Operation Mountain Recovery Page 7

  Or maybe she’d just imagined that spark she’d felt when he’d touched her. Maybe it was all part of the downward spiral into madness, imagining things.

  Although she didn’t think she’d imagined how he’d suddenly had to go after they’d encountered Dr. Andler.

  Her mood crashed. She’d been so hideously embarrassed by that whole scene. Being treated like such a helpless child in front of a man like the deputy had been utterly humiliating. Especially when she had been feeling so good until the moment when Dr. Andler had shattered the mood.

  She should do exactly what her mother had said, stay here, holed up, read a book, binge-watch some movies, something...safe.

  Something moved outside, drawing her gaze. She saw a tiny bird on a snowy branch, apparently looking at its reflection in the window. It looked chipper, cheerful, as if this little bit of snow was nothing, even if it was a third its height.

  Even this tiny, fragile bird had more strength, more gumption than she did.

  She was on her feet and heading for her bedroom and warm clothes before she could talk herself out of it.

  And she tossed the pill into her wastebasket.

  * * *

  When he saw Ashley walking toward him on Mountain View, Brady was torn between the urge to go to her and the urge to run the other way. He would do neither. The decision sounded a bit like a stern order in his head, which made him grimace inwardly. But he was doing his monthly security check with the businesses in town, and that’s what he would continue doing.

  But he could see her face, her expression. It was the same smiling, happy look that had so captured him on Sunday. She was walking with confidence, moving with a grace and feminine sway that nearly stopped him in his tracks. She had the demeanor of a self-assured, at-ease woman, enjoying a walk through the crisp winter air.

  A demeanor he’d seen from her before.

  The demeanor that had crumbled before his eyes when Dr. Andler had arrived to shatter her calm.

  He didn’t know what that meant. His gut wanted to make the doctor the bad guy, to believe that instead of helping her he was somehow causing that change, but he was afraid that was because of his own antagonism toward the man. Maybe it was simply that the doctor had reminded her of her problems—maybe she’d been able to put them aside for a few hours. Although he wasn’t sure mental disorders worked like that. And not knowing which type she had, he couldn’t research it to find out.

  Not that he would. He’d warned himself off, right? No way he was getting tangled up with someone that fragile, whose mental balance was so delicate the simple appearance of her shrink in an ordinary setting could send her off the edge. He didn’t ever want to witness anyone—especially the lively, funny, smart, beautiful woman he’d been sitting with until that moment—disintegrating like that again.

  The sun broke through the clouds, not in a shaft of light but a full, brilliant explosion of illumination hitting the new snow, and instantly the whole world seemed to glitter and dazzle. Pedestrians stopped walking and looked, one of the things he loved about his people. He heard the light, airy laugh of someone taking a deep sort of pleasure in the suddenly gilded world.

  He knew that laugh.

  He looked back down the street. Saw her again. And that he’d been right; she was the one laughing, smiling, looking around as if she were drinking it all in with delight.

  She spotted him. For a moment she went utterly still. Even from here he could see her lips part, and his imagination supplied a deep intake of breath. And then she was walking again, straight at him, and he was the one frozen in place. She was smiling that smile, as if the sight of him was as delightful to her as that burst of sunshine. And he simply could not move.

  “Deputy Crenshaw,” she said as she came to a halt before him.

  He had to again stifle the urge to tell her to call him Brady. Not that he was certain he could have spoken at all. Her eyes were that rich, bright green again, clear and focused. They were rimmed with thick, dark lashes that had him wondering insanely what they would feel like brushing against his skin.

  Okay, maybe insane wasn’t a good word to be even thinking, given the circumstances.

  “You look...well,” he finally managed to say. Which was, he realized, one of the greater understatements he’d ever made.

  “Thank you, I feel wonderful today.” He heard the deep breath this time. “May I buy you coffee today? I’d like to...apologize.”

  He knew what she meant, and that was murky water he did not want to wade into. He reminded himself of his determination not to get in any deeper with her. “There’s nothing you need to apologize for.”

  “Then perhaps I should apologize for my doctor, who was less than polite to you and managed to reduce me to a quivering child,” she said, her tone very dry.

  It startled him. He hadn’t thought she would have noticed the man’s coolness toward him, or at the least toward the uniform. People didn’t always notice or care about the person wearing it. He sometimes joked that if society ever went to actual robocops, it wouldn’t be much of a change for some people, since that’s what they already thought anyway.

  “Not your job to apologize for him, either,” he said. “But he is a bit...much.” He ended with a shrug, keeping his reasons to himself.

  “Amazing what putting an Ivy League degree on your wall will do for your ego.”

  He laughed. Remembered how often he had laughed that Sunday. And how much time afterward he’d spent wondering what he would have done, if she’d been someone else. If she hadn’t been that fragile woman on a razor’s edge of sanity.

  He had a fairly strong suspicion he would have asked her out. Because of how she made him laugh, if nothing else; that was rare enough in his world. Of course, that she had those eyes and that mouth that had him wondering things he hadn’t thought in a long time had nothing to do with it...

