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Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Jackson

I stared through the glass at the suspect sitting at my interrogation table. Legally speaking, he was an adult—but just barely. His tough-guy attitude didn’t quite match his baby-face features, and I might have felt sorry for him if I hadn’t seen the victim. He’d beaten his ex-girlfriend so badly she was in a coma and might not recover.

My suspect was twitchy and tired. Guilt was painted all over his face, but he hadn’t talked yet. He hadn’t lawyered up yet, either, so I didn’t care how tired he was. We’d been here all night, and we’d stay here all day too, if that’s what it took.

Sheriff Morrison walked in, whistling a tune. “You still here?” he asked, though we both knew he wasn’t surprised.

“Yep. Too stupid to lawyer up, but too smart to talk.”

“Been at it all night?”

“Pretty much.”

He came to stand beside me, crossing his arms as he eyed the kid in the room. “Doesn’t normally take you this long,” he said. “You off your game this week?”

He said it mildly, and I knew he was half joking, but I winced anyway. Truth was, I was a lot off my game, but I didn’t want to talk about that. “I’ll get him,” I said, reassuring myself as much as him.

“Are we sure he did it?”

I nodded. “I’m sure. Everything I’ve got is circumstantial so far, but he’s the guy. She broke up with him last week and he was pissed. He’s got an anger problem and two domestics on his record. Witnesses heard him threatening her less than twelve hours before her assault. His buddy gave him an alibi, said they were drinking together and rebuilding a car engine all night, but…he’s the guy.”

Greg nodded. “Then I have no doubt you’ll get him. Need anything from me?”

I started to tell him no, but my phone buzzed. I picked it up and answered, taking the message I’d been waiting for. By the time I hung up, I felt a fresh wave of energy. It was a stimulant that worked better than coffee—though I’d kill for another cup after the night I’d had.

“What is it?” Greg asked.

“My victim’s awake and talking. Said it was him and the buddy who alibied him. They did it together.”

Greg clapped me on my shoulder. “There’s your leverage. Go get him.”

I was running on mere fumes of adrenaline by the time the day was over. I’d picked up the friend, and both guys had caved pretty quickly, each throwing the other one under the bus as soon as they heard that their victim was talking. I was ready for sleep and to put this particular case behind me, at least for the night. But I had one more stop to make on my way home.

The bells jingled on the door of the coffee shop when I walked in. The strong smell of espresso hit, tempting me. After all, at this point, I could probably enjoy a couple of shots and still sleep like the dead when I got home. But I wasn’t there to risk it. I just needed to check on Anna, the owner, who’d had a little trouble of her own recently.

“Well, hey there, Jackson.” Anna waved from behind the counter. “You didn’t make it in for your normal cup this morning. Want one now?”

“Make it tea. Something caffeine-free. I’ve been up for”—I checked my watch—“thirty-six hours straight now. I’m heading home to crash.”

She just shook her head. “You work too hard. You need to take a vacation.”

I grinned. “Hard to take a vacation when the bad guys never seem to.”

She sighed and gave me a look that said she saw right through me as she plucked a tea bag from a case and put it into a to-go cup. “Not a lot of bad guys here in Rosemary Mountain.”

She was right. There really weren’t. Violent crime was pretty rare here, though it had been steadily increasing as of late, a fact that had me and the sheriff both frustrated. Still, we had enough going on to keep me busy, which brought me to my real reason for being here.

“Are your new volunteers working out well?” I asked.

Some high school seniors had broken into her store after hours and had a bit of a party. No damage done, but they had helped themselves to all the espresso and syrup they could drink. I had tracked them down. Made them pay for all of it and agree to community service hours, which in this case meant volunteer work specifically to help Anna. Her husband had been struggling with cancer, and I knew she was barely keeping them afloat with the increase in medical bills. She was also in desperate need of help with the yard work and maintenance that her husband used to do.

“Yes,” she said, laughing softly. “I think they’ve learned their lesson.”

“So no more trouble?”

“None at all.” She put sugar in my tea, just the way I liked it, and handed it to me. “It’s on the house,” she said as I pulled out my wallet.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “I’ve got it.”

She stubbornly shook her head. “It’s the least I can do after the way you helped me out.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” I said, pulling out some cash to stuff into the tip jar. “That’s my job.”

“Well, we all appreciate how well you do it.”

“How’s Aaron doing?” I asked, changing the subject. I always felt a little uncomfortable when someone thanked me for what I did, though I wasn’t sure why. My job gave me a lot of personal satisfaction. In a way, it felt like I was making up for all the trouble Russell had caused. Like I was putting some things right after everything he had done wrong. And I liked that. Liked that I had beaten the odds and taken a radically different path than his, despite having a bumpy start in my early years. But it still felt weird when someone else thanked me for it.

“He’s having a good day,” Anna said with that sweet, patient smile of hers. “Got a good report from the doctor. I think he’s getting better.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, hoping with all my heart it was true. “Tell him I said hi, will you?”

“I will,” she promised.

I headed toward the door, practically counting down the minutes until I could crawl into bed to sleep for at least ten hours. But my ears perked up when I walked by a table and overheard a conversation between two town locals, Larry and Gus. Both were hotheads with a reputation for trouble, all in the name of keeping town the way they liked it.

