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Royce
Even in the near dark of twilight, Royce had had the feeling that the woman walking toward him along the road to Rexville seemed familiar. Once he’d rolled down his window, he knew it was her. Briar Nilson. He’d been expecting her since the phone call yesterday. She was taller than he remembered, probably almost as tall as he was now, but she had the same gait and strong set to her shoulders that she’d had in high school, the one that shouted she was trying to hold up the world by pure force of will.
Royce could relate to that.
He should have picked her up, should’ve at least told her who he was, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d called his brother as he took the river road back into town, and was waiting inside the Sheriff’s Office building when Jordan pulled the tow truck into the auto shop.
Standing at the front window of his new-to-him workspace (and wasn’t that an odd feeling), Royce peered through the dusty shades and across the parking lot. He watched as Jordan unloaded the listing rental car and backed it into the garage. Then his brother disappeared inside and Royce’s cell phone started ringing.
“Hey, big bro. I went and picked her up like you told me to. Are you gonna come over here and talk to her? She’s kind of scary.”
Royce’s attention was still on the tow truck as the passenger side door opened and Jordan’s rider hopped out. Without hesitating, she tucked her hands into the pockets of her raincoat, looked both ways, and very purposefully crossed the street, striding directly toward where Royce waited.
“No, I don’t think I’m gonna have to come over there,” Royce said.
He could see why Jordan thought she was scary in how she walked and held herself. Royce, however, was not his baby brother. He didn’t find her scary at all. He thought she was damn sexy.
He’d had two serious relationships with women in his life and both had complained he was too intense. It hadn’t helped that for most of his career he had been stationed overseas in conflict zones. Royce had learned early that he wasn’t the type who could date when he was on leave and then end it when he was off to work again. He was an all-or-nothing kind of guy, and he’d seen too many of his friends’ relationships fail over the years because of distance.
Briar Nilson had intrigued him as a teen and she intrigued him now as an adult, and he hadn’t seen or talked to her in a lifetime.
“Ok, I’ll let you go, big bro. Good luck.”
Royce clicked off, shoving the phone into the pocket of his fleece jacket. He opened the front door of the office before Briar Nilson could raise her fist to knock.
“Hello,” he said weakly.
She eyed him for a moment, and he could see when she realized that not only was he the man who had stopped on the road, but he was Royce King, the hormonal jerkwad who’d christened her Thorny. Or maybe she’d figured it out before she stood in front of him. Either way, as expected, Briar Nilson did not look pleased with him. Maybe it was the sheriff thing.
“It’s true, then?” Briar asked as she glanced around the office, making Royce more conscious of its extremely short shortcomings.
“That I’m sheriff? Yeah. Come on back. But I have to warn you, it isn’t pretty.”
“What do you mean?” she asked as she followed him.
“You’ll see.”
Royce was planning to take over the unoccupied deputies’ office while he sorted through what Garrison had left behind. Just looking at the mess was overwhelming, his years of military experience and ingrained tidiness repelled by the lack of organization.
As he led Briar into the office, he was aware more than ever of the piles of paperwork and overflowing banker’s boxes that he had no idea how to attack. Of the fact that Tor Nilson’s body had been lying in the Bridgeton Funeral Home for the past five days and Royce hadn’t even talked to the director yet.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding. What the hell is all this about?” She swept a hand around, encompassing the piles and boxes in its arc. “I’ve seen bomb sites that are more organized than this office.”
What would Briar Nilson be doing at bomb sites? Royce regretted not looking into her background, and he had no idea what she had spent the last nineteen years doing. But he’d spent the morning talking with Jordan instead of researching Briar. His brother was an enigma to him and was hiding something, he was sure of it. Royce didn’t know what it was, but he was adding finding out to his already too-long to-do list. After he dealt with Briar Nilson.
“I definitely, unfortunately, am sheriff and I have been sheriff,” he glanced at his wrist, “for approximately twenty-four hours.”
“That was you I spoke to on the phone yesterday?”
Royce snickered and raised an eyebrow. In his opinion, they hadn’t actually had a conversation, but if she wanted to think so, that was her prerogative.
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to claim we talked since you didn’t give me time to answer. Why don’t you sit down and we can talk about what happened with your father? Admittedly, I don’t know much but I can”—he hoped—“track down the paperwork. It must be here somewhere.”
Briar narrowed her eyes at Royce as if she was trying to discover the lie he was telling before brushing past him and moving further into the cramped office. He had spent the morning trying to straighten up, but it was years’ worth of mess and he hadn’t made much of a dent, other than tossing out all the deli napkins and single-serve ketchup packets that had been lurking in one of the side drawers.
Priority was seeing about hiring at least one deputy and an assistant or something to help him out. And he should take Marnie Jackson up on her offer to stay, sooner rather than later.She at least might know where things were.
“This is all very down-home and hokey,” Briar said with distaste, a twist to her lips.
