Shadow Valley

by Kate Sherwood

  Before, his kiss had seemed like the focus of their shared passion, hungry and desperate and intense. Now, though, the focus was elsewhere and they both seemed to recognize it. Joe’s mouth moved in rhythm with his body, and Megan found herself responding in kind, their lips pressing together and drawing apart rhythmically. Eventually, they stopped kissing altogether, but kept their mouths close, gasping together, moaning almost as one, and when Megan’s body arched and spasmed in ecstasy, she knew that he followed along with her.

  He was the first to recover, and she felt his kisses resume, no longer demanding but soft and languorous. She kissed him back, and then she eased her legs down until she was holding her own weight. She wished she didn’t have to. She’d always thought of herself as an independent woman. She made her own decisions and took responsibility for her own mistakes. But there was something about this man that made her want to surrender all that, to let him carry her with him wherever he chose to go. That was what made him so dangerous.

  She nudged with her head to send the message that she needed space, and he backed away respectfully. They both took a moment to fix their clothes. She felt awkward for the first time since Joe had found her.

  “I don’t usually do that,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You should. You’re pretty damn good at it.”

  “I didn’t mean…sex. I meant, you know—jumping a virtual stranger. In a forest.”

  “Within earshot of an innocent community barbecue,” he added with a smirk.

  “They couldn’t hear us, could they?” She peered out through the trees, her stomach churning.

  “You’d better hope the band didn’t take a break at any point.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she swore. “What the hell am I doing? What am I thinking?”

  He was quiet for too long. Then he said, “Yeah. Well, don’t worry about it—your secret’s safe with me. Nobody heard anything.” He stepped backward and held his hands up in the air as if surrendering. “Didn’t happen. Went to check on you, didn’t find you. I’m sure you’re fine, though.” He was still walking backward, but then he turned abruptly and strode away. He was out of the forest before Megan could even begin to process his response.

  Had she hurt his feelings? It didn’t seem possible. He was so—so strong, so independent, and resilient. She caught herself. How much of that was him, and how much of it was who she wanted him to be? What did she really know about the man, other than that his body was beautiful and he knew just how to use it?

  She checked that her outfit was more or less in place. She’d walk back through the forest, she decided, until she found the place she’d entered. That way, nobody would know what she’d been doing, or more importantly, with whom she’d been doing it. She remembered the governor taking elaborate steps to disguise their liaisons. She felt dirty, somehow, but she wasn’t sure just what to do about it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So, you had a good time at the barbecue?” Anna leaned into the conference room, her face inscrutable, at least to Megan. It was Monday morning, so Anna would have had time to hear about Megan’s stupidity, if Joe had been inclined to share.

  “Yeah, it was fun,” she replied. Surely that was noncommittal enough.

  “Any more sign of that guy who was harassing you?”

  Megan wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question. There’d been nothing concrete, certainly. She just wasn’t sure whether to trust her instincts. She’d certainly felt like she was being watched, practically all weekend long, but did that mean anything? She’d been feeling that way, off and on, ever since the story had broken. “Not really,” she said.

  But Anna was used to digging the truth out of uncooperative witnesses. “What does that mean?” She stepped into the room and leaned on the table across from Megan. “Have you seen him?”

  “No.” Megan remembered Anna’s strong, confident stance at the barbecue. “I’ve had a weird vibe, but I’m probably just paranoid.”

  “Don’t ignore your gut,” Anna advised. “I’ll nose around a bit, find out if anyone’s seen him. I assume he’s not staying at the motel?”

  That thought hadn’t even occurred to Megan. “I hope not. I haven’t seen him.”

  Anna nodded, but didn’t look as if she thought Megan’s observations, or lack thereof, meant too much. Megan didn’t feel her situation justified taking up the deputy’s time. “It’s not a crisis. I mean, he was an annoyance, but he wasn’t violent or anything. I know you have important stuff to do.”

  Anna shook her head. “You’ve been listening to Don too much. I can make time.”

  Megan wasn’t sure how to take this. “Well, thanks. I appreciate it.” It hit her suddenly just how much she did appreciate it, how nice it was to feel as if there was someone in her corner, someone looking out for her. Anna probably wouldn’t appreciate it if Megan called her maternal, but that was how it felt. Megan blinked away a little wetness in her eyes, and smiled. “Seriously. It means a lot.”

  Anna shrugged and looked at the stacks of files that Megan was still working her way through. “Are you looking for something specific in all that?”

  Megan wished she had a better answer. “Not really,” she admitted. “I sent a report down to Helena. I said what you’ve all been saying—that there’s a difference in priorities between local and federal bodies, that there’s a problem with policing a long, unguarded, heavily forested border and that the local citizens aren’t inclined to cooperate.”

  She’d faxed all that down on Friday afternoon, and gotten her response that morning.

