Page 61 of Engaging the Deputy

The electricity had been cut off, the barn abandoned, until Angie Marsh could be found and arrested.

He pulled out his flashlight and shone it around the room. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. The interior looked as it had the last time he’d seen it before the crime team had closed up the place. Dean hadn’t been in here, he realized. He wouldn’t have been able to get past the large padlock on the door.

Still, he’d had to look. Dean could have forced a window. But why would he? He had to have known that the investigators would have found anything of interest to the drug operation. What would Dean have been looking for? The DCI would have taken any drugs, any money, so what else was there? Maybe he’d just wanted to look around, though that seemed unlikely.

Stepping back out into the storm, Jaden closed the door. He still couldn’t shake off the eerie feeling Marsh had been out here. Something was wrong. Livie had seen Dean headed this way with a shovel in the back of his pickup.

The wind whirled the snow around him, giving him glimpses of the mountains. It felt too quiet, but then, snow did that. At the sound of flapping of wings, he looked up to see a bald eagle fly past. He followed its flight path with his eyes as it disappeared behind the barn.

He felt an icy chill rush up his spine as another eagle flew by, headed in the same direction. Moving toward the back of the barn, he told himself whatever the birds were feeding on could be the carcass of an animal that had died back there.

But he knew better. His stomach lurched at the scent of rotting flesh as he came around the corner. One of the eagles took flight. The other kept picking at the flesh of the body now only partially buried.

He shooed away the eagle and stepped closer to the body. It appeared a burrowing animal had dug up what had been buried in the shallow grave before the ground had frozen solid. He could see where someone had tried in vain to dig up the body with a shovel with no success.

It would have been impossible to identify the woman’s body as Angie Marsh’s except for her dark hair. She’d had it pulled up in a ponytail the day she’d been frantically packing to leave her husband. Jaden recognized what was left of the T-shirt she’d been wearing that day. Turning away, he fought the nausea that rose in his throat. Nothing about this case had been easy. He had wanted to believe it was over, everything explained, all the loose ends tied up. But that nagging feeling that he’d missed something had continued to haunt him.

Pulling out his phone, he made the call. He would have loved to have arrested Dean himself, but there was somewhere he had to be.

“Going to also need Dean Marsh picked up for questioning in the murder of his wife.”

“Aren’t you getting married soon?” the officer asked after Jaden told him what he’d found.

“I sure hope so.” He thought of Livie waiting for him back in Fortune Creek. No way was he standing her up. “Send a state trooper as quickly as possible to secure the scene. I have a rehearsal dinner to get to.”

Jaden remembered the surveillance camera that had picked up a woman abandoning Angie Marsh’s vehicle in Spokane. Dark hair, pulled back in a ponytail, sweatshirt, dark glasses, same build as Angie Marsh.

Then he thought about the rotting corpse. Angie Marsh had never left the valley. Dean had made sure of that.

“Also, you need to pick up Jenny Lee for aiding and abetting a criminal,” he said. “She’s possibly an accomplice in Angie Marsh’s murder. I’ll write up my report after I get married.”

Ifhe got married, he thought, looking at the time. He was calling it close.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Olivia refused to look out the window one more time. Jaden was right. This was what she had to look forward to being married to a deputy. Wondering if he was all right or if he was dead, killed by one of the bad guys he was so determined to capture. Was she sure she could do this?

“What do you want to do?” her mother whispered. They were seated at the large table in the café. “Alice is ready to serve the meal. Should we wait?”

Shaking her head, Olivia said, “No, we’ll go ahead and eat. He’ll be here soon.”

The sheriff’s wife, Molly, reached over and squeezed her hand. “He’ll be here. I’m sure he’s fine. I’ve been here before,” she said, glancing at her husband. “You just have to think positive.”

Olivia nodded. Unfortunately, she couldn’t right now. It wasn’t even about the wedding. She wanted to see Jaden come through that door. She couldn’t bear the thought that she might not see him alive again. Her hand went to her stomach as she thought of the news she hadn’t yet told him. She’d been saving it for their wedding night. She was pregnant. They had started their family.

Her eyes burned with tears. She fought them back, lifting her chin. “Yes, let’s eat,” she said to the small gathering. “Jaden is out saving the world, but we don’t have to starve while he does it.” Her voice sounded much stronger than she felt.

* * *

Jaden slipped inthe back of the café just as Alice started to serve the rehearsal-dinner meal. He’d cut it close, all the way thinking of his beautiful bride-to-be. He hated to let her down tonight. Not that he didn’t know there would be other nights. He was an officer of the law. It wasn’t a nine-to-five job, especially in Fortune Creek with so much area of the state to cover.

If she didn’t realize that, he feared she had tonight as he slipped into the seat next to her. A round of applause went up. He saw the relief on Livie’s face and knew he would see that a million times in the years ahead. His job was dangerous and unpredictable and often ran overtime. He’d found his calling after he’d lost her the first time. He hoped the job wouldn’t cost him her now.

Her eyes filled with tears as he met her gaze. She smiled, her relief palpable. He smiled back. The group at the table began to clink a utensil against their glasses.

“Kiss! Kiss!” they chanted.

They didn’t have to tell him twice. He leaned in and kissed the woman he loved. She put her arm around his neck, drawing him closer. They lost themselves in the kiss for a moment, pulling back when the crowd at the table got rowdy and Alice announced, “Let’s eat. We have a rehearsal to get to!”

---