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Jenny Hoyt leaned back in the chair still chuckling softly as Beau Arlen turned back to his food with all seriousness. The lines around his eyes betrayed his own humor but she also recognized in the set of his shoulders how unsure he seemed to be at their exchange.
The morning had started early, too early. She had just returned home from celebrating the successful recovery of her partner, Mo Poppernak. The three had enjoyed each other’s company at the Boot Heel but, while Beau had cheekily suggested they should just get drunk, none of them had really gone overboard in no small part due to Poppernak’s head injury.
They had parted just before midnight and as Jenny was just settling into bed, Cassie had called her with the news of the fire. Cassie had pretty much stumbled onto what she believed was a blue-and-white Suburban, that might be tied to her missing backpacker case, burning just outside federal parklands. Jenny agreed to meet her out there at dawn to hike out to the site in order to start a formal investigation.
Jenny hung up with Cassie and sent a text to Beau to let him know she would be late the next morning, not expecting a response. He had sent a text back though and then had joined them both just before sunrise. The half-mile or so trek out to the site had been easy. The hike itself was over moderate terrain but Jenny had once again been drawn into the camaraderie between Beau and her best friend she’d first experienced at movie night. Some day she would need to corner Cassie and find out how and when that all started.
The homicide call that came later dampened Beau’s mood and Jenny couldn’t blame him. They had only just wrapped up a murder investigation and here was another. Thankfully, most criminals were not the super-geniuses depicted in movies. If jumping on the hood of a moving classic 1979 Trans Am this morning wasn’t enough to put a smile on Beau’s face, they had tracked down both perpetrators and recovered a baseball card, of all things, worth more than twelve million dollars.
Jenny grinned again as she watched Beau glance over his shoulder to Cassie before reaching over to steal a few nachos from Cassie’s plate. He looked back towards Jenny with a wink and a shrug. “She’s done anyway.”
Jenny looked over to the bar and saw her friend still in quite an intense conversation with the man who had pulled her away from them and nodded. “Yeah, she’s done.”
In more ways than just dinner, she added in thought.
She glanced back at Beau just in time to catch him looking away and back to his food with an intensity that once again betrayed him. He’d been watching her.
She thought back to earlier in the day, when their banter regarding dating cops had started. While she’d been dodging Officer Knox “Like the Fort” Lister’s advances, she had been intensely aware of Beau’s, not even remotely subtle, eavesdropping. Beau’s teasing after Officer Lister had excused himself had been both good natured and fishing. They both had been dancing around what had happened the night of the Cutter murder and not sure how, or even if, they should address it.
Just sayin’, I think he likes ya.
Well, I don’t date cops. At least, not anymore.
Copy that.
Jenny turned her eyes back to Cassie at the bar. She wasn’t sure why she’d answered Beau’s unspoken probing question the way she had. Fear was the immediate answer now that she was deciding to unpack the morning’s events here with him, right there, at the table next to her. But she found herself immediately insisting it was nothing more than just some unlocalized, free-floating anxiety about someone new in her life.
But even that back-and-forth internal dialogue fell flat. If she was being truly honest with herself, she knew the real reason.
Jenny was a perceptive person, it’s what made her a good cop. But this was a different thing altogether. Even now, without checking, she could feel him looking her way again. She could feel the ebb and flow of his presence as if there were some tangible thing she could reach out and touch. It had been disturbing and she had tried to stay away and ignore it since that first case with Travis.
Her chest clenched as thoughts of him resurfaced. She wondered where Travis was now, chasing his windmills and lost in grief.
Nowhere good, Jenny thought, thinking of that short affair. That was only a few months ago and, she realized with some surprise, that she actually never really loved Travis. Her thoughts once more turned down the path she was trying not to go, especially in this public setting. But it was too late.
Jenny had only been out of the hospital for a short time recovering from the shooting just six months prior. She had told Cassie “damn slow” at the time and thrown herself into that relationship for all the wrong reasons. She’d told herself that it was just a fling at first. A good looking man she already knew, at least she thought she’d known, and a couple of nights of some pretty satisfying sex. Jenny had let herself believe it was more than that up until she realized Travis had been using her.
But she’d been lying to herself, too. What she’d felt for him wasn’t actually anything more than a diversion. Neither one of them came out of that relationship looking good. She had used him as equally as he’d used her and, as much as she wanted to condemn him for trying to hide his grief in a vendetta, he had only been a reflection of her own desire to hide from her own grief.
Cody.
Jenny breathed silently through the wave of emotion that rose.
It hasn’t even been a year yet, the thought came and she pushed it away. She was not going to do this here.
Her attention was slowly drawn once more to Beau. He was openly watching her and she could almost hear the gears turning over in his brain as he tried to understand the sudden change in her body language. He was perceptive in his own right and it would do her well to remember he’d more than earned his position as Sheriff.
She turned slowly then to look at him. His gaze reflected back at her like looking into a mirror. There, then, was the reason she had pushed him away that morning. It was the story buried in his eyes warning her. Taking that step wouldn’t be easy and it would be off a cliff into a fall so hard there would be no climbing out again. It was something so tangible, if she reached out, she knew she would be both warmed and burned by it.
The emotion in his eyes shifted as if he had come to the same conclusion. Concern seemed to radiate from him now and she saw the question he was about to ask.
Please don’t. Not here. I can’t. She thought with a quick glance around at the very public, very full, early dinner crowd around them.
Beau opened his mouth and it was there on the edge of his lips but he paused and looked away.
“You ready to go? We should get back to the office,” he said instead and balled up his napkin. His voice was overly calm and nonchalant as if they hadn’t just been on the edge of an intense emotional moment.
Jenny cleared her throat to steady her voice. “Yup.”
Beau flagged down the waiter and paid the bill. Jenny’s grief gave way to relief as Beau seemed to let this moment pass by as well. The energy between them lost its intensity and settled back into something more relaxed.
He was a good friend, Jenny thought then with a rueful smile. It was something she’d known, felt instinctively, but not actually accepted consciously until this moment.
But that restored calmness didn’t last as Cassie caught them just as they reached the door and Jenny saw the near panic in her friend’s eyes.
“Jenny! Denise just called. Someone broke into the office.”
end.