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“Big,” she said, hugging herself.
Candace presented as an oxymoron. Her face was soft and pale with a splatter of fat freckles that, for some reason, made Nutsbe think of Huckleberry Finn. Spikes jutted through six different holes in each of her ears. With her orange-auburn hair clipped into barrettes, her natural curls draped over the chunky, grey wool sweater hanging loose from her slight frame. Around her neck was a thick dog collar-styled choker. The spikes on that made Nutsbe nervous that if she nodded her head, she’d impale herself.
His gaze traveled to her shoes. Nutsbe found that a person’s shoes said a lot about the role they were playing at that moment. Here, black work boots peeked out from her wide-legged jeans. From the shape, he knew they would have steel toes that would set off the metal detector if she wore them tomorrow. He’d never faced that before. It could be that the officers would consider them a weapon—the footwear version of brass knuckles—in a fight. They were deadly if you knew what you were doing.
Candace nodded and retreated into the house. She sat on an overstuffed chair in the corner. It was the position someone with a great deal of situational awareness would choose.
With Beowolf at his side, Nutsbe walked over to Candace. “Why don’t you spend some time with Beowolf and become friends?”
She looked up at Nutsbe. “Can I get down on the floor with him?”
“Yeah, sure. This is your time.” Nutsbe smiled woodenly. “I want you to be comfortable.”
When Candace got down, Beowolf lay beside her, sniffing at her clothes and hair, making her laugh.
That was a sound he hadn’t expected. Maybe he could relax a little.
Nutsbe put a knee on the ground so he wasn’t looming over her. He didn’t want Candace to feel vulnerable. “Tomorrow in court, Beowolf will be right at your feet. You can pet him. Slide your feet out of your shoes and put your feet on him. He’s there for you.”
“Okay,” she said, then laid down next to Beowolf and wrapped herself around him. When she tipped her head in, she started whispering.
Since Beowolf looked relaxed with no whale eyes or signs of stress, Nutsbe climbed back to his feet.
Olivia had found a place on the couch, and Nutsbe went to sit near her. The room was silent except for the tick, tick, tick of the hall clock and the swhss-swhss of Candace’s secret conversation with Beowolf.
Nutsbe thought this was going pretty well and that he’d probably stressed out for no reason. But that thought formed on the cusp of a sob.
It started with a choking noise, a kind of hiccough, and then Candace was like a volcano letting off hot lava emotions.
A sheen of sweat glistened Nutsbe’s skin. His lungs constricted, and he wanted one of two things to happen—a dragon to slay or an exit route. He pulled at his collar, feeling his face grow red, and he turned to Olivia to see if she was watching the panic rise in his system.
“This is good,” Olivia pronounced. Her focus was on Candace. “She needed to let some of her pent-up emotions go.” Olivia slowly turned concerned eyes on him.
Desperate for a distraction, he blurted out. “I’ve read about you in the paper. Seen your photo. You look different in person, less like someone who could get dangerous people thrown in prison for life.” She was just so familiar. The where of it, though …
“More approachable without my game face?” She smiled.
“Were you ever in the military?”
“No.” She shook her head, but the smile didn’t fall off and Nutsbe found himself smiling back despite his churning stomach and nerves lit on fire.
He didn’t know her from the war. Nutsbe tried to focus on the puzzle of this sensation. How did he know her? The answer was like a word sitting on the tip of his tongue that his brain simply wouldn’t retrieve. “Have you ever been to North Carolina?”
“No. I haven’t. Is that where you’re from?”
“Until I graduated from high school, and then I went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. Have you been out that way, Colorado?”
“I haven’t. I’m told it’s beautiful.” She tipped her head, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. Her smile seemed to ask, what’s this about?
“I’m trying to place how I might know you beyond your newspaper photo, that is. So far, in my timeline, we haven’t been in the same state. I was stationed in Maryland and quickly deployed, so that’s not it. Do you happen to know anyone at the VA?”
“I think we’re neighbors.” Her smile widened. “I’m almost a hundred percent certain that you live in my neighborhood or not too far. Isn’t that you who jogs by my house most mornings? I’m on Millrace.”
“Oh?” Millrace was the road that ran behind his.
“I have the charcoal gray house, white trim, and an obnoxiously bright raspberry-pink door.”
“I know the one. There’s a sweet little cockapoo that likes to look out the window.” He felt the fizz of excitement bubble across his skin. “That one?”
