Page 5 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

Before she could take a seat at her desk, the front door swung open. She parted her lips to greet Mrs. Foster, who came by most Mondays with a list of complaints. Hadley’s greeting faded when her mind registered her mistake.

“Don’t shoot,” Julian Ramos called out, lifting both arms in the air with the grin that had been irritating her in the best possible way for years. “It’s just me.”

Julian kept his hair too short to need much maintenance, though she could swear it was a quarter inch longer than usual. The faint warmth his Cuban grandfather had given his complexion was a shade darker than the last time she’d seen him, the way it turned every summer, though the rest of him hadn’t changed since the days she’d walked into Troop H as a doe-eyed, fresh detective. He never bothered to tuck in his dress shirt, left the collar undone, and rolled his sleeves to his elbows. And the same gold chain he never removed was visible at his collarbone.

Hadley didn’t want to admit it, but she’d missed the hell out of him. A coffee from Maisy’s was in his right hand, and a paper sack of something in the other that she would bet money was two chocolate donuts.

“I come bearing lots of sugar,” Julian announced, lifting the sack a little higher as he advanced her way. “Looks like you need it, too. Skin and bones, Dawkins. Skin and bones.”

“Julian.” Hadley breathed his name out in a small laugh. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Visiting,” Julian replied, setting the coffee and bag down on Reed’s desk. “Since you clearly aren’t visiting me, or those other idiots I work with on a daily basis, you left me no choice.”

He wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug when she came around the corner of her desk to greet him. Her shoulders went stiff for the first second and then, in the next, eased into it. He still somehow managed to smell like fresh air, and she breathed in the comforting scent.

“You drove an hour and a half to give me a hug?” Hadley asked, stepping back before he sensed the overwhelming doubts that had immediately washed over her the moment he’d walked in the door. “You’re a horrible liar, Julian.”

“Fine. I drove an hour and a half to make sure your ass was still among the living,” Julian replied, studying her the way a doctor takes in a patient he has not seen in too long. She shifted from side to side at the unspoken judgment in his gaze. “You haven’t answered your phone in three weeks, Dawkins.”

“I have,” Hadley responded, lifting her chin a fraction. “I texted back each and every time.”

“You’ve sent me one-word replies, so that doesn’t count.”

“That counts.”

“It does not count,” Julian countered as he reached behind him. He opened the bag and didn’t waste time pulling a chocolate donut from its depths. He then handed the bag off to her. “Here. Eat something. You clearly haven’t been feeding yourself.”

Hadley took the rumpled paper bag, but she set it on her desk in exchange for her mug. She leaned back against the edge before kicking off the conversation he clearly wanted to have in person.

“How is Brosmer?” Hadley asked, covering up a slight wince when she realized that she hadn’t responded to his email last week, either.

Sergeant Ellis Brosmer had been her superior at Troop H for as long as she’d been a detective. He never would have sent her back to her hometown if he’d known it would have led to her resignation. He had handed her the Claymont file last October, ignored her arguments about conflict of interest, and told her to be in Cane County the following morning.

The investigation she had stepped into was supposed to take two weeks tops, because it had been more for the media’s sake than to step on any other law enforcement’s toes. Instead, she had decided to permanently move back home, and the simple sight of a former colleague had her second-guessing that decision.

“He’s fine.” Julian walked around Reed’s desk. “Sarge sends his regards and wants you to know he still thinks letting you resign was the worst mistake of his career. By the way, he’s still waiting for a reply from you, too.”

Julian pulled out Reed’s chair and sat down.

Hadley tightened her grip on her mug, forcing herself to take another sip of her coffee. That small space behind her sternum began to ache, but she did her best to ignore it. If she were to rub the spot with her fingers, Julian would notice, which would lead to him figuring out that she was still having trouble coming to terms with Reed’s death.

“And Cedric?” Hadley asked, working to keep the question lighter than it was. “How’s the custody case going?”

“Lost,” Julian replied, the smile leaving his voice. “Kim moved to Seattle in May. He gets the kids over winter break and a month in the summer.”

“Damn,” Hadley murmured, her heart going out to her other former colleague. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Julian agreed with a shake of his head. “Tell me about it.”

“How is he?”

“He’s drinking more than he should, which doesn’t actually mean much, because Cedric’s threshold was already pretty high.”

“What about the rest of the department?” Hadley asked, grateful for the safer ground.

“Adamski’s pregnant,” Julian said, ticking them off on his fingers. “Holden retires in January and won’t shut up about his new fishing boat. There’s a new guy named Chip who came over from Oklahoma and is the worst kind of newbie. He⁠—”

“Let me guess,” Hadley said quickly, cutting him off and holding up a hand to stop him from saying too much. “He eats out of containers that have someone else’s name on them.”