Page 2 of Smoke

"What do they still want from him?" I asked.

Dad shifted carefully against the pillows. "They want me to stop asking questions."

Smoke's mouth tightened. "White's been looking at property purchases, unfamiliar vehicles, people leaning on local businesses. He knows enough to be inconvenient and he's stubborn enough to keep going."

"That last part isn't news."

Dad gave me a look, and I let it go. The sheriff's department had been shrinking for years. Deputies left and weren't replaced, budgets tightened and calls that should have had two officers just got one, and only if Dad was free. Dad had always insisted he could make it work, but making it work felt different when Salvation went unpoliced, because the only law enforcement was currently laid up in the hospital.

I glanced at Smoke. "So the Unholy Few stepped in."

"Don't make it sound noble." His tone stayed dry. "Nobody gets to come into our town, shoot the sheriff and finish him in a hospital bed like Salvation belongs to them. That's the problem."

Dad muttered something about criminal territorial bullshit, and Smoke looked at him. "Call it whatever makes you feel better."

That sounded much more like both men I remembered.

A nurse came in to check Dad's IV. Smoke moved aside before she asked, but his attention flicked to her badge and then toward the corridor as footsteps slowed outside the open door. The movement was small enough that most people would have missed it, but I didn't. Twelve years in the Army had left habits in him that marriage had never softened. Smoke noticed exits, strange cars, people who looked twice. He had spent years choosing restaurant seats with a view of the door without seeming to think about it. There had been a time when living beside that vigilance made me feel safer than I had any right to feel. There had also been a time when I wondered whether any part of him was ever completely at rest.

The nurse left, and Smoke's attention came back to me. "You eat?"

I looked at him. "You haven't seen me in five years and you're asking about food."

"You drove in early. You look tired."

"That was almost diplomatic."

The corner of his mouth moved, and the ease of the exchange unsettled me more than the attraction had. That much time apart should have created awkwardness. Instead, my temper and his dry humor seemed perfectly capable of slipping back into an old rhythm without asking permission.

I turned to Dad and spent the next twenty minutes dealing with practical things. He needed clean clothes, his glasses from the house and a charger he insisted the hospital had somehow lost. He also tried to convince me he would be discharged soon, which the nurse had already told me was optimistic enough to qualify as complete fiction.

Eventually his energy faded. His answers shortened and his eyes started closing between sentences, so I kissed his forehead and promised I would come back after I had slept.

"You staying at the house?" he asked.

"Yes." Smoke's attention sharpened, and I caught the change because I used to know every version of his silence. "What?"

"Talk outside."

I followed him into the corridor and folded my arms. "I'm staying at Dad's. I'm not paying for a hotel when the house is empty."

Smoke glanced toward the elevators before answering. "You tell anybody you were coming back today?"

"Holly knew. Dad knew. My boss knows I'm working from Salvation for a while. Nobody else."

"Fine. Go there, lock up and call if anything feels off."

The instruction rubbed at an old nerve. "You remember we're divorced, right?"

"I was there for the paperwork."

"Then you probably remember that you don't get to tell me what I can do."

His gaze held mine, calm enough to make arguing with him feel like pushing at a wall. "I'm not telling you how to live, Beth. I'm telling you the men who shot your father still want to get rid of the law in this town, and you're the easiest thing in town to use against him."

That shut me up for a second, and Smoke softened the point without taking it back. "If something looks wrong, don't convince yourself it isn't because you don't want me to be right. Call."

"I know how to handle myself."