pride. In the span of less than a minute, he had lost a prisoner, a gun and a sizable chunk of his reputation. All because he’d been stupid enough to lower his guard, and was just biased enough to assume that the girl behind the counter wasn’t a threat to him.
Something he’d have to work on.
Whatever the case, he didn’t doubt that these mistakes would haunt him for many months to come. And as he pulled into the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office parking structure, he had no idea what he was walking into.
The locals would undoubtedly blame him for the death of one of their own, but the question was whether they’d take the professional route and hide their animosity, or—as was so often the case—treat him like a hostile intruder.
The moment he stepped into the conference room, however, such concerns immediately vacated his mind. This could have been a war zone, with bullets flying, and Harlan wouldn’t have noticed.
Of the six people sitting at the long table, only one of them—the lone woman in the room—commanded his attention, despite the fact that she refused to look him directly in the eye.
It was none other than Callie Glass.
Harlan’s internal alarm bells suddenly went off, and he knew he’d better sit down before he fell down. While he would’ve loved to have blamed his sudden disorientation on his head injury, that was only part of it. The sight of his old college flame sitting not ten feet away from him had thrown him completely off balance.
Was he imagining things? Had the bump on his noggin brought on some cruel hallucination?
No. She was real, all right. As real as a heartbeat. A little older but even more beautiful than he remembered—which, until this moment, he would’ve deemed an impossibility. He knew she was from Williamson, but he’d never imagined he’d find her here like this.
Not now. Not today.
“Deputy Cole, I’m Sheriff Mercer.”
Harlan blinked, then swiveled his head to his left to find a sunbaked cowboy in a gray suit with a string tie rising from his chair, his hand extended.
Harlan reached out and shook it, happy for the distraction. “Good to meet you, Sheriff. I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“You sure you’re up to this? Looks like your boy did quite a job on you.”
Harlan had hoped that the bruise wouldn’t be that noticeable—a symbol of his failure—but it didn’t much matter. He’d just have to learn to live with it for the next several days.
“I’ll be fine, thanks. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit down.”
Mercer gestured to a chair. “By all means.”
Harlan glanced at Callie, then pulled the chair out, as Mercer introduced the people around the table. The names and faces came at him too quickly to process, but when the sheriff got to the only one Harlan really cared about, she finally looked up at him, offering him a curt, professional smile.
Her eyes weren’t smiling, however. Not even close. And her voice had a clipped, unfriendly tone. “Hello, Harlan.”
He nodded. “Callie.”
Mercer’s eyebrows went up. “You two know each other?”
“Long time ago,” she said. “Back in graduate school. We took a couple of criminology classes together.”
She’d said this with about as much warmth and enthusiasm as an accountant reciting the tax code. There was a lot more to it than that, but she wasn’t offering any details. Which was fine by Harlan. He didn’t want to think about those details—although he was finding it difficult not to.
Mercer said, “Denver, right? University of Colorado?”
“Right,” they said in unison.
They exchanged an awkward glance as Mercer studied them curiously, then sat back down.
“Small world,” he said, “but I reckon you two can catch up some other time. Right now we’ve got business to attend to.” He looked at Harlan. “Your supervising deputy says you’ve got some information to share.”
Harlan tore his gaze away from Callie and nodded. He had spent the better part of his morning at the Torrington marshal’s substation gathering up as much intel on Billy Boy Lyman as he could find. He hadn’t had much sleep since the incident, and his supervisor back in Colorado Springs had urged him to take it easy and let someone else handle the heavy lifting.
But Harlan had refused.
He preferred to clean up his own messes.
When he’d heard that his Glock had been found under a burned-out pickup truck near Williamson—a vehicle carrying the body of a local rancher—he’d made a vow right then and there that he wouldn’t rest until Billy Boy was back in custody.
Or begging St. Peter to open up the pearly gates.
“First,” he said, “I want to apologize to all of you for making any of this necessary. If I hadn’t been derelict in my duties, none of us would be sitting here right now.”
He glanced at Callie again but got nothing back. She was carefully examining her fingernails.
“Let’s not worry about blame,” Mercer said. “The way I look at it, the only reason we’re here is because of this boy Lyman.”
“Thanks, Sheriff, I appreciate that.” Harlan reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small stack of photographs. “I assume you all saw the mug shot I faxed over?”
There were nods and murmurs around the room.
“Lyman’s a Nebraska native who moved with his mother to Wyoming when he was sixteen years old. He’s been in and out of custody ever since, his latest bust for an aborted robbery attempt at the Colorado Springs Bank and Trust three weeks ago. He was out on parole at the time, and since the courts are backed up, someone on high figured it wouldn’t hurt to ship his butt up to Torrington to finish out his state sentence while he’s waiting for trial. That’s where I came in.”
He laid the stack of photos on the table. “We took these from the convenience store’s surveillance footage. The main unit was destroyed, but the owner keeps a backup in his office closet.”
“How’s the clerk doing?”
The question came from a young guy sitting next to Callie. Rusty-something.
“Touch and go, last I heard.”
Harlan had found the clerk tied up and shoved into a storeroom, his head caved in by a blow much harder than the one he himself had received. Once he saw the poor guy, he knew that he could easily have wound up in the very same condition. So maybe getting beaned by Billy Boy instead of the girlfriend or the potato chip lover was a blessing he should be thankful for.
Tapping the photos, he said, “These are the two perpetrators who helped Lyman escape. We think they may have been his partners in the bank job, but they were wearing ski