  “Please?”

  He realized he’d never really answered her invitation. And when he did, it wasn’t what he’d intended, which had been a polite, tactful refusal. “Only if I buy,” he said. “It feels wrong to me to let a citizen buy when I’m on duty.”

  There. He’d categorized her now. She was a citizen of the county he was sworn to protect, that was all.

  “Those are some pretty strong ethics there, Deputy.” She sounded half teasing, but also admiring, and that warmed him more than it should have. “To each our own, then?”

  At her lead they went into the bakery this time, and he wondered if she was avoiding the coffee shop her shrink appeared to frequent. Or maybe she simply wanted the banana muffin she bought to go with her drink, today hot chocolate. Which suddenly sounded so good to him he bought one, too, although he passed on the muffin.

  “If they could bottle the smell of those cinnamon rolls, I think they’d sell it by the case,” she said as she walked toward a table in the corner.

  “But you didn’t get one.”

  “Only once a month. Waistline,” she said succinctly.

  “Nothing wrong with yours.” Oh, brilliant, Crenshaw. Way to keep things professional.

  “Or yours.” He hadn’t expected that. Or her teasing addition of, “You obviously don’t fit the old, tired cop stereotype about doughnuts.”

  He grimaced. “If I never heard that one again, I’d be happy.”

  He took two long strides around her and reached to pull out a chair at the small table. He gestured her to it then took the other, which faced out into the shop.

  “Why do I feel a bit...herded?”

  She said it lightly, so he gave her a crooked smile. “Points for noticing. I hate having my back to the door. Occupational hazard.”

  It was a couple of minutes and about half a muffin later that she asked, “So how does it work, your job here? I know the sheriff is responsible for the whole county, but is it divided up?”

>   He nodded. “Into ten districts. The county’s just under two thousand square miles.”

  Her eyes widened. “That’s a lot. How many of you are there?”

  His mouth quirked. “I believe the required answer is ‘Not enough.’”

  She smiled. It really was a great smile. “Are the districts all the same size?”

  “No. Down on the flats, they’re smaller, because that’s where more of the population is. So there are six districts there, and only four up here in the mountains. Population of the county is just over a hundred thousand, if you’re into numbers. But a lot of the cities down there have dedicated police departments, so our jurisdiction is outside those.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  He shrugged. “Only if the maps aren’t clear.”

  “What about your district? How big is it?”

  “About two hundred square miles.”

  She gaped at him. “That’s...huge.”

  “Only about fifteen by fifteen miles. And outside town, the population’s a bit sparse, so...” He shrugged again.

  “But if you’re at one end and something happens at the other?”

  He gave her a wry smile. “And there you have it, the challenge. Try it when there’s another few feet of snow on the ground.”

  She went suddenly quiet, her gaze seemingly turned inward. “I...never realized how lucky I was last week, that you were there, behind me, on that road at that moment.”

  “I’m just glad I was.”

  He meant it. Especially since the other option would probably have been finding her frozen body days or weeks later, if not next spring. And for all her problems, all her confusion, he wouldn’t want to see that.

  Chapter 10

  Brady hated when things nagged at him. Especially when he suspected he was not being completely honest with himself, something he could usually tell by the way his mind skittered away from certain aspects of the problem.

  Like when he kept not thinking about the simple fact that Ashley Jordan had mental health issues.

  He’d run into her—and he’d swear it was not intentional, but what was he supposed to do when there was only one coffee place in town?—every day this week since Wednesday, and she’d been that charming, witty, together woman every time. It was like that other woman, teetering on the edge, was the product of his imagination, not the other way around.

  And yet...the snow tires, the heading through the mountains when she was only supposed to be going into town, the confusion over the doctor’s appointment, the way she’d practically collapsed when confronted with the reminder of her mental state in the person of Dr. Andler, and her family history. And that was only what he personally had encountered. What he’d just discovered now just pounded it all home.

  He sat at the computer workstation at the office—their small budget didn’t run to a station at every desk—and stared at the screen. He’d resisted doing the search and had only given in after he’d gotten off duty today because it was a quiet Sunday evening and no one would see him doing it. Why that mattered, when there would be a record of his search on the computer, he wasn’t sure.

  Probably, he admitted ruefully, because he’d been afraid he’d find just what he’d found and wasn’t sure how he would react. But apparently all he was capable of was sitting here staring at the incontrovertible evidence. Multiple instances over the last five months, ever since Ashley had come to stay with her mother, that made it clear she was one confused woman. He supposed it was only chance and timing that he hadn’t encountered her personally before that day down the mountain.

  She’d been found lost and disoriented by some hikers near the falls. The responding deputy reported that she didn’t know how she’d gotten there. She’d been found a week later walking along the highway a couple of miles from town. Same answer: she didn’t know how she’d gotten there.

