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So am I. Even now, more than three years later, the memories sometimes slipped into her thoughts at unexpected moments. Gunfire. Blood. So much blood.
If only Tony had waited a few minutes for her to get into position, he might have walked away from that warehouse. They might have married. And she’d probably still be a street cop in Dallas.
Nathan eyed her closely. “Are you okay?”
She shook off the memories and gave him the breeziest smile she could muster. “Just a little tired.” She snapped her fingers at her side, calling Harold to attention. “We’d better get back home.”
With a vague wave of farewell, she turned and continued down Main, past the restored 1880s stone storefronts housing businesses that sure hadn’t been here while she was growing up. Fiber artists. Potters. A glass studio. A custom jeweler. A charming coffee shop offering espresso and café latte, its prices and flavor variations listed on an antique chalkboard at the front window.
Progress, she thought dryly. All geared to the waves of weekend bumper-to-propeller traffic flooding through town toward the best of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes. The summer migration must be a hundredfold greater these days if the new, upscale shops were any clue.
At the corner of Birch and Main, she waited for the town’s sole traffic light—another new development—to turn green, then started across the street. An uneasy sense of awareness crawled up her spine.
She turned slowly and looked over her shoulder, expecting to see the deputy observing her progress. Making sure, maybe, that she wasn’t as light-fingered as her brother had been. But he was nowhere in sight. Surprised, she surveyed the sidewalks on both sides of the street.
Several women were window-shopping half a block down. A farmer in overalls studied a farm-auction flyer posted on a store window. Just a normal, quiet Saturday afternoon.
Except for a gaunt old man hesitating at the open door of a battered pickup truck at the other end of the block. Hunched over, as if bracing against a stiff wind, he wore ragged jeans faded to white at the knees and a grease-stained denim jacket. Though his face was shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat encrusted with an assortment of fishing lures, he seemed oddly familiar.
The moment their eyes met, he froze.
Curious, she stared back at him. Her holiday trips home were usually too brief to spend time cruising around town, and it had been a good twelve years since she’d left for college. Enough time for a man to age, and some men weathered the years harder than others. Had she known him when she was a child?
She hadn’t moved three steps before he abruptly turned to climb into the truck, then slammed the door. Gears grinding, black smoke spewing from its tailpipe, the truck lurched backward into the street. The pile of twisted metal and dented fifty-gallon drums in the back of the pickup swayed precariously as the vehicle swung around and crawled up the steep slope of Main. Stark’s Salvage was hand-lettered across the tailgate.
She’d be in town for several months, and she’d definitely look up Mr. Stark. But that would have to wait. This afternoon she had to unpack and go through Special Agent Allen Larson’s preliminary report one more time, then take a nice casual run past the Sanderson plant.
And then, when she could delay no longer, she’d need to face her family.
* * * *
“YOU’VE BEEN IN TOWN how long?” Bernice Hanrahan lifted a vein-knotted hand to her gray hair and smoothed it back, then dropped a tea bag into the cup of hot water in front of her.
Even at seventy-three, she continued to wrestle her natural waves into the tight confinement of the bun she’d worn all her adult life. The reproach in her voice hadn’t changed much over the years, either. “I would have made a nice supper if I’d known you were here already.”
“I decided to drive all night, Mom. I didn’t get in until mid-morning. Since then I’ve taken Harold for a walk and unpacked,” Sara added, knowing her mother would want a full accounting. “And I didn’t want you going to any trouble. I thought maybe I could take you out for supper.”
“I’d rather stay home.”
No surprise there. “Maybe I could bring something in? I noticed a new Cantonese restaurant on the edge of town.”
“I don’t think so.” Pursing her lips, Bernice deftly changed topics. “Are you certain you want to stay in that...that place above the Shuellers’ garage? I could certainly make room for you here.”
Sara glanced around the spartan, almost sterile kitchen. Not one utensil lay on the counter, not a single cup or plate in the sink. The white Formica table held the same avocado plastic napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers that had rested on her mother’s table even at the old mustard yellow house they’d lived in when Sara was a child.
The other furnishings were familiar as well, all remnants of a happier time.
The tiny, spotless duplex might be perfect for a single person, but not for two adults plus a good-size dog. Even now, curled up at the back door of the kitchen, Harold seemed to overwhelm the small room. “I appreciate your offer, but I figured the two of us would be a bit much.”
“You could tie that dog outside.”
“Night and day?”
Her mother sniffed. “Wouldn’t that be best?”
Bernice’s tone implied that Sara had chosen the welfare of a dog over that of her own mother, but so be it. “He had a long career as a drug dog, Mom. He doesn’t deserve to be left outside.”
As if he knew what she’d said, Harold lifted his head and looked at her, thumping his tail several times against the floor in agreement. He’d never fully recovered from the last injury he’d received on duty. Cold mornings and damp weather bothered him, even though he slept on soft blankets next to Sara’s bed every night.
