Country Proud (Painted Pony Creek #2) - Linda Lael Miller Page 0,1
required reports. Then sheriff at the time, Dutch McKutchen, had been out of town that day, taking his wife, Clara, for her first round of chemotherapy, so he’d missed the action.
Upon his return, Dutch made up for lost time by reaming out his “brain-dead idiot of a deputy” for the better part of half an hour. “When you approach an armed suspect,” he’d raged, “you have your weapon drawn and ready. You do not go into a situation like some fricking hotshot TV cowboy—you could have been killed!”
After the lecture, Dutch had bought Eli a drink over at Sully’s Bar and Grill, told him not to come near the department until he’d been (1) debriefed by the appropriate state officials, and (2) cleared by an officially sanctioned shrink.
Eli smiled sadly, remembering Dutch. The old man had died of a heart attack ten years ago, a month into his retirement, while fishing up at Flathead Lake.
Deciding his thoughts had taken an unnecessarily grim turn, Eli lowered his hands, sat forward with a creak of the springs under his chair and stood.
Given some of the problems he’d faced, he reckoned a potential blizzard wasn’t the worst thing that could happen in his county. Not by a long shot.
Most likely, the storm would fizzle out before it did any real damage. Those weather people, in his opinion, were given to drama.
Just the same, Eli felt a little uneasy.
His sister, Sara, would say he was borrowing trouble.
Dutch McKutchen would have told him to pull his head out of his backside and be grateful for all the good things in his life. Like his two best friends, Cord Hollister and J.P. McCall. And his job, which he loved, about 85 percent of the time. He had a fair amount of money put away, savings and an inheritance from his and Sara’s paternal grandparents, and he owned his house and a few acres of land outright.
Had a good truck, too. Paid for, and still under warranty.
And then there was Brynne Bailey, back home to stay.
Brynne, his high school sweetheart. The girl he’d essentially betrayed
Eli was thankful that she’d returned to the Creek, for sure. Never mind that she barely gave him the proverbial time of day, probably still carried a torch for the man she’d left behind in Boston. But she was here now, in Painted Pony Creek, Montana, running her parents’ popular restaurant and bar, Bailey’s.
And speaking of Bailey’s...
He’d agreed—a little reluctantly—to meet his friends there for coffee and a few rounds of good old-fashioned bullshit.
Eli checked his watch. It was one of those jazzy Dick Tracy gizmos, a Christmas gift from Sara and her kids, Eric and Hayley.
A text bounced off some satellite and came in for a landing with a ping, startling him a little. He wasn’t all that big on modern technology; sometimes wished he’d been born in the days of swinging saloon doors, dance-hall girls, dusty streets and buckboards.
He shook his head, amused.
He was a seasoned officer—he’d stood toe to toe with armed criminals, not just that once, but half a dozen times over the course of his career, but this damn watch made him jumpy. God only knew what it was up to, behind that chunky square face...communicating with aliens, maybe. Or tracking his every move and reporting to—whom? Men in black? The Illuminati? Walmart?
Amos Edwards, one of his deputies, was big on conspiracy theories, and he’d taken a dim view of the device, claiming that “they”—whoever “they” might be—were using all forms of technology to spy on law-abiding citizens as they went about their daily lives. Intimate moments included.
Eli chuckled ruefully. Videos of his moments, intimate or otherwise, would be boring as hell.
He swiped the tiny screen to bring up the text.
It was from Cord. J.P. and I are here. Are you on your way, or out somewhere making Wild Horse County safe for Democracy?
He grinned. Managed to access the tiny virtual keyboard and bumble-fingered out, Be there in five minutes. At least, that was what he’d intended to say. The actual message read as if it had been punched in by a chimpanzee.
Cord and J.P. would just have to decode it for themselves.
* * *
BRYNNE BAILEY LIKED SNOW. Didn’t mind driving in the stuff, or shoveling the sidewalk in front of the café. In fact, it was romantic, especially around this time of year.
By February, of course, she’d probably be whistling a different tune. Longing for spring and mooning over seed catalogs and websites pitching tropical vacations.