Kathleen Creighton - The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

A young deputy with dark hair and a suggestion of Native American heritage in her cheekbones came in carrying a cordless phone. She placed it on the table and turned to go, then paused, looked back and asked, “Want anything? A soda? Glass of water?”

The unsolicited kindness caught Mary unawares, and she found herself fighting an unexpected urge to cry. And once again memory came, not déjà vu, just the past overtaking the present.

Oh God-I hate these memories! But the room was so much like this one, although I hadn’t been arrested then, only placed in “protective custody.” I felt numb though, like I do now. It seemed like a bad dream, and I was too exhausted to make myself wake up.

I can still hear the FBI agent’s voice. “You do realize that you must not contact anyone from your past life, ever?” His face…so grave it scared me. “If you do, we won’t be able to protect you. I need you to understand that.” He waited for my nod. “Do you have immediate family members you’d like included in the program with you?”

I thought…but there was nobody. “Just…my friend, Joy,” I said, “and she’s not…” There was an aching tightness in my throat. I whispered, “Will I have a chance to say good-bye?”

He shook his head and leaned toward me. His eyes seemed to bore into mine. “I’m sorry. There’s a U.S. Marshal waiting outside that door right now. His name’s Stillwell. He’ll explain in more detail, but basically he’s going to take you to a safe house tonight, and you’ll stay there until we get everything squared away. Once we have all the red tape taken care of, marshals will escort you to a remote location where you’ll stay until it’s time for you to testify, at which time you’ll be brought back to Jacksonville under the tightest security for the duration of the trial. When it’s all over, you’ll be taken to your final destination and set up with your new identity. Okay? Do you understand everything so far?”

Do I understand? I wanted to shout at the man, scream at him, No! No, I don’t understand! How did this happen? All I wanted was to meet a handsome prince and live happily ever after, and now you tell me my life is over! How could this have happened to me?

But I only whispered-I think I whispered, “Yes.”

The FBI agent said brusquely, “It’s a lot to take in, I know.” I remember that he reached over and placed his hand on mine and gave it a squeeze. Then he stood up and as he did he looked back at me and I saw that his eyes were kind. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked me. “Coffee? Some water?”

That terrible aching tightness gripped my throat, just as it’s doing now, and just as I am now, I was fighting to hold back tears. How strange, I thought then, after everything I’d been through, the horrors I’d seen, the fear and disillusionment and despair I’d felt, to be undone by a small unexpected kindness…

“Yes, thank you. I’d love some water,” Mary murmured, and the young female deputy nodded and went out.

Mary counted slow deep breaths until the deputy came back in with a bottle of water. She thanked her and unscrewed the top of the bottle and drank thirstily while the deputy went away again. Only then, left alone and feeling much more in control, did Mary pick up the phone the deputy had left on the table. She shifted her chair around so that her back was turned toward the wall mirror and the unseen watchers behind it, then closed her eyes, huffed out one more breath, and with cold stiff fingers punched in a number she was surprised she still remembered.

After only one ring an androgynous voice droned, “U.S. Marshal’s Office, Special Services.”

“Deputy Marshal Stillwell, please. That’s in Witness Protection.” Oh, how her heart was pounding! She pressed her hand against her chest, which didn’t help at all. The hand that was holding the phone began to tremble, and she couldn’t stop that, either.

After what seemed like a very long pause, but was probably no more than a minute, the voice was back. “Marshal Stillwell is no longer with the service, ma’am. Would you like to speak with someone else?”

“I-are you sure? James Stillwell?”

“Yes, ma’am, James Stillwell retired from the service two years ago.”

“But he was my-” She stopped, unable to think. She felt a curious sensation of being adrift, or of falling, like someone who’d grabbed hold of her one lifeline only to discover there was nobody holding onto the other end.

“Ma’am, if you’ll give me your I.D. number, I’ll see if I can find out who’s handling your case. It might take a while.” The voice had begun to sound testy and harassed. “We’re short-handed around here right now. Maybe you’d like to call back a little later?”

“Yes…all right…thank you,” Mary whispered. Her throat ached terribly, and it wasn’t just her hand that was shaking now. She didn’t remember disconnecting the phone call; her mind seemed capable of processing only one thought: Oh God, I’m going to jail…for murder. How can this be happening? What’s going to happen to me now?

On Sunday morning right after breakfast, Boyd announced his intention to ride up to the high pastures to see if the feed was high enough yet to turn the cattle out. Naturally, Susie Grace wanted to go along, so Roan decided they might as well all go and make a day of it.

After the events of the last couple of days, he figured he needed a break, though he suspected it was going to take more than a pretty spring day and a horseback ride with his daughter and father-in-law to cleanse his mind of the images of Mary Owen the way he’d seen her last. Looking…not like any murderer he’d ever seen before-not that he’d seen so many, but no murder suspect he’d ever encountered or imagined over the course of his career had ever seemed so… bewildered, he guessed was the best way to describe it. The expression on her face, the look in her eyes… The way those changeable eyes of hers had clung to his as she was being led away to lock-up, neither the flat gray-green that so effectively hid whatever she might be thinking nor that surprising golden shimmer of anger, but the deep slate of storm clouds, and the message in them plain and troubling as thunder: Help me. A plea her hopeless expression acknowledged was not likely to be answered that day.

The day had started out cool, but by the time they reached the saddleback ridge the sun was hot on their shoulders. They paused there on the pretext of shedding their jackets, but in truth it was to do as they always did, turn and survey the vista spread out around them, which Roan considered to be 360 degrees of pure heaven on earth. From where they stood, on the crest of a wide-open space knee-deep to their horses in lupin and paintbrush, the world rolled away on one side in gentle waves of foothills carpeted with new green, speckled with buttercups and tiny blue forget-me-nots and dotted with clumps of juniper and sage, down, down, down to the ranch far below, looking like a child’s play toy with its cluster of red-and-white painted barns, stables, corrals and feed-storage silos, the main house barely visible in its copse of pines and cottonwoods, and beyond and a little way up a wooded draw, the foreman’s cottage where Boyd lived now, and beyond that, the sweep of hazy blue and purple mountains stretching all the way north to Glacier Park and Canada. On the other side, the high country began just beyond the thickets of pine and aspen that bordered the meadows, where snow lay in shady places until mid-summer, bald eagles nested and in the autumn the slopes rang with the shrill challenges of bull elk in rut. And above it all, the never-ending sky. It made a man feel small and unimportant, that sky, and damn lucky just to be alive underneath it.