a tiny table—someone else slept on the table above him. He thought it hadn’t been long after that time that Ana had disappeared forever, leaving Niall at the mercy of her so-called friends.
Mat spoke again. “And that was my sheriff TED Talk; thank you for coming. The next is from me, Mat. Not Sheriff Dempsey, just Mat.”
Niall eyed him warily.
“I liked that you texted me. I liked it a lot.” He settled himself more comfortably in his chair, taking another sip of his coffee. Niall waited for him to continue talking, but he didn’t.
“That’s it? You liked it?”
“Yep.”
“You are…” Niall shook his head.
“Great? Wonderful? Patient and understanding? I’m very patient.”
Ignoring Mat’s words for the moment, Niall said, “I finally got my separation paperwork.” To be honest, he didn’t think Mat was very patient, but maybe this wasn’t the time to point that out. He considered telling Mat about the box and Shay Delacombe but decided he needed to think about that a little longer.
Mat’s dark eyebrows lifted toward his hairline. He nodded in understanding. “Oh, yeah? I bet that feels weird.”
“I never thought I’d be in this situation.”
“What do you mean?” Mat asked.
“Honestly?”
Mat nodded.
“I never thought I’d live this long. I assumed some perp would get to me. It’s not like cops generally have long life spans.” Niall tried to pick his words carefully. He’d been to plenty of service funerals, although he hadn’t attended the one for Mat’s father; it had been too soon after his own grandmother’s death, and he hadn’t felt like his presence would be missed… but maybe he’d been wrong about that.
“That’s one of the reasons I came back home, you know,” Mat said.
“I thought you moved back because your father died.”
“I did, but also being a small-town sheriff seemed a lot safer than working in San Francisco. Before Dad died, I was investigating a slew of gang killings and ended up getting death threats of my own.”
Niall cocked his head to the side. “Did you, do you, feel like you gave up?”
That was one of Niall’s worries: that he was giving up. Being a coward, leaving unsolved cases out there, victims with no justice and families with no closure. He hadn’t known about Mat’s run-in with gangs, and he was suddenly very glad Mat had decided to move back to Piedras.
“It was a struggle at first, I’ll admit,” Mat said slowly. “The island is small, but at the same time I feel like I have a real impact here. I’m not just fighting and not seeing anything change for the better. At the same time, I’m more visible and can’t have anonymous downtime.”
“I feel like I’m letting people down,” Niall admitted, the words practically burning his tongue as he uttered them out loud for the first time.
“You’re not.” Mat leaned forward into Niall’s space. “Have you ever thought about consulting? With your experience and record, I bet a lot of departments would be willing to pay for your expertise. Departments like mine that don’t have enough in the budget to hire an expert permanently but might need help with a tough case.”
“You’ve said repeatedly you don’t want my help.”
“Ah, now, don’t go twisting my words. You know very well there’s a difference between consulting and stopping by every time a change in the weather spooks you. And I don’t mean my office exclusively. I mean departments across the state, or even the country.”
Niall did know what Mat meant, but it didn’t make him feel any less like he was abandoning victims and their families. “There is something up with that RV.”
“I believe you.”
A simple statement that meant everything to Niall. He blinked, almost at a loss for words. “You do?”
“I do, but until something happens, we can’t do anything about it.”
Niall nodded. He knew that, of course, but having Mat say he believed him was more important to him than he’d realized.
“Sooo,” Mat drew out the word, “Birdy’s on duty tonight, and even though someone got me out of bed far too early, do you want to grab dinner later? I’d offer my place, but my sister Ella and her daughter are back staying with us—there’s some family stuff going on I haven’t told you about—and with them and my mom it’s probably a bit much right off the bat; they have no idea how to mind their own business. Lulu’s is open.” He waggled his eyebrows, waiting for Niall’s response.
Lulu’s. Niall had forgotten about the old-timer café located out near the airstrip. It