“Well, I am pretty small,” she had said. “Compared to him, especially. Carrying me should have been easy.”
Liam hadn’t let that sit a moment before he had humbled the comment.
“Easy or not, he cared a whole lot. I saw y’all when you came out—James was a cage around you. He wouldn’t even give you up until the EMTs were pulling at him.” Liam had sighed. It was anger but not at James. Still, he had some good words left for the man. “I also saw the inside of the shop. Getting you two out was a dangerous job in itself. He could have left you. He could have left you to get through the fire and the debris on your own. Instead, he managed to get you to safety and stay by your side, no questions asked.”
No questions asked.
That observation was holding true.
Why wasn’t James asking more questions? Could he still be in shock almost a week later? Was he waiting for privacy outside of the hospital instead? Or was he as nonchalant in his everyday life as he had been while sitting on that bomb?
Where did that calm and cool end?
And, was that the reason why Rose felt so comfortable around him in the first place?
It was like James Keller had become walking meditation.
Rose kept using her time with him to accidentally self-reflect.
It was unexpected. And annoying.
She was glad for the distraction of her cell phone ringing. It blared out the theme toJaws. Rose saw her driver chuckle before she answered the only person that ringer was assigned to when they called.
“Sheriff,” she said once the call connected.
Liam was quick and loud.
“Where are you? Price said you had discharged?”
Rose motioned to the truck around her though he couldn’t see it.
“Yeah, the doc cleared me, so I left a few minutes ago,” she answered. “I’m almost home. Why? What’s up?”
Liam was somewhere noisy, but it seemed like a nice kind of noise. There were kids laughing and dishes clinking. Rose eyed the clock. It was lunch.
“I was hoping to grab you before you left. I want you to come to the department.”
It wasn’t a request.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Despite the nice noise in the background, the sheriff’s words were pure authority.
“Just get over here now.”
* * *
THEMCCOYCOUNTYSheriff’s department was small, like its staff. If someone wasn’t paying attention they could almost pass it off as a large house nestled near the woods. An oddly shaped one, but a house all the same. Rose had once mentioned this comparison to Price when they were on patrol. He had laughed andtold her that she only saw it as a house because her job was her whole life.
Wasn’t it less depressing to think of the place you see the most as your home instead of a small building that once had Marty Fletcher mistake the jail cell cot as a toilet in the basement?
Rose knew she should have felt bad or worried about the comparison, but she just couldn’t bring herself to agree.
She let out a sigh of relief as the building in question came into full view through the windshield. The world changed every day. There was comfort in the fact that the department rarely ever did.
“Are you sure it’s okay for me to come in?”
James parked the truck in the guest spot out front. He wasn’t as at ease as she was, that was for sure. In fact, he was showing more stress than he had when sitting on top of an explosive.
