“She’s not here, Sheriff,” the Deputy said, coming out of the bathroom after looking in the closets and every other possible hiding place in the room. “Are we sure this is her room?”
“Quite sure,” he said. “After she made the reservation I updated it and got my own key.”
The Deputy arched an eyebrow, but he didn’t question the Sheriff. No one ever did. At least, they hadn’t since the last fool had come at him, guns ablaze, claiming he had information that would end him. He’d laughed in the man’s face as he lay at the end of a dirt road, hands up, begging and pleading for his life right before the Sheriff had pulled the trigger. The bullet had gone through, and with a callousness that shocked even him, the Sheriff had turned the dying man on his side, dug the bullet out of the rock it had embedded itself in and picked up the casing.
Then, he’d walked away without a backward glance, leaving the man to bleed out slowly after pushing his car into the Squaw Creek Reservoir. There were plenty of wild animals to take care of the body, and the farm at the end of the dirt road had been vacant for almost twenty years.
That was five years ago, and neither the car nor the dead man had been found in that time. And the Sheriff had enjoyed years of running his town how he saw fit without any pushback.
Until now.
This Federal Agent was putting a damper on his well-laid plans, and she was going to have to be dealt with. He would have to be careful about it, since she was a Federal Agent. But it wasn’t anything that the Sheriff couldn’t handle.
The Deputy got closer, pitching his voice low so that the other officers couldn’t hear him.
“Dale, do you think she knows?” he asked.
The Sheriff smirked.
“She stole Robin’s files on Addie, but there’s nothing in there that’s going to make sense to her. She doesn’t know a damn thing, Keith.”
“I hope not.”
Keith stood up, nodding at an officer that walked past with the overnight bag that Senora had left near her bed. When that officer and the other one had gone out the door, Keith leaned over to the Sheriff again, his voice low in case the officers returned unannounced.
“Do you think Ty is still with her? How are you going to deal with her if she’s with him?”
The Sheriff’s face turned red, the urge to backhand Keith strong.
“I have it under control,” Dale said through clenched teeth as he adjusted his uniform collar. “You should know better than to question my abilities.”
“I’m not questioning that,” Keith insisted quickly. “But Ty does throw a wrench in the plans.”
“Ty won’t bother with her. He only looks out for his own, and she’s a stranger. She might be with him now, but she’ll break away soon enough, and I’ll take care of her then.”
“Won’t the FBI come looking for her?”
One of the other officers walked back into the room just then, and Dale forced himself to smile calmly and let go of Keith’s words. It had been years since they had had to tie up a loose end, and Addie’s disappearance hadn’t gone as planned. Because they’d been operating without incident for so long, Keith was nervous and his nerves were getting the better of him. Dale was going to have to figure out a way to rein him in and quick. They couldn’t handle any more mistakes, and Dale didn’t want to have to take out one of his own Deputies.
Dale and Keith milled about the room for a moment, making a show of digging through drawers and looking under pillows and behind the dresser while the officer was still in the room. Unaware that anything was amiss, the officer continued to look around the room while Keith cast nervous glances in Dale’s direction now and then. Dale ignored him and busied himself with the closet even though it had already been cleared.
“Sheriff, over here,” the officer said with some urgency.
Dale perked up, going to the back window where the officer had pulled the curtain open. The window was closed but for a finger’s width of space, and there was no screen.
“Could they have gone that way?” Keith whispered in awe under his breath.
Dale looked down at the ground below and shook his head.
“There’s no way she would have survived that distance without a broken leg. And how did the window get closed again? There’s nowhere to stand while you close it. It was left open. I’m sure she saw us pull up when she was already in the hallway and just went out the back or something. There’s a window at the end of the hall, and it has a clear line of sight to the parking lot. It wouldn’t take a gigantic mental leap for her to figure out that we were coming here to talk to her.
Not sure why that would cause her to run, but it seems to me that her actions prove that the missing, confidential files at Robin’s office aren’t just misplaced or somewhere else; Senora Edwards has them, and I want to know why.”
The officer nodded his understanding, still looking out across the short, grassy field and into the dense forest beyond. Dale wanted to move him out of the room and out of the way, but the officer was thinking, and Dale knew that meant the man wasn’t about to move. He was a thinker and a do-gooder, and just the kind of overachiever that Dale wished he hadn’t hired. But he was there, and Dale knew that he wouldn’t walk away until he’d looked at the situation from all angles.
“Do you think that she went that way from the hall? There’s a rear exit, right? I bet she went into the woods with Ty. Isn’t that the way to the preserve?”
Dale shrugged.
“She might have gone that way, but I don’t know why she would. Going into those woods with a man she just met isn’t any safer than talking to us.”
The officer nodded.
“Look, I’ll send some guys out on the four-wheelers to look for her, but I doubt that she went that way. She’s from D.C., big city girl. She’s not going to just run into the woods because some guy tells her to. She’s around here somewhere; we just have to find her.”
“And if she has the missing files?” the officer asked.
“We’ll ask for them back and make her copies. She’s FBI; there’s no reason for her to steal files. I’m sure this is just a simple misunderstanding, but I also can’t have confidential patient files running off.”
Dale smiled wide, his natural charisma disarming the suspicious officer. Dale knew the moment that the officer decided that Dale was right. He was the Sheriff, after all. And a well-respected member of the community and a decorated peace officer. The officer took one more look out the window, then moved toward the door.
“We’ve got it covered here,” Dale said to the officer. “I’ll get on the radio if we need any more help.”
The officer nodded, and just like that, he was gone.
Dale let out a huge sigh and looked out the window.
“I don’t know how she did it, but that girl is in those woods with Ty. We need to stop them before they get to the preserve and out of our grasp.”
“Sheriff?” Keith asked, his confused expression irritating Dale.
“We can’t very well let her get away with those files,” Dale said curtly. “We can’t let some FBI peon ruin everything.”
“Did Addie tell Robin what happened to her?”
“I don’t know, Keith,” Dale ground out through clenched teeth. “I don’t know what that girl even remembered, but we can’t take the chance, no matter how slim the possibility is that she told Robin. We need to get a handle on this thing.”
“Understood,” Keith said. “I’ll get the four-wheelers, and we’ll head out.”
“Take Jed and Bubba.”
“Are you coming?”
“No. I have to deal with the Medical Examiner. Those wolves did a shit job of destroying the evidence.”
Keith stood for a moment, shifting from one foot to another and looking at Dale for the longest time before he finally spoke.
“Maybe we should get out of town,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to be here when it hits the fan.”
“Everything is going to be fine if you just remain calm and do as I say. Find Senora and get those files from her. Smooth talk her, offer to make her certified copies, do whatever you have to do to get those files back.”
“And if she won’t give them to me?”
Dale narrowed his eyes, looking over Keith’s shoulder to the forest behind the hotel.
“If she won’t give them up, then we’ll have to kill her.”