style="font-size:15px;"> THE NEXT MORNING, as soon as Annabelle slipped into Sierra’s hospital room, her steps faltered. Annabelle had hoped to find Sierra awake, to ask her about Emmie’s father. She’d visited twice now and found little change in her cousin. All around monitors beeped and buzzed, but the information on the displays next to Sierra’s bed might as well have been written in Greek. Annabelle’s brief stop at the nurses’ station hadn’t provided much information beyond the fact that, although she’d been moved from ICU last night, Sierra was still listed as critical.
What if she didn’t survive? What would happen to Emmie?
Her throat feeling tight, Annabelle stood beside the bed then took Sierra’s limp hand. It was like touching, looking, at a stranger. Her blue eyes were swollen closed, her blond hair, usually so like Emmie’s, instead looked dull and stringy and she didn’t move at all. Harsh cuts and bruises covered her face and neck, and a bulky bandage slanted across her forehead. She was thrown from the car, Finn had said.
Annabelle’s spirits sagged. It was a good thing she hadn’t brought Emmie with her. Until Sierra looked better or wakened, the sight of her mother like this might be too much. Emmie was getting to know the staff at the diner so Annabelle had left her there for an hour, giving her fat crayons and a book to color at the counter.
“Oh, sweetie,” she murmured, fighting tears. She tried to warm Sierra’s hand, but after her talk with Finn she had to wonder. The interview had been difficult for her. Annabelle hadn’t cared for his comments about Sierra, but did she really know this woman in the bed anymore? She hadn’t told him about Sierra’s troubled teenage years because they hadn’t seemed relevant. Sierra had since turned her life around, and yet...
She applied slight pressure to Sierra’s hand, hoping she’d wake up, and to her relief Sierra’s eyelids fluttered once before they drifted shut again. And Annabelle took heart. “You’re going to be fine,” she said, remembering summer nights together when they’d stayed up late and giggled, played tricks on each other...until her parents had abruptly put an end to Sierra’s annual visits. “We’ll straighten everything out. You’ll see. I won’t let you down again.” As she’d done when she’d meekly accepted her parents’ command not to mention Sierra again and on the phone not long ago. There would be time later for Annabelle’s full apology. Time to ask about Emmie’s father.
* * *
“YOU SAID YOU had something for me.” Finn cradled his cell phone against his shoulder and tried to stifle his growing resentment at his former partner, who was on the line from Chicago. Finn envisioned Cooper in the squad room, the top button of his uniform shirt undone, one hand running through his surfer-boy hair.
“I’m only human, Donovan. I’ve spent most of my free time since you left town hunting that gang...and, sorry,” he said in the sarcastic tone that Finn knew well, “but every one of them has dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Not likely,” Finn muttered. None of this was Cooper’s responsibility, but Finn still hoped he would help bring Finn’s most personal case to a close. “When you called, you said you had an update so I thought—”
“Didn’t mean to mislead you. But, frankly, there’s not much more I can do here. I guess that’s the heads-up—the something—I had to give you.”
Finn refused to be deterred. “The gang’ll resurface. We only need to wait.”
“Listen, my friend. If I kept taking those little side trips to follow a lead from my snitches—all of whom have now dried up—I’d be looking at disciplinary action.” He added, “That should resonate with you.”
Finn came from a family of cops, and in Chicago he and Cooper Ransom had always toed the line. As a kid Finn had learned that from his uncle Patrick. The opposite of Finn’s father in temperament, with gentle good humor and lots of one-on-one time while his dad was all about The Job, Pat had guided Finn off the dangerous path he’d walked in his teens onto the straight and narrow again—until years later when that Chicago gang known as The Brothers struck close to home. Because of them, especially Eduardo Sanchez, Finn no longer had a wife he loved, a son he adored. A family.
Justice for them had become his chief concern—his obsession.
“I wasn’t fired,” Finn said. “I quit.”
“In the nick of time.” Cooper blew out a breath. “If you’d gone any further in your private quest to send those thugs to prison for the rest of their lives, the department would have taken your badge, your uniform, your gun—and hustled you straight into Internal Affairs. Then where would you be?”
Finn’s mouth hardened. “Free to pursue the gang—full time.”
This was an old argument, begun the day Finn had lost everything. He heard the metallic clang of a desk drawer being slammed shut, and it reminded him of the no-go drawer in his bedroom. Of Sanchez. Cooper’s voice lowered. “If I hadn’t talked you out of turning into some vigilante, you’d be in jail.”
Or lying dead on the South Side pavement. Finn would have traded his life then for one shot at the gang’s leader. He still would but he wasn’t there. Now he just tried to get through each day without his thoughts of the tragedy overwhelming him to the point where he couldn’t do his job here. “So, instead, I took your advice—and you promised to find them for me.”
He could almost see Cooper shaking his head, his gray eyes somber. “I wish I knew what else to do. I hate to disappoint you, Finn—but maybe you need to focus now on being sheriff of Stewart County.”
Finn heard a wistful note in his voice. Cooper had grown up near Farrier, a few miles from Barren, on a cattle ranch. He was the cowboy Finn was not and had no aspirations to be. Finn didn’t like horses, and he’d never been around cows. But when cattle prices had plunged years ago while Cooper was in his teens, his family had been forced to sell out. He claimed he was still trying to adjust to life in the city, but for whatever reason he’d never come back home. He’d sent Finn here instead.
“Being sheriff is a lot less dangerous than Chicago PD. I write a few parking tickets, stop a speeder here and there...oh, and there was a break-in last week at the hardware store. Somebody stole a few bags of pet food.”
He could sense Cooper’s smile. “Not the Foxworth kid again?”
Finn nodded, almost dislodging the phone from between his neck and shoulder. “He’s my chief suspect. Think I’ll go easy on him, though. His mom’s been having a rough time since her husband died. Money’s tight and Joey loves his dog more than he likes to obey the law. But he’s a good boy. Community service seems the right ‘sentence.’”
“And you’ll pay for the dog food.”
Finn didn’t answer that. “I like my job here,” he told Cooper instead. “There’s no gang activity in Barren or the other towns in my jurisdiction. So thanks for that tip about the election.” The old Stewart County sheriff had been running unopposed, giving Finn the opportunity he’d needed at the time to get out of Chicago and save his sanity.
Cooper said, “My mother’s distant cousin. Eighty-two, and his wife was worried about him. Competition in the last election nudged him to give up his badge and move to Florida, just what he needed.”
Finn owed Cooper for that and maybe he hadn’t seemed grateful enough. Hoping to mend the breach between them while they talked more shop,
