as my college degree of sorts.”
She paused to add more salad to her plate and then continued. “Five years ago my mother passed away and left me an inheritance that was enough for me to buy something when I found what I wanted. Three years ago I stumbled onto Dead River and the diner. Maggie, the previous owner, wanted to leave Dead River and the diner behind, so I made her an offer she couldn’t resist. And now you know pretty much everything about me.”
He knew he’d barely scratched the surface of what he wanted to know about her, but as they finished the meal, the conversation remained pleasant but strictly superficial. She offered nothing else personal about herself nor did she ask him any personal questions about his life.
Even though the conversation bordered inane, Flint enjoyed the very novelty of having a beautiful woman seated at the kitchen table in his home. She filled the silence of the evening that he’d grown accustomed to for far too many years.
There had been few women while he’d been in Cheyenne ambitiously climbing the ranks in the police force. There had certainly been nobody special and only rarely had he had somebody in his home.
Right after the two of them finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen, she told him she needed to finish unloading the bags of personal items she’d bought and disappeared into the guest room.
He was glad that she kept the door open, letting him know she intended to take that particular rule seriously. While she was busy in the bedroom, he went to the master suite and checked to make sure all of the windows were locked. The smallest bedroom he used as an office, and after checking the windows in there he grabbed a handful of files from the desk and returned to the kitchen.
He sat at the table with the files and his gun before him. One thick file was Hank Bittard’s and the other, thinner file was on Jimmy Johnson, the twenty-one-year-old loser who had left his cousin Molly at the altar, stolen her money but more egregious, had absconded with the Colton heirloom ring.
Flint was relatively certain that Jimmy would eventually be found, as the quarantine kept him from being able to get out of town. He wasn’t a seasoned criminal, and he’d get tired of sleeping in the woods and foraging for food, especially as winter set in for real.
He wouldn’t be surprised if the dumb kid wouldn’t eventually turn himself in before the weather got really cold and the snow began to fly.
Flint opened the thicker file on Hank Bittard. The first item in the file was Hank’s mug shot from when he was arrested for the murder of his coworker at the gas station.
At twenty-seven years old, Hank was a fairly handsome man with dark hair and equally dark, soulless eyes. He was six foot two, and with a muscular build, he looked like he’d never backed down from a fight, nor would he hesitate to start one.
He’d had several arrests before the last one, mostly for disturbing the peace and bar fights, but that had been before Flint had become chief of police. His single run-in with Bittard had been on the day he’d arrested him at the gas station for the murder of Donny Gilmore.
Now the man had killed the only eyewitness to that crime, and Nina was a new witness to that second murder, and there was no doubt in Flint’s mind that sooner or later Bittard would come after Nina.
What if Bittard changed his hair color? Somehow managed to disguise himself? Would Flint see him coming? He hadn’t seen the shooter who had taken down Madelaine on the courthouse steps in Cheyenne. He’d vastly underestimated the risk to Jolene Tate.
Bittard was no Jimmy Johnson. He was hard, accustomed to spending time in the woods. He’d have the kind of survival skills that a kid like Jimmy wouldn’t have.
Flint had come back to Dead River for a number of reasons: to help his brother, Theo, in his recuperation after being thrown from a bucking bronco, and to be close to his sister, Gemma, who worked as a nurse at the Dead River Clinic, and the grandmother who had raised them all.
Finally, he’d returned to his home and family to lick the wounds of the job gone wrong in Cheyenne, to enjoy the slower pace of life in the little town. He’d lost his driving ambition in Cheyenne.
He should have never taken the job as chief of police here. After the debacle in Cheyenne, he should have retired from police work altogether.
Evil was loose in the town of Dead River, with nobody getting in to help and nobody getting out, and the truth of the matter was that Flint had lost any confidence he’d ever had that he was the man the town needed to fight the evil.
* * *
Dr. Rafe Granger was unsurprised as he made his way down the hallway of the clinic just past midnight and saw the lights on in Dr. Lucas Rand’s office. They’d all been working long hours but none more than Lucas.
The man had been working like a maniac to find a cure for the virus that had taken his ex-wife as its first victim. Mimi Rand had been gone from town for some time when she returned with a baby she’d insisted was Theo Colton’s. Although Theo was suspicious, the baby had the Colton vivid green eyes, and he’d had a one-night stand with her around the right time for the baby to be his.
Mimi had been on her way to Theo’s house with her three-month-old little girl, Amelia, when she’d stopped in to grab a cup of coffee in the café before heading out to Theo’s place. Shortly after arriving at Theo’s ranch, she collapsed, and within hours she was dead.
Lucas had been inconsolable. He’d known about Mimi’s pregnancy and initially had assumed the baby was his. He’d done the stand-up thing and had been financially supportive from the moment the baby was born. It had only been when Mimi had confirmed that the baby was Theo’s that Lucas had stepped back from the role of potential fatherhood. Lucas had heard through the grapevine that a DNA test was in the process to assure the paternity of the baby.
Other victims had followed Mimi, and while everyone at the clinic was working nearly round the clock to find the source and a cure for the virus, nobody had taken the illness and deaths as hard as Dr. Lucas Rand.
No place else in the country had the virus shown up. It was as if it had specifically chosen the little Wyoming town to grow and breed.
Rafe gave a quick knock on the door and then opened it. Lucas didn’t look up from whatever was in front of him on his desk. It was as if he was unaware that anyone had entered his office.
“Lucas.” Rafe walked over and dropped a hand on the man’s broad shoulder, and Lucas started and whirled around in his chair to face Rafe.
Lucas Rand was a handsome man, with dark hair and eyes, but at the moment his eyes burned with feverish desperation. “I feel like I’m so close to figuring out a cure that will save everyone, but I can’t get it right. There’s something I keep missing. I’ve got to get it right. We’ve got to fix this before we lose more people.”
“I know, and we will, but it’s late, Lucas,” Rafe said gently. “Why don’t you knock it off for a while and get some rest. You’ve been pushing yourself so hard, and eventually you’re going to crash and then you won’t be good to anyone.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his thick dark hair. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe a little sleep will bring everything into better focus. I am tired,” he admitted.
He rose slowly, as if the mere act of pulling his tall, muscular frame out of the chair was almost too much for him. He appeared haggard,