  “They said fine, stay with it.” She looked around the room at the stacks and stacks of files, then back at Anna. “I can do what they want. I can write something that will make it sound like everything’s fine up here. The governor’s looking to make the move to national politics, so he wants to look good. I don’t think I’m actually expected to solve anything. I’m just here so they can say it’s been investigated, and there’s no waste at the state level. I can come up with a report for them to send the feds, carefully worded and politically astute, wrap things up and go back to Helena to try to figure out the next step in my life.” She could do all that, and she should do all that. “But I feel like there’s something I’m missing.”

  She didn’t know if there was any chance that she could actually express any of this properly, but it seemed important that she at least try, and Anna seemed willing to listen. “I feel like maybe there’s something real that I could be doing here. Something that could actually help. I feel like there is a problem, something bigger than routine squabbling over jurisdiction, and if I can figure that out, then maybe it would make things better.” She frowned at the stacks of files in front of her. “I’m fooling myself, right?”

  But Anna didn’t seem as dismissive of the task as Megan was. She eased into the room and let her fingers dance over the closest pile of folders. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe there’s a real reason we’re not working together very well. I mean, something beyond the different priorities.”

  “Yeah, okay, but what?”

  Anna shrugged. “Good question. What are you seeing in the files? Where does it seem like things are going wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” And it didn’t really help that Joe Cody’s name was scattered throughout the reports. Each time she saw it she was distracted, remembering rough hands and soft lips, the heat of his body, the gentle strength of his movements. No, that wasn’t helping at all. “This isn’t my area, really. I fix things, but more on the surface than down deep. I’m probably not the best person for this job.”

  “You’re the person we’ve got,” Anna said firmly. It was reassuring that she didn’t seem totally upset by the statement.

  Don poked his head into the room. “Baker. You ready?”

  He was mor
e animated than usual, and Megan looked at the two deputies curiously. What were they up to? But Megan wasn’t a cop, and day-to-day operations weren’t really her business.

  So when Anna stood up with a cheerful, “You bet,” to Don, Megan just smiled at her, watched them leave and then kept reading.

  She was starting to think about going over to the diner for lunch, trying not to wonder whether Joe would be there, when the main room exploded into activity. There was normally a buzz of quiet conversation with occasional outbursts of louder talk, but this was something out of the ordinary. Megan tried to ignore it for a while; it wasn’t her business, and she didn’t want to get in the way. But when the room started emptying, officers from all departments and levels rushing out the door, she wondered if there’d been a bomb threat or something.

  She stepped out of the conference room just in time to be almost plowed over by the sheriff, charging down the aisle faster than she’d thought possible for a man his size. “Carson,” she stammered, “What’s happening?”

  He looked at her as if he barely knew who she was. “Officer down,” he said. He shook his head as if to clear it. “Anna.”

  By the time Megan had recovered her voice, Carson was gone. There were only a few people left in the room, and they were all busy making phone calls.

  Megan wandered out to the foyer and found Tanya, the receptionist, busy on the phones. Megan listened to the side of the conversation that she could hear. Unfortunately, the woman wasn’t giving out much information. Apparently “the situation is still developing” and “we’ll release more information as it becomes available” was the best Megan was going to learn from that source.

  Then Tanya looked up. In the past week or so, they’d exchanged little more than a few friendly greetings, but now they were about the only people left in the building. “Anna,” the woman said softly, as if that word conveyed everything she needed to say.

  Megan nodded. “Is it—how bad is it?”

  “There’s an airlift on the way. The local ambulance is giving first aid, but it’s bad enough that they want to get her to the city fast.” The woman’s face creased. “They wouldn’t send the helicopter…not if there wasn’t a chance.”

  Megan nodded. “Anna’s family—have they been told?”

  “The sheriff said he was going to call Patrick.” She saw Megan’s blank look. “Her ex. He and Anna aren’t real close anymore, but he’s a good dad. He’ll take care of the kids.”

  Megan nodded. “Do we know what happened?”

  The receptionist just shook her head. “I heard ‘shots fired, officers need assistance.’ Then ‘officer down.’” The phone rang again. She made a face, but then clicked the button to connect her headset. “I’m sorry, the situation is still developing,” she said as Megan drifted away.

  Megan felt useless and frustrated. She wanted to do something to help, but didn’t want to get in the way. She was an outsider both to the town and to the law enforcement community. But she couldn’t just go back inside and keep reading files as if Anna wasn’t fighting for her life somewhere not too far away. She’d been planning to go for lunch, but that seemed absurd now. She wandered out to the front of the building and took a deep breath of the crisp spring air. It was a beautiful day, and it made Megan want to cry.

  Agent Styler, the woman from the DEA, stood by one of the few cars left in the parking lot. She was pacing, her whole body tight and angry, holding her cell phone to her ear as if she was trying to embed it in her head. Megan had never noticed Styler and Anna being especially friendly, but obviously the agent was pretty damned upset. Megan remembered her father’s reaction to any law enforcement shooting, even those states away. The different branches might squabble like children, but when it came down to it they were all part of the same family, and an injury to one of them hurt them all.

