Shadow Valley Read online

“My car…” She had to stop and collect herself, but even so, her voice was shaky. “The doors wouldn’t open. And the windows.”

  “Probably shorted the electrical, with all the water. Might fix itself when it dries out.” He shrugged. “Or it might not. And your driver’s side door—it wasn’t locked, just jammed up against the embankment. Still, if the electrical isn’t working, the car won’t start, so it’ll need some time in the shop. I haven’t seen much of it, so it’s just a guess, but I’d say you’re looking at a few days—probably more like a week, the rate Sam works.”

  Megan couldn’t really imagine ever climbing inside that car again.

  They pulled into the motel parking lot. The place was small, only eight rooms that Megan could see, but it seemed to be well maintained. And it wasn’t like she was in town for a resort holiday.

  “The coat’s long enough for decency,” the man said. “Do you want to pull your boots on and check in yourself? If you’d rather, I doubt Shirley would have a problem with me checking you in. I can ask her about clothes while I’m at it, if you want. And if you don’t want to see a doctor, you should at least have someone keeping an eye on you in case of concussion—do you need help with that?”

  It had been absent too long, but Megan’s independence finally asserted itself. “You’ve already done too much. I’ll be fine.” She gritted her teeth and shoved her finally-warmed feet into the icy wetness of her boots. As soon as the truck stopped, she opened the door and hopped out. She scooped her wet clothes up in her arms and smiled up at the driver. Damn, he was a fine-looking man. But that was not what she was focusing on. “Thank you so, so much. I don’t really know how to thank you.” She realized that they’d skipped past an important social ritual, and leaned up with her right hand outstretched. He’d already heard her identify herself to people on the phone, but she hadn’t gotten much information from him. “I’m Megan Archer.”

  He smiled and shook her hand. “Joe Cody. Nice to meet you.”

  She returned the smile, but now that she was back in control of herself, she was embarrassed by her earlier weakness. It was understandable that she’d been upset; she’d almost died. But she should have pulled herself together faster, shouldn’t have made her emotions into this man’s problem. The best thing to do was to extricate herself from his life as quickly and cleanly as possible, without further impositions on his generosity. “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Cody. I can’t really think of how to return the favor.”

  He smiled again and raised one eyebrow. “Well, you don’t really need to worry about returning the favor. But if you don’t mind, I’d like you to do what you can in terms of returning my coat.”

  “Oh,” she said. The man’s eyes were beautiful when he smiled, but she didn’t really appreciate the way they looked when he was laughing at her. “If you wait until I check in, I can hand it out to you from my room.” She headed into the motel office with the remnants of her dignity clutched around her just as closely as the fabric of Joe’s coat. But her pride didn’t give her nearly as much warmth as the jacket.

  Chapter Two

  Megan’s shirt had dried overnight, but her jeans were still a little damp when she eased into them the next morning. The stiff clamminess of the denim more than canceled out the positive effect of her hot shower. The sore muscles that had just begun to relax clenched again, and she was tempted to pull the jeans off and crawl back into bed.

  She needed to get her ass into gear and find something to distract her from her troubles. That was one of her goals for this whole trip, really, so her current situation was just a matching piece of the overall pattern.

  She felt inside her boots and found that a night spent over the radiator had only partially dried them. Her jacket was made of wool, and it was still soaking, and probably ruined anyway. She was fighting another wave of the urge to give up when there was a knock at the door. She straightened, glanced through the peephole, and then took a deep breath. Her smile felt pinned on, but she hoped the lack of sincerity wouldn’t be noticed. She turned the handle and pulled the door open.

  “Meggie! It’s good to see you!” The bear of a man who lurched toward her seemed to have forgotten that he was carrying a cardboard tray with two coffees in it, but Megan didn’t, and she kept a close eye on the beverages as she returned the hug.

  “Uncle Carson. Good to see you too.”

  He pulled away and braced her at arm’s length with his free hand. “It’s been too long, sweetie. You look different.”

