“Why isn’t there someone watching the rubble at Kelly’s?” Jericho asked as he stepped inside Kayla’s office and shut the door behind himself.
She shook her head at him. “Don’t start.”
“No, I’m not starting something, I’m genuinely curious. The fire marshal hasn’t made it up from Helena yet, right? So, public safety aside, we should have a deputy out there making sure evidence isn’t destroyed. Shouldn’t we?”
“We normally would, yes.” Kayla was speaking too carefully, and Jericho squinted at her.
“The feds asked you to pull the deputy?” he said incredulously.
“‘Asked’ is probably a generous term to describe their instructions.”
“Theytoldyou to pull the deputy.” Jericho sank into one of the leather chairs in front of her desk. “What the hell? Why?”
“They didn’t see fit to share their rationale with me.”
“This is bullshit.”
“It smells that way,” she admitted. Then she sighed. “I don’t know, maybe there’s a reason for it.”
“Yeah, maybe there is. They’re watching the site pretty closely, I guess—rolled up fast after Wade got there.” She raised an eyebrow at Wade’s name, but he kept talking and she didn’t interrupt. “So maybe they’re doing surveillance. But the bullshit part is them not telling you what they’re up to. If they want to be assholes to me? That’s one thing. But to you? You’re the fucking sheriff, you’ve been totally cooperative, and the last time they were in town you had to clean up their huge fucking mess. You’restillnot good enough to get information out of them?”
She didn’t respond, and the pause told Jericho what he needed to know.
“Because of me,” he said. “They’re freezing you out because— Seriously? Because of me? Because I used to be close with Wade?” It was unsettling, really. Jericho had done nothing improper with Wade, nothing to compromise his sworn duties. So the feds were just being paranoid assholes, covering for their own corruption problem by accusing others of being dirty. But what if that wasn’t it? What if they were actually better cops than he was giving them credit for? What if they could somehow sense Jericho’s obsession? Maybe they weren’t so off base wondering if he could be trusted.
He’d shown Wade’s text message to Kayla at the earliest opportunity. He’d shared it with the feds too. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Not yet.
“You can compartmentalize me away from their cases, can’t you?” He kept his voice unemotional. “I’m supposed to be focusing on sorting through the corruption stuff, and on day-to-day policing, building the department back up. So you can tell the feds you’ve warned me off. That you won’t share any information with me. They can keep you in the loop if I’m out. Right?”
“I asked you to come here because I needed someone I could trust,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to turn around and stop trusting you now just because they’re paranoid. They don’t know how small towns work! Everyone knows everyone—it doesn’t mean we allagreewith what everyone’s doing. I can get a lot of good information from people who hang out with criminals.”
“But you’re careful to make sure the information is only going one way. You listen to those people, but you don’ttalkto them. We can do the same thing here.”
She frowned at him. “Wait. Are you telling me you and Wade are spending time together?”
He shook his head. “Not on purpose. I tracked Elijah to the fire site today, and Wade showed up. That’s the first occasion I’ve talked to him since I started working for you. But . . .”
She sat quietly for a while, then said, “But he’s still got a hold on you. After all this time . . .” It was her turn to trail off.
Jericho wished things were different. He didn’t usually worry too much about his sexuality, but just then, he’d have been happy to be straight. Of his two high school partners, why did it have to beWadehe remained drawn to, instead of Kayla? “He’sWade,” he said, as if that was an explanation.
She shrugged in response. “He is. And that means he’s trouble. But I trust you to keep it out of the department.”
He nodded, and that was the end of the conversation. He went back to poring over old records, tracing threads of corruption that had so far led only to cops who had already been discovered and were out of the department, gathering evidence for their trials, hoping he didn’t find anything to implicate anyone still at work. It was tedious but important, and he wanted to do a good job for Kayla.
He spent the next couple of days on that. He lifted weights in the dingy basement of the sheriff’s office after work, then jogged home, often taking detours up into the mountains, along old hiking trails he’d once known so much better. He checked in on Nikki and the kids, thought about buying Elijah a BB gun and decided against it, and through it all, he fought to keep his mind off Wade Granger.
But on Wednesday morning he arrived at the office and saw the man himself. Wade was handcuffed but smiling politely, letting Special Agent Hockley lead him to one of the interrogation rooms as if they were about to sit down for tea. As he passed Jericho he gave a pleasant nod. Always nice to see an old friend.
Jericho followed the scene with his gaze until Hockley closed the interrogation room door, then looked away to find KaylaandSpecial Agent Montgomery watching him closely.None of my business. Can’t get involved.He nodded an acknowledgment to Kayla before returning to his own office.
But of course it wasn’t that simple. Tyler Meeks, one of the new deputies hired to take the place of those under investigation, poked his nose through Jericho’s doorway before Jericho had even made it behind his desk. “The FBI’s coming up!” he announced. “I mean, three bodies—yeah, you’d think they might get involved—but not unless the bodies are someone special, you know?”
Jericho sat down heavily and let the words sink in. There were three bodies. And he hadn’t been called. In LA, three bodies was just another night, but in Mosely County, Montana? This was big news, a big case, and Kayla hadn’t been able to tell her under-sheriff about it because she’d promised the feds to keep him in the dark.
“I guess we’ll find out more when they get here,” he managed, trying to seem casual and unconcerned.
The deputy frowned at him. “That’s all you’ve got? And you’re just—you’re still working on all that old stuff? You’re not going to switch over to the hot new case? I figured— I mean, you’ve got a lot of experience, right? From the city?”