  Megan went back inside the building and waited until Tanya turned to her. “Is there anything I can do?” Megan asked. “Any way to help?”

  “Pray,” the receptionist suggested. Then she lowered her eyes and went back to the phones, but not before Megan had seen the tears threatening to spill out.

  Megan wasn’t religious. She wasn’t even spiritual, didn’t really believe that her positive thoughts in a Shadow Valley office could have any effect on a woman fighting for her life miles away. Yet it was all Megan could do, so she went back to the quiet of the conference room and prayed her hardest.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she heard voices in the main room. She stood up so quickly that she banged her thigh on the edge of the table, but she barely noticed the pain. By the time she reached the doorway, the room was starting to fill up. It looked like mostly DEA and FBI agents, but there were other people too—all men, all handcuffed. Megan counted six of them, and then she stopped. Joe was being led past the desks straight to the interrogation rooms at the back. He was handcuffed, but his head was still held high and his face was calm. He looked like he’d been through all this before, countless times, and regarded it as a slight inconvenience at most. He didn’t even glance in Megan’s direction, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he knew she was there and didn’t want to look at her, or if he was just coolly uninterested in his surroundings.

  She wanted to run to him. She had the crazy urge to attack the officer behind him and steal the key, stage a daring rescue and run off into the mountains. But practical considerations aside, she knew she would never do that. She trusted the legal system and, at least when her brain was working properly, she wasn’t sure that she trusted Joe Cody. So she stepped back inside the conference room, enough to feel hidden, and watched as Joe walked calmly into one of the interrogation rooms. The agent stayed in with him for a few moments, then came out and carefully closed the door. Megan eased over close enough to hear the agent as he shook his head and spoke to his partner.

  “I don’t know why we’re bothering with him. The fucker wouldn’t say a word any other time we’ve brought him in. What’s different this time?”

  “This time, him or one of his boys shot a cop. The gloves are off.” The agents shared a look, then nodded grimly.

  Megan wondered what Joe was thinking, or what he was feeling. How could he appear so calm? And what were the agents thinking, to suspect Joe in an attack on Anna? Were they really so removed from the locals that they didn’t even know about the friendship, the history? Megan tried to imagine any world where Joe would hurt Anna, and she couldn’t. It might not be smart, but she did trust the man, after all. She might not know whether he was a criminal, but she was certain he wasn’t a monster.

  Her cell phone rang and she answered almost automatically. “Hello.”

  “Megan. It’s Don Gallineau.”

  “Don!” She tried to control her volume. “Are you with Anna? Is she okay? What happened?”

  “I’m with her.” Don sounded tired. “As close as they’ll let me get, at least. I rode down in the helicopter with her.”

  Megan wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, but she forced herself to ask anyway. “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t know.” He paused. “Bad. It was supposed to be a fairly routine arrest, but things just went wrong.” His voice was rough. Maybe he was crying right then, or maybe he’d just been crying earlier. “But look, Megan, the reason I’m calling…”

  “Yeah? What can I do?”

  “Anna asked for you before they wheeled her away. She said she wanted to talk to you. Can you get down here? She’s going to be in surgery for a while, I think, but she seemed pretty insistent that she wanted to see you.”

  “Me? Are you sure?” Anna had family, friends of her own, coworkers…why on Earth would she want to see Megan?

  Don sounded as if he didn’t understand it either. “Yeah, she said you. We’re in Missoula. Can you come down?”

  Megan thought of Joe,
locked in the interrogation room. She didn’t want to abandon him, but she realized that she already had, when she’d ducked back into her office instead of stepping forward and letting him see a friendly face. But there was nothing to do about that now. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “We’re at St. Patrick’s. Do you know where it is?”

  Missoula was a couple of hours away. “I can find it. I’m on my way.”

  She turned the phone off. She allowed herself one more look toward the closed interrogation room door, and then headed back to her desk to grab her jacket. Whatever Anna needed, Megan would try to give it to her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The waiting room at the hospital was just as full as Megan had assumed it would be. She couldn’t find Don, but there were two Missoula police officers posted outside Recovery. Megan hoped that they were just some sort of honor guard, as opposed to being a sign that there was an ongoing risk to Anna’s safety.

  Anna had been out of surgery by the time Megan arrived at the hospital, but she’d been closely monitored, with only her mother in the room with her. For several hours, Megan paced along the hallway, drinking disgusting coffee and convincing herself that Don had misheard Anna, or Megan had misheard Don, or that there had been some other miscommunication. There was no reason for Megan to be there.

  But then an older woman came down the hallway, her face tense. She peered uncertainly at the waiting crowd, then said, “Megan Archer?” Megan stepped forward and the gray-haired woman moved to meet her. “Megan Archer? I’m Anna’s mother. She wants to see you.”

  “I heard. That’s why I’m here.” Megan tried to sound respectful and sympathetic, but it wasn’t easy with this woman squinting at her like she was sure Megan was up to something.