The Mill wasn’t just a business. It was her laboratory. Her baby.
Now, it was gone.
On top of everything else that had happened over the last couple of weeks, it was almost too much to bear. It might have been were it not for the incredible man by her side.
“It’s no accident that Doc came into your life at this particular time. You’re meant to be together.”
Maggie’s words seemed more insightful than the hopeful, romantic notions Tina had originally thought them to be.
After they looked around, Doc accompanied her to the Sumneyville police station to talk to Chief Freed and Fire Chief Petraski. Doc hadn’t asked if she wanted him to, but she didn’t mind because the truth was, his presence didn’t weaken her. It made her stronger.
Bonus: Tina didn’t particularly care for either chief. In her opinion, they were nothing more than overgrown bullies with badges and—she believed—the primary malcontents behind local anti-Sanctuary sentiment.
“What’s he doing here?” Joe Eisenheiser asked, narrowing his eyes at Doc when they walked into the police station together.
Joe was one of the two full-time police officers in Sumneyville. Jerry Petraski, Chief Freed’s nephew and Fire Chief Petraski’s son, was the other.
“Providing moral support,” Doc said simply.
Joe ignored him and spoke only to Tina. “This doesn’t concern him.”
“It concerns me,” Tina said, “and I want him here. Chief Freed said he wanted to talk to me this morning. Is he here? Or should we come back another time?”
“Follow me,” Joe said, grudgingly leading them to a small conference room. “Have a seat. I’ll let the chief know you’re here.”
Doc held out the chair for Tina to sit down before taking a seat himself.
“So, you and Joe are good buddies, huh?” Tina asked once the door closed solidly behind Joe.
Doc smiled. “We’ve never been formally introduced.”
“But he knows who you are.”
“Yes. He knows.”
Tina waited for him to say something more. He didn’t. Instead, Doc looked pointedly around the room.
He met her eyes and mused quietly, “Do you think they watch a lot of cop shows?”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Tina’s lips quirked. The room did look like something right out of a crime drama. The furniture consisted of a plain, rectangular table and a set of uncomfortable metal chairs on either side. There were no windows. The walls were painted a drab, depressing shade of off-white. The only splash of color was the black corded phone hanging on the wall next to the door.
She wondered if Doc’s question was also a veiled warning that perhaps they were being watched or listened to. The room didn’t have the massive two-way mirror most made-for-TV interrogation rooms did, but when Tina looked around, she did spot a security camera mounted in one corner near the ceiling.
It seemed a little over the top for their tiny, mostly rural, mountain town. As television show comparisons went, Sumneyville was more like Mayberry than Chicago or New York. It wasn’t the type of place where hardened criminals made videotaped confessions to be presented in a court of law.
They preferred to handle their own business in Sumneyville. The less outsiders involved, the better. In fact, Tina could only think of one instance in recent memory that hadn’t been handled in-house, and that was when the chief’s son had gotten a wild hair and thought it would be a good idea to go up to Sanctuary with an attitude and a gun.
They probably would have squashed that, too, if they could have.
That could explain some of the current animosity between some townies and Sanctuary, but there had been issues even before that happened. Everyone had a different theory. Some were completely ridiculous—like Rick’s ramblings about them stockpiling weapons (ironic!) and seducing women, for example.
Others seemed more plausible, like an age-old feud between Matt’s and Daryl’s granddaddies. Or the popular rumor that Matt had done wrong by Daryl’s sister, Hayley. Matt and Hayley had been quite the power couple back in high school before Hayley suddenly left town and Matt joined the Navy.
Matt and Daryl were probably the only ones who knew for sure. Matt wasn’t likely to say, and Daryl was likely to lie.
Tina and Doc waited. And waited. Tina got up and paced the small space several times—not just out of impatience, but also because when she sat too long, her joints got stiff and achy.
“What’s taking so long?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
Doc’s eyes followed her around the room. He knew the answer, too. Making them wait was a power play.