father then. Grandparents. Siblings. Whoever was hurt when you were sent to prison so young.”
“No one was hurt.” At this rate Jay was going to need another fifty or so laps in the pool to calm down enough to get to work. “My only living relative—the aunt who raised me—passed away during my freshman year of college.”
“You ever been married?”
“No.”
“What about girlfriends?”
“No one serious.” Not that it was any of this man’s damn business.
“Any close friends?”
“Not that I can think of offhand.”
“You have no one at all.”
Jay felt exposed by the shock in the sheriff’s voice. And forced himself to answer the question, too. “No.”
Now the other man knew Jay’s dirtiest secret. He was completely alone in the world. No meaningful relationships. He’d never had anyone with whom he felt close. Had no idea how to be a member of a family unit. Let alone the head of one.
“Any more questions, Sheriff?”
Jay’s voice must have had more of an edge than he’d intended. Leaving the unopened bottle of water on the counter, Sheriff Richards stood and moved toward the front room. Before he reached the door he turned, a look of concern lining his face.
“We aren’t unforgiving folks,” he said, his hands at his sides. “Nor are we unwelcoming. We’re just protective of our way of life out here. It’s why we’re all here, and not in some other place. The people of Shelter Valley have chosen a lifestyle that makes them happy. It’s my job to protect that as well as to protect them.”
And an ex-con with long hair and secrets roaring into town on the back of a Harley didn’t fit.
Jay couldn’t agree more.
“We’re a family here in Shelter Valley. A big, overgrown family sharing a homestead in the desert. We all look after each other’s kids, and after each other. But I guess you wouldn’t understand that.”
No, probably not.
And he sure as hell wasn’t selling his bike or cutting his hair to make them all happy.
At Jay’s continued silence, Richards opened the door. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around,” he said. “Call if you need anything.”
Jay had the oddest feeling that the guy’s offer was sincere.
“Come back anytime,” Jay offered in return. But only after he’d shut the door firmly behind the other man.
THE ROAD WASN’T WELL TRAVELED. Two dirt tracks was the extent of it. Ellen bumped along easily, breathing in the peaceful mountain air through the open window of her green Ford Escape, appreciating that the temperature dropped so drastically in mere minutes as she left behind the hot desert that she also adored.
Each time she made this bimonthly trek she felt torn. Part of her wished that Joe Frasier could open himself up to a move to town, to having more than only her and Sheriff Richards in his life. And part of her understood why Joe clung so voraciously to his mountaintop home. Life made sense out here.
Still, life was meant to be lived, not avoided.
Ellen slowed from the 15 mph she’d been going to climb the steep track to 5 mph as she pulled into the cleared bit of dirt in front of Joe’s rudimentary cabin. He’d cleared the spot for her—had that been almost five years ago?—when Sheriff Richards had first asked Ellen to be his partner in this effort to assist the lonely mountain man who’d helped the sheriff find his father’s killers.
“Joe?” Pulling the thin, short-sleeved button-down over the top of her shorts, Ellen climbed out of the SUV and stood.
Ellen was a trained social worker. Joe needed to be socialized in the worst way.
“Joe?” she called again. She wouldn’t go any farther, take another step, until the fiftysomething bearded man appeared. If this wasn’t a good day, she’d come back.
Joe knew that. He knew he could stay hidden.
He never had before.
They had something in common, Ellen and Joe. A shared awareness of the tragic effects of inexplicable violence against women.
“I’ve got your syllabus and textbooks,” she called. Joe had a thirty-year-old degree in engineering. Once Ellen had discovered that fact, she’d started planting the seeds of him upgrading his courses with the hope that a love of learning would be able to do what five years of visits had not—get him out of the hell he’d thrown himself into after his wife’s death.
She had bags of groceries, too, as always.
“Where’s the sheriff?” Joe’s gruff voice came from somewhere behind the one-room log cabin he had built by hand over thirty years ago.
Ellen and Greg usually made this trek up the mountain together. But not always.
“There was a traffic accident out by the highway.”
“You shouldn’t be here without him.”
“Of course I should be,” she called, completely without fear. “Sheriff Richards knows I’m here. And you need your groceries.”
Besides, Joe would never, ever do anything to hurt Ellen. Ever.
Now if she had been meeting Black Leather, as she’d come to think of the man she’d seen roaring through town the other day, she would have—
She simply wouldn’t have done it. Period.
“Can I come sit by the window?”
He’d built a seat for her there when she’d first started visiting him. Greg would sit in the cruiser and Ellen would counsel with Joe in plain sight but out of hearing range of the sheriff. Then somehow things had changed and Ellen and Joe had been more friends than social worker and hermit.
“Wait.”
She heard a rustle of grass then saw the thin, slightly stooped man, dressed in baggy overalls and a flannel shirt, skirt around the front of the house and inside. He promptly latched the door with the board Ellen knew he used to lock himself in.
“’Kay.” She only heard the word because she’d been waiting for it. Listening.
Leaving the cooler in the back of the Escape, Ellen grabbed the blue book bag she’d purchased at Walmart the same day she’d bought Josh’s and headed to the house.
With her back to the building, she pulled out a folder of papers and rested them on the windowsill.
Joe’s fingers didn’t come close to brushing hers as he gently tugged the folder away from her.
“It’s all there. Dr. Sheffield is glad you’re in her
