by Caroline Lee
It was probably too much to hope Maury would send Tristan again, huh? And would he come, despite her warning? She didn’t actually have any way to back it up, and if this was his job, then he couldn’t not come…
She said her goodbyes to Maury and ambled towards the Main House, her hands in her pockets and glad for the modicum of warmth the vest provided on this bright and chilly spring day. What would it be like to camp under a bridge every night, regardless of the weather? Was he warm enough, even last month when Riston got that surprise snow flurry? Or—
No. She needed to put Tristan Quarles out of her mind.
And she managed to, by focusing on what mattered; the safety of the ranch’s guests. She greeted all of them, and took four more sets of photos with children—including one where she let the oldest girl pretend to arrest her, and had to work hard to maintain her fierce glower instead of beaming proudly at the girl’s ambition.
Passing through the admin offices, she waved to a frazzled-looking Erica. Then she got roped into helping Deena hang a new painting by Mira—Tony’s new wife—in a guest room in the Bunk House. She agreed it was almost as lovely as Tony’s work, and the tiny gnome peeking out from behind a rock in the foreground just made it perfect.
It was almost lunchtime by then, so she made her way towards Kelsey’s Kafé, and radioed to Allan on the way. He asked her to pick him up his usual, so she put in both orders at the counter to go and waved to Bob, who was singing to himself while he flipped burgers in the kitchen.
When she turned to place her elbows behind her on the counter and scan the room, she was surprised to see Shane Clapper in one of the booths in the corner. Surprised, because he was rarely in here at lunchtime anymore. Since Kelsi had had the twins, he’d been taking off more and more time to stay home with “his girls”—as he called them.
But today, he sat with a big cup of coffee—made sense, considering he had two babies who weren’t sleeping through the night yet—and a bunch of papers spread out in front of him. But what was alarming was the way he planted his elbows and locked his hands behind his head. He looked almost…hopeless.
Charley was halfway across the Kafé before she realized it, worried about her friend.
“Howdy, Sheriff.” She stopped right beside his booth, not sure if she should slip in without permission.
Shane jerked his head up, but then his expression eased into a slight smile. “Howdy, Sheriff, yourself.” He nodded towards the tin badge on her vest. “Doin’ your rounds?”
She grinned in an effort to lighten his mood, and tipped her white novelty ten-gallon hat. “Jest doin’ m’job,” she said in her best old-timey accent. “Gotta make sure these good folks’r safe.”
Jerking his thumb to the booth on the other side of the papers, Shane invited her to sit. “Glad to know that you’ve got the basics down.”
“So, how are the girls?” she asked as she sat, figuring they were a safe subject.
She was right; Shane’s face lit up. “They’re amazing. Kelsi’s amazing! I dunno how she manages to take care of the babies and be so chipper all the time and take care of me.” The man was sure in love with his wife, that was obvious. “Little Victoria hasn’t stopped moving since she was born—before she was born, I guess. Kelsi says that she was the one who kicked her the most when they were inside. She—Victoria, I mean—takes up most of the space in the crib by herself, just spread out all over. She’s always wiggling or kicking or cooing, and she started smiling really early, according to the docs.”
“And Willow?”
“She’s the opposite of her sister. A little bit smaller too, but the docs say she’ll catch up soon. She’s the one who likes being all wrapped up tight in swaddling—Kelsi calls her our little baby burrito—and who just sort of watches the world with those big Weston-blue eyes.” He sighed blissfully. “I’m exhausted one-hundred-and-ten percent of the time, but I couldn’t be happier.”
Listening to Shane’s enthusiasm, Charley had to smile. He and Kelsi—the youngest of the Weston siblings who ran the ranch—had been married for almost a year, and they were so in love it was sometimes funny.
“I’m really happy for you, Sheriff. Your little girls sound incredible.”
“They really are.” His enthusiastic grin began to slip. “But they’re growing so fast, and I’m afraid I’m missing stuff.”
