Riverbend Road

He had run through that moment in his head dozens of times in the last few hours and still couldn’t figure out the emotion he’d experienced, when he knew she was safe and unharmed.

Something had changed. That’s all he knew. Or maybe it had been there forever but was only now growling to life.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, then realized how rude the words sounded when her hesitant smile slid away.

But what was he supposed to say? Though she lived at the other end of the street, they didn’t socialize at each other’s homes outside of work. He could count on one hand the times he’d been to her place, usually to drop off paperwork. She stopped here just as seldom.

Why was that?

He didn’t know the answer and it seemed odd now. They were friends and had been for years, even before she came to work for him after her father’s injury. Her brother was his best friend.

He had been to all his other officers’ homes several times. Barbecues. Birthday parties. It had never been a big deal to socialize outside of work, especially in a small police department like Haven Point. But something about Wyn Bailey was...different.

Maybe he could blame the same something that had sent him rushing to the scene of a fire after she stopped responding to the radio, with his heart hammering and his foot pushing hard on the gas pedal.

“I’ll tell you why I’m here but I’d rather not do it standing on the porch,” she said. “May I come in?”

He had no choice but to step back and open the door wider for her.

A familiar canine followed her in and he couldn’t help a smile, despite the tension that popped and sparked between them like a bad wire.

“Hey there, Young Pete.”

The dog’s ears perked up at his name and he sat at Cade’s feet with his tail brushing the wood plank floor of his entryway. Cade reached down and scratched Pete in the spot he remembered the dog liked, just under its left ear.

“How are you, buddy?”

He and Young Pete went way back, to the days when the dog used to be John Bailey’s constant companion. The former chief had adored the puppy, the latest in a string of dogs he always named Pete.

He wasn’t a puppy anymore. Gray peppered his muzzle and he walked with the same ginger care of an old man on the cusp of needing artificial knees.

“How are the lungs?” he finally asked when Wyn showed no inclination to let him know what she was doing at his house.

At her blank look he arched an eyebrow. “Smoke inhalation, remember? A few hours ago you were being examined by two of Haven Point’s finest EMTs. Ring a bell?”

“Oh. Right. The lungs.” She shrugged. “If I breathe too deeply, they ache a little but nothing I didn’t expect.”

The reality of her close call seemed to reach out and grab him by the throat all over again. He couldn’t even contemplate what might have happened to her.

Yeah, he knew the risks of the job. Every day when he sent his officers out, he knew they were risking injury and even death. People thought Haven Point was a nice, quiet town where nothing much happened but those in his department knew better. The town had its share of drug abuse, domestic disturbances, assaults.

He had been standing just a few feet away when her father took a bullet to the head that should have killed him—and in a roundabout way, eventually did just that two years later.

If Wynona had joined the ranks of the fallen that included her father and her twin brother, Cade wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.

Her mom was probably out of her head with worry.

“That was a really stupid thing you did,” he said sternly.

“Yes, I believe you mentioned that when you were yelling at me in front of the entire fire department.”

For a guy with a reputation for a cool head under pressure, he had done a miserable job of handling the whole situation. He could admit that now, after the fact. He should have taken her aside and reprimanded her in private. The whole public-safety community didn’t need to watch him lose his temper.

Too late now. It was done and he wouldn’t back down or change his mind.

“Did you come here thinking you could talk me out of the suspension? If you did, don’t bother.”

“You are ridiculously stubborn, Cade Emmett. Did anybody ever tell you that?”

“You. About a thousand and sixteen times.”

Of all his officers, he trusted her judgment most. She wasn’t afraid to call him out when he became dogmatic or unreasonable, whether during an investigation or in personnel issues. He wasn’t afraid to admit when he was wrong but he knew he wasn’t on this one.

“Would you at least consider reducing the number of days I’m suspended?”

“No.”

She narrowed her gaze at him. “This is the worst time of year for the department to be shorthanded, with all the tourists starting to trickle in before Lake Haven Days in a few weeks.”

“I know that.”

She sighed. “You’re hanging me out to dry as an example to the rest of the guys, aren’t you?”

Yeah, that was partly true. When it counted, he needed his officers to follow the chain of command. If he ordered an officer to stand down, he needed to know the order would be heeded.

“It’s not easy having to be the one who makes the tough calls.”

Sometimes he was really tired of being the responsible one. Between the phone call from Christy about his brother and Wynona calling him out because of her suspension, the burden had never felt so heavy.

“I get it. You did what you had to do. A week just seems excessive to me.”

“A week. No more, no less. You scared the hell out of me, Wyn.”

He shouldn’t have said that last part, especially not in that rough, intense tone. She gazed at him, her eyes wide and he thought he saw something there, a little flicker of awareness, before she shifted her gaze down to her dog, who was now stretching out on the floor at his feet.

“Fine. Your decision. I guess we’ll all have to live with it. That wasn’t really why I stopped anyway,” she went on. “You have new neighbors across the street.”

“Yeah, I saw a vehicle in the driveway this morning and a moving van unloading things when I came home around lunchtime.”

“Do you know anything about them?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing, except what I saw earlier. They must have kids because I saw a couple of bikes out on the lawn when I came home—a boy and a girl, judging by the stereotypical bike colors. The pink bike was bigger. They drive a minivan with Oregon plates and listen to NPR, according to a bumper sticker.”

She laughed. “For not knowing anything about them, you seemed to have picked up quite a bit.”

