Gracie Delaney didn’t care for the nickname “Angel of Death,” but in Bent, Wyoming, it was something of the truth. If she came to a person’s door unannounced, they knew what was coming.
The fact that she was young, maybe a little girl-next-door looking, no longer fooled people. As the coroner for Bent County, Gracie’s work was death.
It wasn’t as bad as some people made it out to be. Considering her parents had died in a car crash when she’d been six, and she was the lone survivor of said crash, she’d been intimately acquainted with death her whole life.
Funny, life was a lot harder than death. Death was easy, and it was final. The cause might occasionally be a mystery, but it was a mystery she always solved.
Gracie blew out a breath as she parked her car in Will Cooper’s yard. Life, meanwhile, had a hundred mysteries she couldn’t figure out. Like why two years after she’d informed Will Cooper of his wife’s death, she still came to check in on him routinely.
She’d informed a lot of people of their loved ones’ deaths over the course of two years, and while some reactions stuck with her, maybe a few even haunted her, only Will’s reaction had ever caused her to act outside a professional capacity.
She supposed it was the fact he couldn’t accept his wife had simply skidded off the road and crashed into a tree. He insisted the detectives had missed or overlooked things. He’d become obsessed with proving foul play.
Gracie had felt sorry for him and his inability to accept the truth. So, she’d let him have access to records she shouldn’t have let him have access to. She’d shown him, over and over again, how the only thing that had killed his wife was an icy road and a tree.
Still he pushed into this theory that whoever his wife had been having an affair with had been the one to kill her.
Gracie got out of the truck and stared at the ramshackle cabin Will currently lived in. He still owned the pretty little two-story he and his wife had shared in Bent proper, but rented it out to a family with kids. He claimed it was because up here he could do his metalwork without any neighbor complaint, but Gracie figured it was something more isolating than all that.
He wasn’t a Bent native. He’d moved here after marrying Paula Carson and though he’d lived in town and been building a name for himself with his metalwork, Paula’s death had changed him. He’d isolated himself and since he had no family in Bent, no natives had been too worried about a stranger’s hermit behavior.
Except Gracie. For all intents and purposes, she was his only link to the outside world.
God, she wished she could help him.
“You’re going to,” she said to herself. “Right here. Right now.” She’d been playing into his obsession for too long, and it had to stop. No more looks at old reports. No more trips to that road to study curves and angles. She’d still be his friend, but that was it. Like a drug dealer refusing to continue to deal an addict their drug of choice.
Will was going to have to go cold turkey or solo. Her chest tightened and for the briefest second she considered retracing her steps. He’d go solo. She knew he would, and she didn’t want him to.
She wanted to fix him. To help him. And yes, maybe she was a little inappropriately hung up on the guy, but that only factored into it a little.
She shook that thought away and started for the cabin. No Christmas lights, not a hint that it was December and even rough-and-tumble Bent had brought out its Christmas decor. But not for Will. She wasn’t certain he celebrated anything anymore.
She heard the faint strains of music and bypassed the cabin door, instead walking around the cabin to the back. He had the doors open on his shed, and inside he worked on a metal project.
He’d once had a blacksmith shop down in town, something both local ranchers had used and tourists had gotten a kick out of. But he’d closed it after Paula’s death. In fact, he hadn’t worked for a year after, living off the rent from the house.
Slowly over the past year he’d gotten back into metalwork. Little artistic projects he made custom for ranches, or occasionally sold to the antique store in town.
Gracie had been hopeful it was a sign he’d give up obsessing over the mystery of Paula’s affair and death. Like so many times with him, her hopes had been dashed.
And you are done being a silly, too-hopeful girl.
She nodded to herself as she crossed the yard. He worked, mask over his face, black T-shirt clinging to his chest even with the cold air around them. He was working with some tool that shot a flame out of it in one hand, clamps in another as he heated and twisted metal. Faint lines of grime and sweat streaked across his impressive forearms and his biceps strained against the sleeves of his T-shirt.
She allowed herself a dreamy sigh, because he wouldn’t hear her over the noise of the tools. Because this was it. She was cutting ties. Well, she was cutting off the supply of information. She just had a sinking suspicion that meant he’d cut ties with her, too.
He turned off the blowtorch thing, nudging the mask up on his head to reveal his face. A few trickles of sweat dripped down his square jaw, and she didn’t know why she found that appealing.
“Hey,” he offered. “You bring those pictures?”
Gracie shook her head. “No, Will. I didn’t.”
He frowned, setting down the tools and pulling the mask completely off his face. “Then why are you here?”
Ouch. She forced herself to smile. “I always come hang out on Friday afternoons.”
“Usually with the thing I asked you for, though.”
“I’m not...” She cleared her throat. “I can’t keep bringing you stuff.”
He frowned, eyebrows drawing together as he stared at her. Not just anger, but confusion, as if it didn’t make any sense to him.
How could it not make sense? “For two years I’ve helped you try to undermine both my investigation and the police’s. I’m...” She swallowed at the nerves flapping around in her chest and throat. “I’m done,” she said, wishing it had come out more forcefully and not so wobbly.
“Done,” he said flatly.
“I’m still your frie—”
“I don’t need a friend. I never did.”
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. “Okay.” She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She couldn’t allow herself to show the hurt. It was so stupid. She’d all but forced her company on him for two years. He might be the obsessive one, but she was pathetic.
She turned, blinking back the tears that burned in her eyes as she forced her lead-like legs to move back toward her car.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“Home,” she said, hoping he couldn’t read that squeak in her voice. Oh, who was she kidding? He didn’t care. If it didn’t have to do with the case, he did not care. She’d been a means to an end, and she couldn’t be anymore.
“Why?”
She laughed, surprised at the way bitterness could grow just as large as sadness. “You don’t want a friend, and I can’t keep being your supplier. So.” What else was there to say?
Apparently nothing, because Will didn’t try to stop her after that. She got to her truck, didn’t bother to look back and drove away.