“Really?” She plopped her elbow on the table. “I thought you were able to spend a lot of time with them, with Bart as your point man?” From what she’d heard from Tony, Shane’s deputy had been thrilled for the extra responsibility, just like she’d been excited to step into Tony’s shoes.
“Yeah,” he sighed, “I was. But recently…” He trailed off as he gathered up some of the papers in front of him, revealing a map of the Idaho panhandle covered in red circles and scrawled dates from the last decade. “A big case came down the pipes, and we’ve got guys from Boise and the feds crawling all over.”
Charley sat up straight. “Whoa! The FBI is here?” Her heart began to pound. Imagine, a case so big that the FBI ended up in her little neck of the woods!
“Agent Saunders is running the team—he visited here last summer and married one of Kelsi’s friends. He requested to be transferred to the case, and Liz came back to visit and meet the babies. But if we can’t bust this soon, I figure the CIA and DEA will stick their noses in, since it’s technically international—”
“The DEA? International?” Charley’s jaw dropped open in shock. “What’s going on, Sheriff?”
He looked at her for a long moment—judging if he could trust her?—before shrugging and pulling the map on top of the pile. “You used to be a cop, and you’ve got good instincts. Maybe you can keep your ear to the ground and let me know if you hear anything suspicious.”
His trust made her feel lighter…it lessened the heavy ball of guilt that had been sitting in her stomach since discovering how badly she’d misjudged Tristan. “I’ll do my absolute best, Sheriff Clapper.”
“Shane, please.” He leaned forward, moved his coffee out of the way, and used his pen to gesture to a stretch of State Route 95—and some of the surrounding roads—between Sandpoint and the border. In those sixty or so miles, there were probably three dozen red marks; some with dates, and many with question marks.
He took a deep breath. “Twelve years ago, there was a gang—mostly family-based—that operated north of Bonner’s Ferry and manufactured methamphetamine. That was during the heyday of the drug, and sales were good.”
Charley shuddered, knowing how much damage meth did to a person. It was a real problem in certain areas, and one thing she definitely did not miss about being on the force was having to deal with meth-heads.
“They had an edge on most of the other small-time producers, because they were so close to Canada. They were bringing Sudafed across the border, because it wasn’t regulated up there yet, and using that Pseudoephedrine to cook up the meth. They managed to distribute a big chunk before the local police departments busted them, and even that bust was mainly luck. We—well, they, since this was right before I came to Riston—were in the right place at the right time, and interrupted a drop, which allowed the FBI to trace the drugs back across the border for the Canadians to deal with.” He tapped a large red circle on the map. “And our officers nabbed the kid who was picking up the Pseudoephedrine, which let us finally pin it on his family. Oh, he refused to rat on them, but we had a pretty good case already.”
Shane sighed and tapped his pen against the map again. “It was a huge feather in the local PD’s cap, you know?”
“I can imagine.” Charley nodded.
“Well, now it’s happening again.”
Charley cocked her head. “What, the smuggling? The drug-manufacturing?”
“Yeah. We think. There’s been a new influx of drugs in the area, at least according to Agent Saunders, and the whole thing is following the same route as it did twelve years ago. The Canadians have told us their guy is still in prison, and th
ey’ve cracked down on selling Sudafed across the counter, just like the US did. But there was a big theft from a medical warehouse in Edmonton a few months back, and we figure it was too hot to process up there. So we think that one of this gang down here in Idaho heard about the theft and decided to start the old lab back up. Complete with drops at random points along the highways, just like a dozen years ago.”
“You’re pretty sure it’s the same MO?” It felt good to be talking cop-speak, if only for a while.
“If it’s not the same gang, they took lessons from the original.” His fist dropped to the map. “They’ve got some kind of system; we know that much at least. They’re bringing the Pseudoephedrine across in the forests between Route 95 and Kootenai National Forest in Montana—which is a huge swath of land.”
