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SADIE
Mark stares aheadat the road, his lips pursed. I can tell he’s ready to say something I’m not going to like. I know the look on his face.
He clears his throat. Finally. “Do you know that Bridger fellow? Miles?”
I play it cool because…well, several reasons. One, I don’t share my personal life with Mark. Ever. He’s my partner, but he’s not my friend. In fact, he’s a dick. Two, if he finds out I have any kind of connection with Miles, he’ll either use it to his advantage or use it to fuck me over. I’d expect both from him.
So I lie. “No. Do you?”
“He was looking at you with”—another throat clear—“whatappearedto be recognition.”
Peterson sometimes likes to think he’s a father figure to me, which is weird because he’s not much older than I am and he also likes to stare at my chest, which makes the first part creepy as hell. He’s a decent detective when he goes by the book, but he’s definitely got an unsettling side.
“How could I know either one of them?” I ask. “They moved here yesterday.”
“It was a couple weeks ago, I think.” Peterson stops the car at the red light at Broad and Main, near the station.
“I was being hyperbolic, Mark.” I sigh. “My point is that Miles and Austin Bridger recently came to Bayfield for the first time, and from what I hear, their father left them with a huge mess with that will of his.”
News of their arrival and the reason behind it spread across the county like wildfire.
“Not to mention a dead body.” Peterson lurches the SUV forward when the light turns green and he pulls in front of the station—right in front of a fire hydrant.
He always does that, even when he could pull up a few feet and leave the hydrant free. Peterson’s the kind of cop who takes all the liberties granted him.
Pisses me off.
But I’m a rookie, and I have to work with someone. It may as well be a seasoned detective like Peterson. He does know his stuff…when he keeps to the book.
“What’s your beef with the Bridgers, anyway?” I ask once we’re back in the station.
“Who says I have any beef with them?” He glances at his phone.
I give him a perturbed look he doesn’t pick up on. “You couldn’t have made your feelings clearer. I mean, you went out there twice just to mess with them. We haven’t even heard back from the coroner yet. Those three—at least the two newcomers, for sure—obviously had nothing to do with that dead body. And I’ve known Chance Bridger since I moved here over a year ago. He’s a decent man.”
Mark gives me a patronizing look as he grabs his dirty coffee mug off his desk. “Listen, Hopkins. You’re a good cop, but you’ve got a lot to learn. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you learn to trust your instinct. And my instinct is telling me those boys know more than they’re letting on.”
Boys? Chance Bridger has to be around thirty, and I’d bet his brothers are older.
“Stick with me,” Peterson continues. “I’ll teach you how to ferret out evidence in the most unlikely places.”
I grit my teeth to keep from telling him the unlikely place where I want him to stick something.
“You know I appreciate your guidance,” I say. “Butmyinstinct is telling me the Bridger brothers are innocent.”
“Your instinct is non-existent,” Peterson says. “No rookie a year out of the academy knows anything.”
I hold back a scoff. “I guess I knew enough to get hired as a detective after only a year in uniform.”
He doesn’t reply because his phone buzzes. He puts it to his ear. “Peterson.”
I walk to my desk when the receptionist calls to me from her spot by the door. “Sadie, you’ve got a call on line one.”
I frown and stare down at the phone on my desk. “I do?”
“You sure do,” she calls.
Strange. No one calls me on the landline. We all use our cells. I pick up the receiver. “This is Hopkins.”
