Salvation in the Sheriff's Kiss. Kelly Boyce

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СКАЧАТЬ last night had been a colossal mistake. He’d blindsided her and as a result she’d gotten her back up. Then Bancroft and his brood had descended poking into their business. Hunter loved this town, but just once he’d like to do something without everyone in Salvation Falls dipping their toe into his life like they had some right to it.

      He wondered if that was how Meredith had felt when he showed up at her door like a puffed-up buffoon and demanded to know what her intentions were. He groaned and dropped his forehead onto the smooth surface of his desk, banging his head lightly against the wood. He should have tried a softer approach but it had been so long since he’d tapped into anything remotely resembling a soft emotion he wasn’t even sure he’d remember how. His job as sheriff demanded he be strong, steady, often tough and forceful. Softness didn’t enter into it.

      Given their parting seven years ago and the circumstances surrounding it, he had to expect he’d be the last person she’d want to see. If only he’d cooled his heels long enough yesterday to remember that before he went barreling over there to pound on her door.

      Hindsight was a rather smug beast.

      He lifted his head and leaned back in his chair, swinging his feet up onto the corner of his desk. Her return had set him on edge, no doubt about it. If he’d thought he had locked away their past and put it to rest, her arrival had proved him wrong. On first sight of her, everything had come rushing back in a tidal wave of memories. The good. The bad. The incredibly ugly.

      To this day he still wasn’t sure which one outweighed the other. He couldn’t think of the good without the bad and ugly creeping in, and so he’d put them all away. Tucked them down deep where he didn’t have to look at them or face what he had done. It had been hard enough to do when she wasn’t here. He suspected it was going to be damned near impossible if she was front and center in his life day in and day out.

      He needed to convince her to return to Boston. This time, however, it was for his safety, not hers.

      It didn’t help matters that he’d spent the better part of the night tossing and turning trying to figure out how he was going to accomplish such a feat when it was obvious she wasn’t interested in one word that came out of his mouth. By the wee hours of the morning he was no closer to a solution. He’d dressed and come downstairs to his office to relieve Jenkins. With Bill Yucton’s penchant for escape, he wasn’t taking any chance of leaving the man unwatched.

      He pushed himself out of his chair and crossed over to the woodstove, stoking the fire to ward off the cold creeping down from the mountains. He poured another cup of coffee. He had hoped the first cup would awaken enough of his faculties to force the image of Meredith from his mind, but he was three mugs in now and her image still lingered. A strange mesh of the girl from his memories and the woman she had become.

      Time had left her skin smooth, untouched. The freckles he remembered were no longer in evidence. Her ivory skin did not appear to have met with the sun’s rays in some time. Maybe it didn’t shine much in Boston. And her eyes. Lord help him. The cornflower blue seemed even more brilliant against her flawless skin than he remembered. They’d stared at him in surprise when she first opened the door. He watched myriad emotions scuttle across them like fast-moving clouds when a storm was brewing.

      Her words drifted back to him as they had over and over again through the night.

       I plan on proving my father’s innocence once and for all.

      That could prove problematic.

      He took a sip from his mug and winced. The sludge tasted like a disgusting mixture of burnt tree bark and dirt. He should have let Jenkins make a pot before he took Yucton to the bathhouse. He’d enlisted Kincaid’s aid in transporting the prisoner. The bounty hunter had been none too pleased to be roused from his slumber, but since he’d taken to bunking in the empty cell to sleep off his latest bender, Hunter figured he wasn’t in a position to argue.

      Besides, he needed some time to think.

      The return of Bill Yucton and Meredith Connolly at the same time was a bit too coincidental for him to swallow. He’d never put much faith in happenstance. Then again, he hadn’t put much faith in anything of late.

      He stared at the narrow file cabinet wedged under the small window next to his desk. He kept meticulous files, a trait McLaren had not shared and not one Jenkins seemed inclined to pick up. He’d had to go into the bottom three drawers repeatedly to refile whatever he’d given to Jenkins. It was as if the boy had never been introduced to the alphabet.

      But the top drawer he’d left alone. It had been two years since he’d opened it and pulled out the worn leather notebook. Years earlier, he’d gone over its contents six ways from Sunday, reread every word he’d put into it in the vain hope they would reveal whatever it was he was missing. They hadn’t, and so he’d stuck it in the drawer and tried his best to wash his hands of it.

       Dig deeper...the trial...syndicate...

      The words had confused him at the time and haunted him ever since.

      Sheriff McLaren had been like a father figure to him, more so than his own father ever had. In the wake of his death, Hunter had done his best to look at Abbott Connolly’s trial from every direction. But in the end, it was what it was. A straightforward case of cattle rustling with one alleged accomplice saying he was there and another claiming he wasn’t. If they hadn’t found a few of the stolen cattle on Abbott’s small piece of property perhaps the trial would have had a different outcome, but they had found the cattle, and in the end, it was all the jury needed to convict.

      Hunter walked over to the cabinet and pulled at the top drawer. It stuck, as if telling him what he already knew. He was wasting his time. No amount of digging on his part had revealed any great secret or explained what Sheriff McLaren had meant by syndicate. His dying declaration remained a mystery and Hunter had been forced to accept the fact it meant nothing. Likely the fatal wound he’d suffered had left him confused in his last moments of life and he’d simply been rambling. Doc Whyte said that could happen.

      Still...

      The memory of that day continued to trouble him. He’d come upon the scene too late. McLaren had been coming back from a routine checkup on old Mrs. Dunlop when he was gunned down by two men in cold blood. Hunter had heard the shots and come running. The shooters had taken off, no reason or explanation given for the attack, and McLaren lay dying in the street. He gripped Hunter’s wrist when he reached him and his eyes, though filled with pain, were sharp and alert. The man knew he was dying. He’d gathered what was left of his strength and pushed out the words with the last beats of his heart.

      It had to mean something! But what? And why? If Abbott knew, he wasn’t talking. No one was.

      He gave the drawer another yank, harder this time. It opened with reticence, the leather notebook exactly where he’d left it two years ago. He reached in and fingered the twine wrapped around it. He didn’t need to look inside. He’d long since memorized every note he’d written. It wasn’t much.

      Outside, the steady chink of chains and boots moving in tandem on the planked walkway heralded the prisoner’s return. Hunter slammed the drawer shut and turned toward the door as Yucton crossed the threshold, Jenkins close on his heels. Kincaid was nowhere to be seen.

      As if reading his mind, Jenkins hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Kincaid stopped on the way back for a drink. But we got the stink washed off ole Bill here and he’s clean as a whistle. Willie gave him a change of clothes jus’ while his own are gettin’ laundered.”

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