Page 33 of Small Town Secrets

“This isn’t good.” Dean’s tone cut through with a dull edge of resignation. “It sets a precedent for the other business owners, which will hurt any residents unable to just sell and move.”

“Oh, no, no, no. As if turning part of Maynard’s into a makeshift grocery store wasn’t bad enough.” Sarah scrubbed her hands over her face and growled. “People will go downright bankrupt, while stuck in a town with no basic resources.”

Laila locked gazes with Ramos, his stillness only making her heart sink deeper.

Imagine what will come of us when everyone turns to retaliation…

She snapped her focus to the sheriff and tried to keep a handle on one problem at a time. “With the roadblocks, fueling up out of town will be a nightmare.”

“Town council is already secretly working on shipping in an alternate supply, but”—the sheriff rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced—“I wasn’t lying when I said this was bad. If I’m being honest, we might not be able to hold off an angry horde for long.”

“Well, angry horde or not, I still feel safer here.” Rochelle reached out beside her and took Gordon’s hand, an inexplicable smile on her face. “I plan to stick around.”

A collective pause drew out and everyone peered amongst themselves with tight, perplexed stares. What a weird moment for Rochelle to choose to assert her dedication to Gordon.

Sarah’s brows dipped in the center, and she craned her neck to stare at Rochelle. “Don’t you have a stack of money and about a billion other places you could be? Why are you sticking around?”

Rochelle’s mouth fell into a limp gape, her erratic stare bouncing about before she snapped her lips shut and mumbled some weak-sounding explanation. “I guess with all my travels, as well as being from a big city, I’m a little more used to danger. What I mean is, I like small town life and the people I've met there, and Harlow seems like a town worth fighting for.”

Another pause dragged out between the group, and to be honest, the knot forming in Laila’s tummy kept her from saying much. That’s when the sheriff cleared his throat, vying for attention to return to him. “This new development furthers our need for a solid plan. And perhaps as Rochelle says, Harlow is worth fighting for, and we’re not helpless when it comes to that, either. We have each other, and maybe enough locals on our side to keep the bulk of everyone safe.”

In the sheriff’s words rested an unspoken caveat. For now.

“Sounds like you already have a plan.” Blaine leaned forward in his seat, brows raised in seeming interest. “Care to let us in on it?”

“Less a plan, more an idea. A real temporary one at that. Something along the lines of keeping hold of the situation with regards to the local unrest.” The sheriff sighed, a deepened sense of wariness darkening his eyes. “If things should worsen, we would move you all to safe houses that the more malignant members in this town won’t know about.”

“Safe houses?” She sat taller, mind racing with thoughts of how she could rely on anyone else to protect her and her daughter. “Where on earth do we get so many safe houses? Much less places people in this town wouldn’t know about.”

“It’s less about finding unknown locations and more about summoning all the allies we can.” Ramos turned to her and raised his brow in a plea for her to drop her need to control every situation. To understand this situation. But control had been the only thing to get her this far in life, and fulfilling his wishes wouldn’t be so easy. “Aggie has a guest house on her property. As do the Coopers. And Gordon has a spare room he's willing to share. However, we need more help, and those who’ll open their homes to—”

“Wow!” Her jaw slid open, and she held back an incredulous laugh. “You have been busy.”

Her laugh wasn’t all she held back. There were her other thoughts, too.

You have this whole other life that I’m locked out from.

Which only nudged her doubts about how secure this relationship would ultimately be. The sensation of not knowing stirred deep-set memories of Michael and all the secrets he’d surely kept before leaving her.

Ramos held her gaze for a frozen moment. Her heartbeat slowed and seemed to pound against her ribcage. Though she’d always known about his work, that she couldn’t be privy to every detail, she would have thought they were close enough that she wouldn’t be hearing about something as intimate as her future living arrangements right now with the rest of the group. Why hadn’t he come over last night to tell her? Heck, he could have at least called and given her the heads-up. All she felt was blindsided and unnerved.

“Laila, this is what I do.” His hushed tone once again pleaded with her. “I know it’s a lot to grapple with, but it saves lives.”

He’d given her plenty of leeway and understanding, hadn’t he?

Who was she to withhold the same. So, as much as the group held its weighty silence, she gave him a steady nod and hushed the voices warning her to guard her heart.

His gaze shifted about her face some more as if he still rightly saw her uncertainty when it came to him, then he turned back to the group, gifting her space all the same. “Make no mistakes, we’re all in for a rough ride. If the safe houses go ahead, you’ll all have to be extra vigilant that no one follows you to your new place of hiding. There’ll be a set of precautions to take, such as concealing your vehicles within garages and avoiding any street-facing activity when in residence.”

She clenched her teeth together and held back an urge to ask how exactly she would achieve that with a child who loved to run around outside. But even with that near-impossibility, what struck her most, was the crushing sense of just how much she and her fellow targets stood against.

Then there were the other overhanging questions. How much would their lives change and who would be left standing when all this ended…

Twenty

Four days later, Laila sat at the kitchen table with her books sprawled out before her, her laptop open and a pen in her hand. She took notes for her next assignment, while Whitney sat cross-legged in the living room engrossed in the wooden doll house and dolls she’d received from her grandparents for Christmas. Occasionally, she would look to her mother and use a cheery voice to explain the imaginary happenings between her dolls. That, or she’d ask Laila to help craft dresses out of scraps of cloth.

As much as Laila needed to focus, she found it hard to dismiss Whitney’s youthful imagination at work, and she smiled through the pang of sadness knocking about in her chest. Her daughter was growing up way too fast, and Laila longed to stop what she was doing completely and just get down on the floor and play with her kid.

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