“I need to see what’s going on,” I say to Julian, shifting to try to get down, and his hands move to my waist, lifting me up offthe bar, helping my feet find the floor. My knees feel weak as my eyes stay locked on his for a moment. Damn, it feels good to be looked at and handled like this.
“What the hell did we do this time?” Stevie says, interrupting as she leans on the bar. “If it’s another drunk asshole getting handsy outside, I swear to everything decent in this universe, I will just dick-punch first and ask questions second.”
I shake my head as I move away. “Not the smartest solution. Let me go see what’s going on before you start swinging.”
I shift a glance at Julian again before I work my way through the crowd. Just as I shove through a small group, a finger hooks onto mine and Julian follows behind me.
The second I make my way through the front doors, I overhear Sheriff Fury talking to my mother. “The last person to see him said it was here, Lu.” I release my hold on Julian’s finger.
“Well, he wasn’t here,” my mother says, tapping her head. “I remember every goddamn face that walks into my bar, and Deputy ‘Dumbfuck’ Billings was not one of them.”
“Watch it.” Fury points to her, then crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m just asking questions, no need to get fired up at me about it.”
My mother’s pissed off and ready to dole out a roster of insults. The funny thing is, nobody’s ever prepared for the way she fights. It’s dirty and she rarely loses. “So you thought the best way to ask me questions about whether I’d seen a missing police deputy is to come here during a busy Saturday night?” She gives Jameson the side-eye. “You couldn’t have said something and talked this yahoo out of traipsing down here and making a scene?”
Jameson looks annoyed that he even needs to be here when he says, “Lu, you and I both know he and Cora live less thana mile away. It wouldn’t be unheard of for him to grab a drink down here.”
“Except the part where he’s not welcome here, and you’ve witnessed Cora talking shit about me for years,” she says.
“Nobody is accusing you of any—” But he cuts himself off when he sees me. He looks up and over my head at Julian, and then back down to me. “Wyn, you mind having a word?” he asks and starts to turn away.
My chest hollows, and I try sucking a deep breath. My mind instantly wanders into a place that isn’t logical.“He’s dead. You’re safe. You can come home.”
“She ain’t got nothin’ to say to anyone here. She’s filling in tonight,” my mother interjects.
“Tell me what’s going on?” I ask, ignoring her and focusing on Jameson. The reality is that he’s homicide, and less than three nights ago, a person was very dead in the bar behind me. I run my fingers along the leather cuff on my right wrist.
The sheriff answers instead, “Deputy Stan Billings,” he pauses to look at my mother, and then back at me. “He’s been missing for more than seventy-two hours, and we’re trying to retrace where he might have gone. Cora reported him missing and said she had no clue where he could have gone. So, we’re asking around and trying to figure out his last whereabouts.”
My mother looks at Jameson when she says, “You knew him. Not the most upstanding in law enforcement. I have no business with Stan fucking Billings. We don’t mess around with pieces of shit who like to take advantage of their authority.”
That has Jameson’s brow furrowing and then looking to the sheriff. “That common knowledge?”
The sheriff holds his hand up to my mother. “Lu, that’s enough.” Then he tilts his head at Jameson, like that’s a yes.
“I know that’s just boys being boys to you, Fury. Might want to consider that yourboymight have pissed off the wrong people, finally.”
“Lu, knock it off,” he says, getting fed up with my mother. “I’m just askin’ when the last time you’ve seen him was and if any of your girls might have.” She does a doubletake at the doors and starts barking orders at Gina and Gail about not letting people linger. “They either go inside and have a drink or they get the fuck home.”
Jameson ignores all of it, stepping closer to me, and more quietly says, “Wyn, I actually do need you for a moment.” Holding his hand up to stop Julian from following, he adds, “Alone.”
I glance down at the way Julian’s fingers lightly hold on to the hem of my shirt, like he’s ready to pull me away if I just ask. I take a steadying breath. Putting on my best fake smile, I tell Julian, “I’ll be fine.”
He looks at the way my fingers play with that leather cuff and then brings his gaze back up to me with a nod. “I’ll be right here,” he says without anything other than protection lacing his words. There are plenty of alarm bells ringing that kick my heartrate higher, but it’s the first time I’ve ever believed someone when they’ve said, “I’m here if you need me.”
As soon as I follow Jameson and turn the corner of the building, he asks, “When did your friend arrive in town again?”
That question is tinged with suspicion that I’m not prepared to digest. “Jameson, he’s been here a couple of days, and most of the time when he wasn’t with me, he was at either Birdie’s or Tommy’s.”
Detective Jameson Bishop knows exactly where I was before coming home. He ended up being the person to tell me that it was safe to return. Jameson has always been a good guy. He has plenty of baggage in his past—Stevie’s talked about Theo’sdad over the years, about how he’d go undercover and leave for long periods of time, even after he came into Theo’s life. Which is why, when he looks at me pointedly, waiting for more info, I tell him, “I met Julian when I was in witness protection, in Hideaway. I was working at a bar. He found me here again by coincidence.”
“I’m not the biggest fan of coincidences, so do me a favor and just be cautious,” he says, pulling out his phone. He puffs out his cheeks, blowing out a breath. “The sheriff wants all hands on deck with this one. I never liked the guy, but if an officer of the law isn’t showing up for shifts, there’s something off.” As we start walking back toward the noise that my mother’s still making, he stops. “I haven’t asked, but how are you doing?”
I know it isn’t meant to be a loaded question, but it feels like it. I survived being kidnapped and tortured. And my case files were entirely redacted—the effects of departments messing up and allowing a serial killer to slip through the system. But Jameson knew all of that—he knew about the monster and his death, and he knew about the time I spent in Hideaway. I feel like I’ve lived two lives already, three if you count whatever the hell the past seven months have been since I’ve been back in Rumor, and I’m only thirty-five. But he doesn’t need to hear any of that. He’s not the person to unleash all of that on, so instead, I nod and tell him, “I’ve been trying to settle back in.”
My life feels shaken up all over again. It took me nearly two and a half years to feel settled in Montana. For a year of that time, I was in regular therapy and figuring out what type of medicine would allow me to close my eyes and not wake up drenched in panic and sweat. The second year, I figured out a routine that calmed my nerves, food tasted good again, and I found an appreciation for talking without struggling to remain present.
I had moved on from questions I’d never get answers to like:Why me? Why was it so easy to just take me?I had been at a symposium in Nashville with plenty of colleagues and tourists, but it was me who he decided to take. There was no real reason other than he liked how I looked. He saw my face on a poster as the keynote speaker and watched. He never told me why, but I stopped speaking and never asked. I blocked out so much of those early days that I’m too nervous to even try recalling any of it.Don’t go there, Wyn. Focus on what’s in front of you.
