Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

“Trust me. Someone close to her did this, and the only people in town I trust right now are you, Wyatt, and your ladies.”


“Jo’s smart, she’s going to figure out something’s up.”

“I’ll tell her. Just wait for me to get there.”

Gill blew past his colleagues when he entered the office after being gone for two weeks.

“Shauna?” He poked his head into her office, motioned her to follow him.

“Hey, stranger.” She scrambled to catch up with him. “What’s up?”

Gill blew past his superior’s secretary. “Reyes in there?”

“He’s on the phone.”

That didn’t stop him. He knocked once and let himself in.

Reyes looked up from his phone call. “Right . . . okay. Listen, something just blew in. I’ll get back to you.” He hung up. “Clausen . . . Burton.”

“I have a new case.” For the next thirty minutes Gill explained the situation. From Jo’s nonaccident to the questionable death of her father ten years prior. One too many coincidences pointed to foul play and murder. The holes in the lines of the squad car were attempted murder of a sworn officer. And no one wearing the uniform was okay with that.

“You’re too close to be objective,” Reyes said once he agreed there was a case.

“I’m the only one close enough to investigate this. A new player in this town will scare off our suspect.”

“And you think this deputy is our guy?”

“He stands to gain if something happens to Jo.”

“Feels too neat,” Shauna said.

“I have to agree with Burton.”

“Still think you’re too close, Gill.”

“Send someone else if you need to, but I’m going in. I’ll tell Jo I’m taking a vacation. Shauna can come visit. Be a second set of eyes.”

“Our heroin case?” Reyes asked.

“I’m a day away from the warrants being signed,” Shauna told him.

“We need hard evidence.”

“I’m not new. I’ll get your evidence.”

Reyes stood. “I want a daily report.”

Gill offered a tight smile. “Done.”

“Go. Get out of here.”

Gill didn’t need to be told twice.





Chapter Twenty-Nine




Jo sat across from Gill, her kitchen table separating them, and listened.

Before he was finished, she felt sick to her stomach. A serious desire to empty what dinner she had managed to eat sat close to the surface.

“Maybe the mechanic is wrong.”

Gill held her hand. “He’s not wrong. I saw the lines with my own eyes. The holes were large enough to warrant leaks, not big enough to dump all the fluid in one sitting. It was deliberate, Jo.”

“Why?”

“We’re going to find out.”

Someone had tried to kill her. The sling holding her left arm and her inability to run a block, much less the five daily miles she’d run before, were evidence that whoever that someone was, they’d nearly succeeded.

“When I was in the academy, the other cadets would talk about wearing a badge, how it was a target just asking for someone to aim a weapon at them. I never felt like that. I figured my father’s death was isolated. Something that involved him . . . not this badge.”

“There’s no way of knowing if they’re connected,” Gill told her.

“No way of knowing they’re not either. Seems a little too convenient to have my father ‘accidentally’ shoot himself and for me to bite it going off a cliff.” Jo pictured the cemetery where her parents lay and for a brief moment saw another flag-draped casket.

“You didn’t bite it.” His eyes were large orbs of worry.

“How are we going to find this person? They’ve been hidden for ten years.”

“They’re not hiding now.”

Jo shook off the chill. “I’ve felt like someone has been watching me for close to a year.”

“Probably have. Which tells me that whoever this is, they’re local, or local enough.”

“They climbed under my car. They would have to know about the recall, my schedule.” A long list of names filled Jo’s head.

“So write those names down. No matter who they are.”

“I know it isn’t Luke or Mel . . .”

“But Luke is a mechanic, and maybe he said something to his father about the recall.”

“Mr. Miller is like my second dad,” she protested.

“Mr. Miller runs an auto shop. He might have said something in passing to Joe Blow from outside of town.”

She hadn’t thought of that.

“Every name.”

The list in her head doubled. “How am I going to trust my car?”

“Playing post-traumatic stress might be the best way to handle that right now. River Bend is small enough to walk. It’s almost summer.”

“That can’t last forever.”

Gill squeezed her hand. “Honey, I’m not waiting forever to nail this bastard to the wall.”

She brought their clasped hands up to her lips and kissed his fingertips.



Gill liked working with as few players as possible. He and Shauna were a pretty good tag team for that very reason. Shauna would network as the social one, and he would sit in parking lots and snap pictures.

Bringing in Jo’s friends was unavoidable. Especially when Gill himself had called Luke to make sure Jo wasn’t driving before he could make it back to town.

Outside her small circle of friends, no one was eliminated from the suspect list. When he’d suggested Glynis, Jo laughed him out of the room. But her name stayed on the list. She knew about the recall, had access to the car, was removing files.

When he’d pointed these things out, Jo still laughed.

In Gill’s head, the number one suspect was Jo’s deputy, Karl Emery. The man didn’t pretend to be completely charmed, but he wasn’t a total asshole either. He sat on the fence, and he watched both Gill and Jo a little too hard.

Gill had the list of activities Jo was on point to attend. Events that everyone in town would be aware of.

The state championship competition for her runners. That would take place in Eugene. They agreed to make it sound like she was driving her Jeep to the event, and at the last minute they would take the van with the kids.

The senior graduation was less than a week after state, and then the class reunion back at the school gym.

Jo would have a personal bodyguard at every event.

Gill knew he’d driven his point on her personal safety home when he witnessed her putting on her vest before her uniform.



Life couldn’t get much better.

Thanks to all things Tina, Drew passed his chemistry class. Something he knew he’d never use again in his life.