  “It’s been almost ten years. It’d be a bit of a miracle if I didn’t.”

  “Still beautiful, though,” he said with a smile, then he pulled one of the coffees out of the tray and offered it to her. “Didn’t know how you took it, so I just told them to put a bit of everything in.”

  “That’s great, thanks.” And now he was obviously waiting for her to invite him in. But she didn’t want to, and she was reluctant to get into the big discussion about why. She didn’t want to admit that after all the fuss, she was afraid of somebody seeing a man going into her motel room. Especially a man who was only an honorary uncle, not an actual blood relative. “It’s a beautiful morning. Is there anywhere to sit outside?”

  He gave her a surprised look. “It’s barely above freezing. I’ve got my nice thick coat, but you’re not dressed for this weather.”

  “No, I’ll be fine,” she lied. She thought about Joe Cody’s jacket, how warm it had been, how safe she’d felt all wrapped up in it. It had smelled like the woods.

  She forced her mind back to the present. “Look!” She grabbed the purple-and-brown quilt off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Okay,” Carson said reluctantly. “There’re picnic tables over there.” He gestured to a small grassy area just past the parking lot, and Megan had her first chance to really see the town, when it wasn’t dark out and she wasn’t in shock.

  The most dominant feature was definitely the mountains. The town was nestled in a narrow valley, with heavily forested slopes rising steeply all around it. She knew that the area economy had been based on mining, until the coal ran out. What the economy was based on now…well, that was a big part of the reason she was there. But from the look of things, the alternate income source wasn’t enough to keep the town from getting run down and raggedy.

  Megan followed Carson to the table and watched as he settled his weight gingerly onto the bench. He’d always been a large man, but what used to be muscle had clearly turned to fat, and what used to be fat had turned into more fat. She wondered how he managed to do his job. Mostly from behind a desk, she supposed.

  She realized that he’d been watching her own progress as closely as she’d been watching his. “You’re a little sore? Why don’t you take the day off? A couple days, maybe, because you’ll probably be worse tomorrow.” He shook his head. “Meggie, I should not have heard about your accident from the highway patrol. You should have called me first thing.”

  “I thought about it,” she confessed. “But I already had help. I didn’t want to bother you. I’d like to just forget about it now, and get on with the job. It’s great to see you, but I’m here on business, right?” She smiled to take away any sting from her next words. “So this is it for ‘Uncle Carson’. You’re Sheriff Giles from now on, okay? And I’m Megan, not Meggie.”

  “I’m allowed ‘Megan’? It’s not going to be ‘Ms. Archer’?” The corners of his eyes crinkled when he was teasing her, just like she remembered.

  “Well, now that you mention it, Ms. Archer would probably be best, yes.” She raised her chin primly.

  Carson roared with laughter. Another thing Megan remembered fondly about him—he was easy to amuse. He recovered enough to ask about her family, and they made small talk until their coffees were finished. Then he stood up with a groan. “Time for me to get to work. And you too, if you’r
e sure you’re coming.”

  “I need to look after some things, but I was told there’d be desk space for me at the station? Can I make personal calls from there?”

  “Well, I don’t know if that would be proper,” he said, and she spoke quickly, before he started another fit of laughing.

  “I’ll keep it to a minimum, I promise. Can I get a ride to the station with you?”

  “You can. And in the future, you could walk.” He pointed one massive hand down the street. “We’re two blocks down, on the left. Can’t miss us—we’re the one with all the flags.”

  “Great.” She stopped off at her room just long enough to drop off the blanket, then followed him to his car. Two blocks might not be quite enough time for the conversation she needed to have. She stood with her door open, and looked at him over the roof of the police cruiser. “What am I walking into here? I was told tensions were high....”

