Page 64 of Snow River

Her lips parted, but she didn’t respond.She shouldn’t be so surprised.Didn’t she know what she meant to him?

Of course she didn’t.He’d never given her any hint.He was too damn “scowly.”

“I don’t talk about it because I’m not supposed to, as a legal matter.”

“A legal matter?”Her eyes widened and she plopped down on the couch.Buttercup followed suit, so he found himself telling the story to both of them, the woman and the dog with his head on her knee.

“I was a police officer for five years, up in Bethel.I was good at it.Too good.I was following up on some leads about a missing Athabaskan woman.I uncovered some information that connected the police chief to her disappearance.I confronted him with it.I thought it would be better to be straightforward, but I didn’t know what I was getting into.He and his minions planted drugs in my locker.They started an investigation into me.It looked bad; they kept coming up with new evidence.None of it was real, but no one believed me.Even my buddies in the department told me to shut up and stop rocking the boat.”

He hunched his shoulders and paced around in a circle.All the emotions of that time were churning through him again, as if no time had passed and he was still in the midst of that nightmare.

That’s how trauma works, he thought.He knew that.He’d studied it during his time in the Alaskan bush, when he’d specialized in domestic violence cases.But he hadn’t thought about how it applied to him.Was he also a victim of trauma because of what he’d gone through?

“What did you do?”Lila asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

“I hired a lawyer.He had a good reputation, and he’d worked with other police officers, so I trusted him.He encouraged me to come to a settlement with the department.That’s what I did.They dropped the investigation and I quit the force.”

She frowned.“Why did he recommend that?Didn’t he think you had a case?They were fabricating evidence!I’m no lawyer but I’m friends with one, and I know that Molly would have destroyed them.”

He gave a short laugh.How he wished he wasn’t still bitter about how it had gone down.But he was.

“That lawyer turned out to be married to a cousin of the police chief.”

“Really?But that’s a,” she cast around for the right word, “that’s a conflict of interest.Did he tell you ahead of time?”

“No.I don’t know if it would have mattered.There aren’t that many people in this state.All kinds of connections pop up.”

She scratched Buttercup between the ears.“It sounds like he wasn’t working in your best interests.”

“No.He wasn’t.”Then he shrugged.“Or maybe he was, and he knew what could happen if I didn’t play ball.Corruption like that…it’s the worst thing that can happen to a place, whether it’s a town or a state or a country.”

His voice rose, passion vibrating through it.He never got worked up like this.He prided himself on keeping his cool.That stoic expression he was known for was no accident.It was a shield, a weapon, a tool—a survival mechanism.But under Lila’s riveted gaze, he couldn’t stop talking.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it publicly.That was part of the deal.My lawyer gave me a rundown of all the politicians the police chief was connected to.I’d heard of most of them.I even took my evidence to a reporter I knew at the biggest newspaper in Alaska.They wanted nothing to do with it.”He looked away from Lila, at the floor, because this was the part that bothered him the most.“I signed the deal on the condition that they keep investigating that Athabaskan girl’s disappearance.They promised they would.The chief passed it on to the local FBI office, and they started a task force.It lasted about a year, did jack shit, then they closed the case for good.”

“Oh my God, how awful.You must have felt terrible.”

Her sympathy nearly undid him.He didn’t deserve it.“It wasn’t about me.It was about her.I let her down.I just got buried under all this…fucking crap.It seemed like the only way I could get anyone to pay attention to the case was to agree to that deal.I should have known they’d fuck me over.”

He’d sworn more in the past minute than he had in the past year.The back of his neck was sweating.His heart was jumping.He drew in a long breath and called on his calm.“I’m part Native Alaska, Ahtna.I thought that was part of why it was hard to get anyone to listen.But that police chief was Inupiat.When corruption is allowed, when it isn’t checked, it corrupts everyone it touches.That was really hard to watch.”

As he finally came to the end of his flow of words, silence fell between them.After a moment, Lila got to her feet and padded toward him in her fuzzy socks and thick sweatpants.She leaned against him, put her arms around his middle, then leaned her head against his chest.At first he wasn’t sure what to do.He couldn’t hide his galloping heartbeat, or the stink of stress sweat.

Cautiously, he looped his arms around her back.

“I’m really sorry all that happened to you.Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Like I said, I don’t talk about it.I’m not supposed to.It’s…I’m ashamed,” he admitted.“I worked hard to join the force, and to be treated like that, discarded as if I wasn’t worth anything, it hurt.”

“But that’s not what happened.You were a threat.You were chased away because you were a danger to that corrupt bastard.”Her fierceness brought the touch of a smile to his lips and lightened the shadow over his heart.

“So you believe me?”

She lifted her head off his chest so she could look up at him.“Of course I believe you.I never doubted that whatever your side was, it was the right one.”

“Never?”

“Never.I know what a good person you are.I thought…maybe you didn’t trust me, and maybe you never would.”

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