Her Cowboy Sheriff

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING, as soon as Annabelle slipped into Sierra’s hospital room, her steps faltered. Annabelle had hoped to find Sierra awake, to ask her about Emmie’s father. She’d visited twice now and found little change in her cousin. All around monitors beeped and buzzed, but the information on the displays next to Sierra’s bed might as well have been written in Greek. Annabelle’s brief stop at the nurses’ station hadn’t provided much information beyond the fact that, although she’d been moved from ICU last night, Sierra was still listed as critical.

What if she didn’t survive? What would happen to Emmie?

Her throat feeling tight, Annabelle stood beside the bed then took Sierra’s limp hand. It was like touching, looking, at a stranger. Her blue eyes were swollen closed, her blond hair, usually so like Emmie’s, instead looked dull and stringy and she didn’t move at all. Harsh cuts and bruises covered her face and neck, and a bulky bandage slanted across her forehead. She was thrown from the car, Finn had said.

Annabelle’s spirits sagged. It was a good thing she hadn’t brought Emmie with her. Until Sierra looked better or wakened, the sight of her mother like this might be too much. Emmie was getting to know the staff at the diner so Annabelle had left her there for an hour, giving her fat crayons and a book to color at the counter.

“Oh, sweetie,” she murmured, fighting tears. She tried to warm Sierra’s hand, but after her talk with Finn she had to wonder. The interview had been difficult for her. Annabelle hadn’t cared for his comments about Sierra, but did she really know this woman in the bed anymore? She hadn’t told him about Sierra’s troubled teenage years because they hadn’t seemed relevant. Sierra had since turned her life around, and yet...

She applied slight pressure to Sierra’s hand, hoping she’d wake up, and to her relief Sierra’s eyelids fluttered once before they drifted shut again. And Annabelle took heart. “You’re going to be fine,” she said, remembering summer nights together when they’d stayed up late and giggled, played tricks on each other...until her parents had abruptly put an end to Sierra’s annual visits. “We’ll straighten everything out. You’ll see. I won’t let you down again.” As she’d done when she’d meekly accepted her parents’ command not to mention Sierra again and on the phone not long ago. There would be time later for Annabelle’s full apology. Time to ask about Emmie’s father.

* * *

“YOU SAID YOU had something for me.” Finn cradled his cell phone against his shoulder and tried to stifle his growing resentment at his former partner, who was on the line from Chicago. Finn envisioned Cooper in the squad room, the top button of his uniform shirt undone, one hand running through his surfer-boy hair.

“I’m only human, Donovan. I’ve spent most of my free time since you left town hunting that gang...and, sorry,” he said in the sarcastic tone that Finn knew well, “but every one of them has dropped off the face of the earth.”

“Not likely,” Finn muttered. None of this was Cooper’s responsibility, but Finn still hoped he would help bring Finn’s most personal case to a close. “When you called, you said you had an update so I thought—”

“Didn’t mean to mislead you. But, frankly, there’s not much more I can do here. I guess that’s the heads-up—the something—I had to give you.”

Finn refused to be deterred. “The gang’ll resurface. We only need to wait.”

“Listen, my friend. If I kept taking those little side trips to follow a lead from my snitches—all of whom have now dried up—I’d be looking at disciplinary action.” He added, “That should resonate with you.”

Finn came from a family of cops, and in Chicago he and Cooper Ransom had always toed the line. As a kid Finn had learned that from his uncle Patrick. The opposite of Finn’s father in temperament, with gentle good humor and lots of one-on-one time while his dad was all about The Job, Pat had guided Finn off the dangerous path he’d walked in his teens onto the straight and narrow again—until years later when that Chicago gang known as The Brothers struck close to home. Because of them, especially Eduardo Sanchez, Finn no longer had a wife he loved, a son he adored. A family.

Justice for them had become his chief concern—his obsession.

“I wasn’t fired,” Finn said. “I quit.”

“In the nick of time.” Cooper blew out a breath. “If you’d gone any further in your private quest to send those thugs to prison for the rest of their lives, the department would have taken your badge, your uniform, your gun—and hustled you straight into Internal Affairs. Then where would you be?”

Finn’s mouth hardened. “Free to pursue the gang—full time.”

This was an old argument, begun the day Finn had lost everything. He heard the metallic clang of a desk drawer being slammed shut, and it reminded him of the no-go drawer in his bedroom. Of Sanchez. Cooper’s voice lowered. “If I hadn’t talked you out of turning into some vigilante, you’d be in jail.”

Or lying dead on the South Side pavement. Finn would have traded his life then for one shot at the gang’s leader. He still would but he wasn’t there. Now he just tried to get through each day without his thoughts of the tragedy overwhelming him to the point where he couldn’t do his job here. “So, instead, I took your advice—and you promised to find them for me.”

He could almost see Cooper shaking his head, his gray eyes somber. “I wish I knew what else to do. I hate to disappoint you, Finn—but maybe you need to focus now on being sheriff of Stewart County.”

Finn heard a wistful note in his voice. Cooper had grown up near Farrier, a few miles from Barren, on a cattle ranch. He was the cowboy Finn was not and had no aspirations to be. Finn didn’t like horses, and he’d never been around cows. But when cattle prices had plunged years ago while Cooper was in his teens, his family had been forced to sell out. He claimed he was still trying to adjust to life in the city, but for whatever reason he’d never come back home. He’d sent Finn here instead.

