Page 70 of Shadow Sabotage
“What happened?” His eyes searched my face, my body, like he was afraid I’d been hurt.
I shook my head. I couldn’t talk. Not here.
He understood, even though I didn’t say a word. He relaxed his grip but kept his hand on me until I was inside his vehicle. I stared out the window, mulling over what had just happened as Vance walked around to his door.
Sheriff McGrath wanted this case to go cold.
Worse, he hoped I would cover up the truth, actually help whoever had done this get away with it.
What other explanation could there be for the things he had said?
Everything within me tried to deny it. This wasSheriff McGrathwe were talking about. Sure, he and I disagreed sometimes. But never on something like this.
Every fiber of my being hoped that I had misunderstood him completely, that the investigation was just making me paranoid. But the swirling storm in my gut told me that’s not what I believed.
I was totally and utterly confused. I respected Sheriff McGrath. He was my mentor. The one person who had actually seen something in me and believed I could do this job. And I knew he cared about our town, that he’d done a great job here.
He was also right—Ididunderstand that things weren’t always black and white. That had been the primary source of contention between us since I’d gotten the job. But I was usually the one wanting to bend the rules, not him.
I felt sick.
If that’s why he’d put me on this case, if he truly wanted me to do that with ahomicideinvestigation… That was totally different.
He didn’t know me at all.
I buried my head in my hands, trying to figure out an explanation for his words that meant anything other than him being a corrupt sheriff at best, a killer at worst.
Maybe he knew something I didn’t. Maybe he knew that it had been an accident, that whoever had killed her never meant for it to happen and had panicked and tried to hide the body. My heart sank again. You didn’t “accidentally” put your hands around someone’s throat and choke them.
Unless it was some kind of weird sex game gone wrong. The thought of that made me shudder.
Regardless, if Sheriff McGrath knew something that big, he was breaking some serious rules by keeping it to himself. I could maybe understand not telling us about the coffee shop. But anything more than that was a crime.
I couldn’t respect that.
I looked over and found Vance watching me, his eyes revealing a mixture of worry and anger.
“What the hell happened in there?” His voice was gruffer than I’d ever heard it.
I shook my head. Voicing it, telling him what I feared… I wasn’t sure I could do it without vomiting.
He put his hand on mine, stroking it gently with his thumb. Despite everything, my heart fluttered. The weight of his hand felt reassuring, like I was fighting my way through a storm and he was offering me a lifeline.
A lifeline I desperately wanted to grab on to.
“Claire. Come on. What’s wrong?”
I found myself wanting to spill it all to him—to trust him with this and for us to figure out what to do together.
But I still couldn’t speak those awful words out loud.
His eyes searched mine. “I’m taking you home,” he said, his jaw set.
I didn’t speakthe entire drive back to the ranch. But my mind still raced. I went over every word Sheriff McGrath had said, willing them to have different meanings.
I felt cold. Numb. Like the SAR victims we rescued who were dealing with shock. Only my shock wasn’t from physical trauma… It was from utter disbelief. From my whole world being upended.
When Vance pulled up to the ranch house, I took a sharp inhale and shook my head. “I can’t.” They were the first words I’d spoken since leaving Sheriff McGrath’s office and they felt strange on my tongue.
