Julie Lindsey - Shadow Point Deputy

Ryan was nineteen and a sophomore at the university one town over. He was a full seven years her junior, with a misplaced big brother attitude. She’d helped raise him, and not the other way around.

“Yep.” She tugged her ear and hefted a passing cat into her arms. The sight of her feline family usually brought her great comfort, but today they only delivered flashbacks of the docks.

“I thought you didn’t have to be at work for an hour,” Ryan said.

“I don’t.”

He scanned her freshly straightened living room, the result of too much time and anxiety with zero sleep. “Since when are you up and dressed by now, and why is your place so clean? What’s going on?”

Rita’s cheeks ached from the forced congeniality. What she wanted to do was cry. “Nothing.” She dropped the act and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand while cradling her kitty with the other. “I had trouble sleeping. Can I get you some coffee? Are you hungry?” Her gaze jumped again to the hands of the clock that never seemed to move. Going to work early wasn’t a bad thing. It was normal, really. Not for her, but lots of other people did it. Maybe she could finally make some headway with the files on her desk, and the distraction would keep her mind off the slew of questions that she had no way of answering.

Ryan’s hand danced before her. A US Army key ring swung from one finger. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“What?”

He cocked a hip and dropped his arm. “Did someone hurt you?”

“No. Of course not.” That was funny. Self-defense was a mandatory course of education in the Horn family, had been even before they’d lost their mother. Though no amount of self-defense training could’ve saved her from the drunk driver who’d taken her from them.

Rita dropped the cat on the couch. “Let me grab my purse.” Her breath caught as she pulled back the zipper, revealing the pen she’d found at the docks inside. She’d considered throwing it away when she found it in her coat pocket, but decided to keep it until she knew what had happened. Maybe it was evidence.

“Give me one more minute,” she called into the living room.

Rita grabbed a sandwich bag from the lazy Susan and wrapped the pen in tissues before stuffing it inside. If being trampled by thirty cats at an abandoned dock wasn’t contamination enough, one night in her disaster of a handbag had surely ruined the pen’s chances of being useful. But with technology these days, maybe someone could do something with it. If only she knew who to give it to or if she should. She rubbed her forehead and swallowed a lump of emotion. Was it evidence? Was she crazy? Maybe both. She sealed the bag and stuffed it back into her purse.

“Found it.” She dropped the bag on the couch beside her white Himalayan rescue. The other two cats leaped onto the sofa and stuck their noses into her bag.

She presented the key to her new truck on one palm. “Take care of my baby.”

He made the trade with enthusiasm, dropping the key to his twenty-year-old yellow hatchback into her newly empty hand. “And you take care of Suzie Sunshine.”

Rita snorted and dragged one finger in a small X shape over her heart. “Do you need money for gas or lunch? How are your grades?”

Ryan backed toward the door. “I’m good. Grades are fine. I am meeting the guys for a cram session, though. So I should get going. I’ve got two morning exams. All those professors want me to learn things.” He pretended to choke himself.

Rita clapped slowly, and a genuine smile formed on her lips. “The future of America, ladies and gentlemen.” Education had always been high on Rita’s priority list, but never on Ryan’s. It had been all she could do to convince him to get a degree before enlisting in the army alongside their father. With a degree he could at least enter the service as an officer and be prepared for a career afterward.

He turned for the door.

“Wait.” Rita pried the pile of cats from her handbag and set them aside. “I’ll walk you out.” She stroked the kitties’ heads and scratched their chins. “Try to behave.”

A thick fog had settled in after the night’s heavy rains, making it impossible to see the stop sign at the end of the block and adding a Hitchcockian feel to her already pear-shaped world.

Ryan angled her silver Ford smoothly out of the driveway.

She coaxed his rusty hatchback to life. The stench of exhaust bit her nose and the air.

Ten minutes later, she set her purse on the municipal building’s security scanner and nodded at the guards. She collected her things on the other side and walked quickly away, feeling irrationally conspicuous, knowing the pen lay inside.

Her heels snapped and cracked against polished marble as she crossed the cavernous foyer and climbed the wide, sweeping staircase. Cade County wasn’t small, but it was rural, and the population was low, making one grand building a sufficient hub for the courthouse and local government offices, including hers at the County Treasurer. Oil paintings of the governor, senator and US presidents lined the second-floor hallways.

Rita ducked into her office and dropped onto her rolling chair with determination. Once she cleared the clutter from her head and desk, she’d give the sheriff’s department a call. Anonymously. She’d been trespassing, after all, and she wouldn’t be in this predicament if she’d obeyed the law and heeded the sign. She dropped her head into waiting palms. What would she say? She suspected that something bad happened? The storm had surely erased any evidence, and hadn’t a deputy been there last night?

Why, yes. He had. And she’d run from him. A groan escaped her lips.

“Good morning, Rita!” A perky voice split the silence.

Rita jerked upright. “Hello.”

The receptionist stared expectantly. “You’re here bright and early.” She fluffed giant blond hair and straightened a spray of stiff bangs.

“Hoping to catch up.” Rita motioned to the pile of folders on her desk.

“Any luck?”

“Not really.” She shouldn’t have come in today. The office didn’t feel like a distraction. It felt like a prison. “I think I’m going to make a coffee run before I get started.” Maybe a little fresh air would help. “Can I get you something?”

The woman raised her steaming mug higher. “Kinda got that covered.”

“Right. Sorry.” Rita grabbed her coat and purse. “I won’t be long.” She straightened her white silk blouse and black pencil skirt, then hustled downstairs, taking the side exit into a public garden to catch her breath.

A slight drizzle forced her to stay near the door, where a small overhang served as shelter. The benches were wet. The ground waterlogged. Narrow puddles filled the spaces between walkway paving stones. She inhaled the cool, misty air and shook her hands out at the wrists. She didn’t need fresh air or caffeine. She needed answers, and the only way she’d get them was to call the police like she should have done last night. It was better to report something that turned out to be nothing than to not speak up and find out later that her call could have helped someone.

She marched back inside with resolve and climbed the stairs to her office. Her steps slowed at the sight of a deputy speaking with the receptionist inside her glass office doors. If she truly planned to report what she’d seen, this was the time, but her muscles seemed to atrophy at the thought. There was something unsettling about his stance. She hadn’t seen the faces of the men at the docks, but this deputy seemed familiar in a way that raised the hair on her arms.

She slipped into an alcove and waited. When the deputy reappeared on the steps to the building’s front doors, she dialed the main line to the receptionist.