anything for you.”

Once Gill walked out the back door, Lee continued as if Jo hadn’t changed the subject. “Let me guess, your father would have wanted you to take over for him.”

“Nothing would have made him happier.” Jo pulled on her beer.

“But not you, I’m taking it.”

She tried to deny it. “It hasn’t been that bad.”

“Or that good.”

She moved to protest, shrugged her shoulders instead.

“You know what happens when you live your life for other people, Jo?”

Jo couldn’t think of an answer, so she remained silent.

“You end up in some godforsaken sand trap, an M-14 strapped to your back, while your buddy steps on a bomb. There aren’t enough pieces to pick up of your friend, and you end up spending the next six months on your back in some deathtrap hospital, knowing you’ll never walk again. But you were the lucky one. You made it out alive.” Lee revealed what sounded like the CliffsNotes version of how he ended up in his chair without venom, just straight facts.

“What branch of the service were you in?”

“Army. Dad joined right after high school. Met my mom somewhere after he’d worked his way up the ranks to private first class. By the time I was in the picture he was a sergeant dragging us from one base to another. Like most army brats, I wanted nothing to do with it.”

“You enlisted anyway.”

Lee nodded, drank from his beer. “Tried to avoid it. Went to college for two years, hated it. Floated around for another year trying to figure out life. Finally I conceded to the old man. Wanted him to think I was doing something good with my life. Little did he know that all hell was about to break out in the Middle East and my boots were some of the first to hit the ground.”

Jo looked at his chair. “This happened over there?”

“Yeah. Six months before my term was up. All because I was trying to make someone else happy.”

Jo saw Gill’s back through the sliding glass door at the back of the house. She knew then why he had brought her to visit Lee and his wife.



“What do you think of Jo?” Gill asked his friend.

Consuela and Jo were sitting by the fire pit in the backyard while Lee smoked his cigarette a distance away.

“Looking for my approval?”

Gill leaned forward on his knees, kept his voice low. “We haven’t known each other long.”

“Considering you haven’t spoke of her, I assumed as much.”

Gill glanced her way, enjoyed the way the flames from the fire danced over her face. “She’s too good for such a small town.”

“She doesn’t seem to want anything to do with her job.”

Gill wasn’t convinced. “I thought so, too, then I saw her in action during this training. She’s good at what she does. I just don’t think she’s doing it in the right place.”

Lee pulled in a drag from his smoke. “It’s hard to stop chasing ghosts once you start. While she might be good at what she’s doing, it doesn’t mean she should be doing it.”

“I thought you would say as much. Once she puts some closure to her father’s death, I think she’ll move on.”

Lee narrowed his eyes. “What’s up with that?”

Gill explained Jo’s theory and added that he wasn’t convinced the death was accidental either. “I need to see the files, scope out where they found him.”

“Open a cold case?”

“The case is completely closed. But for Jo, it’s open every day of her life. And it’s strangling her.”

Lee crushed out his cigarette. “For someone who just met this lady, you seem to know a awful lot about her.”

Gill felt Jo’s eyes on him. “Not nearly enough.”





Chapter Ten




The syndicator counted down, Jo’s heart stayed steady until the red light indicated that the simulation was live. Her weapon out in front, her eyes wide open . . . she waited.