by Fiona Lowe
His phone beeped with an incoming message.
Floyd Coulson here. Just following up on last night’s conversation. Can we meet at the Big Foot diner this morning before you leave town?
Last night’s conversation? Will wracked his memory, but other than Katrina introducing him to Bear Paw’s jolly and florid hospital administrator and a brief conversation about the influx of tourists in the town during summer, he couldn’t recall anything that required a follow-up. Then again, he couldn’t remember giving Floyd his cell number or much else about parts of the evening. There was every chance he’d momentarily fallen asleep, and as his head had fallen forward, Floyd had taken it as an assenting nod.
Now the guy wanted to meet. Well, he had a day to kill, so why not? Intrigued, he texted back, Yes.
Chapter 4
Tara Ralston checked she had everything ready for work. Polished leather boots? Check. Leather belt? Check. Handcuffs? Check. Whip? No, there was no mounted police division in Montana. Pen. Notepad. Taser. Handgun. Check. Check. Check. Check.
She took a last gulp of coffee, draining the mug, and immediately rinsed and upturned it on the drainer before glancing around her small and sparsely decorated apartment. Her gaze settled, as it often did, on the framed photo of her mother standing outside one of the many trailers that had constituted home when Tara was a kid. She remembered very clearly the day the photograph had been taken—it was her mother’s thirtieth birthday and her twelfth.
There’d been chocolate cake from the grocery store bakery with her name written on it in pink frosting and the gift of a new pair of jeans and a T-shirt from K-Mart. Tara had been over the moon, because new clothes hadn’t been common in her childhood. Her mother had also given her a necklace, and she’d worn it every day until it had fallen apart a year later along with the clothes. But the real reason that day had been so special was because her mother was happy, sober and had stayed awake past seven. They’d cuddled up on the couch watching TV in the way she’d always imagined normal families did. It was one of the highlights of her childhood. Everything had gone downhill fast not long after.
She grabbed her Ike jacket and headed out the door, walking the short distance to the station. LEC, remember. She smiled to herself, thinking that Hollywood was unlikely to start having movie cops say, “Bring him down to the Law Enforcement Center for questioning,” but she hadn’t mentioned that thought to the county officials who’d employed her. They were justifiably proud of the new purpose-built facility that included the police station, pods, holding cells and the city court. However, Mitch Hagen, the sheriff and her boss, rolled his eyes every time he heard the letters LEC.
While she walked she made a call. “Hey, boss, how’s it going this fine Monday morning?”
“How the hell do you think it’s going, Ralston? This frickin’ cast itches worse than poison ivy.”
Mitch had broken his leg a week ago falling out of a tree while trying to rescue Bethany Jacobs’s cat. The cat had climbed down unscathed. Tara wondered how Mitch had spent years as a country cop without learning that along with his gun and his Taser, his other must-have weapon for law and order was a can of tuna fish.
“Sorry to hear that. Do you have a ruler? They make good scratching sticks.”
He grunted. “You on top of things?”
Was she? She was Bear Paw’s first female police officer, and although that shouldn’t be an issue, people often made it one. As a woman on active duty in the military, she’d had to perform better than her male counterparts before she’d been taken seriously. She had no clue what the Bear Paw residents thought about her appointment, but she was holding her breath until after her introductory interview by the local press hit the stands and the Internet tomorrow. Folks who didn’t know the county had appointed a woman would read it for themselves, and she imagined there might be the odd discussion about it over at the bakery, the bar and every other place in town.
Meanwhile, after nine days in Bear Paw and seven on the job, she’d suddenly found herself in charge of the department now that Mitch was on sick leave. Not that she had to worry about managing staff—she was the deputy and she usually did what she told herself to do, and police-wise, there was no one else at the moment until the county made another appointment. Judy Sharp ran the office the way she’d done for years, and what she didn’t know about the town and the department wasn’t worth knowing.
