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She lay back on top of the covers without taking her shoes off and stared at the ceiling.
The thing was, she’d known it might come here. She’d thought she was being careful—watching, checking over her shoulder the way she’d been checking for months—and still it had arrived, wearing a different face than she’d expected, and she’d walked right into the middle of it.
She closed her eyes.
She was not going to think about Keith Larsson. She was not going to think about amber eyes or the particular way he’d gone still across that table, reading her, giving nothing back. She was not going to think about the fact that in another life—twenty-four hours ago, even—she might have trusted someone who looked at her like that.
She was not going to think about any of that.
She put her arm over her eyes and waited for sleep, which took a long time coming.
Chapter 8
The Texan
The tie had been giving him trouble for five minutes. Keith stood at the locker room mirror and made another attempt, got the knot halfway decent, and stopped. He didn’t look like himself. He’d been awake since four, and the mirror was not being charitable about it—the shallow lines around his eyes a little deeper than usual, his jaw tight in a way he hadn’t quite managed to unclench yet.
He’d spent most of the night turning Rachel Grant over in his mind like a problem that kept presenting new angles. She was sharp and funny, and she’d looked at him in that interview room like she’d expected him to fail her and was ready for it, and the worst part was that he still didn’t know if he had. He’d done his job. He’d done it correctly. She’d walked out without being charged, which was not nothing.
He’d also watched her go, and the particular set of her shoulders had stayed with him all the way through the dark.
He gave up on the tie and started over from scratch.
Les found him still at it.
“Hospital called.” Les leaned against the doorframe, coffee in hand, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. “They’re doing another CT this morning. If she clears it, we can have her in the afternoon.”
“Good.” The knot came together this time. Keith adjusted it, smoothed it down. “She remember anything?”
“Didn’t say. Just that she’s conscious and talking.” Les studied him for a moment with the unhurried patience of a man who’d been sheriff for eleven years. “You get any sleep?”
“Some.”
“Mm.” Les pushed off the doorframe. “There’s someone at reception. Said he’s here about your case.”
The man at the front desk was white, early forties, slightly soft around the middle in the way of someone who’d once been fit and had let the gym slip without quite noticing. Short dark blond hair, nothing about him that stood out. He was reading on his phone when they came through the door and looked up slow, easy—a man who walked into rooms expecting to be the calmest person in them.
He produced his badge and held it up—briefly, too briefly, a flash of gold and then gone. Not according to protocol, and the easy smile that followed it was the smile of a man who knew that and didn’t particularly care. Keith filed both without comment.
“Jonathan McGraw, Austin PD.” He extended his hand. “Here about Rachel Grant. Think I might be able to help you out.”
Keith shook it. The grip was a degree too firm, the kind that was less about greeting and more about establishing dominance. Keith didn’t bother matching it. “Keith Larsson, chief deputy.” He kept his voice collegial—the particular register of two law enforcement professionals meeting for the first time, the shared language of it. “You want some coffee?”
“I’d never say no.”
They settled in the conference room. McGraw leaned back in his chair with his coffee like he was at a briefing he’d called himself, and Keith sat across from him and listened.
“You want to know what we’re dealing with,” McGraw said, “I’ll tell you.”
He leaned back and let the silence work for him, the way men like McGraw always did—comfortable with the weight of what they were about to say, comfortable with the room.
“Grant. Rachel Grant. Austin PD knows her well. Too well.” He picked up his coffee, didn’t drink it. “Woman has made a career out of this. Files complaints the way other people file taxes—regularly, systematically, and always just inside the line of what you can dismiss outright.” A small smile. “Smart. I’ll give her that. She’s smart about it.”
Keith said nothing.
“Officers with solid records had been written up on her say-so. She’d filed a restraining order against a decorated cop,” McGraw let the word decorated do some work, “based on what amounted to a personal vendetta dressed up as a harassment claim.”
Keith kept listening. None of that sounded like Rachel. Not the Rachel who walked into a room like she already knew what she was there for. People like her fought real fights, about real issues. They didn’t harass for the sport of it.
