Troublemaker Read online

  That hadn’t taken long, she thought. Morgan had been at her house for a whole four days. “Oh, you mean my old friend who just had open-heart surgery and can barely walk? That guy? Sure, go for it, but be prepared to be laughed at.”

  That information was almost too much for him to process. He teetered on the verge of a violent explosion, but self-preservation kept him from going there because he seemed to sense that Bo and Loretta were a hair’s breadth from putting handcuffs on him. He couldn’t bear to admit defeat but had no other option. Finally he simply turned and stomped out, leaving the door standing open in his wake.

  Blowing out a breath, Bo closed the door and turned back to Loretta. They grinned at each other and met halfway across the office for a high five and a fist bump. “I’m so glad you’re a Hobson,” she told Loretta.

  “It comes in handy.” Loretta blew on her nails, buffed them on her shirt. “I can’t wait to tell my brothers. They’ll get a kick out of it. You really got a man living with you?”

  “For now, poor guy. He just got out of the hospital.”

  It was the description of “poor guy” that did it because no woman described a romantic interest that way. Losing interest, Loretta said, “Hope he feels better soon,” and dropped the subject.

  The excitement over, Loretta returned to her cubicle and Bo sat at her desk. Tricks sniffed around before deciding to take a nap. After thinking the situation over for a few minutes, Bo called Mayor Buddy and filled him in on her encounter with Warren Gooding.

  He sighed. From the sound, she could just see his face, homely but pleasant, settling into lines of concern. “I knew he was going to be a problem. Still—he did just give us leverage, and we might be able to work it to our advantage.”

  “I’m torn,” she admitted. “I dislike him so much I’d love to file bribery charges against him, but overall that wouldn’t be good for the town. If the sawmills closed because he wasn’t there to run them, that would hurt some innocent families who depend on the jobs.”

  “It’s your call. If you want to file charges, I’ll back you up.”

  Letting go of the vision of Warren Gooding behind bars, Bo gave her own sigh. “Strategically, I think we’d be better off not filing charges, but not letting him know.”

  “I agree. I’ll talk to the town council about this whole situation. I don’t want everyone getting sucked into what should be a private divorce situation. Bad blood can cause trouble for years. Harold Patterson”—that was the barber—“is already up in arms because he’s been sweet on Miss Doris for years, not that she’s having any of it, but he thinks he can impress her by taking up for her and Emily.”

  Bo rubbed her forehead; she could feel a headache coming on. The way the lives of people in small towns were woven together was foreign to her, but over the years she’d gotten sucked into it anyway, and damn it, now that she knew these people, she cared, however reluctantly. It was disturbing that she even knew this many people. If she’d known this would happen, she might never have taken the job of chief.

  “I need a vacation,” she said aloud.

  Mayor Buddy chuckled. “I know the feeling. Small towns, huh?” He paused, then with a faint undertone of guilt said, “Come to think of it, have you ever taken one? Vacation.”

  Mortified that he might think she’d been asking for paid time off, she said, “I was joking. I have too much on my plate to even consider a day off. Not only do I have a boatload of tech projects lined up, I have a friend recuperating at my place.”

  “I heard about that. When he’s feeling better, bring him to town so people can meet him. I bet Miss Doris would bake something special for him.”

  Oh, yes, she definitely had a headache. When Morgan was feeling better, he wouldn’t look so sick. That stood to reason, didn’t it? What would people see when they met him? Would they see what she saw, a man who chose to live his life on the razor’s edge of danger, a man who could and had killed in a number of ways? Perhaps it was because she knew he’d been shot, knew—vaguely—what he did for a living, but to her it was evident in the sharpness of his gaze, in the way he moved, the intense alertness about him even when he was doing nothing more dangerous than watching TV. Who would be so oblivious that they’d look at him and think he was nothing out of the ordinary?

  Now Mayor Buddy was wanting to enfold Morgan in the town’s embrace, which to her was a little like putting a tiger in a petting zoo. And Miss Doris would bake the tiger a special cupcake.

  God in heaven. She couldn’t keep Morgan secluded, or everyone would die of curiosity and she could just see a regular parade of visitors to her house on a pilgrimage to see the man she kept hidden there. Small towners were both nosy and brazen; they wouldn’t care if their excuses were flimsy as long as their goal was accomplished. Sooner or later—probably sooner—she would have to bring Morgan to town. What better way to spike Warren Gooding’s charges than to let people see for themselves what shape Morgan was in? Sooner would definitely be better, while he still looked sickly.

  When she got home, Morgan was outside on the porch again, his chair in the sunshine. The late afternoon was feeling cool to her, but he didn’t have a jacket on over his tee shirt. Her laptop was open in his lap, and he was tapping at the track pad. Tricks woofed happily as soon as she saw him, and when Bo released her from her safety harness, she bounded out of the Jeep and raced to him, her tail wagging madly, her whole body wiggling in delight.

  He stopped what he was doing to scratch her ears with both hands and ask how her day had gone. After a minute of that Tricks abandoned him to do some investigative sniffing. “Hi,” he said, glancing at Bo, and went back to the laptop.

  Two seconds later he muttered, “Shit!” and closed the laptop.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, going to stand beside him while she kept an eye on Tricks.

  “I saved seven of the little fuckers, you’d think that would count for something,” he growled. He shoved his hand restlessly through his hair. “Sorry. That slipped out.”

  She had to laugh. Dragging another chair around, she sat and stretched out her legs. “Playing Pet Rescue, huh?”

  “For about three hours now. I run out of lives, I play something else until I have more lives.” He slanted a look of blue fire at her. “No offense, but I’m going crazy with boredom. I’m not good at doing nothing.”

  “None taken. I’d be bored too.” Privately she thought the timing couldn’t have worked out any better. “If you feel up to it, want to go to work with me tomorrow? I can’t guarantee sitting in the police station will be any more interesting than playing Pet Rescue, but it’ll be a change of scenery.”

  “God, yes.”

  “Things got a little interesting today.” She told him about Warren Gooding’s visit, and the standoff with Loretta, which elicited one of those rusty-sounding laughs from him. “Evidently people are already curious about you, so you can expect a steady parade of people coming by to look you over. But Mayor Buddy also said Miss Doris would probably bake something special for you, so I’d say it’ll be worth being stared at.”

  “Hasn’t anyone in your town ever seen a stranger before?” he muttered.

  “It’s a small town. Being nosy is required.” She smiled as she tilted her face toward the sun. The down time was . . . relaxing. It was oddly companionable, sitting here with him in the late afternoon, chatting while she watched Tricks. She never would have described him as companionable, but there it was.

  “How did you end up here? This isn’t exactly on the beaten path.”

  “Hubris,” she replied. The story wasn’t a pretty one, but what the hell, she wasn’t ashamed of it. She’d made some mistakes, and she’d worked hard and dug her way out of a hole. “I teamed up with a friend in California and flipped a house. It seemed like a fun thing to do, real estate was booming, and we each cleared about thirty thousand profit from it. In hindsight, that was the worst thing that could have happened because I decided I liked flipping houses