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“Someone’s having a bad day. That time of the month?”
If you only knew, she thought angrily. Why did stupid guys always go there? She jabbed a finger at his chest. “If you haven’t noticed, dickhead, things aren’t all that great around here. Not only have we lost one of the best lawmen in the history of the state, but since he’s been gone, two women have been killed and we’ve probably got a brand new sicko running around. Keep your adolescent remarks to yourself and stay out of my way.”
“Sheeeit,” he said as Joelle came clipping down the hallway, her eyebrows raised over the tops of her reading glasses at the exchange.
“Children, children, children,” she chided.
Pescoli growled under her breath, stormed into her office, and started to slam the door, but Alvarez caught it, holding it open. “Why do you let him get to you?” she asked. “He’s just a loser who loves baiting women. Don’t go there.”
“I usually don’t.”
“Stress of getting married again? Because this stuff”—Alvarez motioned to the piles of paperwork on the desk—“is always here, at some level.”
“I guess it is the idea of walking down the aisle again,” Pescoli lied. “But Watershed’s right, damn it. I’m not all that great at picking husbands.” She dropped into her desk chair. “But I’m right, too. It’s none of his damn business what I do.”
“Amen.”
“What a tool.” She scowled at the door, then determined she was going to shake it off. “Let’s get
to work.”
Rather than drive all the way home, Jessica peeled off her work clothes in the small bathroom at the Midway Diner after her shift ended at two. She wasn’t due back to work until four-thirty, for the early-bird dinner crowd, so she decided to make good on her vow to become proactive.
After changing into jeans and a sweater, then replacing her work shoes with boots, she found her jacket, threw it on, and made her way to her SUV where frost had collected on the windshield. The sun was actually out, beams glistening on the snow, the sky a clear, Montana blue, the day so bright she had to slip a pair of sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose. If circumstances had been different, she might have felt lighthearted; as it was, a deep sense of dread clung to her.
She made one stop at the cleaners located in a strip mall on the outskirts of town. A smiling girl in braces worked behind the counter. After counting and gathering up Jessica’s uniforms, she promised to have them ready the next day. “No problem.”
Jessica left and slid behind the wheel of her Tahoe again, steeling herself. Facing Cade wouldn’t be easy, but lately, what had been?
“Nothing,” she whispered as she waited for a slow stream of traffic, four cars behind an older Cadillac that inched through the streets, as if it were rolling through glue.
Finally, she was able to turn down a side street before making her way to the county road leading out of town. Now that she had made her decision to face Cade again, she pushed the speed limit, afraid she might chicken out.
It wasn’t all that hard to locate the Grayson ranch. Nearly everyone who had come into the diner had talked about the sheriff’s death and how hard it was on a family that had been in the area for generations. Misty, always a fountain of gossip and information, had told her where the Grayson spread was located and Jessica had double-checked on the Internet and the white pages.
As the sunlight bounced off snow-covered fields, she followed the directions on her GPS to the address where an old mailbox confirmed that she’d found the Grayson homestead.
“Here goes nothing,” she whispered as she cranked on the wheel and eased her SUV along the long lane that had, at one point, been cleared of snow, piles of the white stuff lining the drive, tracks visible in a newly fallen layer. Jessica’s heart was thudding, her stomach in knots as she considered how Cade would react to seeing her as they hadn’t parted on the best of terms. “Too bad,” she reminded herself.
Wide fields flanked the lane as it rose to the heart of the ranch where a sprawling ranch house had a three hundred and sixty degree view of the surrounding property. Half a dozen outbuildings had sprouted around the residence, but Jessica zeroed in on a garage, the doors open, one bay empty, another filled with a pickup that was facing outward. Thankfully, Big Zed was gone, or at least his truck was. She needed to talk to Cade alone.
“Now or never,” she said, eyeing the rearview mirror and catching the reflection of her oversized shades in the glass as she parked near a path winding to the front door. She cut the engine in a parking area where the snow had been mashed by various vehicles and pocketed her keys.
She hiked her way toward the three front steps that had been cleared of snow, and climbed them to a broad porch where a dying wreath was mounted upon a massive door.
She rapped loudly. Three sharp knocks. From inside, a dog began barking wildly as if his sudden rash of loud woofs made up for the fact that he’d been asleep at the switch, not hearing that a stranger had arrived.
“Shad. Enough!” a male voice, Cade’s voice, ordered.
Jessica’s heart fluttered. Oh, dear God, what am I doing?
The door opened suddenly and Cade, in faded jeans and a flannel shirt that he used as a jacket over a black T-shirt, stood on the other side. He was unshaven and his hair was rumpled, uncombed. He had that outdoorsy I-don’t-give-a-damn look that she’d always found far too sexy, but she ignored it. Whatever they’d once had, that white-hot spark of years ago, had been extinguished by lies. Her lies.
“Yes?” he said.
A speckled hound, his gait uneven, rushed out. Rather than snarl and growl, it wiggled and wormed around her feet, begging to be petted as he balanced himself on three legs.
“Hello, Cade,” she said and saw his eyes darken for a second before she leaned down and gave the dog a couple pats on the head. To the animal, she said, “I’m guessing you’re Shad.”
