Page 1 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Sheriff

chapter

one

Griff

The call comes in at 4:47 on a Tuesday, and it comes in wrong.

Not wrong like a bad call. Wrong like the ringtone is the one assigned to my county-issued cell—the number maybe four people in this county have, all of whom know better than to dial it. My new subordinates at the sheriff’s office know I prefer texts.

I answer it anyway. That’s the whole problem with me. I always answer. Because when you work homicide in Houston, you have no choice. So now it’s instinct, even though I left Houston months ago.

“Meadows,” I say.

There’s no response. Then a stretch of static. Under it, faint, a female voice that isn’t talking to me. “—no, no, no, stop, I’m fine⁠—”

Then a robot lady, calm as a lake: Emergency SOS. A hard fall was detected. Address is as follows…

The line drops.

I sit there a second in the dark of my kitchen with the coffee I haven’t poured yet, and I do the math I’ve done ten thousand times. Fall detection. Auto-dial. Which means somewhere in my jurisdiction a person is on the ground and their watch is more worried about it than they are.

The address pings through a beat later. If I remember correctly, it’s the old Pruitt place off Farm Road 12, the little clapboard house that’s been sagging on its foundation since before I left. It’s at the far end of town, which means somebody’s out there alone at the ass-end of a county road with a device screaming that they went down hard.

Here’s the thing nobody in Saddle Creek knows about me yet, and I intend to keep it that way: I did eleven years in a city where a repeat address on the board was a joke. Oh, her again. Wrote it off. Passed it down the line. And one Tuesday—it’s always a Tuesday—the last time somebody wrote it off was the last time anybody heard from her.

So. I don’t write off repeats. I don’t hand them to anybody. I go.

I’m already reaching for my keys.

The Pruitt place has an old dented truck in the drive. The white paint is chipped in some places and the tailgate is missing a few of the letters from CHEVROLET. So it now reads CHE RO T. The porch light burns against a sky that’s going the soft bruised color it goes right before real dark. There’s a ladder tipped over in the flowerbed. And a woman on her hands and knees in the grass.

I try to ignore the plump heart-shaped ass, but I am completely unsuccessful. Which makes me feel like a creeper since this woman could be seriously injured if she fell off that ladder.

Then she sits back on her heels, and I see she’s not hurt. Instead, she’s arguing… with her wrist.

“I did not fall, I stepped down, there is a difference and you would know that if you had legs or eyes—” She jabs at the watch face. Jabs again. “Cancel. Cancel. Why do you not—oh my God.”

I cut the engine. Get out. My boots hit gravel and she goes still and then her whole head comes up and around, and I get the full front of her. She’s young. Clearly, an adult, but definitely younger than me. She’s plump and curvy, soft where a woman should be soft.

Paint on her hands. Paint on one cheekbone, a streak of it, blue. There’s more of it dried up on her forearms in about six colors like she lost a fight with a rainbow. She’s got a pencil shoved through a knot of dark hair that is losing structural integrity by the second. She stares at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

I know what she sees. A man the size of a doorframe walking across her yard in the failing light. I’m not in uniform since I was already home, but she can surely see the Bluebonnet County Sheriff’s Office star emblazoned on the side of my truck.

She shakes her head. Her brow furrows and she looks damned adorable. But that just pisses me off. That I noticed it. That I mentally acknowledged it. I am a goddamn professional. And I’m here on official duty.

I finally get close enough to see the color of her eyes—brown—which is also annoying. Not the color, but that I noticed.

“No,” she says.

“Ma’am?”

“No. Just, no.” She holds her wrist up. “This is a nuisance. I’m fine. Promise.” She does a little twirl. “See? I’m all good.”

“Got a fall alert.”

“How mortifying. I didn’t fall. I got off the ladder; I just stepped off a little too high and stumbled.”

“Doesn’t matter. If we get the alerts, we have to check. Office policy.” Okay, I don’t actually know if it’s an official policy. But it’s my damn policy.