It would probably sound too much like bragging to recite the license plate he’d memorized or the county in Oregon where the vehicle was registered last. “It’s my job to notice what’s going on in front of me.”

She made a funny little sound in her throat that morphed into a cough. “Of course it is.”

Did her dry tone imply there was something significant he hadn’t noticed?

He frowned. “Why are you so interested in our new neighbors?”

“It’s also my job to notice what’s going on around me and something there is off. I don’t know what it is but it’s got my nose itching.”

Her instincts were usually right on the money.

Once she called him in for backup on a routine traffic stop of a gray-haired couple driving a sedan with Ohio plates. None of his other officers would have found anything unusual about them but Wyn had caught a subtle vibe about the pair and ended up asking their permission to search the vehicle. When the couple refused, he brought in Rusty, the drug-sniffing dog from the Lake Haven Sheriff’s Department, who found a quarter million dollars’ worth of heroin sewn into the hollowed-out seats.

He would have said she had her father’s cop instincts—except for the last few weeks he had served under her father.

“Have you met them already?”

“Yes. Well, the mom and the kids. Andrea Montgomery and two kids, Chloe and Will. I don’t know if there’s a dad in the picture. I didn’t see any evidence of one but that doesn’t mean anything. I said hello to them on my way to the trailhead. When I was coming down, I found her sprawled out on the trail with a sprained ankle. I helped her back to her house.”

“You’re on a roll. How many more people will you rescue today?”

She made a face. “I couldn’t just leave her there.”

No, she wouldn’t. Wynona was like her father in many ways, full of compassion and concern.

“What makes you think something’s off?”

“She doesn’t seem very crazy about police officers. When I told her I worked for the local police department, you would have thought I told her I drowned kittens for a living.”

“Plenty of people don’t like the police. That doesn’t make them criminals.”

“I know that. This was something beyond dislike. More like...fear.”

Perhaps she was exaggerating or had misunderstood the woman’s reactions but, again, he trusted her gut. He had guys in the department who could shoot the hell out of a bull’s-eye at the shooting range and one who could bench-press three-hundred-fifty pounds. None of them had Wynona’s instincts with people.

“You think she’s on the run?”

“Maybe. Maybe she’s got an abusive ex in the background. Or maybe it’s a custody case. Who knows?”

“Maybe she’s witness protection.” He couldn’t resist teasing her a little. “Maybe she testified in a mob hit back in Oregon and now she’s got a new identity here in Haven Point. Or maybe she’s a superhero and her secret identity is a suburban mom.”

She smacked his arm. “You can mock me all you want but something was up. My spidey sense is tingling about this one.”

Cade dropped the teasing tone. “Want me to run the plates and see if anything pops?” he asked.

“That might be overkill at this point. She hasn’t done anything wrong, as far as I can tell. I only wanted to give you a heads-up so you can keep an eye on things, especially since you’re just across the street.”

“I’ll do that.”

His phone timer went off and she raised an inquisitive brow.

“Just telling me the coals are ready for my dinner.”

She looked shocked. “You’re cooking? Really?”

“I guess you can call it cooking. Grilling, anyway. I’m throwing on a couple of steaks.”

“Ah.” Her stomach chose that moment to rumble with enthusiasm, so loudly that Pete looked up and cocked his head to the side. Wyn—the steadiest, most unflappable person he knew—looked flustered. Her cheeks turned pink and she gave an embarrassed-sounding laugh.

“That wasn’t a hint, I swear. I’ve got leftover Chinese at home.”

“I’ve got an extra steak, if you want it.”

He wasn’t sure which of them was more shocked by the invitation. She stared at him, eyes wide.

What was the big deal? They were friends. They had been for years, long before she ever came back to work for the Haven Point Police Department after her father’s shooting and Cade became chief.

He had known her since she wore her hair in braids on either side and those light freckles had been much more pronounced. Back in the day, he used to spend every spare moment he could at the Baileys’ house with his best bud, her brother Marshall. The warmth and peace there had been a foreign concept to him at first compared to the fighting and yelling at his own house but had quickly become addictive.

“Somebody ought to give you dinner,” he said gruffly when she continued to look at him out of wide blue eyes. “It’s not every day one of my officers runs into a burning building to save a couple of kids.”

“Thank heavens for that.” A dimple flashed beside the mouth he had never noticed was so lush and soft. “You don’t have that many officers and you certainly can’t suspend us all.”

“True enough.”

She appeared to consider the offer and he couldn’t begin to guess what was going through her head. He seriously doubted she was entertaining the same thought that seemed to ricochet through his brain—that something had changed between them the moment he saw her come bursting through the doors of that burning barn.

“I would actually really enjoy a steak,” she finally said. “I’m all dusty from the hike, though. Give me fifteen minutes to run home and change and toss a salad.”

“You don’t have to do that. The salad, I mean. I’ve got a head of lettuce in the refrigerator and can throw something together.”

“I’ll bring something. Just give me a few.”

He was inordinately happy that she had agreed. Probably just lingering relief that the situation today had turned out so well, except for poor Caleb Keegan’s broken ankle.

“They shouldn’t take much time to cook. I’ll wait until you’re back to throw them on. The coals can heat a little longer.”

“Sounds good.”

She headed for the door, whistling for Pete.

“You can leave him if you want. He can keep me company out on the deck.”

Again, she looked a little surprised. “Okay. He could probably use some water. Young Pete, behave yourself. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She headed out into the soft dusk, leaving him with her dog, a couple of steaks and the uncomfortable feeling that he had just made a grave mistake.

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