“Compared to Afghanistan and a year in Detroit, Sheriff, Bear Paw’s a walk in the park.”
“There are snipers and unexploded mines here, too, Ralston,” Mitch said, his tone serious. “Only they have different guises from what you’re used to. Don’t get sloppy thinking nothing happens here.”
“No, sir,” she said, trying hard not to roll her eyes as she glanced up and down a virtually empty street. The only action she could see was a squirrel holding a possibly stolen acorn and running up a tree with it.
“And, Ralston, you’ve been thrown in at the deep end, so if anyone gives you a hard time, you let me know.”
I don’t think so. She liked Mitch. He was one of the good guys—the complete opposite of the men her mother, Lexie, had been attracted to. Lexie had introduced a variety of men into their lives, and their legacy had stayed on long after their departure. Part of her appreciated Mitch’s concern for her, but she’d been looking after herself for a very long time, and she wasn’t going to start depending on anyone now.
“I’m a big girl, Sheriff, and I’ll be just fine. You go back to watching daytime TV.” Laughing, she cut the call on his outraged expletive.
She spent the first couple of hours of the day trying to clear paperwork. Her only interruptions were a tourist needing a police report for an insurance claim after she’d lost her wedding ring in the campground shower house and Peter Wengham, an intellectually disabled teen who’d gotten separated from his independent living skills class. He’d come to the station because he was lost.
Tara made a couple of calls and located the class and Peter’s mother. “Come on, buddy, I’ll take you back.”
The boy grinned at her. “You’ve got boobs.”
“I have, and I’m a police officer,” she said, thinking that men with far greater IQs had made the same remark, only theirs had intended offense. If she had testicles, the uniform alone would give her respect, but because she had a set of double Ds, too many men underestimated her and tried something. They always regretted it.
“I like boobs,” Peter said, his cheeks pinking.
She tried not to smile at his pubescent wonder. “Most men do, Peter. It’s fine to think in your head that you like boobs, but you don’t say it out loud because it can upset women.”
“My mom says that.”
She smiled. “And your mom’s right.”
He followed her to the patrol car and got inside, his fingers running over the dash and his eyes wide at the console buttons and lights. “Cool. Turn on the siren?”
Tara wasn’t used to police work like this. In Detroit, the kids that ended up in her patrol car had usually been picked up for graffiti, breaking and entering, drug use or motor vehicle theft. She opened her mouth, ready to say, Keep your hands by your sides, but instead she closed it.
New job, new procedures. Could she break procedure and let the siren whoop for two beats? Her heart rate picked up at the thought.
“What’s this?” Peter pointed to the dash, his round face alight with interest and the siren forgotten.
“It’s the radar unit. It tells me how fast someone’s traveling.”
Peter kept up a barrage of questions that matched the inquisitive interest of a four-year-old, and over the course of the short journey she named almost everything in the vehicle from the mobile data terminal to the spotlight arm. How hard was life with a disabled kid? Her mother had struggled to raise her, and she’d been able to dress herself, cook and get to school all on her own. Truth be told, she’d raised herself.
She pushed away the sadness that thr
eatened to sneak in whenever she thought about that and instead concentrated on the job at hand like she always did. She enjoyed the order of things, and most work tasks could be completed in full without the messy or unfinished business that tagged the rest of her life.
Parking in front of the community center, where the daily living skills class had walked to from the grocery store, she delivered Peter to his group. They were learning how to cook eggs, but everyone seemed far more interested in Tara’s gun, her badge and her favorite color than how to heat a pan. If she’d thought Peter had asked a lot of questions, he had nothing on a group of eight. A jittery sensation buzzed in her chest, and she made a hasty retreat back to her patrol car.
She leaned against it, sucking in a few long, slow deep breaths. Had she really signed on for this? It had seemed like a good idea when she’d seen the advertisement for the job. When the interview panel had asked her why she wanted to work here, she’d said confidently that she was more than ready for a change and was seeking a slower pace. Only small-town policing was proving to be very different from what she’d imagined. She just wanted to lock up offenders and keep the peace. She didn’t ever want to answer questions about herself.
