Page 4 of One Night Years Ago

The doorbell chimed and she turned. It was Emma, her best friend, which was strange because Emma lived right next to the school where she taught and rarely came into town at this hour.

What are you doing here, Emma?

“Sheriff, I need your help, please.”

Natalie picked up her coffee and dropped a couple dollars on the counter, thanking Diane before following Emma outside. She felt dozens of pairs of eyes follow her out.

“What’s wrong, Em? Is everything okay?”

Emma shook her head. Her blond curls kept shaking even after her movement stopped. Her hazel eyes looked amused. “Me? Of course I’m okay. I came to see how you are, Natalie.”

Emma was her best friend since … forever. She’d been with Natalie since the very first moment she’d woken up in the hospital. Her love and her support had been unwavering. Natalie felt her eyes well with tears and pushed them back. If she let them out now, she’d never make it through the day.

“Oh, honey, please don’t cry. It’s going to be okay. We’re not going to let him stay in Sharp’s Cove,” she said with determination in her voice.

Natalie shook her head. “He’s done his time, Em. He can live wherever he wants as long as he doesn’t leave the state or break the terms of his probation.”

“Well, I don’t want him close to you.”

We don’t always get what we want, Em.

Chapter 3

Natalie

Natalie spent the morning shuffling papers from one side of her desk to the other, pretending to be useful but not accomplishing much, watching the rest of her team walk on eggshells around her.

It’s like they’re all waiting for the other shoe to fall.

After lunch, her father came into the station. It was something he did less frequently now than when he first retired, but when he did, he still walked in like he owned the place—which made sense since he’d been Sharp’s Cove sheriff for over twenty-five years.

“Natalie,” he said, closing the door to her office. “May I speak to you for a moment?”

Natalie inhaled quickly. She preferred her office door open—it was just the way she liked to run things now—but she swallowed her irritation. She knew today was going to be hard on her dad as well. She wasn’t a parent but couldn’t imagine what it was like to find your daughter in the state he’d found her in and then have to lead the arrest of the person responsible and testify in court.

“Of course. Is everything okay, Dad?”

“He’s on his way to town, Nat. He’s spent fourteen dollars on a one-way bus ticket. He’ll be here within the hour.” His shoulders drooped, as if this was a failure on his part. Natalie stood up and walked around to the other side of the desk, placing a hand on her father’s arm.

Sharp’s Cove wasn’t big enough to have a prison, thankfully. The closest prison was almost three hours away, outside the city. Natalie looked at the clock on the wall. Buses coming from the city area arrived in Sharp’s Cove at nine in the morning and three in the afternoon, six days a week. On Sundays, the only way out of Sharp’s Cove for those without a car was the ferry, which took you north along the other coastal towns.

“We knew this could happen, Dad,” she repeated as much for herself as for his benefit. Her throat was so dry it was hard to get the words out. “He has a right to live here if he wants to. His mother and his younger brother moved back last year, remember? To their farm.”

“He cannot live here, Natalie. I will not have it. I will not have him hurt—”

“Dad,” she interrupted, placing her hand on her father’s arm. “Dad. It’s going to be okay.”

She looked up into his sky blue eyes, so similar in color to her own, and saw desperation and hopelessness in them. He’d always felt he should have done more, but what else could he have done other than arrest the person responsible? She’d tried not to let him see just how badly the assault had affected her, had succeeded in picking up most of the pieces of her life, but maybe she hadn’t done as good a job at hiding the damage as she thought.

“Go home, Dad. Everything’s going to be okay.”

As soon as he left, she made her way to the bathroom. Walking into the dark bathroom triggered another memory. She turned on the light, blinking away the panic, still feeling a terrible weight on her chest. She could almost feel his huge heft straddling her. It was too dark to see his face, but she felt his disgusting breath as he lapped away at her tears. She’d said no a hundred times, and each time he’d swallowed her scream.

She remembered some if not all of the obscene threats he’d whispered at the beginning. Then nothing. She must have blacked out for a while. Understandable, given the level of trauma her body had endured. It’d taken weeks for her to heal from her physical injuries. Best not to think about the other injuries. The ones that couldn’t be fixed.

She remembered lying there, in the dark, thinking she was going to die. After what felt like an eternity, he grunted and lay still on top of her, still suffocating her.

Suddenly a car drove by behind the alley, and the figure on top of her was illuminated for an instant. She pulled on his shirt, ripping a piece of it, saw the large eagle tattoo on his upper chest. And then, Hunter Fowler’s icy eyes, wide with shock. He’d seemed genuinely shocked at what he’d done.