Page 117 of Valor

Everyone in town knows the Hunts. They’re a staple in this community, always coming together to help anyone in need. Just as they’d done when Tommy found a two-year-old Lani wandering around in the cold, hungry, crying, and wearing nothing but a diaper.

They’d brought her in and adopted her as one of their own.

“They’re broken,” I tell her truthfully. No need to sugarcoat their pain. “And feeling even more helpless with the brothers gone.”

She nods. “How areyoudoing?”

I turn toward her. “Why do I matter?”

Deputy Brown arches a brow. “Sheriff, we all know what she means to you.”

Her words are a dagger to my heart. “I need to find her, and that’s all I can focus on right now. Everything else is just noise—a distraction.”

“We’re going to find her.”

I nod, doing everything I can to hold it together in the midst of Lani’s space. Her perfume still lingers in the air. The coffee cup from yesterday morning is still in the sink. Her purse tossed on the floor. “Thanks. I’ll check in when I have something.”

With an understanding smile, she slips out of the apartment and shuts the door behind her.

I head into the kitchen. It was the only place the apartment wasn’t tossed. I open the fridge and see a Post-it Note with her writing on it stuck to the front of a bottle of creamer.

Get more, Lani. You’re not giving up coffee today so stop acting like it.

I smile, tears burning in my vision. That is so like her, to leave notes like that to herself. I bet she smiled when she saw it. Honestly, it’s probably been moved from bottle to bottle for weeks. “I’m going to find you,” I say aloud to her empty apartment. “And I can’t be trusted to do the right thing when I find the person who did this to you.”

* * *

“The list is small,”Tommy says as he hands me a list with five names on it. “The boys don’t like to advertise when they won’t be in town.”

“Understandable.” I scan the list again, going over each name for the third time since he handed it to me. “Three of these are your ranch hands.”

He nods. “Though I can’t imagine they had anything to do with it.”

Ruth hasn’t spoken the entire time I’ve been here. She’s in the kitchen now, staring out the bay window into the darkening sky. A storm is brewing, a nasty one at that. But it’s not going to stop me from searching tonight.

I’ll scour every road in the county if I have to.

“We won’t know if Lani told anyone,” I say. “But I plan to ask around the hospital more tonight. I talked to the day shift today, but the night shift should be starting here in an hour or so, and I plan to interview them, too.”

“Her clinic?” Tommy asks.

I nod. “I spoke to her assistant over there. Sherry hasn’t noticed anything strange, or anyone hanging around that shouldn’t be. But she’s going to let me know if that changes.”

Tommy nods. I can see the fear and grief in his expression, the way he’s barely holding together. “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. Is she scared? She used to get scared of the dark,” he says, then drops his head as tears spill from his eyes. “She was so scared, and she’d ask me to come in and hold her hand while she fell asleep.”

Emotion burns in my chest.

Ruth crosses over and takes a seat beside him. She leans against her husband, and he wraps an arm around her.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell them. “I can’t help but wonder if I’d have just gone back. Or if I’d taken her with me to the diner?—”

“It’s not your fault,” Tommy replies. “How could you have known?”

It’s not logical to blame myself, I know that, but logic doesn’t matter when my heart is broken. “I’m going to find her. If I have to tear this world apart to do so, Iwillbring her home.”

Ruth reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. “We know you will.”

There’s a knock at the front door, so Tommy pulls away to answer it. Seconds later, my mom is rushing in with a casserole dish in her hands.

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