Charley nodded, looking at the map. “Yeah, that would be pretty hard to patrol regularly.”
He grunted in agreement. “It is. So we’ve decided to let the feds focus on that—it’s international business, after all—and we’ve been focusing on catching the drop and getting there before they do. We’ve figured out how they’re communicating. It’s the same way they did twelve years ago, but we can’t make heads or tails of the instructions. Just a bunch of numbers.”
“Well, they must mean something to someone. If you’re pretty sure it’s the same gang, why not just track down the remaining family members and figure out who’s started up the business again?”
“Because we don’t have to.” Shane started to gather up the papers and stack them neatly. “There’s only one person who could be doing it. One who was close enough to the original operation, who has the motivation, and who isn’t in prison.”
Charley’s brows rose as she helped him fold up the map. “Really? Who is he? Do you know where to find him?”
“No, that’s the problem.” Shane took a moment to finish his coffee before placing the cup on the edge of the table for a server to pick up. “The kid I told you about? The one who we busted collecting the drugs? That was the head honcho’s son. I told you it was a family operation, right?” Shane scooted to the edge of the booth with his papers and stood up. “Well, we put Daddy-O away for a long time, but the kid got out a few years back. And disappeared.”
Something deep in Charley’s stomach flipped over, and a sense of foreboding closed over her. She didn’t know how or why, but what Shane was saying was going to change her life. She didn’t know why it was so important for her to know this kid’s name, but it was.
“Who is he?” She looked up at Shane, met his eyes, and held her breath.
He pulled his hat on with his free hand, nodded to her—one professional to another—then said, “Tristan Quarles.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Tristan’s phone dinged with an incoming text message. He was already awake, breaking camp and getting ready to head over to Denny’s for his morning coffee and eggs. He paused mid-stretch and wondered what Maury needed from him now. He knew his boss had gone over to River’s End Ranch yesterday to check out the window jambs…had he agreed with Tristan’s observations? Was that why he was texting so early?
Pulling the phone out of the compartment on his motorcycle, Tristan wondered if he was going to be ordered back to the ranch. What would he do if his boss needed him back there to work on one of their projects? Charley couldn’t actually keep him off the property, not really…but on the other hand, he didn’t want to irritate her unnecessarily. She had enough to irritate her already, without him adding to her burdens.
On the other other hand, he would really, really love an excuse to see her again.
He clicked on the text icon.
“We need to talk ASAP. Come to my office.”
Office? Maury didn’t bother with an office, and Tristan didn’t recognize the number.
“Who is this?” he typed.
A long moment passed before the reply popped up. “Sorry. It’s Charley.”
Charley? A band tightened around Tristan’s chest. What was Charley doing texting him? And why did she want to see him again? His heart thumped in anxious joy. Should he be nervous or thrilled she’d tracked him down?
“How’d you get my number?” he asked. Not that he minded.
“I met your boss yesterday. I contacted him and he gave it to me.”
She’d met Maury? The older man had gone to the ranch yesterday... Hopefully he hadn’t done anything to tick her off. “How’d that go?” Tristan typed carefully, hoping he could keep her chatting with casual conversation.
“He assumed I wanted to track you down to ask you out on a date, judging from his jokes. I let him believe that.”
Uh-oh. That sounded like she wasn’t interested in asking him out, didn’t it? Tristan’s thumbs hovered over his phone’s screen, but he couldn’t come up with anything in reply before the three little dots popped up to show she was typing again.
“Are you going to come to my office? Or do I need to come find you?”
He hesitated. This wasn’t sounding good. “Your office?” That building she tried getting him to go in last week?
“You know what I mean.”
“The jail,” he typed, that old panic climbing up his throat again. He clenched the muscles in his hands to keep them from shaking as he typed, “That’s your office, right?” He’d known too many cops whose offices were part of a jail. But he didn’t like them, not nearly as much as he liked Charley.
