complete guidance. Chase understood that all too well.
He strode back into the great room in time to find the crew loading Dalton onto the stretcher, but he didn’t stop to check on his status. Instead, he took the stairs two at a time. When he reached the top landing, he discovered Danny Wainwright, dressed in a pair of race-car pajamas, standing against the wall with his gaze focused on the hardwood floor.
After Danny finally looked up, Chase was amazed over how much he resembled Jess, with the exception of his blond hair. Fortunately he couldn’t see a scrap of Dalton in him, but he did see the same vacant stare his mother had exhibited a few moments ago.
More recollections of another time, another foreign place and another child intruded into Chase’s thoughts. He had to get a grip on the present and stay out of the past for both Jess and her son’s sake.
Chase swept his cowboy hat from his head and kept a safe distance. “Hey, Danny. I’m Deputy Reed, a friend of your mom’s.”
The boy blinked but remained silent.
He decided tackling Danny’s immediate worry might help. “The paramedics are taking your dad to the hospital, so he’s in good hands.”
Still no response, and Chase wasn’t real sure how to proceed. “Do you want to go see your mom?”
This time Danny shook his head, which fueled Chase’s concerns. If the kid had witnessed Jess injuring Dalton, inadvertent or not, he could have a damn hard time forgiving his mother. He wasn’t too keen on leaving the boy alone, but he didn’t want to push him, either. “Why don’t you wait in your room and I’ll have your mother come up to talk to you.”
Without any reply or hesitation, the boy headed down the hall and walked through a door to his right. Chase followed behind and entered a bedroom decked out in dark blue walls and baseball memorabilia. A typical kid’s room that reminded him of his own when he’d been about Danny’s age, only he’d been more inclined to collect football souvenirs.
When Danny curled up on the bed facing the wall, Chase felt the need to say something else, to offer some words of comfort, but he had no real experience dealing with childhood trauma. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with your mom, okay?”
Danny didn’t respond, didn’t even shrug his shoulders to acknowledge the suggestion. With any luck, reuniting him with Jess would be the key to his comfort. Then again, maybe not, but Chase felt he had no choice in the matter.
As he sprinted back down the stairs, Chase heard the sound of an all-too-familiar voice coming from somewhere in the house. A booming voice that belonged to his father, the sheriff. No surprise that Buck would have been summoned, considering the nature of the crime. Correction. Accident. Chase refused to believe anything else until proof landed in front of his nose. Even then he’d have a hard time buying Jess flying into a homicidal rage.
He made his way back to the dining room where he’d left Jess and arrived just in time to hear his dad say, “You’re going to have to give me more details than that.”
Furious over Buck’s tone, Chase stepped inside the opening, hands fisted at his sides. “Can I have a word with you?”
Buck turned to him and scowled. “I’m taking Jess’s statement, son, so you’ll need to wait a minute.”
Chase was tempted to remind his father that he should call him by his proper name, not son. “It’s important.”
Buck forked his fingers through his silver hair and sighed. “Fine,” he said before turning to Jess. “Don’t go anywhere.”
As soon as Buck joined him at the front door out of Jess’s earshot, Chase turned his fury on his father. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“My job, exactly what you should be doing, too. She told me you hadn’t questioned her about Dalton’s injuries.”
“She said it was an accident and that’s all I needed to know.”
Buck hooked his thumbs in his pockets and stared him down like he was thirteen, not thirty-one. “Doesn’t matter what she said, boy. You have to get all the facts to put into the report.”
Chase pointed in the direction of the dining room. “That’s Jess in there, Dad. The same girl who used to come with her folks to our house for Sunday dinner and dominoes.”
“Yeah, and you’re too close to the situation. That’s why I called in Barkley to assist me. He should be here in about five minutes.”
That only increased Chase’s wrath. “Barkley can’t find his way out of a feed sack. He’ll arrest Jess first and ask questions later.”
Buck raised a brow. “Any reason why you think Jess should be arrested?”
He reflected on Danny’s reaction and decided to keep his mouth shut for now. “Like I said, she claims it was an accident, and I have no reason to believe it wasn’t.”
“You know the procedure,” Buck said. “I still have to take an official statement.”
“Then do it in the morning after she’s had some time to recover.”
“That’s not the way it works, son.”
“Make it work, Dad. Right now she needs to rest.”
“She can’t stay here, Chase. We’ll need to gather evidence in case Dalton dies during the night.”
On one hand, he didn’t give a rat’s ass if Dalton died. On the other, he had to consider what that might mean for Jess. “She can stay with me tonight and I’ll have her at the department first thing in the morning.”
“She can get a room at the motel.”
He had no intention of sticking Jess in some seedy, pay-by-the-hour dive on the outskirts of town. “She’s in shock and so is her kid. She needs to be in a place where she’s comfortable.”
Chase could see Buck’s frustration beginning to build. “And you think that’s with you? Best I recall, she hasn’t come around once since you’ve been home.”
Understandable why they’d been avoiding each other, but he’d be damned if he let his father in on a ten-year-old secret. “She’s been busy getting rid of Dalton.”
Chase realized how questionable that sounded when Buck said, “Maybe that’s what she did tonight, got rid of him once and for all.”
He couldn’t quite understand why his father was bent on treating Jess like some black widow lying in wait to off her former husband. Buck might be one of the good guys, but he could be an obsessed hard-ass when it came to the job. If serving as sheriff for thirty some odd years did that to a man, Chase wanted no part of it, even if that’s exactly what was expected of him.
“Tell you what, Sheriff,” he said. “If you’ll stop jumping to conclusions, then I’ll have Jess to you bright and early. But if you’re not going to stick to the innocent until proven guilty clause, then I’ll be damned if I’m going to continue to work for you.”
Chase could see the cogs spinning fast in Buck’s head. Placid had suffered a deputy shortage for years,