  “We’re trying to keep a lid on things.” Carson looked thoughtful. “Honestly, the worst of it’s coming from outside. We know the state and the feds need to be here, and they know we’ve got a job to do, protecting our community. I’m not saying everything’s sunshine and roses, or that toes haven’t been stepped on. You’re here, after all. Somebody complained. But down deep, we know we’re on the same side.” He shook his head regretfully. “But this is rural Montana. There’s a lot of people up here who don’t trust the government much. Don’t trust outsiders. Hell, I’ve been here more than a decade and I’m still the new kid. And the people in my department—they’re law officers, but they’re also locals. It’s our strength and our weakness.”

  Megan nodded seriously. “And they know I’m coming? And why?”

  Carson seemed to be trying to decide how much to say. “They know you’re coming. They have some different theories on why. But you just need to keep your head down, do good work and they’ll warm up to you soon enough.”

  That didn’t sound good, but it was no worse than she’d expected. “Okay,” she said, and she slipped into her seat and shut the door behind her. She felt a little trapped, back in a car, but she fought her way past the unease. She needed to focus on her job. Shadow Valley already was her escape, her second chance. If she screwed up here, she had no idea where she’d end up.

  Chapter Three

  The sheriff’s office was a busy place. Megan had done enough research to know that they were responsible for a large geographic area, but didn’t have a huge population to service. The crowd of employees made it clear that there were a lot of visiting officers taking up space.

  Carson introduced Megan to the civilian clerk at the front desk and showed her how to sign in, then guided her through a set of double doors into a large, open room full of desks, with glassed-in private offices on three sides. Carson steamed his way into the middle of the space, Megan trailing along reluctantly in his wake.

  “Hey, now, everybody, listen up!” he bellowed, and the people in the room looked toward him with a nonchalance that suggested that this was not an unusual mode of communication. “This here’s Ms. Megan Archer, up from Helena. You all know why she’s here—I expect everyone to cooperate.” He turned to her and said, loud enough for the room to hear, “And I trust that I will hear about it if anyone doesn’t.”

  Oh good, starting things with a threat. That was sure to make her popular. Megan tried to look inoffensive as she was shown to a free desk in the back corner of the room. She was distracted by the sheriff’s choice of words. “Up from Helena,” not “up from the governor’s office.” Was he being uncharacteristically tactful, or had it been a coincidence? Was she just getting paranoid about the whole thing?

  “You’re okay, here, Megan?” Carson asked as she got settled. “There’s a phone, there—dial 1 for an outside line, 2 for the internal phones—I’m at extension 200, if you need me. I’d like to stay and help you get settled, but there’s an issue of some sort…” He rolled his eyes, and stage-whispered, “There’s always an issue of some sort.” He straightened up and looked around the room, then waved an arm to the far side. “Those two over there in the uniforms are my top deputies. Most of the people in here are from out of town—state or federal. But those two were born and raised here, and they’ll help you out. I’ve already briefed them on what to expect.”

  That was interesting. The sheriff seemed to know what Megan was planning to do while she herself had hardly any idea. She knew the governor had received complaints from several different branches of law enforcement, and more seriously, from a citizens’ group dedicated to overseeing government spending. With his national political aspirations, he couldn’t afford to be seen as soft on crime, but he also couldn’t give the impression that he was wasting taxpayer money. He’d sent Megan to “figure out what the hell is going on, and make it go away.” It was probably a sign of trust that he’d given her so much leeway, but it might also have been an indication of how desperate he was to get her out of the capitol.

  She nodded with more confidence than she felt. “Okay, great. I’m going to try to get hold of a replacement car, and then…just settle in, I guess. Get a vibe for the place.” That sounded vague, but Carson nodded encouragingly.

  “Sounds good. Don’t push yourself too hard— you’ve had a rough time lately.” And there it was. He was being gentle about it, but if it had just been the crash he was referring to, he wouldn’t have said lately. But of course he’d heard—the whole world had heard. She needed to forget about it and hope that everyone else would follow suit. “I’ll check in around lunchtime, okay? See how you’re doing.”

  “That’s great. Thanks.” She smiled with what she hoped looked like confidence and sat down at her desk as if she had a purpose. She knew the sheriff was watching her, so she made herself busy, pulling scraps of paper out of her jeans pocket and arranging them on the table in front of her. She refused to look up, and eventually he walked away.

