Shielded By The Lawman. Dana Nussio
note folded in his pocket really had been intended for him.
What those things meant was less clear. Could she have overheard the other troopers talking about him before he’d arrived? Could all of this be about pity, after all?
But when he started toward the cash register, Sarah was gone. Ted had replaced her and was checking out the last few troopers. Jamie slowed. Sarah wasn’t clearing tables or filling salt shakers, either. Where had she gone? The answer to that and his other questions lay beyond the swinging door that separated the restaurant’s dining room from its kitchen.
He couldn’t burst into the back, locate her and insist that she explain herself, but he couldn’t let her raise these questions and vanish, either.
“Officer, ready to check out?”
Ted waved him over to the counter. Jamie opened his wallet and pulled out his debit card.
Two minutes later, he pulled up his hood and headed outside. The jangling bells jarred him, reviving those same memories that had chased him into the diner earlier. Had he conjured this whole mystery to escape thoughts about the suicide investigation? Had he clung to the distraction because it might at least offer some answers when the other matter remained a black hole of question marks? Either way, he had to know.
He glanced one last time toward the kitchen as the door whooshed closed. Sarah might not be around to answer his questions tonight, but he was about to become Casey’s best customer until she did.
Sarah Cline hated cowering in the kitchen, but it seemed like her only option now. Even if the dishwasher had to be watching her as he sprayed gunk off plates with the pre-rinse hose, she didn’t dare look his way. How would she explain herself, anyway? For someone who understood just how critical it was for her to keep a low profile, who knew what she could lose if she didn’t, she’d practically leaped on the counter and performed a country line dance in her sensible shoes for all the customers to see.
For all of them? No, her side steps and kick-ball-changes had been for been for just one guy. And she couldn’t explain why she’d done it. A cop? She’d learned the hard way how much she could trust them. She hugged herself tighter, her thumb tracing the jagged pucker of a scar on the underside of her left arm. It was covered, just inside her short uniform sleeve. Hidden. Like so many others.
She lowered her arms and wiped her sweaty hands inside her apron pockets. From her awkward angle, she could no longer see the officer through the scratched, round window. She couldn’t blame him for his curiosity after her odd behavior tonight, so she was relieved when she caught sight of him again as he slipped out into the rain. Relieved and something else. Wistful? It couldn’t be that. If anything, regret was the thing pushing down on her shoulders like a lead blanket. Maybe tinged with the same anxiety she awoke to every morning and tried to sleep with every night.
What had possessed her to write that note? She should have minded her own business. She knew better. It couldn’t matter that she’d only today realized that “Mr. Jamie,” the after-school-program volunteer her sweet Aiden had been gushing over for months, was the same “James A. Donovan” whose debit card she swiped at least twice a week. Or that, from snippets of his coworkers’ conversations, she’d learned that something bad had happened to him at work tonight. Or even that the raw expression clouding his hazel eyes was similar to the one living inside her own mirror.
Not one of those things was a good enough excuse for her to meddle in some guy’s situation with a note...or even two-fifths of a pie. Getting involved in people’s lives encouraged them to ask questions. She couldn’t afford that.
Especially not from a cop.
With a shiver, she glanced back at Léon, who was watching her so closely that he’d sprayed water down the front of his apron. He lifted a thick black brow. She frowned at him. This wasn’t the first time she’d hidden in the kitchen at Casey’s, but usually she was avoiding rowdy customers who refused to accept the word no.
But this one...it was all on her.
Shooting one last glance to the front of the diner to be sure he was gone, Sarah stepped into the deserted dining room. She grabbed the tub of refilled salt and pepper shakers, ketchup bottles and containers filled with sweetener packets on her way past the counter.
Ted plucked a peppermint from the bowl by the cash register and popped it in his mouth. “I wondered where you’d wandered off to.”
“Just planning the desserts for tomorrow.”
She marveled at how effortlessly she lied, but then most things came easier with practice. And at age twenty-eight, she’d had plenty of practice.
“The fuzz boys do something to upset you? Because if they did, I could talk—”
“No, they’re good customers.”
“Good. But if they get out of line...”
As Sarah leaned into a booth to reset the condiments, she turned away so that he wouldn’t see her eye roll. Ted hadn’t even hinted that he would ban them for bad behavior. He couldn’t turn away paying customers, especially those who appeared harmless.
But she’d made the mistake of trusting the police once and had barely survived to tell the story. She brushed away that thought with a swipe of her forearm over her forehead. Compared to those Chicago officers, this group seemed like choir boys.
When the image of one particular choir member invaded her thoughts, his wide eyes staring back at her, Sarah’s hand jerked. A saltshaker slipped from her fingers and skidded across the table, leaving a sticky white mess on the laminate.
“Butterfingers tonight?” Ted asked.
“I’m just tired.”
The sound system blared with one of the country ballads she’d once adored, as a singer crooned about a love that didn’t exist. Hearts and hope and heaven easily turned to hurt and hits and hell.
She righted the saltshaker and cleared the residue with her cloth. If only it were as easy to erase the other mistakes she’d made tonight. She had one rule—keep her distance from others—and she’d broken it faster than an order up for scrambled eggs and toast.
She moved to the next table, but Jamie’s face flashed back at her from the mirrored napkin dispenser. He had kind eyes, she decided, and then shook her head. Why had she chosen now to think about that? She must have noticed his eyes before. Maybe because they matched his boyish face. But when she’d really looked at him tonight, what she’d seen had ripped at her heart.
So, blame her odd behavior on the misery in his eyes. That rare vulnerability in a guy whose career suggested a preternatural fearlessness had drawn her in, but that was all there was to it. All there ever could be. Friendships were a luxury she couldn’t afford.
Sarah blinked, the absurdity of those thoughts as shocking as her actions tonight. She needed to go home, where she could reclaim her good sense and her survival instinct. She had to remember the truth: She could count on no one but herself.
“Marilyn’s late,” Ted said.
“Again?”
“She called this time. Car trouble.”
She’d moved to the set-up table and was rolling cutlery, but now her gaze shifted to the door. At least there wasn’t a crowd of diehards arriving from Salute Lounge. If they had a rush, Ted might ask her to stay until Marilyn arrived. Again.
“You’d better clock out then,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.
“I do need to get home.”
“Aiden’s already in bed by now, right?”
“He’d sure better be, or he’ll never get up for school.” She wished