“Being sheriff is a lot less dangerous than Chicago PD. I write a few parking tickets, stop a speeder here and there...oh, and there was a break-in last week at the hardware store. Somebody stole a few bags of pet food.”

He could sense Cooper’s smile. “Not the Foxworth kid again?”

Finn nodded, almost dislodging the phone from between his neck and shoulder. “He’s my chief suspect. Think I’ll go easy on him, though. His mom’s been having a rough time since her husband died. Money’s tight and Joey loves his dog more than he likes to obey the law. But he’s a good boy. Community service seems the right ‘sentence.’”

“And you’ll pay for the dog food.”

Finn didn’t answer that. “I like my job here,” he told Cooper instead. “There’s no gang activity in Barren or the other towns in my jurisdiction. So thanks for that tip about the election.” The old Stewart County sheriff had been running unopposed, giving Finn the opportunity he’d needed at the time to get out of Chicago and save his sanity.

Cooper said, “My mother’s distant cousin. Eighty-two, and his wife was worried about him. Competition in the last election nudged him to give up his badge and move to Florida, just what he needed.”

Finn owed Cooper for that and maybe he hadn’t seemed grateful enough. Hoping to mend the breach between them while they talked more shop, he filled Cooper in on his one real active case, Sierra Hartwell’s accident and the outstanding warrant in St. Louis.

“Have you run a background check on her?” Cooper asked.

“In the works,” he said. “Unfortunately, her closest relative and I don’t agree that this isn’t about some parking ticket.” He paused. “Her cousin is Annabelle Foster.”

Cooper’s desk chair creaked. Finn had his partner’s full attention now. Cooper said, “I knew Annabelle. Used to drop in at the diner now and then with my folks. She was always there helping out—not that her parents ever seemed to appreciate that. I’m surprised to hear about her objections. Annabelle never said boo to anyone.”

“Well, she did with me.” There must be some mistake. The moment when Finn had teased her about doughnuts hadn’t lasted long. Too bad his heightened awareness of her did. The sunlight on her hair, the way she’d approved of his adopting Sarge, her concern for Sierra...he almost didn’t hear what Cooper said.

“Wait a minute. Sierra Hartwell? If I remember right, she and Annabelle were close then. I only met Sierra once or twice, and she could be, well, difficult, but I never heard of her getting into any real trouble. Keep me informed, okay?”

“Sure,” Finn said. “Something will turn up about her and with The Brothers.”

As he ended the call, he missed his partner even more than he had before Cooper phoned. He shoved his cell back in his pocket. At least their less-than-conclusive talk had given him some feedback on Sierra Hartwell, if not taken his mind off Annabelle Foster.

He almost missed Chicago as long as he didn’t let himself think about what had happened...

And the black depths of his own loss. Or Eduardo Sanchez.

* * *

FROM THE SECOND Finn’s car rounded the last corner onto his street in a tree-lined Chicago neighborhood near the station, his nerves had been shooting sparks through his arms and legs. Beside him, his wife Caroline kept glancing at him, as if she sensed his unease. “What, Finn?” she finally asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Feeling jumpy, that’s all.”

“You’ve been like this since you and Cooper raided The Brothers’ headquarters.”

Finn didn’t think the term brother suited. It didn’t sound nearly dangerous enough—as if they were actually harmless. Their low-slung, abandoned warehouse ten minutes from his home was nothing more than broken windows, doors hanging by their hinges and trash everywhere. The place smelled of rotting garbage, and shattered liquor bottles littered the dirt yard. Inside, a few sagging couches, a half dozen wooden straight chairs and a scarred table made up the decor. A single match would have torched the area quicker than the time it had taken him and Cooper to surround the building, bust in and wrestle four gang members into handcuffs. Another two had left in ambulances for the hospital. And The Brothers had vowed revenge.

Finn wasn’t sleeping well, even on his off-shift days.

“You really think they mean to harm you?” Caro asked.

Finn was sure of it. He couldn’t ditch the feeling he was being watched. He’d taken to carrying an extra handgun plus his service pistol and the backup gun that, like most cops, he kept in an ankle holster. But he wasn’t really worried about himself.

“I wish you and Alex would do as I asked. Go to your mother’s for a while. I’d rest easier,” he said, though he wasn’t sure of that and he’d miss her as if a part of him had broken away.

“I can’t stay with Mother,” Caro said, flicking her dark red hair from her face with that uniquely feminine gesture that had drawn him to her the day they met. In the back, three-year-old Alex sat in his car seat, his eyes—the exact match of Caro’s gray green—glued to his mother’s cell phone screen and his latest favorite, a video game with farm animals that squawked and mooed until Finn’s last nerve shredded. “It’s almost Christmas,” Caro went on. “Remember all that shopping we did today? Or were you not there, Finn?”

“I was there.” And looking over his shoulder the whole time they picked out presents for family members, friends and the kid whose name Alex had picked from a hat for his day care gift exchange. The back of his neck still prickling, he pulled into the driveway. “I’ll get Alex for you then unload the packages.”