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“I’m hungry,” he says.
I point at the box of food on the small dresser.
“I want something else,” he says.
I hold open the door. “Go on and get it. We’ll wait here.”
His scowl deepens. Considering how the others feel about him, he doesn’t want out. Or, at least, not unless it involves a flight south.
“I hear you want to leave,” I say.
He waves around the cell. “Yes? For obvious reasons?”
“Which are…?”
His look suggests I’m losing brain cells at an alarming rate. “I’m stuck in a cell for my own safety. People think I have something to do with what happened to Penny.”
“What if I said you could fly out tomorrow, but you’ll be taken into temporary custody while I complete my investigation?”
“Thrown into a real jail cell?”
“No. House arrest in a suite at a resort, with room service and a TV.”
He looks at me. “You’re serious?”
“I am. However, as this is an active investigation, you’d be escorted there, and while your room would have TV and other entertainment options, you’ll have no access to the internet or a phone or any communication with the outside world until either I’ve completed my investigation or your work term here ends, whichever comes first.”
“Fine.”
“That’s acceptable? No outside contact?”
He throws up his hands. “I don’t have that here, do I?”
“All right. I’ll make the arrangements.”
I back into the main room and lock his door. His eagerness to agree doesn’t mean he isn’t Bruno’s partner—he could think he can still find a way to submit that application once he’s left Haven’s Rock. But it’s a definite strike against that theory, especially when Yolanda says Pierre didn’t demand to leave untilafterhe found himself in danger. As he rightly said, it’s obvious why he’d want out.
I make sure the front door is locked, and then I take Yolanda onto the back porch. As I step out, a wave of nostalgia washes over me. Our new town hall might not be exactly like our old police station—we made improvements—but this back porch is, and Anders and I are the ones who insisted on it.
Our old station back porch was Dalton’s office. Even whenit was below freezing, he’d sit in his chair and gaze into the woods and think. It was a mental trick—he relaxes in the forest, and so having that view let him fully sink into his thoughts. Anders and I replicated this deck for him, even using timbers from it that Yolanda’s company had reclaimed. But part of it is for us, too. Our earliest good memories of Dalton are from that deck, when his defenses lowered and we saw the man behind the facade, and we decided this was a superior officer who deserved our trust… and our friendship.
Dalton’s chair is there, right where it always is, with a can of rusted beer caps below it. Has he seen this yet? In all the commotion, I don’t think he has, and when Yolanda goes to sit in Dalton’s chair, I tense.
She notices the movement and nods to the chair. “Eric’s, I presume?”
I wave toward it. “Sit. He won’t care.”
“But you would.” Her lips twitch as I protest. “How about this one? Is that yours or Will Anders’s?”
“We don’t have specific spots to sit. Kind of depends on Eric’s mood.”
Her lip twitch turns into a smile. “Whether he’s in the mood for company or not?”
“Yep.”
She lowers herself into the middle chair. “I can’t get a read on him. Gran warned me about that. For you, too. Now, with Will, she said it would be easier. What you see is what you get. I’m not sure that’s entirely true either.”
I make a noncommittal noise. “Depends on what you see. If it’s the easygoing deputy who does as he’s told, then that’d be about fifty percent accurate.”
