like I was seeing Ted for the first time and it made me realize something, if I were being honest.
I liked this Ted.
“Thanks, Ted,” I said. With that, he tipped his hat and put the shotgun away. He went back to his polishing as if Biker Ted had never been there, slipping easily back into the role of Hardware Store Ted.
“You tell him I said hello,” He added, as if I just came in to buy a quart of oil.
I was touched by Ted’s offer, but what I really needed right then was someone who had a connection.
A way in.
There was only one person I knew who could help me. With one last wave to Ted I rushed out the door in search of the only person in Jessep who had such a connection.
And who may or may not hate my guts.
* * *
I found Buck in his cruiser behind the diner, exactly where Ted had said he would be. He wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, and although I couldn’t see his eyes, I knew they were shut. His head was tilted back against the reclined seat, his mouth wide open as he snored away. The sun reflected off his badge as he breathed in and out, making it look as if it were a light bulb being turned on and off.
“Bucky!” I shouted, slamming my open palm on the roof of the cruiser, startling him back to consciousness. His head connected with the headliner as he jumped up in surprise.
“It’s Deputy Douglas,” he mumbled the familiar correction as he came out of his haze, catching his sunglasses as they fell off his face and rubbing the top of his head. “Thia?” he asked, squinting against the sun.
“The one and only,” I said, leaning up against the cruiser. Buck reached for the handle and I stepped back to let him out, but before he did so he put on his ridiculous wide-brimmed sheriff’s hat that made him look like Deputy Dog from the cartoon we used to watch as kids.
“So, the prodigal daughter returns,” Buck said in his slowest and thickest southern drawl. He hung his sunglasses from the collar of his shirt and assumed a very wide “I’m a police officer” stance, tucking his thumbs into his gun belt. “You know, last time you left I thought I’d never see you again, especially after your boyfriend decided to try and kill me,” he said the word boyfriend like he was waiting for me to correct him, and although I didn’t think that word was accurate enough to describe what we were, I didn’t have time to go over the specifics of our relationship.
“In all fairness Buck, you were being an ass by locking me in that cell, but never mind. There isn’t time for that. I need your help. That’s why I’m here.”
“Oh, now you need my help? We used to be friends, but six months ago I get a call that your parents are dead and that you’re on the run, but I didn’t hear it from you. I had to hear it from the sheriff himself. Then I find out that the guy you ran off with last time is now in jail for murder and you still never came to me. So tell me, Thia, why I should help you now, when my oldest friend couldn’t be bothered to come to me in the first place?” This time he didn’t seem pissed. The sarcasm that he put up when I first banged on the roof had faded away. His shoulders fell. The front he tried so hard to put in place was shattering.
Buck wasn’t angry.
He was hurt.
Suddenly, I felt bad, although what he was saying wasn’t entirely true. “We’d grown apart, Buck. It wasn’t like you were the best of friend to me either. Once my family started falling apart and the entire town started calling me Crazy Thia Andrews, it was like I didn’t exist to you anymore.”
“I might be the law, but you could have come to me.” Buck dropped the official stance, mirroring me and leaning up against the cruiser. “You have to have known you could have come to me, Thia.” Buck and I used to share everything, and me not going to him when my parents died was because of one very simple reason. I never thought to. I thought of Bear, getting to him, and nothing else.
“I’m here now,” I said. “And I promise, I’ll tell you everything you want to