The Missoula County Courthouse was a three-story brick building with a clock tower and a lawn full of mature elms. Bear pulled into the public lot across the street and killed the engine.
Nobody moved.
After a long beat, Logan pulled out his earbuds. “Is this it?”
“This is it.”
“Okay.”
Bear turned in the seat to look at his son. Logan met his eyes, and the careful blankness was still there, but something underneath it had gone tight. Scared, if Bear was reading him right. Which he was, because the same expression was sitting on his own face.
“Hey.” Bear kept his voice level. “Whatever happens in there, you’re coming home with me. You understand?”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I’m promising it anyway.”
Logan looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, but his expression said he still didn’t fully believe it.
Bear got out of the truck.
Greta came around to his side, her hand finding the small of his back as he locked up. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. She walked beside him up the courthouse steps with Logan trailing behind them, and Bear breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth and tried to look like a man who deserved to walk into a custody hearing and walk out with his son.
The courthouse lobby smelled like floor polish and old paper. A deputy checked their IDs at the security desk. They rode the elevator to the third floor and stepped out into a narrow hallway lined with wooden benches.
Jennifer Hayes was waiting outside Courtroom 3B with her portfolio under her arm and a paper coffee cup in her hand. She straightened when she saw them, and something shifted in her face — relief, maybe, or its professional cousin.
“Mr. McKenna. Logan.” She extended her hand. “Thank you for being early.”
Bear shook her hand. “Is there a problem?”
“No problem. Actually — there’s been a development. I tried to call you this morning.”
His phone had been on the dresser. He hadn’t checked it.
“What kind of development?”
Hayes glanced at Logan, then back at Bear. “Ms. Wexler withdrew her petition two days ago.”
The words took a second to land.
“She what?”
“Withdrew. She no longer wishes to pursue custody.”
Bear had to brace a hand against the wall. “Why?”
Hayes’s mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile. “She saw the news coverage of the flood rescue last month. The piece about Valor Ridge and the evacuation. Apparently she watched you carry a child out of waist-deep water on KPAX, and her attorney called me the next morning.”
Bear stared at her.
He hadn’t thought about cameras during the flood. He’d just done the work in front of him and?—
X.
No doubt the bastard had pulled footage from somebody’s phone and made sure it got to the right news desk. That was exactly the kind of thing X did and never mentioned afterward.
Bear had no idea how he’d ever repay him.
