Marilyn Pappano - The Sheriff's Surrender

Reese had just signed off the computer and risen from his chair when the cell phone rang. He sat back down and answered, fully expecting to hear his cousin’s voice. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Hey, bubba. How’s it going?”

Thinking about Neely’s escape that morning and his dragging her back into the house, Reese ignored the heat rising up his neck and carelessly replied, “Everything’s okay here. How about there?”

“Everybody’s stirred up. Seems somebody disappeared from the department’s protective custody and no one has a clue where she’s gone.”

“That’s what you get for working in a big city. We couldn’t lose a prisoner down here if we wanted to.” Unless she just got up and walked out. If she had closed the door quietly instead of giving in to her temper and slamming it, who knew how far she could have gotten?

“Did you ever start locking the jail cells, or couldn’t you find the key?”

“Funny, Jace. When are we going to see you again?”

There was a guilty silence, followed by a slow, “I don’t know. I thought I was going to be able to get away sometime soon, but it didn’t work out. There’s too much going on here. I’m stuck.”

Reese scowled. Jace had lied to him, conned him into taking Neely and accepted his deadline for getting her out by tonight, and now he was backing out of the deal, just like that. As if no one else had a say in the matter. And, really, how much say did they have? She was here. She had no place else to go, and he had only one place to take her—one place she certainly didn’t belong. They were stuck, not Jace. “For how long?” he asked stiffly.

“I don’t know, bubba.”

“Listen, bubba—”

“Hey, I tried. There’s just no way I can get away right now.” After a pause, Jace’s tone lightened. “But it’s nice to know you miss me so much.”

“Yeah, like a pain in the—” Reese broke off as Neely, looking very much like a small child awakened too soon from a nap, came into the room. “Hey, your mom says you never call.”

“I call her every week.”

“Yeah, well, call her twice this week.” That would make Aunt Rozena happy, and all Barnetts had a stake in keeping Rozena happy. “You know, you owe me more favors than you’ll ever be able to repay.”

“I know, bubba. Thanks. And, hey, tell her… Tell her not to worry.”

Reese glanced at Neely, standing in front of the fireplace and looking at the family photos there, and wondered yet again what was between her and Jace. It had better not be anything more than friendship, because if his cousin thought for one minute he was going to marry her, make her part of the family and subject Reese to her presence for the rest of their lives, he was crazy.

But Neely had been known to make men crazy before.

She’d sure as hell made him crazy.

“I will,” he said quietly. “Keep in touch, will you?”

“When I can.”

Reese hung up and laid the phone aside, then swiveled around to watch her. He could tell the instant she became aware of his gaze. She stood an inch taller. Became less soft. Tried to look tougher—and failed.

“Was that Jace?” She sounded as cool and unapproachable as she tried to look, and never shifted her gaze one millimeter from the photograph in front of her.

“Yeah.”

“He’s not coming, is he?”

“No.”

If he hadn’t been studying her, he would have missed the nearly imperceptible shiver that rippled through her. “Then we may as well go. My bag is already packed.”

If he took her to the jail, as he’d threatened, her presence in Canyon County would no longer be his and Jace’s secret. She would be out of his house but not out of his life. He might be more comfortable—though he wouldn’t bet on it—but she would be trading one difficult situation for another. She very well might be no safer there than she was here—maybe not even as safe. Everyone in the department and a good number of courthouse employees would know she was there, and who knew who they might tell?

No, transferring her to the jail wasn’t the answer—not yet, at least. He would give his cousin a little more time, then reconsider, but he wasn’t taking her anywhere today. “Jace said to tell you not to worry.”

The faintest of smiles touched her mouth before disappearing. “Jace is an optimist.”

“So are you.”

She shook her head. “Maybe I used to be, but not anymore. These days I’m a realist.”

And these days her reality wasn’t too encouraging.

“You hungry? There’s a casserole in the refrigerator—one of my aunt’s Tex-Mex specialties.” Reese went into the kitchen, and she followed, taking a plate from the cabinet to dish up a helping to put in the microwave.

“Smells wonderful,” she said, breathing deeply. “How is Rozena?”

Pausing in the act of returning the casserole container to the refrigerator, Reese looked at her sharply. When they were together, she’d never met any of his family but his father and Jace. He couldn’t remember ever mentioning his aunt by name, or believe Neely would remember after all these years. “You know Rozena?”

The suspicion in his voice stiffened her spine as she watched the food slowly rotate inside the oven. “We met the last time she visited Jace in Kansas City.”

He didn’t know Rozena had visited Jace in the city. And why in hell would Jace include Neely in a family visit unless… “You think he’s going to marry you?”

Either the question itself or the hostility that made it so harsh startled her into looking at him. Her brown eyes were open wide and faintly amused, and her mouth wore the beginning of a smile that never quite formed. Instead she grew serious and thoughtful. “Does that worry you?”

“Jace deserves better.”

“But we don’t always get what we deserve, do we?”

And what did she think he deserved? Eternal damnation?

“The family will never accept you.”

“Why not? Because you’ll tell them whatever is necessary to make them dislike me?”

“All that will be necessary is the truth.”

The microwave stopped, and she removed her plate, carried it to the table, then returned for a Coke and silverware. As she settled in the chair she calmly said, “You can’t tell them the truth, Reese, because you don’t know it. All you know—all you can accept—is your narrow-minded version of what happened, but there’s so much more to it than that.”

“There’s nothing more to it,” he argued, moving to sit across from her. “Leon Miller tried to kill his wife. We arrested him and took him to trial. You manipulated the law to get the charges dropped, and he walked out of the courthouse and blew her away. Bottom line—if not for you, he wouldn’t have gone free that day. If not for you, Judy wouldn’t have died that day.” He stared at her a long, cold moment before finally finishing. “The bottom line is you were responsible, Neely. You should have paid the price.”

Neely held her fork so tightly that the beveled stainless edges cut into her palm, but she kept her hand from shaking and thought she succeeded fairly well at keeping the hurt and frustration out of her expression. In fact, even to herself, she sounded polite. Conversational. “It must be nice to be able to pass judgment on the rest of the world—to lay blame wherever you want, to condemn whoever you want and absolve whoever you choose. You decide which laws are worth enforcing and which to ignore in the name of right. You point fingers, lay blame, assign guilt, judge, condemn and sentence, all from your intolerant, mean little viewpoint, and all with the certainty that you have a God-given right to do so.

“Well, you don’t, Reese. You’re no wiser than anyone else. You overstep your authority, and you do incredible harm. You accuse me of manipulating the law. How could you possibly tell after you and others like you have twisted and subverted it beyond recognition? In your quest for justice as you define it, you trample all over people’s civil rights, and then when your case gets thrown out, you look for someone else to blame. You don’t have the guts to say, ‘I shouldn’t have conducted an illegal search, or beaten a confession out of the suspect, or failed to read him his rights. I screwed up.’ Oh, no, you say, ‘It’s his lawyer’s fault. It’s the judge’s fault. The D.A. wasn’t prepared. It was that bleeding-heart jury.’”