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Wyatt smiled weakly. “That’s good news… He’s a good cop.”

Hanna nodded. “He is. And we can support him by figuring out what happened that night. Can you tell me about the shift change?”

They spent the next hour going over the details of the night, and despite how the medication and pain had made Frankie less than focused in the hospital, the two accounts seemed to align. Wyatt seemed suitably upset about what had happened, but nothing he said or did gave Hanna any indication that he had been involved with leaking the information to Iverson. No, she was going to have to dig deeper, maybe even have Jinx scrub her computer to see if there was a trail in the zeros and ones that hopefully someone hadn’t been smart enough to hide.

“Thank you, Deputy,” Hanna said, finally closing her notepad and placing it on the desk. “I know it’s always difficult when one of our own is injured.”

Wyatt nodded. He had come from the police force in Portland, and didn’t talk about his past much. With several years of law enforcement work under his belt, and a good-natured attitude about the slower pace of life in Bitterroot, he’d fit right into the department. She only hoped she had made the right call in bringing him onboard.

“Thanks, Sheriff,” he said, with the kind of darkness to his tone that made Hanna think it wasn’t the first time he’d had to wait for news from an ER.

“Frankie’s okay,” she pressed. “He’ll be back in your truck in no time.”

Wyatt nodded tightly. “I know.”

Hanna glanced at the clock. Somehow, the minutes seemed to be slowing to a crawl, and she felt as if she had been sitting in her office for a hundred years, not a few minutes past the hour. “Any chance Doug or Lou is back in?”

Wyatt shook his head. “They’re on patrol until the afternoon. Want me to call them?”

Hanna gave him what she hoped was a light smile. “No need, I’ll chat when they come in. Thanks again for your help.”

Wyatt took the hint with a gracious nod, and walked back into the hallway, closing Hanna’s office door behind him. The room, not much larger than her bedroom back home, suddenly felt like it was closing in on her, the walls warping and sloping, and the shadows creeping out of every corner.

Not again.

Hanna closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them again, the walls were back where they belonged.

She swore under her breath. This had been her office for the better part of five years, and before that, it had been her father’s office. It was a safe place, a place of hope and justice. And yet, knowing what she did about her department and what she didn’t about Grace, no place felt right, no place felt safe.

Hanna pushed her pity party away and opened the second drawer of her desk. Inside, she found the cream envelope with gold borders that she had come to retrieve.

She had opened it a month ago when it had first arrived, and had quickly tossed it to the side. Bryce Iverson’s company had always given her a feeling of unease, though she’d never known the specifics before. But she wasn’t interested in the politicking of the job any more than was strictly necessary, and she definitely didn’t want to be attending events just because the host was trying to pad his stats.

Thankfully, that morning had been busy, and she hadn’t thrown the invite away. It had gotten folded into a stack of papers, which had been moved around three times before Hanna had noticed the white edges sticking out from under yellow legal papers. By then, Grace had reached out and asked for help, and Hanna had known she was going to need all the leverage and opportunities she could get.

Lot of good it had done her.

She held the invitation between two fingers. No part of her wanted to make nice with a man who was exploiting their state’s natural resources for money, a man she knew liked to leave marks where no one would see them. But attending the gala truly was the best opportunity they had to steal Iverson’s phone and smart key. And for that, Hanna knew she would put up with just about anything.

She pulled out her phone and shot a quick text to Ash, telling him to put some eyes on her two patrolling deputies. Then she pocketed the invitation and walked out of her office, as if it were any other day. The pain in her heart and the seemingly impossible weight of the letter inside her jacket spoke the truth, though.

The game had changed the moment Grace had been kidnapped. And the time had come for her to play her turn. Nothing would hold her back.

Chapter Nine

Nicco stood on the back porch of Hanna’s cottage. A cigarette dangled between his lips, but he hadn’t yet brought himself to light it. Every time he clicked the lighter in his hand, all he could think about was Ash’s expression, and the soft, frustrated pleading in his best friend’s voice to stop.

Stop slowly killing himself.

Or not so slowly.

Ash saw things Nicco didn’t want anyone to see, and he knew without doubt or hesitation that Ash could see cigarettes were the least of Nicco’s concerns.

Cazzo.

Niccolo didn’t have anyone to speak Italian with, not anymore. At least, he hadn’t, until Dante had bridged the gap between them the previous year. But the words were in his blood and soul, and when the tides felt like they were pulling him back in, Nicco reached for the familiar.

Nowadays, that as much meant reaching for his sergeant as it did reaching for the words he’d grown up speaking in a small kitchen, sitting at a tiny table with a red-and-white checked cloth. Their mother had been from Florence, and Nicco knew that if he ever made it to the homeland, his accent would be a map, mingled American and survivor and cowboy, the diaspora all immigrants felt, even when their families had put roots down generations before. Some people got to slip into American, shedding their old country and old customs, assimilating seamlessly into a single fabric, as if there had been nothing to set them apart.