As she clicked her seat belt into place, her stomach rumbled loudly, reminding her it was time for lunch. Before she could go to the Big Foot diner, though, she needed to do a town patrol. This would include a drive past Mitch’s house, otherwise he’d be texting her and asking what was happening. The man had no clue how to relax.
And you do?
Years of structure in the forces didn’t allow for relaxation. In a war zone, a soldier, like a cop, was on duty even when he or she technically wasn’t. Modern warfare meant snipers were just as likely to kill soldiers on R & R as they were those out in the field. She immediately reminded herself she was in Bear Paw, the gopher capital of Montana, where there hadn’t been a murder in thirty-five years and people didn’t lock their doors unless they had something to hide.
Why are we here again? The quiet voice that questioned her decision to relocate to Bear Paw was gaining volume with each passing day. It’s so damn quiet. She refused to answer and instead cruised up and down the quiet streets of her newly adopted town.
Bear Paw was basically one mile long by one and a half miles wide. She’d read in her orientation handbook that it had sprung up when the most northern railroad in the country had come through in 1888. The distinctive concrete grain elevators dominated the town where no other building was more than two stories high, and the closer the street was to the railroad yards, the older the housing.
The mellow early June sunshine warmed her through the windshield as she made her way up and down the numbered streets and avenues until she was in the newer part of town. New was a relative term. The houses were twenty years old, and the area backed onto the steep ridge of the creek, which lay way below. Here the houses were a combination of brick and clapboard, and they had neat gardens with the obligatory blue spruce growing in the front yard and a lilac tree where the front path joined the sidewalk. The trees were in stark contrast to older parts of town where rusted-out vehicles rather than concrete gnomes and ceramic frogs featured. Tara was familiar with “sculptures” hewn from the fine color of rust and decorated with tall grass. As a kid, they’d been her play spaces.
Here in the newer part of town there was no view of industry, just the vista of the country club, and farther out across the grassy plains, the silhouette of the majestic Rocky Mountains. She reached a dead end, although a very faded sign proclaimed more land was for sale. Bear Paw wasn’t growing, but then again, it had missed the bubble and bust of the non-prime housing debacle. Executing a U-turn, she was tempted to text Mitch and tell him all the criminals and troublemakers were obviously taking an early lunch.
As she signaled and took a left turn, something flickered in her peripheral vision. She immediately tensed, slowed and turned her head toward the movement, her eyes quickly taking in the scene. An old truck with a swinging license plate was parked in the driveway of a large house with a well-maintained garden, and a pair of legs stuck out of a basement window. Legs clad in rust-colored trousers that were swinging widely as they shimmied over the windowsill.
Don’t get sloppy, Ralston, thinking nothing happens here.
Yes! Finally, some action. She was out of the patrol car in an instant, her booted feet pounding across the thick and spongy lawn before she threw herself down on the ground and grabbed two ankles with a vice-like grip. “Stop. Police.”
ETHAN Langworthy, PhD, felt the firm grip of fingers biting into his ankles and stilled. It was turning out to be a hell of a birthday, and it was only twelve noon. For the hundredth time, he berated himself for not telling the German backpacker who’d bunked in his spare room last night not to lock the doors when he’d left to catch the train out of town. Ethan never locked his house, so it had been a shock to arrive home from the library for lunch and find the doors and almost all the windows bolted. Those Germans were nothing if not efficient.
The small basement window was the only one that Jürgen had missed closing, and although Ethan wasn’t a big and burly guy, he wasn’t small, either, and he barely fit through the tiny space. Now, along with the fingers digging into his skin, came the pain of the windowsill cutting into his belly. Basically, it was pain all around, given he’d hit his head on the raised sash when he’d tried to push through. He was still seeing silver spots from that slam, but even so, he’d swear he just heard a voice say, Stop. Police.
