of running a department that employed twenty deputies and ran a jail with up to two dozen inmates.
By the time they ended the call and he hung up, the rest of the stew was cold and the exhaustion pressing on his shoulders reminded him how little sleep he’d been able to find the night before.
He was amazed at how wiped this broken leg had left him.
This wasn’t his first major injury. He broke his arm twice during his wild younger days, once skateboarding and another time backcountry snowboarding with friends in the mountains east of Haven Point.
Considering all the crazy things he used to do with his brothers and Cade, it was a wonder he came out of childhood with only those few battle scars.
His mother would freak when she found out he’d been struck by a hit-and-run driver.
Charlene was a fretter, of the highest order. She had always been overprotective, wanting to keep all her children tucked safely under her wing like a hen with her chicks, but she had gone into overdrive after Wyatt’s tragic death and then his father’s life-altering injury.
The shooting at Andrea’s house earlier in the year had only made her worse.
That he was injured on the job as well, while trying to meet a confidential informant, would probably send her over the edge. Good thing Elliot worked in Denver with the FBI or she would be camped out on his doorstep every day, making sure he came home safely from work.
He took one more bite of shortbread from the tin Andrea had brought, which automatically sent his thoughts zooming back to his neighbors next door and the problem he didn’t know what to do about.
He was still mulling his options when he drifted to sleep and dreamed of headlights coming toward him in the silvery twilight of a Lake Haven December.
* * *
FURTIVE WHISPERS AND the sensation of being watched woke him out of tangled dreams.
“Is he dead?” Marsh heard a nervous little voice ask.
“I don’t know,” another one answered. “Maybe we should poke him to see.”
“You do it,” the first voice said.
“No, you.”
“Nobody’s poking anything,” a more mature voice interjected quietly. He opened his eyes a crack and saw Andrea Montgomery walk inside the room with a stack of mail that she set on the table beside him.
Her cheeks were rosy from the cold and she looked pretty and soft and more delicious than all the shortbread in Scotland.
He blinked, wondering where the hell he came up with that thought.
“Leave the poor man alone and let him finish his nap,” she said to her children in a low voice.
“I’m not napping,” he growled—though he had been doing exactly that. He must have slept all afternoon, like some old geezer in a nursing home with nothing better to do.
“If you weren’t napping, why were your eyes closed?” Will Montgomery said, his tone accusatory.
“Just checking for holes in my eyelids,” he answered, which had been his father’s standard answer when one of his kids caught him dozing off in church.
The little girl, whom he had seen only briefly the day before when she slipped in and out of the room like an afternoon shadow, gave a little giggle. The sound seemed to take her by surprise because she quickly clamped her lips together and looked down at the ground.
“Sorry we woke you,” Andrea said, her tone brisk. “I have your groceries. I also brought you some chicken casserole and a couple pieces of spice cake.”
“I thought you weren’t coming until later.”
“We have something tonight and I’m not sure how long it will go, so this time worked best.”
“It’s a party and my friend Ty is going to be there,” her son announced. “It’s at my mom’s friend McKenzie’s house. She has a dog who’s my friend, too, and her name is Paprika. Only, we call her Rika.”
With his mom’s auburn hair and a scattering of freckles, the kid was really cute, Marsh had to admit. Too bad he wasn’t very good with kids. His uniform had always seemed to make them nervous around him—like the boy’s sister was acting.
“I know that dog,” he admitted.
Will took a step closer to the recliner. “Rika is funny. She licks my hand and it tickles. Guess what? We have a dog, too. We’ve had her for two whole weeks and her name is Sadie and she’s the best dog in the whole world.”
“Is that right?”
“She hardly ever pees in the house. Do you have a dog?”
“No. Not right now. I did when I was a kid, though.”
One or two dogs were always running through the Bailey house when he was growing up, but he hadn’t had one since he left home. It was hard to justify it when he lived alone and worked long hours.
He was much better with dogs than he was with kids, actually.
“We can bring Sadie over if you want, to keep you company while your leg is broked,” the boy offered.
The tightness in his throat at the offer was caused by the pain, he told himself. “That’s very nice of you, but I should be okay.”
“Are you sure? She’s a really nice dog. Just as nice as Young Pete, only not as big. She likes to sit on your lap and watch TV.”
“Good thing she’s not as big as Pete, then. I don’t think I’d have room on this recliner.”
The boy giggled, which Marsh had to admit was kind of a sweet sound.
“We had another reason for stopping by,” Andrea said with a meaningful look down at the girl, who had moved back to the doorway to be closer to her mother, as if afraid he was going to reach out and whack her with his crutches.
“Chloe?” Andrea said when her daughter only looked at the carpet. “Chloe? Show Sheriff Bailey what you made.”
The little girl shook her head vigorously. “You do it,” she whispered.
“I’m not the one who made it, honey. You are. You did such a beautiful job on it, too.”
Chloe continued to look anywhere in the room but at him, and after a moment her mother sighed.
“Sorry. She’s become a little more nervous about people she doesn’t know the last few months.”
Though he had come onto the scene after the fact, Marshall had read the reports of what happened at Andie’s house over the summer. He knew Chloe was an eyewitness to the double shooting at her house, when Wyn and Rob Warren had both been injured.
When he showed up just moments after dispatch called him, Andie had been cradling her daughter close, trying to comfort her.
The tenderness of the image had stuck in his head for a long time—the bruised and bleeding Andrea, who must have been terrified herself, doing her best to calm her child.
He frowned, furious all over again at the man who had caused the whole situation.
Warren had put Andrea and her kids through hell, simply because he refused to accept a simple one-syllable word. No.
“Go ahead,” Andie encouraged.
“You show him,” Chloe said again, her voice whisper soft.
“I’ll do it.” Will, his tone exasperated, grabbed a paper out of his sister’s hand and thrust it at Marsh. “This is for you. It’s from Chloe.”
An odd mix of emotions tumbled through him as he looked at what was clearly an art project, a wreath cutout made from two pieces of green construction paper that had been sandwiched on