club.
* * *
“TODAY’S MAIL,” RUTH LANG announced and plopped a pile in front of Noah. Of course, she’d already slit each piece of mail open and paper-clipped the correspondence to the envelope.
He grimaced. “Thanks, Ruth.”
His assistant’s predecessor had retired when Mayor Linarelli lost the election. In the first week after he’d taken office, Noah had chosen Ruth, middle-aged, brisk and efficient, from internal applications. There’d never been a moment of regret. Choosing the right personnel was one of his strengths, although he was beginning to realize that hiring a bartender wasn’t quite the same as hiring a city engineer or attorney. He’d been glad to have the chance to do both, but there were days he thought all he did was hire. Half the long-timers had decided to retire when they saw the way the wind blew with Linarelli gone.
Ruth smiled sympathetically. “That’s what you get for advertising two jobs at once.”
Yeah, it was. He wanted to get somebody competent in the job of city recorder, but his real interest was in filling the position of director of community development. Angel Butte had stagnated compared to comparable towns within a three-county area. The only significant move to alter that before his tenure had been the annexation that doubled the size of the city while leaving it struggling to provide expected services. Like too many city employees, the former head of planning had been an old crony, unimaginative and more interested in hanging on to the way things had always been done than he was in new trends in the field. Noah had been hoping that, at sixty-two, he was starting to think retirement. What happened instead was a heart attack. The guy had survived, but he’d admitted to Noah that his wife had put her foot down and refused to hear about him returning to work.
Noah had hoped for more applications than he’d received so far. He supposed Angel Butte seemed isolated to most potential applicants, a backwater with a lousy climate. But the area was booming economically thanks to tourism. It was beautiful, and there had to be some people in the field who loved to ski or hike or fish. Or, hell, just wanted to breathe air that wasn’t yellow with smog, or commute five minutes to work instead of spending two hours a day crawling in heavy traffic on the freeway.
He’d already received three online applications that morning. Now, he flipped through the day’s mail, which included several more résumés for people interested in the city recorder job and five for the community development one. Two of those he tossed in the recycling bin after barely a skim. Two were possibles, but not exciting. The fifth... He couldn’t quite decide. In one way, she was overqualified, apparently only months from receiving an interdisciplinary PhD in urban design and planning. Actual work experience was somewhat scantier—after getting her master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Washington, she’d worked as a planner in community development in Kitsap County, on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle. From there she’d gone to Spokane, where she’d spent a year completing a special position as parks project manager, preparing an updated plan for the city’s parks and open spaces. She’d included excellent letters of recommendation, as well as one from her dissertation adviser at the UW. Noah had advertised for someone with a minimum of four years’ experience in a position of comparable seniority to the one in Angel Butte. This woman didn’t quite have that—although close if he added in her various internships—but she shone if he wanted someone with cutting-edge knowledge of the field.
He glanced again at her name. Caitlyn McAllister. As it registered, a frown gathered on his forehead. The last name had to be coincidence. Didn’t it? He went back to the first page of the résumé to see when she’d received her degrees. BA in political science from Whitman College... The date of graduation likely put her in her late twenties now. Thirty at most, if she’d been a slow bloomer.
He had no idea whether police captain Colin McAllister had a sister. If this Cait was related to him, that might explain why someone of her education was interested in a town so off the beaten path. On the other hand—as pissed as McAllister was, as undecided as he was about his future in Angel Butte—surely his sister wouldn’t have applied to work closely with his sworn enemy, the man who had in his eyes betrayed him.
Damn it, if she was related to McAllister, did he even want to consider hiring her?
Noah read her qualifications again and, impressed, thought, Why not? By the time they reached the interview stage, he might have half a dozen other strong candidates. So far, though, she was the cream of the crop.
He reached for his telephone.
* * *
CAIT’S EYE CAUGHT the blue-and-white roadside sign. Entering the City of Angel Butte, Population 38,312.
Oh, boy. She hadn’t expected to be so nervous. She didn’t even know why she was. Some of her memories of the years before her mother had taken her away weren’t so good, but she also had happy ones. So it wasn’t the town, per se.
Seeing her brother, maybe? The farther she’d gotten down the road, the more she wished she’d called to let him know she was coming. It was just that she didn’t know how he’d feel about her moving back here, and really their relationship was so stiff and distant, she wouldn’t blame him if he was less than thrilled.
My fault.
Yes, it was. He had tried. She knew he would have liked to be closer to her. Her feelings had been so complicated, her memories so muddled, she was the one to keep him at arm’s length. At the same time... Well, she remembered him walking her to school, holding her hand. With seemingly endless patience, Colin had taught her to ride a bike, not Dad or Mom. When she’d started playing soccer, he’d kicked the ball with her by the hour. He’d teased her, and put up with her trailing him around like a hopeful puppy even though he was six years older than her. He’d been sixteen when Mom had hurriedly packed her own and Cait’s things one day, loaded her in the car and driven away. By then Colin was a man, with a stubbly jaw come evening and a man’s muscles, capable of such terrifying anger and violence.
The tumble of images and memories running like YouTube videos were so vivid and frightening, she put on her turn signal and pulled to the shoulder of the two-lane highway leading into town. Stopped, she clutched the steering wheel, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
Her father had hurt her mother. Hurt Cait, sometimes. Colin and Dad had fought viciously, even sometimes punching holes in walls or breaking furniture. How, growing up in that kind of environment, had she let herself get sucked into an abusive relationship? Shame rose in her, making it hard to breathe.
Why? she cried inwardly, and had no answer.
There was no way she could ever tell Mom. Cait didn’t know if she could bring herself to tell Colin, either. Except...if there was any chance at all that Blake were to follow her to Angel Butte, she’d have to, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t she there to interview for this job because of Colin? Because he was a cop, and she knew he’d protect her? Because he’d persisted in saying, “I’m your brother”?
Yes. But...she could wait to see if Blake appeared, couldn’t she?
Why did she care what Colin thought of her?
Because. Because he was her brother. Because he loved her, and she knew it.
The last time she had seen him, this past November when he’d come to Seattle for some kind of law enforcement conference, she had wanted to really talk to him, maybe even tell him she was in trouble. But Blake, of course, had insisted on going with her when she had dinner with her brother, so she’d found herself being stiff as always, struggling for anything to say, letting Blake dominate the conversation.
There it was again, a burst of the shame. She didn’t understand herself at all. She was a professional, for heaven’s sake, smart, assertive on the job and in the classroom, well educated. Likable, with lots of friends—until she quit having time for them, because her boyfriend wanted all her time.
Was achieving understanding of her own horrible choices too much to ask?
Her breathing had grown calmer and her grip on the wheel more