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“Uh-huh. So just a boy toy? God, you get the best deliveries.”
Isabelle laughed and tried to push up to her feet. “So he caught the guy?”
“Not the guy. Someone from their group, I guess. But Ephraim’s brother is still out there.”
That must have been what that marshal was spreading the word about earlier.
“Be careful,” Lauren said. “Really. Maybe you should come stay with me.”
“And leave Jill alone up here? No way. Anyway, he’s after the judge, not me. And I have Bear.”
“Are you locking your doors?”
“Tom insists.”
“Oh, Tom,” Lauren said with a laugh.
Isabelle finally pushed to her feet and smiled at the way her stomach fluttered. It was nice to feel that after so many years. “You’re sure he’s okay, right?”
“You can read it yourself on the paper’s website. The story is only
three paragraphs long at this point, but it specifically says that no shots were fired, and the guy was taken into custody.”
“I guess he’s going to have a busy day,” Isabelle said, already thinking selfishly of the night to come and whether he’d have time to stop by. Probably not.
“Why don’t you come down and have lunch with me and Sophie? You can tell us more about Marshal Tom.”
Isabelle snorted. “You’ve both met him. What is there to tell?”
“You know what we want to hear.”
“Pervert,” she said on a laugh. “But I can’t. Too much work.” That wasn’t exactly true, but Lauren probably understood that Isabelle had reached her limit of socializing for the week. She needed time to not speak to anyone for a while. Except Tom. That she could handle, but only because it led to other forms of relaxation.
They said goodbye, and Isabelle tucked her phone away.
If he’d raided a motel at 6:00 a.m., he’d probably been up nearly all night getting ready for it. And he had a full day at the courthouse. There was no way he’d come by tonight.
“That’s fine,” she said aloud. It was casual. He’d be gone in a few days. Better not to get used to seeing him every day. What if she was lonely when he left?
A strange thought.
Not that she’d never been lonely in her little cabin, but it had only been isolation, never actually missing a specific man. Normally, she was relieved to get back to her routine and forget about the whole world once a fling was done. But her day felt a little emptier now that she knew she wouldn’t see Tom at the end of it. Even this snowshoe hike through the forest felt muted now, but she trudged on.
The sound of a car carried through the trees from the east. The car wasn’t visible, but the distant sound of the engine meant that young deputy had headed farther down their road. Clearly a guy assigned a mindless task, because there were only summer cabins up that way. Maybe he’d get stuck.
Nothing she could do about that. He could hike out just as easily as she could get to him. Plus, she didn’t give a damn. Isabelle took a path heading a little farther west and walked on, trying to recapture her earlier excitement and wishing she could have last night all over again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I’VE GOT A stack of paperwork to catch up on,” Tom said, rubbing a hand over his eyes to try to clear the exhaustion from them. “You get some sleep.”
“It’s 6:00 p.m.,” Mary said, even as her jaw cracked with a yawn.
“Yeah, and neither of us slept last night.” He tipped his head toward the window that looked out on the courthouse grass. “Your room is only two blocks away. Go crash. I won’t be in bed until midnight, but I’ll call then if I need you up and alert. If not, hopefully we can both get a whole night’s sleep.”
She nodded. “All right. Shit, it was a good day, at least.”
“It was a good day,” he said. Not great. Great would have meant getting Saul Stevenson off the streets. But that shithead hiding in the motel room had clearly been here in a supporting role. He’d had three assault rifles, one sniper rifle and boxes of ammunition for additional firearms he wasn’t carrying. With a felony conviction under his belt, Butch Abrams wasn’t allowed to have any of it.
