Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
“Leland Dern was tried for his abuses of office, and he served a year sentence and is now living somewhere else, so we can’t try him again,” Harry informed her. “If you’d go on record, it would just be more we’d have on him if something else springs up with this case audit. You absolutely do not have to make an official statement or lodge a complaint. It’s your choice. But I’ll be here if you change your mind.”
“Lodge a complaint?”
“It’s up to you, totally up to you, but we can investigate this, Dern and the former deputies who were involved in it, and we can press charges if there’s evidence to support them.”
“Now?” she asked. When he nodded, she noted, “But that was years ago.”
“If a victim is too afraid to come forward to report a crime, the clock starts when the crime is reported.”
“Whoa,” she mumbled.
“I can promise you, I will investigate this to its fullest if that’s what you want. It might not lead to anything, but I have a feeling there are a number of former deputies that are more than a little concerned about what our audit will bring, and it’s a little bit of poetic justice when they used their position to terrify a woman and her husband, that they get some of that back. And I can assure you, if anyone did anything to you, you’d have the full force of this department at your back.”
She rolled her lips together, but her eyes lit.
“Think about it,” he urged.
She nodded. “I will. I’ll think about it, and I’ll talk to Darrin about it.”
“I’m here, whatever you decide.”
She studied him a beat before she declared, “You’re so not him, it’s not funny.”
“Best compliment I could get,” he replied.
A hesitant smile formed on her face before she stood. Harry stood with her, and he escorted her to the front door.
Once she was out, he prowled to Polly’s office, entered and closed the door behind him.
“You know who she was?” he demanded.
Polly shook her head. “But I can guess.”
Harry was thinking about that woman, who was still scared even though Dern no longer lived in their county, or any of the ones bordering it.
He was also thinking about Avery Rainier.
“How often did he pull that shit?” Harry asked.
“There were things he hid from me, Harry, and the boys did too. Just like he hid them from you. So I don’t know. He scared them so bad, they wouldn’t come to me. They’d not even go to Pete so Pete could come to me, and no one’s afraid of talking to Pete.”
Pete was her husband. He owned the Double D. And he, like Polly was a mom, was a dad to anyone who knew him.
“But I’d hear murmurings,” she continued. “Some of the men, it went against the grain. But if your boss tells you to do something—”
“If your boss tells you to terrorize a woman and her husband because he wants to get into her pants and she won’t let him, you quit, and then you report that boss to someone who can stop his shit,” Harry ground out.
“I’m not excusing them, I’m explaining. And you’re transferring, because of Av and your feelings for Lillian.”
“Fuck yeah, I am,” he clipped.
“He’s gone, Harry,” Polly said gently.
“You can’t ever get that kind of stain out. She wouldn’t make an official statement because she’s still scared of Dern.”
Polly’s lips thinned.
“Fuck,” Harry muttered.
“Go have a cookie,” Polly suggested.
Christ.
“You run. You lift weights,” she reminded him. “You’re generally active all the time. You can have a cookie when it isn’t Christmas, Harry Moran. You won’t get a gut. Food is soothing.”
“It’s just when you think food is soothing, you get a gut.”
“Not if a pretty woman made you cookies, and you eat just one, for heaven’s sake.”
Harry scowled at her.
“Go on, get a cookie and then get to work,” she ordered.
Polly was totally the boss of this station, he just held the title.
Harry left and he didn’t go to his office.
He went to get a damned cookie.
And fuck him, after he ate it, he felt better.
FOURTEEN
Marie Antoinette
Harry
That evening, his dogs going crazy told Harry Lillian had arrived.
He and his pups moved through his house and out to the front door. When he got to his porch, he saw her parking her dark-blue Subaru, which was at least seven years old, next to his truck.
His pups raced toward her car until Harry put his teeth to his lip and whistled.
They stopped dead and sat, long tails sweeping the grass, tongues lolling with excitement, eyes locked on Lillian getting out of her car.
His dogs were social, but Harry didn’t often have company.
Something else that needed, and was going to (imminently), change.
Lillian had a bottle cradled in her arm with a big bow on it.
She shot a smile to him but moved right to his dogs. He knew she knew animals when she did it slowly, crouching a little and offering a hand low that they could smell.