glinted under there, but it wasn’t a coin. She used the mop handle to snag it and drag the object out.
It turned out to be a quarter-sized gold medal on a thin gold chain. The piece was beautifully carved on one side, the figure of a man holding a sword high over the head of what looked like a dragon. Saint George, maybe? Wasn’t he the guy who slayed dragons?
She turned the medal over. It was engraved with the words B—Always come home safe—Love, Mom.”
B for Brett, maybe? Or did this belong to the robber? She tucked it in her pocket to take to the sheriff.
The rest of her shift was busy as locals flocked to the diner to hear the story of the robbery and check out the damage—which amounted to one smashed chair and the coat stand being knocked over. Sheesh. Nosy much?
She wanted nothing more than to go home to the tiny house she’d inherited when her mother died, curl up in a ball and sleep for about a month.
Instead, she smiled and pretended she wasn’t shaken to her core, that the resurgent memories hadn’t freaked her completely out, and served up pie and coffee in a continuous stream. She had never been so relieved to hang up her apron when the supper waitress, Wanda, showed up for her shift at 4:00 p.m.
It was just as well that she had agreed to visit the sheriff today. She was too wiped out, first by the robbery and then by the continuous flow of customers who’d kept her hopping, to make the drive over to Hillsdale to check out some used windows at a junk shop as she’d planned to after work.
She stepped into the combination police office and jail, acutely uncomfortable at the overpowering atmosphere of law and order. She’d never had a run-in with the law here in Sunny Creek, but the law was the law, no matter where she was. And she had no love for police. Not after the past few years.
“Thanks for coming down to the station, Anna,” Joe Westlake said pleasantly enough.
She nodded, her throat too tight to speak. For crying out loud, she was the victim here. There was no need for her to feel like she’d just committed a murder. Still. Old habits died hard.
She perched on the edge of a chair beside the sheriff’s desk while he tape-recorded her hesitant description of the robbery.
“Oh, I forgot,” she said after he’d turned off the tape recorder. “Does this necklace belong to the robber? I found it on the floor when I was mopping up after the fight…er, robbery.” She fished out the Saint George’s medal and held it up.
“I recognize that!” Westlake exclaimed. “That’s Brett’s. His mom gave it to him just before he enlisted in the Navy. Want me to run it out to him?”
Her fist closed around the medal, warm from her pocket. “No, that’s all right. I’ll return it to him.”
Now why on earth did she go and say that? She wanted nothing to do with men at all, let alone a good-looking one capable of hair-trigger violence and who made her belly flutter in ways it had no business whatsoever fluttering.
Brett sank carefully into a crappy recliner that had been crappy thirty years ago, swearing under his breath at the knives of pain jabbing his side. The punk had punched him right over the spot where he’d broken a bunch of ribs in the explosion that ended his military career and erased his memory of the last hour of said career. An hour he would give anything—anything—to recover.
Dangling a bottle of beer in his fingers over the edge of the armrest, he closed his eyes. Immediately, the events in the diner started running through his mind. Oh, sure. He could remember every single second in the diner. But could he remember a damned thing about that mountain pass with his men? Hell, no.
He didn’t even want to remember acting like a crazy man in Pittypat’s. He’d decided not to intervene in the robbery. Truly. But then the strangest look had come across that waitress’s face—certainty that she was going to die. Acceptance that her life was over. She was way too young to be killed. Just like his men had been. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from trying to save her. He’d leaped to his feet and had to be some kind of hero. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.
Damn his old man for making him go to town. For making him interact with human beings at least once a month as the condition for letting Brett hole up in this old hunting cabin on the family ranch. This was what came of it. He ended up busting up some kid.
Hell, the kid was lucky Brett hadn’t killed him. Lord knew, he’d been tempted. When he saw that punk slam the pretty waitress into the counter, something had snapped inside his head. The same something that was preventing him from remembering what happened on his last mission. It was that exact something that made him a menace to society and had sent him up here into the mountains to an isolated cabin to drink away his memories or die trying.
A furry head bumped his free hand, sliding under his palm until it rested on a soft back. “Hey, Reggie,” Brett muttered.
The black Lab took another slow step forward, bringing Brett’s hand to rest at the base of his tail. Brett obligingly scratched the dog’s back over the spot where the dog’s pelvis had been broken and subsequently repaired, leaving him with a permanent limp. They made a perfect pair. Both broken. Both alone in the world.
“You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” The dog’s tail thumped against the side of the recliner.
“At least I don’t have to go back to town for another month,” he told the dog. “Until then, it’s you and me, buddy. The rest of the world can go straight to hell.”
Brett took a long slug from his beer, not particularly enjoying the taste. But a man could drink only so much whiskey before he needed a change of pace. Beer didn’t provide as fast or sharp an escape from reality as hard liquor, but it got the job done eventually.
He’d downed the rest of his beer and must have dozed off because he jolted awake to a short, sharp bark of warning from Reggie.
Brett bolted from the chair and into the shadows beside the front window, hiding behind the cream-and-brown plaid curtains. His palm itched to feel the cold steel of a weapon. But his father—wisely—had removed all firearms from the cabin. Not that he needed a gun to be lethal, of course. Hell, he didn’t even need a knife. His bare hands would do the trick. Brett peered through the filthy window, his gaze predatory, seeking the slightest movement of an incoming threat.
There. A vehicle was coming slowly up the gravel switchback trail that served as a road to this place. It was one of those prissy little hybrid cars, all ecological self-righteousness and no muscle. Who in the hell was driving one of those up here? Nobody with a lick of sense came up into the high mountains without four-wheel drive and a set of chains in the back of their vehicle. The weather was unpredictable as hell, and snow was known to fall up here on the Fourth of July.
It might be sunny now, but in ten minutes, a line of storms could blow in over the mountain peaks at his back and drop a deluge of rain that turned the road into a sheet of slick mud or blow in a blizzard that made the mountain entirely impassable for days or weeks.
Apparently, his would-be visitor knew none of that because the little car continued chugging up the track toward him. More irritated than interested, he waited to see who would
