Page 4 of Her Baby, Her Badge

CHAPTER TWO

While Dutton waited in Grace’s office, he paced and continued to read through reports from his ranch hands and his PI that were coming in on his phone. Something he’d been doing for the past two hours as he waited for Grace to return from notifying Deputy Elaine Sneed’s family that she was dead.

Dutton knew he wouldn’t be included in that tough job, but he wished he’d been allowed to go, anyway. And not just so he would have been close to Grace to make sure she was safe. That was a huge concern. However, he also needed answers as to why Grace and he were now targets of a killer.

Well, maybe they were.

Thanks to a copy of the threatening note now pinned to Grace’s board in her office, Dutton could see the words, the threat, every time he paced in front of it. Which was often. Even though Grace was the sheriff and therefore the top cop, her office wasn’t huge by anyone’s standards. More of a bare-bones kind of place, designed for work and not much else.

He suspected that over the fifty or so years that the office of the Renegade Canyon PD had been here at this particular location, there’d been plenty of work done in this space. At the very desk that had once been occupied by Grace’s mother, Aileen, and before that, Grace’s grandfather, Chet. Before that, there’d been cousins at the helm at the original police station. A string of Granger sheriffs going back over a century.

A law-enforcement legacy that Grace had continued.

Normally, thinking of her as the sheriff didn’t put a knot in Dutton’s gut. It was simply who she was and had been for six years.

Of course,simplyhadn’t always been, well, simple.

Not with his own family legacy that was often at odds with Grace and her family. Still, he had always thought Grace as capable of balancing that feud, this forbidden attraction they had for each other and anything to do with the badge.

But that note changed things.

Two down. Sheriff Grace Granger, you’re on the list, too, and your time is coming. Or should I say ending? And for you, I’ll add a bonus. Two for the price of one. You and Dutton McClennan. Soon, you’ll both be dead.

Yeah, no way could Dutton be unaffected by that. Grace and he might not be an actual couple, but in four months or so, they’d become parents. And if Grace’s life was in danger, then so was the baby’s. That more than tightened his gut. It twisted at everything inside him.

It twisted even more when he had to mentally spell out something he already knew. That Grace wouldn’t want him to play protector in this. In fact, she’d want to protecthim. Not because of their past, but because he was now the job to her.

Dutton would need to figure out a way around that. He wanted Grace focusing on her own safety. On the baby’s. And that would involve shoving aside their past so they could work together.

Which wouldn’t be easy.

Especially since the past was front and center between them. Not only the baby, but also the scalding attraction they’d fought for years. A fight they’d lost just twice. Once when they’d been teenagers and had become each other’s “firsts.” Then again, five months ago, when she’d gotten pregnant. It was easier to fightthe attraction when they weren’t around each other, but that note would make any distancing impossible.

But they needed some emotional barriers.

Their families would make it next to impossible for them to be together and still live and work in this small town. The bickering and conflicts would escalate, and Ike would make Grace’s life as miserable as possible.

Dutton glanced at the movement in the doorway. Not Grace or one of the deputies, who had likely been instructed to babysit him and make sure he didn’t go anywhere. This was a black cat that strolled in as if he owned the place. With only the arrogance that a cat and a Greek god could have managed, the cat eyed Dutton and then sauntered past him to leap into Grace’s chair.

He knew the cat’s name was Sherlock. Knew, too, that the police department had more or less adopted him after he’d been found standing guard over his late owner’s body.

Not a murder but a heart attack.

The plan had been for Grace to take Sherlock to the county animal shelter, but since that’d been four months ago, Dutton figured the feline was here to stay. Especially since he’d noticed that someone had added an automated litter box and feeding area in the break room.

Dutton stopped pacing at the sound of approaching footsteps, and turned to see his brother, Deputy Rory McClennan, step into the doorway. Genetically, they looked like twins, with their black hair, dark brown eyes and nearly identical McClennan DNA, but Rory was five years younger than Dutton and therefore the baby of the family.

Rory handed Dutton a cup of coffee and sipped his own while his cop’s eyes studied his big brother. He didn’t ask Dutton if he was okay. No need. He wasn’t. He was shaken to the core, and while that wouldn’t have been obvious to most people, Rory would have seen it.

“Grace is on her way back,” Rory said. “She’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

“Any idea how the notification went?” Dutton asked.

Rory shrugged, which was apparently all the info he was going to dole out. They were brothers, but Dutton knew that Rory was a solid cop, one who was loyal to his boss, and he would want any info about the notification to come not from him, but from Grace herself.

Rory tipped his head to Dutton’s phone and then the note on the board. “How exactly are you looking into that?” his brother asked.

“The same way I’ve been looking into it for the past month.” Since the first body had been left just outside the ranch.

---