Safe by the Marshal's Side

Right then, though, it felt empty. The thrill of the hunt, the excitement of the chase, victory in sight—none of it seemed nearly as important as making sure that Annie was okay. He hesitated, tempted to unlock Annie’s door and make sure she was. He wouldn’t, though. That would be crossing a line and walking into dangerous territory.

Cold detachment. It had served him well before. It would serve him well again.

He pulled out his cell phone and called Josh again.

FOUR

Annie knew she shouldn’t have gotten so upset, but Hunter’s attitude infuriated her. She was a grown woman with a child. Not some naive little girl. She knew he was doing his job. She didn’t have to be reminded of the fact over and over again.

She was doing her job, too. Staying inside, meeting with the prosecuting attorney, sticking by her agreement to testify against Saunders and Fiske even though she couldn’t help wondering if it was the right thing to do. After all, what did she really owe Joe?

In the years they’d been married, he’d apparently lied to her and stolen. He’d taken money that should have gone to their family and spent it on gambling.

She did owe Sophia, though.

A good life free of the shadows of her father’s mistakes.

She touched Sophia’s soft curls. Hunter had been right about one thing: Annie did need a friend. If she could have, she’d have picked up the phone and called her college roommate. Tabitha had always known the right thing to say and the right way to say it. She’d even tried to tell Annie that Joe wasn’t good enough for her.

Love was blind. Annie hadn’t seen anything but the good in Joe. She didn’t want to call that a mistake. They’d had plenty of good times together, and they’d gotten Sophia from their relationship. Annie would do it all again to have her daughter.

She just wished she’d known. She wished she hadn’t been so blind. Maybe then Joe would still be alive.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and paced across the room. She felt antsy and trapped. No jogs in the park like she’d been able to do in Milwaukee. No trips to playgrounds. No playdates. Nothing to take her mind off the looming trial or the danger that she was in.

It was no wonder she felt irritable and unhappy.

“Annie,” Hunter called, his voice soft.

Go away, she wanted to say, but she’d been raised with better manners than that. Besides, she wanted to prove that she wasn’t the immature little girl he seemed to think she was.

She opened the door and stepped into the hall. “What?”

“I called Joshua. He confirmed that the thread on the doll’s dress was blue.”

“Okay,” she said, because she’d known it would be. She had spent hours making that little dress. She’d wanted Sophia’s first doll to be something prettier than the dollar-store find Joe had brought home.

She felt guilty for thinking that.

He’d tried, and he really had loved Sophia. No matter how much Annie doubted everything else about her husband, she didn’t doubt that.

“The crime lab is going to process the doll,” Hunter continued. “Maybe we’ll get some evidence that will help us find the guy who tossed it into the yard. Once we find him, we should be able to connect him to Fiske and Saunders. There’s no other way he could have gotten the doll aside from one of them.”

“You think that will help at trial?”

“It will be one more mark against them, and when it comes to trial, more is better.”

“I hope you’re right, Hunter. If they aren’t convicted—”

“They will be,” he assured her.

“One thing I’ve learned the past year, Hunter, is that there aren’t any guarantees. So, I’m not going to celebrate until both men are locked away.”

He nodded and leaned his shoulder against the wall. It looked as though he had more to say, but he just watched her silently.

“If that’s all you wanted to say, I’m going back to bed.” She put her hand on the door, not really ready to go pace the room again, but not willing to stand in the hall having a stare-down with Hunter, either.

“I owe you an apology,” he said before she could close the door. “There’s nothing wrong with being kind. As a matter of fact, I could use a little more practice at it.”

“You’ve been perfectly kind,” she conceded, oddly touched by his apology. For the first time since she’d met him, he seemed absolutely sincere and absolutely himself.

“For the sake of my work, sure. But I need to spend a little more time being kind for the sake of kindness.” He flashed a quick smile, reached around her to push the door open. “If you’re going to try to get some more sleep, you’d better do it now. Sophia is usually up at the crack of dawn.”

He walked down the hall and disappeared into the kitchen.

She almost followed him. Hunter was a paradox. By the book and cold as ice, but there was something warm in him. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now that she had, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.

Maybe that was what happened to young widows. They inevitably started noticing the men in their lives. Eventually, noticing led to falling for someone and they married again. That was what Annie’s mother had said a few days after Joe’s funeral.

“One day, the pain will fade. You’ll find someone else. You’ll fall in love again. You’ll get married and have a dozen children,” Sandy had murmured as she’d hugged Annie.

Annie hadn’t believed her then, and she didn’t want to believe her now. She’d learned too much about the lie her first marriage had been.

“Sorry, Mom. No marriage. No dozen children,” she muttered. “Ever.”

The door next to hers opened, and Serena Summers peered out, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, a few strands escaping and falling across her cheeks. “Everything okay out here?”

“Yes. Fine. I was just going back to bed.”

“At...” Serena glanced at her watch. “Four in the morning? Shouldn’t you already be in bed?”

“I was. I couldn’t sleep. I probably still won’t be able to, but I’m going to give it a try.”

“I’ve been trying for three hours and haven’t had any luck. Maybe we should both give in to the inevitable, drink some coffee and play a game of checkers.”

“Checkers?”

Annie wasn’t really in the mood for a rousing game of checkers. She wasn’t really in the mood for coffee, but she couldn’t not notice the sadness in Serena’s eyes.

She saw it in her own eyes every time she looked in the mirror.

“Sounds like fun,” she said and couldn’t quite hide the note of sarcasm in her voice.

Serena smiled and shook her head. “Honestly, it’s not my idea of fun, either. I’d rather be out on the gun range, but we’re stuck here for the time being so we may as well make the best of it. Come on. I’ll make the coffee.”

Annie followed Serena into the small living room. Hunter was in the kitchen, so she didn’t follow Serena there. Instead, she sat on the couch and waited. She wanted to ignore Hunter’s presence, pretend that she hadn’t noticed just how masculine he was, just how handsome. Now that she’d noticed, though, she couldn’t not notice. She glanced his way, saw that he was watching her.

She should probably say something, but her mouth was dry, her throat tight.