“Tomorrow,” Maud replied. “Now get to work.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Dillon was as content as he’d been in what felt like forever.
The work was deeply complex and absorbing. Just the same, a portion of his mind was safe to drift back over the hard weeks and months he’d left behind. Through the sleepless period of defeat and shame and futile struggle, he had lost touch with this. The joy he had always known while working.
Numbers like these formed a delicious puzzle. He could dive in, lose himself in piecing together the mystery that very few even realized was there. His ability had taken him so very far. And now brought him back to where he had started.
He broke the work into five segments. The state’s jumble of paperwork and red tape came first, since that formed the necessary framework for everything else. Once he had a handle on the requirements, he launched into the four sets of books—police, fire, EMT, and all the equipment the town had leased from local contractors.
Hours passed.
Dillon was content. A kitten working its way through a saucer of double cream, with a silk cushion waiting by a roaring fire, had nothing on this guy.
A while later, he looked up to find a sandwich and steaming cup planted on the desk’s corner. Only then did he realize how hungry he’d become. Dillon ate while doing a preliminary run-through of the fire station’s books. Which were, in a word, a mess.
He fanned out reams of hand-scribbled notes, receipts that had been dashed off and smudged to oblivion, then dripped grainy mustard all over an email from the state confirming the highway department would reimburse them for clearing roads and using equipment normally reserved . . .
Dillon stopped when a shadow fell on the desk. He looked up to find Maud standing by his chair. Ryan was two steps back, observing. Dillon thought the detective had a lovely smile. “Yes?”
“The fire chief called. Do you want him to stop by?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.” His gaze was caught by a flicker of lightning. “It’s raining.”
Ryan chuckled, shook her head, turned away.
“Well, duh,” Maud said.
Dillon thought the woman’s glare had lost a touch of its former spice. “Thanks for the sandwich.”
Ryan called from her desk, “You’re welcome.”
Maud asked, “You need anything?”
Lightning flashed, closer this time. “A laptop would help. You know, just in case we lose power. I can make sure nothing’s lost . . .” He stopped talking when Maud turned and walked away. He caught sight of Ryan seated across the aisle, still grinning. “What?”
“Just wondering what that song was you kept humming.”
This was news. “I don’t hum.”
Ryan laughed out loud.
“I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
She bent back over an open file. “You got that right.”
Maud returned and set down a laptop and cables beside his keyboard. “This is the chief’s personal computer. You break it, you’ll be back in the rear cell without a key.”
The fire chief arrived soon after. Dillon wasn’t exactly clear on timing. Which he took as a very good sign. The fire chief was a lean, rawboned man with craven features. He stripped off his yellow hazard gear, dragged over a chair, asked, “You mind?”
“Not at all.”
He eased down like every joint hurt, then offered a meaty paw. “Charlie Hurst. Sorry about the mess we’ve dumped in your lap.”
“It’s okay, Chief. I figure you’ve done your best, given everything else you’ve had to handle.”
The man’s eyebrows were a pair of unkempt meadows. The eyes below were one shade darker than his skin. “That’s not what I was expecting to hear from the man wading through my bad handwriting.”
