Page 11 of Return to Laurel Valley

“I gave her a special permit,” Blaze said. “Considering the trouble we’ve had with the drug trade around this area, I felt it was better to be safe than sorry.”

Boone grunted and dropped his feet to the floor. “This is why I’m glad you’re the sheriff. You get to deal with the politics and backlash from the people. And I can just pretend I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Yeah,” Blaze said. “I’ve got a new respect for all my commanders over the course of my career. Being in charge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And speaking of safety, I got a look at the paperwork on the skip Lily is tracing. Jackson Coltraine. He’s Caucasian. Brown and blue. About six foot. He comes from money, so he’s not going to be used to roughing it, and he caught the flu a few days back in South Dakota. He held a small-town doctor hostage and then bashed him over the head after he gave him some samples to treat the symptoms. It’s slowed him down quite a bit. And with the rain and flooding?—”

“You think he’s going to hide somewhere he can get easy access to food and stay dry,” Boone said, finishing his thought.

“Yeah. And with no way in and out around Mill Pond, I was thinking he might try to hit either the Coleman or Newton barns, or maybe those empty cabins that head up into the mountains. Things are pretty deserted around here now that the season is over. It might be worth checking out.”

“Agreed,” Boone said, rubbing his eyes. “But we’ve got to keep this quiet. All we need is mass hysteria because there’s a fugitive on the loose. Earl Wilkins will be shooting at everything that moves.”

“Too late.” Blaze scrubbed his hands over his face and wished he’d been able to get more sleep. “Lily showed Coltraine’s picture to Linda when she stopped at The Lampstand for lunch yesterday. Every person I ran into last night while trying to clear the roads and area mentioned it to me.”

“Great. Now Earl will want to get his boat and gather a posse to hunt down Coltraine. Fool of a man makes me wonder how he keeps getting elected to the city council.”

“His daughter is one of the vote counters,” Blaze said. “And I think he figures his city council seat is like the supreme court. He’s appointed for life and he’ll have to die before his seat opens up.”

“It must be nice to be so old the rules no longer apply,” Boone said. “But I reminded him while we were on the phone that he was the only council member to vote down hiring extra deputies, so we might be a little slow getting out to his place unless there’s an emergency.”

Blaze laughed but felt the headache behind his eyes. “I’ll look forward to his call telling me I should fire you.”

Boone grinned. “I knew you would. That’s why I did it.”

“I need to ask you something,” he finally said to Boone.

“Is this about the bounty hunter?” Boone asked. “You seem a little old to need pointers, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

“You’re such a comedian,” Blaze said. “It’s no wonder you’re single.”

“I tried being married. Cops and marriage don’t go well together.”

Blaze grunted. He wasn’t wrong. Law enforcement life was hard on marriages and it took work from both parties. “You just haven’t met the right woman.”

“Now you sound like my mother. Something is bothering you. What is it?”

Blaze blew out a breath, feeling a little uncomfortable at mixing his personal life with his professional life.

“Last year when Lily came into town looking for her brother, I had you do the background check on her.”

Boone’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah, you did.”

“What did you leave out of your report?”

Boone gave him an inscrutable gaze and finally let out a sigh. “I wasn’t keeping anything from you. I just figured you wanted the high points. She didn’t have a criminal record and she’d been a cop for a couple of years. We already knew Jacob was her brother and he’d picked the wrong side of the law.”

“I’m not blaming you for anything,” Blaze said. “I told her I ran a make on her when she came into town. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have secrets. We all do when this is the career we’ve chosen.”

“Don’t you think those are her secrets to share?”

“I do,” Blaze agreed, but the worry was gnawing at him. “But I’m worried about her. About what I see in her. There’s this hell-bent determination to put herself in the line of fire no matter what. As if she has to prove herself. We both saw it when she waded into that fight at the River Rock Bar to take her brother into custody. And I know she’s chomping at the bit now to get out in that water and track down her skip. I need to see that file. She’s hurting. And she talks in her sleep.”

Boone opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a file. “I figured you might, so I’ve got it here. I don’t know what happened between you two the last time she was here, but I have my sources at the courthouse.”

Boone raised his brows in question, but Blaze stayed silent.

“You haven’t asked for my advice?—”

“This is true,” Blaze said.

---