“Yeah, you heard right,” Larry drawled, nodding. “Can’t believe she has the nerve to show her face here. I thought we had run that family off for good.”

Gus nodded his agreement. “Takes some gumption for sure.”

“Gumption? Ha,” Larry scoffed. “I wouldn’t call it gumption. She’s probably just like her mama. Remember how that woman used to walk around holding her head up high, like none of us knew the truth of what she was? If her little girl is coming back all high and mighty, she either don’t know that family ain’t welcome here, or she does and she’s showing up anyway. That’s not gumption. That’s just pure arrogance.” He pointed his finger at Gus. “Somebody’s going to have to put her in her place and let her know we don’t abide by people like that here in our town.”

I stopped at the cream and sugar station, pretending I needed to stir up my tea so I could continue listening. Who were they talking about? I hadn’t heard of anyone new moving to town, much less someone who would cause a controversy.

“Aw, come on now,” Gus said. “She ain’t responsible for what her daddy did. Or what her mama did, neither. She was just a kid when all that went down. They wouldn’t have offered her the job if she was that bad.”

“I don’t like it,” Larry said, disagreeing. “In the end, kids always turn out like their parents. What’s that saying? The apple don’t fall far from the tree.”

I winced, knowing he likely said the same thing about me behind my back. Most people in town had accepted me despite who my father was. Larry and Gus hadn’t.

“I just don’t like having another Bell in this town,” Larry continued. “They’re all bad seed, if you ask me. Best to root them out before they get started here again.”

At that, I almost dropped my cup. Bell.

Allison Bell was coming home to the mountain.

The next morning, I drove straight to the station and dropped my laptop on my desk before heading to Greg’s office. I knocked on his door and waited for him to invite me inside.

“Come in,” he called out, not even looking up from the papers in front of him until I took the seat in front of his desk. “Oh, morning, Jackson. Hey, great work yesterday. Hope you got some good sleep last night. What’s up?”

“Got a question for you.”

“Shoot,” he said. “And where’s my coffee?” He nodded at the cup in my hand and smirked.

“Sorry,” I grinned. “Your wife told me you’re supposed to be cutting back.”

He groaned and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. She thinks I’m”—he raised his hands in air quotation marks—“under too much stress and that reducing my caffeine might be good for my nervous system. Next thing you know, she’ll be trying to get me to take up painting or meditation or something.”

“She loves you,” I said with more than a little envy. Greg and Janet loved each other deeply and shared one of the most beautiful relationships I’d ever seen.

“She does.” He grinned. “And I love her. More than life itself. I even love her enough to cut back on my coffee, which as we both know is a hell of a lot of love. But you said you had a question for me. What’s up?”

“Have you heard anything about someone with the last name Bell moving to town?” I was almost afraid it wasn’t true. Afraid he’d tell me it was some other Bell moving here and not Allison.

He frowned and scratched his head. “Bell. Hmm. Sounds familiar.” He dropped his pen on his desk, and nodded, remembering. “Yeah, yeah. I remember now. Allison Bell. Doctor. The mayor mentioned her to me last week. She’s taking over Doc Rogers’s old family practice.”

My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. My thoughts were moving a million miles an hour, torn between excitement about her moving back and anxiety about what she might face when she got here.

“Why?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “What do I not know?”

I shook my head. “Hopefully nothing. I heard a couple of men talking about it in the coffee shop last night. Did the mayor tell you Allison’s originally from the area?”

Greg shook his head. “Nope, didn’t mention it.”

“He might not know,” I said. “Allison was a kid when she lived here. Her family lived next door to me.”

“Really?” Greg gave me a piercing look. He knew I had grown up in a trailer park known to house some of the rougher residents of Rosemary Mountain. “And she’s a doctor now?”

“Apparently. Her mom ended up leaving her dad when Allison turned thirteen. Just packed up in the middle of the night and was gone.” I could still remember it like it was yesterday. How empty and dark life felt with her gone. How in a single moment, the only sunshine in my life had disappeared.

Anyway,” I said, clearing my throat to try to mask the emotion I was struggling to hide. “One of the men didn’t seem too happy about her coming back. Said someone needed to put her in her place and drive her out before she got started here. I know her dad wasn’t well liked, though he seemed like a saint compared to mine. He was a drunk and a gambler though, and he didn’t hold much respect from anyone. They spoke negatively about her mama, too, but that’s probably guilt by association.”

Greg frowned. “Well, I don’t like that at all. Who was doing the talking?”

“Larry and Gus.” I knew the names alone would be enough for Greg to realize why I was concerned.

“Great. Just great,” Greg said, shaking his head. “Last thing we need is for Larry to have a grudge against yet another person in town. What other kind of trouble did her dad cause?”

I shook my head. “Other than his addictions, I don’t know why people had such disdain for him. I had my own things going on at home and didn’t pay too much attention to town gossip. You know how it was.”

Greg nodded, his face grim. He didn’t know everything I had been through as a kid, but he knew enough about my dad to know it hadn’t been easy. He rubbed his face and muttered under his breath about not being able to get a break in this town. “Find out what you can,” he finally said, looking weary. “Were you and this Allison close?”

I swallowed hard, fighting back an unexpected wave of emotion. “Like I said, we were just kids. I haven’t spoken to her since she left. But Allison was the best friend I’ve ever had.”

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