  She found the number for the garage, and moved it to the top of the desk. She needed to know the state of the car, she needed her clothes, her purse, her phone, her laptop…she supposed she was being naively optimistic, hoping that it hadn’t all been ruined, and found the number for her insurance company, as well. She knew she should be calling down to Helena, but she decided to put that off for as long as possible.

  She was on hold with her insurers when an attractive dark-haired woman in a deputy’s uniform stopped beside the desk, looking questioningly at Megan. “Hi,” Megan said, turning the phone so the mouthpiece was away from her face.

  “Hi. I’m Deputy Baker. Anna. The sheriff said to show you around, make sure you get what you need.”

  “What I need? I don’t suppose you’re carrying a bottle of vodka?”

  “I don’t drink.” Deputy Baker waited the proper amount of time for awkwardness maximization before severely adding, “Anymore.” Megan froze. Had she just suggested that a recovered alcoholic join her in a little inappropriate drinking? She was about to pretend that the insurance company had come back on the line when the deputy’s face broke into a grin. “Nah, just kidding. But careful with that around the feds—some of them are pretty uptight.”

  “Okay.” Megan looked at Anna, then hung up the phone. She’d deal with the insurance later. “I’m still just kind of finding my feet around here.”

  “Careful you don’t stagger into any land mines,” Anna said, and this time she didn’t smile.

  “So I guess a guide would be great, if you have a little time.”

  “She doesn’t, really,” said a male voice from over Megan’s shoulder, and she turned to see another uniformed deputy standing with his hands on his hips. “Neither of us does. We have actual, real work to do. Solving and preventing crimes. Serving and protecting. I know you’re not law enforcement yourself, but perhaps you’ve heard of some of these priorities?” His tone was conversational, but his handsome face was t
wisted into a severe frown.

  “Maybe you’ve heard of following orders, Don?” Anna didn’t seem remotely intimidated. In fact, she stood up a little taller and turned to face her colleague head-on. “And maybe you’ve heard of not being a total asshole? I say ‘heard of’, because I know all too well that you don’t have any firsthand experience with the concept.”

  “Jesus, Anna. Is it that time of the month again? Or are you some sort of miraculous, permanent menstruator?”

  Anna rolled her eyes at Megan, and said, “Shadow Valley’s finest. Try to ignore him. We used to think he was tense because he never got laid, but then the town hooker got out of jail, and he’s still just as much of a little bitch, so we have no idea.”

  Megan really didn’t want to get in the middle of this. She remembered her concerns about not seeming professional, and tried not to laugh. “Okay. Well—yeah, if you have a bit of time, I’d appreciate an orientation.”

  “We’re set up for you in the conference room,” Don said.

  Megan had been hoping that it would just be Anna she’d be working with, but she stood and followed the two of them into one of the glass-walled rooms. There were manila file folders piled all over the conference table, a couple of feet high, and more stacked against the walls. It looked like the contents of ten or fifteen filing cabinets.

  “Jesus, Don,” Anna groaned. “How long did this take you? You carried all this in here…are you sure you want to be a cop? Maybe there’s a job for you in the theater, somewhere…”

  “What?” Don sounded aggrieved. “We shouldn’t let her know what she’s wading into?”

  “We could have just told her it was a big job, asshole.” Anna turned to Megan. “It’s a big job. But almost all of this is on the computers. And it’s not like you’re doing any actual investigating, right?”

  “I’m not a cop,” Megan said. “The governor’s been getting complaints from all levels of law enforcement about how things are going up here. Or not going, as the case may be, and he wants to know what the hell’s going on.” She decided not to mention the citizens’ group. These two would probably not respond well to the suggestion that their jobs were a waste of money. “I’m just here as a neutral body, to see what’s going on, and figure out whether there’s a way to make things run more smoothly. So far, I’ve gathered that there’s a lot of paper involved.”