“Yeah,” he found himself typing. “I’ll come to you. This afternoon.” He had to check in on the bricklayers over at Athol this morning.
“Fine.” Was it his imagination, or did her texts seem curt? “I’ll be looking for you.”
Tristan didn’t ask why. Just sent a thumbs-up before closing the app. That didn’t stop him thinking about it all through breakfast and the ride out to Athol. Something had happened, and he guessed it wasn’t something good.
Sure, he’d like to imagine he’d charmed her to the point where she had to break her own rules about asking him to stay away. But judging by her comment about Maury, he figured it was more likely she was going to drop a bombshell on him.
She’d probably looked up his priors and now was going to demand what he’d been doing at the Kids’ Korral. No, wait. If she’d met Maury, then she probably already knew why Tristan had been there, and knew that he had a legit reason. But her texts didn’t sound like someone who was ready to apologize for misjudging him.
Still, he was pretty sure he knew what she wanted to hear from him, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to share. He could just imagine it: I heard you’ve been in jail for nine years. Wanna tell me about that? It wasn’t something that came up all that often with women, was it? Should he just spill everything? Did it really matter, what she thought of him?
Later, as Tristan made the turn by the big brick “River’s End Ranch” sign and zoomed up towards the parking lot, he realized that it did. It did matter what she thought of him, for some reason.
He was mentally preparing himself to walk into that jail and explain it all to her, when she surprised him. Just as he reached to turn his bike off, he looked up and saw her as she stepped off the porch of the hotel-building. She was in her full cop-look-alike uniform, and he had to swallow the uncomfortable feeling of fear that tried to climb up his throat.
“Hey,” she called out as she crossed the parking lot towards him. Her voice was flat, and her expression was guarded.
He pulled off his helmet. “Hey, yourself.” That was the best you could come up with, man?
She stopped an arms-length from him, and he didn’t like the way she rested her hand on the butt of her weapon again. Was that to make her feel tougher? Or was it just habit?
“Can that thing go off-road?”
That wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. Tristan blinked, then looked down at his still-idling motorcycle. “My bike? It’s not meant to. What are you thinking?” Man, he’d love to know what she was thinking half the time.
“Dirt a
nd gravel. Not mud or woods or anything.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, it’ll handle that no problem.” That pretty much described three-quarters of the construction sites he visited, anyhow. Maybe she wanted him to drive her on his bike somewhere because her car still had the faulty gas-gauge?
“Good.”
That’s all she said: good. And then she climbed on his bike. Behind him. With her arms wrapped around his middle, her palms flat against his stomach, and the insides of her thighs plastered against the outside of his.
Uhhhh. Tristan’s mind went blank, and he just stood there, his engine idling between his legs and his entire being focused on the woman behind him.
Eventually she nudged him with her elbow. “Let’s go, Tristan.”
He had to swallow twice to make his voice work. “Go where?” he croaked.
“I’ll direct you.”
So he handed her the helmet, and she took it with a little huff which might’ve been amusement. She let go of him long enough to drop it over her head, then wrapped her arms around him once more. He kicked the bike into gear and headed into the ranch.
They followed the river for a little while, before she hollered in his ear, “Turn here!” and he found himself puttering along a dirt road that seemed to be following the edge of a big lake.
After about five minutes, she unwrapped her arms from around him, and pointed to a place that obviously served as a little pull-off.
He pulled the bike in and thumbed the ignition. When she climbed down off the back, he admitted feeling a little lost without her warmth pressed against him. He wasn’t sure what was going on here; should he feel flattered she’d lured him out in the middle of nowhere? Or seriously alarmed that the armed cop had dragged him out here, away from witnesses?
Feeling more than a little nervous, he swung his leg off the bike, and watched her pull off his helmet. Her short brown hair was fluffed, and she held the helmet by the face guard, bouncing it against her thigh. To his surprise, she seemed just as hesitant, just as unsure. But then, as he watched, her jaw hardened and her shoulders straightened.