having to answer to a man young enough to be his son. It hadn’t helped that Dylan had questioned the padding in Fallon’s recent budget request. “I tried to reason with her, but she had a tantrum.” He gave Dylan a wily smile. “But then I guess you know all about her tantrums.”
Tara was right about one downside to small towns—people knew your history. Normally that didn’t faze him, but he’d always been sensitive about Tara, and Bill Fallon could be an ass. Dylan thought the lead officer in the department, Russell Gibbs, would make a great police chief. Bill was close to retirement and talked a lot about moving to Sun City when he did.
“Why not give her the report, Bill?”
“She doesn’t want my report. She wants someone to blame. She’s asking me what I saw, did I take pictures, was there a hit-and-run.”
“A hit-and-run?” Where had that come from?
“What she needs is someone to hand her tissues and say there, there, you poor, poor thing. That’s not my job. I’m the peacekeeper. I smooth the waters, keep the ship afloat. That’s what you pay me for.” He tapped his skull. “If people knew half the stuff I keep in here for their own good...”
Dylan fought the urge to roll his eyes. Fallon bent the rules when he saw fit. He’d likely traded a screaming deal on his own pool for tipping off the contractor to the other bids for the town swimming pool. By the same token, he had patrols drive Mrs. Johnson’s neighborhood whenever her husband was out of town, ran a Scared Straight program for the high school and coached Little League, all on his own time.
The I’ll-scratch-yours-if-you’ll-scratch-mine stuff bothered Dylan at times, but it was human nature to want favors. It happened everywhere—big city or small town. That didn’t mean he had to engage in it. Once he was working for the town full-time he’d do some housecleaning and make sure everything was aboveboard. People expected no less from him.
“She won’t let this go, Bill. I promise you that, and this town can’t afford a lawsuit. Figure out what you can give her—your notes, photos, the report, something. In the meantime I’ll talk to her.”
“You do that. Go hold her hand, or whatever else you want to do with her.” He smirked.
It took everything in Dylan to keep from cold-cocking the guy, but he knew that would only fuel the man’s speculation about Dylan’s involvement with Tara. Besides that, no one—least of all Tara—would benefit from a fistfight in town hall.
Still fuming, Dylan left and drove toward the Wharton place. As he rounded the highway curve, he noticed a white sedan parked at a sharp angle on the shoulder, as if the driver had stopped abruptly. He recognized it as Tara’s rental car, but she wasn’t inside. Where the hell was she?
Then he noticed the orange cones and dangling caution tape. This was the accident site. She must have gone down the embankment. That would be like her. If she couldn’t get Fallon to tell her what she wanted to know, she’d find it out herself, by God.
With a sigh, he parked and jogged across the highway to the caved-in guardrail. Looking down the slope, he caught a flash of Tara’s red shirt, so he stepped over the barrier and headed after her, passing crushed bushes, broken branches of mesquite and palo verde, and gouged trunks—damage the tow truck had likely contributed to.
“Tara? It’s Dylan,” he called so he wouldn’t startle her. She got up from the boulder she’d been sitting on, and turned to him. She was breathing hard and chewing on her lip, trying not to cry. She looked small, beaten down and sad. Beyond her, a tree had been nearly snapped in half. Had to be where the car ended its fall.
What a terrible thing for her to see.
He started closer, but she stepped back, as if afraid he might hold her and she might lose control. He saw she gripped a cell phone in both hands.
She swallowed hard. “Look at all this.” She motioned at the ground, covered with glittering pieces of safety glass, chunks of plastic, twisted strips of metal, broken bulbs, torn padding and wires. “This is all evidence. It should have been collected.”
“This is a lot to take in, Tara,” he started, wanting to get her away from this horror.
She held up one of the phones. “This has to be my father’s. It’s the old flip style. He