  Scariest of all was when she’d been cornered by a pair of unpleasant male tourists who’d apparently decided to take sexual advantage of her confusion, until she was spotted by a passing off-duty firefighter who had stepped in.

  After that, her mother had realized the seriousness of the situation, and usually she was reported missing before she was found. And as it continued to happen, supplemental reports about her mother’s distraught state started to appear. Whatever polished front she presented as a small-town politician vanished when she was dealing with her daughter’s obvious and steady decline. Somehow that made him like her better. It couldn’t have been easy, being made a single mom by her husband’s suicide. Maybe her brisk exterior was just a defense.

  He kept reading, reluctantly because the record was chronicling that decline so clearly. And as the weather changed, cooled toward fall, what had been simple became complex, culminating in her being found in the predawn hours outside city hall, without any jacket or shoes on an early October morning, the day of the first frost of the season. Her story then was that she was waiting for her mother to arrive, that her mother had told her she was on the way.

  Her mother, the report said, had been sound asleep at home all night. The officer who’d responded to the house had awakened her.

  Ashley had spent the morning at the clinic that time, then was transported to a psychiatric facility for observation. She had been released—after her mother’s tearful intervention and promise to keep her safe—but the incidents continued.

  Brady tapped a finger on the table, still staring at the screen. Sometimes having influence isn’t always for the best. Maybe she’d have been better off...locked up somewhere.

  He had trouble even thinking it, because the images of the woman he’d seen—the other woman, not the broken, terrified one—kept surfacing in his brain. Her bright, clear eyes, that incredible smile, her quick wit, her way of speaking...how could that woman be mentally crumbling?

  But then, maybe that was it. Maybe the woman he’d encountered this week was the upswing side, and the one who’d answered the door two days after the crash was the downswing. Or maybe her problem was some kind of multiple-personality thing. Maybe one side of her was that charmer, and the other side was the...basket case.

  He cringed at the phrase.

  You just don’t want that to be her. Because for the first time since Liz, you’re actually attracted to a woman. Or are you just attracted to her because she’s...troubled? You become a glutton for punishment, Crenshaw?

  Maybe he’d just developed some kind of savior complex.

  Does your job run to rescuing everyone?

  Her teasing words that had brought on an admission he didn’t usually make played back in his head. Had she, for all her confusion, nailed him that easily?

  Maybe he was the one who was confused.

  You’re job’s not to save all the birds with a wing down. You’re just supposed to protect this little corner of the world. Maybe you need to take some time to think about who you are—a good cop—and who the hell you’re not—Superman.

  But then he thought of the Foxworths. And their dog, supposedly indicating Ashley had a problem. As if he hadn’t already known that. But the Foxworths, who were far from fools, insisted Cutter’s actions indicated the problem was something they—and apparently he, although how he’d ended up in the dog’s calculations he didn’t know—could help fix.

  Okay, now you’re believing a dog’s assessment of a situation? Kinda puts your own mental health in question, doesn’t it?

  By the time he reached this point, his head was spinning. And on impulse he pulled out his phone and made a call. Sergeant Celeski didn’t hesitate to give him a few days off, but then he shouldn’t; not only were the holidays over, but Brady hadn’t taken a vacation in over three years. And a few minutes after he’d gotten a hearty “Take all the time you need,” he was back in his vehicle, wondering what he’d just done to himself.

  At least if he wasn’t patrolli
ng in town every day, he wasn’t going to be running into her.

  Nope, just plain running.

  He grimaced inwardly at his own self-assessment. He started the motor, despite not knowing where he was going to go. Home? He would, but if he did, there was always something to do to distract him, some repair to be made or maintenance to be done, and he needed to think. Seriously, honestly think. He wasn’t real happy with himself right now, felt like he was heading toward disaster with this whole Ashley Jordan thing, and he needed to get his head straight.

  And there was only one place to do that, for him.

  The weather had cleared, just as a blazingly brilliant full moon was rising. Moonlight on new snow turned the world silver, and he barely needed the headlights to find his way. The roads were practically deserted on this quiet Sunday night, most of the shops in town closed and most of his people home and safe by now. Celeski always reminded him that when he was off duty, they technically weren’t his people or his problem, but he couldn’t change the way he felt. He loved this place, these people, these mountains, and if somebody was in trouble, it was a gut-level reaction in him to want to help.

  But right now, he was the one who needed help. He reached down and snapped off first the radio in the unit, then removed the walkie-talkie and shut it off, too. If they really needed him for some disaster, enough to call him in from off duty, then they could use his cell. He had things to deal with.

  The question of the moment was, why was he feeling so compelled to help someone whose problem was way outside his experience? Simply because she had gorgeous green eyes and a great smile? Was he that shallow?

  He tried to focus on the beauty around him as he drove the winding road to the lookout. The unspoiled swaths of pure white snow, the stark relief of the shadows of the trees caused by the silver light that gave everything an unearthly feel—it all should inspire awe, wonder, and yet he was so damned tangled up in his head, he was missing the splendor of it.