Julie Anne Lindsey - The Sheriff's Secret

She slowly raised her tearstained face, catching his gaze in hers. “No.”

“Tina.” His heart clenched and his gut fisted at the sight of her after all these years, her clothes smeared in blood.

“Hi, West,” she croaked. Her rain-soaked hair hung in clumps over her shaking shoulders.

The sound of his name on her tongue was a painful slap of nostalgia. “Hi.” West struggled to make her presence at the crime scene something other than ludicrous. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my practice.”

West rubbed a rough hand over his mouth. He’d heard she worked at the medical center but had refused the details. This wasn’t the same girl who’d stolen his teenage heart and eventually destroyed it. That girl had left Cade County long ago. This was someone else. Someone he no longer knew. He pulled in a long breath and refocused on the job. He gave her a more critical exam. “Is any of this blood yours?”

“No.” Tina pushed onto her feet with a whimper and wrapped trembling arms around her middle. “I’m not hurt. I want to help.”

He stood, as well. “All right. You can start by telling me what happened.” He motioned to a section of the sidewalk covered with an awning. “Let’s step out of the storm.”

She complied, shuffling toward the building, peeling clumps of sopping hair off her cheeks and forehead. “We were leaving the building. It was just after eight, and there was a shadow on the roof.” She stopped short and swallowed several times.

“We?”

“I have a weekly support group for PTSD and emotional trauma survivors.” She rolled her shoulders forward and squelched a sob. “Steven saw the figure on the roof. He told us to get down. He tried to get to me.” She pressed the heels of both hands against her eyes. “The gunman shot him before he reached me.”

West nodded toward the man on the pavement. “That is Steven?”

She removed her hands from her face with a sigh. “Steven Masters. He was discharged from the army about a month ago. He has a wife and little girl.” Her voice broke on the last word. “Oh, Lord. His poor family,” she whispered. Tina spun away from West, walking aimlessly into the lot, obviously in shock despite her efforts to look otherwise.

“Hey.” West jogged to her side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t you have a seat while we talk?” He led her to a bench beneath the awning and released her at once. The instinct to comfort her was unprofessional and wildly outdated. “Better?”

She didn’t answer.

“Tina?” West knew firsthand that she wasn’t a sharer, but this time he needed her to open up. “I know this is tough,” he began.

Tina rolled glossy blue eyes up at him. “Someone shot Steven from that rooftop. I don’t know who. I don’t know why.” She shook her head roughly. “It’s just nonsense.”

“West?” His baby brother and current deputy, Cole Garrett, strode to his side. Cole was four years younger than West and twice as smart, but he’d been bitten by the law enforcement bug like the rest of the Garrett men and refused to go out and change the world like West and their older brothers had suggested. “I’m going to head out and see if I can get a bead on this guy.”

“What do you have so far?” West asked.

Cole gave Tina a wayward look. “Not much. Witnesses heard a car hightailing out of here. I’m going to head up the road and see if anyone saw a vehicle taking the state route in a hurry.”

“It was a pickup truck,” Tina said.

Cole’s sharp gaze locked on hers before drifting back to West. “Isn’t she—”

“Don’t,” West warned.

Cole whistled the sound of a falling missile and walked away.

Tina rolled her head against the wall behind their bench. “I suppose I’m not exactly the Garrett family’s favorite local.”

West grunted. That was a conversation he never wanted to have. The past was the past. He’d like to leave it there. “I need to know which member of your group could’ve made someone mad enough to do this?”

Tina’s soft expression hardened. She glanced at the coroner’s van. “The only person to blame is the maniac who did it.”

West raised an eyebrow. “I’m not blaming. I’m looking for bread crumbs. Which one’s the loose cannon?”

“All my patients are serious about their recovery. They’re employed. Paying bills. Contributing to society. They wouldn’t be here every week, carving out time before work, if they weren’t dedicated to the process.”

“Uh-huh.” West nodded. “I understand why you’d say they’re doing well, seeing as how you’re their therapist.” He gave a little smile, knowing he walked a fine line. “You look for the best in people, and that’s admirable, but can you tell me honestly that if one of your patients had gotten into trouble, you’d know? How can you be sure? Because I’m sitting outside an office where people suffering from emotional distress come for treatment, and one of them is dead. You want me to believe the location is a coincidence?”

She scowled. “Of course it can’t be a coincidence because you don’t believe in those.”

West regrouped and tried again before she shut him out completely. “You’re right. You know these guys. I don’t. I’ll admit that, but I’m thinking distraught individuals tend to make poor decisions, and maybe one of them got tangled up with someone capable of doing this.”

“No.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong about my group.”

“How do you know?” West asked. “What do you talk about in your sessions? Has anyone shared anything out of the ordinary lately? Did they meet someone new? Make a friend? Take a trip?”

Tina rubbed her forehead. “That’s all covered under counselor-patient confidentiality.”

“Are you kidding me?” West bristled.

“You know I can’t tell you any of those things.”

West ground his teeth. “Even in the aftermath of all this, you still want to keep secrets?”

Tina looked away. “You can ask them anything you want to know. I’m sure they’ll tell you. And I’ll tell you anything I can about my day. About the moments before and after the shooting. About the figure. Anything that won’t break my patients’ trust, but I owe them that. I took an oath.”

West braced himself for a long day. Prying secrets from Tina was a task he’d never had any success with, and frankly she was right. What he wanted to know was covered under confidentiality laws, unless she’d suspected criminal activity. In that case, she had an obligation to report it, but she’d already declared the group’s united innocence and probably wouldn’t change her story. “Okay,” he conceded. “Fair enough. I’ll ask my men to question the group members. What do you say about coming with me to the station while they do that? It sounds like you spoke to the victim just before the incident, and it seems you were also the closest to him by proximity.” His gaze slid over the bloodstains on her rain-soaked blouse and pants. “I need to get an official report from you, and I’d like to continue the interview while the details are fresh. I imagine you’d like to get away from here for that.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then, Miss Ellet, let me walk you to my car.”

Chapter Two

Tina climbed inside the sheriff’s cruiser, shaking off memories of similar rides as a girl. Every time her dad had caused a scene at a park or ball game and was hauled in for a night in the drunk tank, Tina was escorted home by a nice deputy, often by the former sheriff. West’s dad. Eventually, she’d smartened up and steered clear of her dad before he could insist they go anywhere together.

She buckled in and winced as the condition of her hands and clothes registered. “Oh.” She rubbed her stained fingers against the ruined material of her pants, but it was no use. A tremor rocked through her as memories of the gunshot came rushing back. Tina shook her hands out hard at the wrists and released a shuddered breath. “Can...” She swallowed against the painful lump in her throat. “Can we make a pit stop at my house? I’d like to get a dry change of clothes before we go to the station. I don’t think I can concentrate like this.” She bent and stretched her fingers in the air above her lap. “Please.”