Page 44 of Her Boss

Because the only woman in that town I wanted was the one I’d brought with me.

Keenan seemed genuinely surprised. “No? You’ve got the willpower of a stoic, Trafford. Her… special service is kind of the worst kept secret in town. Everyone knows what comes with one of the rooms there. Storey can hardly be blamed for pride in ownership—of both his woman and his establishment.”

Holy shit.

“This town,” I muttered, shaking my head.

“You have no idea,” Keenan drawled. “Look, before the meeting, I’ll take you and Geneva for a little stroll. Give you a tour. Promise it’ll be, ah, worth your while.”

Of that I had no doubt.

“Shall we?” Keenan set off walking down the trail, and I followed. He decided to change the subject. “I think we should bring in someone else to help us with this. Someone who knows this area and its people better than even I do.”

I nodded in agreement. “Makes sense.” They needed all the help they could get. “Who is it?”

Keenan glanced back at me as he walked, his gaze lingering on me a heartbeat longer than it needed to. “Ford.”

I gave a low whistle. “You sure about that?”

Ford Matthis had been the sheriff of White Valley for going on twenty years. Roughly the same age as me, he was a gruff, no-nonsense sort of man, but his heart was, generally, in the right place. I’d met him a time or two, long ago, but we definitely did not travel in the same circles.

Never had.

“He’s who we’re meeting with today. Sorry for the short notice, but I wasn’t even sure he’d agree to talk to you at all. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Sure do.” I took no offense at it. He was the law, and I worked—generally—outside the boundaries of it.

It was just the way things were.

“Ah, here we are,” Keenan said, a note of pleasure in his voice. The sun finally broke through, a bright beam of it angling down from a gap in the clouds, illuminating the western side of town. “God’s eye. Don’t see one of those every day.”

I took a moment to admire it too, my only regret that Geneva wasn’t there to enjoy it along with me.

Keenan’s voice sobered as he set off down the trail again. “Once we talk to Ford, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re facing. The sooner we get this sorted, the better.”

I nodded in agreement, following Keenan on our descent along the trail into town. My thoughts moved to similar cases I had worked on before. I suspected the answers to the problem lay somewhere in the small town itself, but there wasn’t yet enough to draw any conclusions.

Keenan was a good man, and I respected him. He was smart and resourceful, which was part of the reason why it was so odd that he’d asked someone like me to help him.

“Come on,” Keenan said. “We’ll worry about this shit when we need to. Let’s get your Girl Friday, then we can walk over to the meeting. I might be able to show you a little something on the way. But we have to hurry.”

CHAPTER 20

Rick

The paved path snaked its way through hedges, down hidden little alleyways, and traversed gently sloped woodlands, cutting its way across manicured landscapes and wildly overgrown vacant lots alike, going anywhere it willed through both the center and the outskirts of town.

Right downtown, it formed more or less a giant Z, taking a clever, unpredictable route that casual visitors, who didn’t have anyone to point it out to them, would almost surely have missed.

Fortunately, we had Keenan Wingate as our esteemed tour guide, a man who seemed to both know everyone, and more important, know what everyone got up to in the secret, intimate corners of the little town.

It was a fascinating bit of infrastructure in an already mesmerizing locale.

Even if the case went nowhere, just experiencing the place from the secret perspective of a long-time resident was more than worth the long drive to get there.

“Ahh, here we are. Just in time, as I’d hoped.” Keenan put an arm across my chest to stop me. “Up there, in the yard to the right. See them?”

“What is it?” Genie murmured at my left, her hand instinctively worming itself into mine. I gave it a tiny squeeze.

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