It was unlikely. In fact, it was far more likely to be the bored Aitken twins joking around. “Ha-ha. Very funny, guys.”
“Move yourself back onto the lawn, now.” The voice sounded feminine, but then again, the twins’ voices did tend to go up and down with the vagaries of puberty. He remembered that excruciating time only too well. Late to the puberty party, he’d been short and weedy at fifteen with his voice squeaking and cracking at inopportune times. It had firmly established his nerd status—one that had dogged him all through school. Who was he kidding? A part of him was still dogged by it, only he’d turned it into a profession.
“Guys, cut the crap.”
The hands didn’t move.
“Now,” he added in his best authoritative voice, which always silenced the pleasers but the naughty kids mostly ignored.
Suddenly, his body jerked back as his legs were tugged hard and his belly scraped roughly over the sill in a jag of pain. “Jesus. Let go of me.”
“And let you disappear into the house? I don’t think so,” the definitely feminine voice replied before yanking his body backward again.
His hands gripped the sill to stay her momentum, his arms burning in their shoulder sockets. His shirt pulled away from his trousers, and he immediately felt the edge of the window grazing the thin layer of skin stretched tight over his vertebrae. He gasped at the whipping and stinging sensation, and his fingers lessened their grip. Her pull won out, and with a thud that expelled the breath from his lungs, he landed facedown in the garden bed with his favorite pair of retro cat-eye spectacles cutting into his face.
Before he could suck in a breath or try to move, his arms were suddenly wrenched roughly behind him, and he felt cold metal pressing against his wrists. God damn it, had he just been handcuffed? He tried to move his hands, and that was when his brain finally caught up with events. Fury blew through him, and he rolled fast onto his side. Looking up, he met a pair of blue green eyes, the color of Saint Mary Lake on a clear and sunny day.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The woman’s expression was neutral. “My job.”
“The hell you are.” In one swift movement he’d learned from years of martial arts, he rolled onto his knees and pushed up onto his feet until he was facing her. He registered her momentary look of surprise as it raced across her cheeks.
Despite the severity of her almost puritanical hairstyle that had her golden blond hair pulled straight back off her face and tig
htly braided, she was stunning. Her dazzling eyes were ringed with licorice black lashes, and her smooth and even skin stretched over ski-jump cheekbones. Not even a utilitarian uniform shirt could disguise that she also had a hell of a rack. She reminded him of an avatar—the perfect visualization of every male gamer’s imagination.
Who was she? Her uniform looked real, but that made no sense, because he’d never seen her before and he knew almost everyone in town. Besides, Bear Paw didn’t have a female police officer, and he couldn’t imagine a woman this attractive wanting to work in law enforcement.
The memory of a conversation that had taken place two weeks ago at Leroy’s after a county in-service drifted back to him and gave him a clue about what was going on. Damn it, but those guys at the county never took no well, and every time he thought he’d shucked off his past and reinvented himself, something like this happened. Hell, they’d probably been the ones to lock him out of the house and not the pedantic German.
He glanced around, fully expecting to see the guys from sanitation, EMS and road maintenance pop up from behind the trees and shrubs in the garden, yelling, You’ve been pranked. “Okay, guys,” he called out. “You win. Come on, show yourselves.”
The woman, who was tall for her sex but the same height as him, wrapped her hand around his arm and in her undeniably throaty voice said, “I’m taking you down to the station.”
“Sure you are.” He wanted to add sweetheart, but let’s face it, he wasn’t that type of guy. Some guys could say it with confidence and make it sound sexy. When he tried, it came out strangled. Truth be told, whenever he was faced with a truly beautiful woman, his mind generally went to mush. “Look, I know this is all part of my birthday roasting and the guys from the county hired you and sent you here to humiliate me because I said I didn’t want a stripper for my thirtieth birthday. Mission accomplished. Consider your job done, and please return the uniform before you leave town.”