He didn’t exactly ghost Jess after this, but he politely ended it. I mentioned to Jess that I’d run into him, and when she asked if I’d said anything mean to him, I said I hadn’t. But I think she knew I had. Thankfully, she wasn’t too broken up about it. She even mentioned that if Ihadsaid anything to him, I’d done her and Sam a favor.
I refocus on Deputy Zane. His cheeks are flushed. I smile at the idea that he’s still young enough to have perpetually rosy cheeks.
“Where next?” he says.
I ignore him. “What’s your first name?”
“Andy,” he says.
“Where you from?”
“East of the mountains.” He looks away like he’s embarrassed.
“What part?”
“Chester.”
“Chester? What’s the population there?”
“Less than a thousand.”
“You grew up there on a ranch? A farm?”
“You could call it both.”
I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about where he’s from, but I press on. “You went to high school in Chester?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Oh, where’d you go to school then?”
“Sage Creek.” Sage Creek is a Hutterite colony north of Chester, not far from the Canadian border. I’ve never been there, but I’ve met people who pay the Hutterites, an Amish-type community practicing an old-fashioned way of life, for permission to hunt pheasants on their land.
“But you left the colony?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This your first job since you’ve left home?”
“I’ve worked others. Got my GED and my associate’s at the community college. Took odds-and-ends work to support myself during that. This is my first real job since ...”
He leaves the thought unfinished. There’s sadness in his eyes.
“Good for you,” I say. “Getting that all done, I presume on your own.”
He rubs his forehead. He would clearly rather talk about something else. Anything else. I know the feeling well.
“You don’t need to call mema’am,” I tell him as I walk away.
Fiona stares at me, her mouth parted.
“You have a bodyguard?”
“Don’t mind him,” I say. “It’s a precaution. Emphasis oncaution.”
“You’re worried enough that you went to the cops?”
“I did. Worried enough to get it on the record.”
