"Which is?"
"Cities, mostly. Always moving." She takes a sip of coffee, and I catch the small smile that crosses her face when she realizes I got it exactly right. The expression transforms her whole face, makes her look younger and less guarded. "This is the longest I've stayed anywhere in... well, in a long time."
There's something in the way she says it, a careful distance that tells me she's editing her words with the precision of someone who's learned that the wrong detail can be dangerous. Choosing what to reveal and what to keep buried.
"What made you decide to stick around?" I ask, genuinely curious despite my ulterior motives. "Besides the job, I mean."
Lucy is quiet for a moment, watching Tyson sniff at a particularly interesting patch of grass. When she speaks, her voice is soft, almost reverent.
"Have you ever been somewhere that just felt... safe? Like you could breathe for the first time in forever? Like maybe, if you were very careful and very quiet, you might be allowed to stay?"
The honesty in her voice catches me off guard. There's real emotion there, real vulnerability, and it triggers every protective instinct I've spent years trying to suppress. She's not just talking about liking a place. She's talking about finding sanctuary.
"Yeah," I tell her, my voice rougher than I intended. "That's why I came here too."
She looks at me then, really looks at me, and I can see her trying to piece together the puzzle of who I am beneath the badge and the uniform. Those brown eyes are sharp, intelligent, cataloging details the same way I've been cataloging hers.
"You weren't always a small-town sheriff."
It's not a question.
"Marines. Two tours in Afghanistan." The words come out easier than they usually do, maybe because she's looking at me like she understands what it means to carryweight you can't put down. "After that, big city police work. Detroit, then Chicago."
"What made you leave?"
The question I've been avoiding for two years. The one that cuts too close to memories of partners I couldn't save, choices that still wake me up in cold sweats, the slow poison of watching good cops break under the weight of a system that doesn't give a damn about right and wrong.
"Sometimes you reach a point where you realize the thing you're fighting isn't worth the cost of fighting it," I say finally, surprised by how much truth I'm willing to give her. "Sometimes you just need to find somewhere quiet to remember who you used to be before the world tried to break you."
Lucy nods like she understands exactly what I mean. Like she's been fighting her own wars in her own quiet way, looking for her own safe harbor in a world that seems determined to hunt her down.
"I know the feeling," she says softly, and I believe her.
We walk in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the morning settling around us like a well-worn quilt. Tyson has found a stick that apparently meets his exacting standards and is carrying it proudly as we make our way back toward the clinic, his tail wagging with the simple joy of a dog who's found treasure.
The moment feels too natural, too right. Like this is how it should be. Walking beside her in the morninglight, sharing coffee and conversation without agenda or deception.
Which makes what I'm about to do feel like sacrilege.
"Lucy," I say as we round the corner onto Elm Street where the clinic sits like a yellow brick anchor. "I've been meaning to ask you about the morning you found Dusty. I know you've been through it already, but sometimes details surface after the initial shock wears off."
I watch her carefully as I speak, falling back into cop mode despite everything in me that rebels against it. Looking for micro-expressions, tells, anything that might reveal more than she wants to share. Lucy's face remains composed, but I catch the slight tightening around her eyes, the way her grip on Tyson's leash shifts almost imperceptibly.
The change in her is immediate and devastating. It's like watching shutters slam closed on a house that had just started to let in light.
"What kind of details?" she asks, and her voice has gone carefully neutral.
"Anything unusual. Sounds, maybe. Tire tracks. Signs that someone else might have been in the area recently."
"I told you everything I remember," she says, and there's something defensive creeping into her tone now, a wall going up brick by brick. "I found him bleeding, got him to Colt as fast as I could. That's it."
But it's not it, and we both know it. There are pieces missing from her story, gaps that don't quite add up under scrutiny.
Like how she happened to be camping on Blackwell's land in the first place. Like why she ran when she saw my patrol car that first day. Like why when we run her licence plate we hit a wall. Sealed information that needs federal clearance to access.
"I'm just trying to understand the timeline," I press gently, hating myself for the way her shoulders tense at my words. "You said you were camping by the creek?"
"Yes." The word comes out clipped, final as a door slamming.
