The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

keeping him afloat.

“My father’s name was Joshua Yancy,” she went on, speaking rapidly, breathlessly, wounded but defiant. “He was the pastor of a church-strict fundamentalist-in a small town in upstate New York. My mother’s name was Rebecca. She played the organ. I was their only child. My father was fifty and my mother was in her mid-forties, I think, when I was born. My arrival must have been a tremendous embarrassment for them, indisputable evidence, you see, that they’d been engaging in Pleasures of the Flesh.” She said it as if it had been written in capital letters, her lips twisting into a bitter smile. “It didn’t help matters that I turned out to be pretty, but I think the capper, the final disgrace, was my red hair. Neither of them had it, so they-”

“You had…red hair.” He felt as though he’d gone deaf-and numb. He didn’t feel the flannel robe beneath his fingers anymore-wasn’t aware he was holding her by both arms now.

She shook her dirt-brown hair back on her shoulders. He felt the warm tickle of it on his hands. “Oh, yes-fiery. I’m sure they thought I must be the Devil’s spawn. They certainly never let me forget it.”

Roan was barely listening to her. His head was full of the sounds of his good intentions and common sense colliding with concepts of some sort of Fate or Destiny he’d never even believed in before. Logic and common sense told him this woman’s hair being the same color as his wife’s and daughter’s had nothing to do with anything. And yet, why did he feel like he’d just been bucked off a bronc…shaken, bruised, and not sure which way was up?

He shook his head, and when the dust began to clear, realized his fingers were woven through locks of silky brown hair they’d found all on their own, and were testing the texture of it against their tips as if it were some rich and rare fabric he was thinking of buying.

He thought of her skin…that particular translucence, clear and pale as porcelain. The way her eyes could go in an instant from rain on the ocean to sunshine on meadow grass. The fact that she hated pink.

“My God,” he murmured. “My God. How-”

“I dye it, Roan,” she said, gently sardonic. “It’s not that hard to do, considering I’m a hair stylist.”

She jerked away from him, and his hand, thoughtlessly clutching, caught the sleeve of the flannel robe. Her momentum pulled it off her shoulder. What lay revealed, then, like the unveiling of a lovely work of art, was a gentle round of creamy white faintly shadowed, as was her face, with freckles. And the narrow strap of a silky nightgown, the exact color of the lilacs beside her front porch.

Something slammed him in the gut-he told himself it was anger. It ricocheted through him, blowing all thought from his mind the way a gunshot sends a flock of birds exploding from a tree. Thoughts of Erin and Susie Grace vanished, along with any notion he might have had about behaving like the professional lawman he liked to think he was. The only thing in his head right then was the image of that pale, lovely body…and the Mob.

He followed her into the kitchen, his skin sizzling and blood pumping hot in the bottom of his belly. “Tell me- how did you get from singing in church choirs to sleeping in a drug lord’s bed?” he said with a cruelty that shocked him.

She didn’t seem to notice it. She fussed with the coffeemaker, putting in a filter, counting out spoonfuls of coffee. She waited until she’d finished, then muttered without looking up, “It’s a long story.”

“For God’s sake, Mary-why didn’t you tell me about this?”

She shook her hair back and tilted her face toward him-another unconscious gesture of a beautiful woman. “Apparently you’re not acquainted with the protected witness’s first rule.” Her smile was faint and sardonic. “Tell no one. It’s the first thing they tell you: if you break security they can’t protect you. They hammer that into you until you’re afraid to admit even to yourself in the privacy of your own bedroom who you really are-” her voice caught “-or who you used to be.”

He wouldn’t let himself hear the pain. “My God,” he said, almost shouting-something he did so rarely he didn’t recognize his own voice. “Do you know what this does to the case against you? You were the mistress of a mobster. Not only does that make you look like the kind of person who might kill somebody, at least in most people’s minds, but the prosecution can make a helluva good case for blackmail. How’s this? Jason found out about you somehow-is that what happened, Mary? He threatened to expose you unless you gave him what he wanted, so you shot him?”

Her eyes had gone the dark slate-green of thunder clouds, and the way they were glaring at him now, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see lightning bolts shoot out of them. “I…have…never…shot…anyone…in…my… life,” she said in a voice pressed between clenched teeth, enunciating each word separately as she advanced across the kitchen toward him. “In fact-I think the only wrongdoing I’ve ever been guilty of in my life is being stupid. Stupidly chasing after the wrong dreams, maybe. And you know what?” Almost nose-to-nose with him now, she punched his chest with one finger. “I know for a fact I don’t have to take this from you. In fact, I want you to leave. Right…now.” The finger punched him again.

In full retreat, backing up with his hands held out to his sides in surrender, Roan found himself wondering how in the hell this firebrand had managed to pass herself off as a mouse for so long.

“I want you out of my house,” she finished, folding her arms on her heaving chest. “And I’m calling my lawyer.”

The funny thing was, watching her work up such a spectacular head of steam, Roan could feel his own temper cooling down. Something began to hum deep inside him-excitement, maybe, or anticipation…appreciation… respect…who knew? What he did know was he suddenly had to fight an urge to grin.

“Look…Mary,” he began, and was on the verge of putting his hands on her shoulders again, with the memory of what was under that flannel robe all too fresh and vivid in his mind.

So it was maybe a good thing his cell phone picked that particular moment to ring, although he didn’t see it that way at the time. Some adrenaline squirted into his system, just enough to make his heart do a little hop-skip and his skin tingle with the disappointment of missed possibilities, and he was swearing as he snatched the trilling phone from his belt. He glanced at it to make sure it wasn’t Boyd or Susie Grace’s school calling, then thumbed it on and barked, “Roan.”

“Uh, yeah, Sheriff,” came the cigarette-raspy voice of Carol Butterfield, the morning dispatcher, “sorry to bother you, but I’ve got somebody on the line here I think you’re gonna want to talk to. Fella says he’s a deputy sheriff down in Florida, has some information on the Holbrook murder-or rather, on the woman you arrested for it. You see the news this morning?”

“Yeah, I did.” He glanced at Mary, who gave him a hostile look, then whirled and marched back to the counter and the coffeepot. “Okay,” he said, “put him through.”

Mary leaned against the countertop, sipping her coffee and watching the tall, lean, golden-haired sheriff restlessly pace the two stingy steps the confines of her back stoop allowed him. Two steps…turn. Two steps…turn. Now and then he’d throw a glance her way, and when he did, some sort of electric current would shoot along her nerves and her muscles would tense and shiver, her heart would skip, her breathing quicken, and threatening tears sting her eyes and nose like pepper.

Just tears of anger, she told herself. Tears of confusion.

Confusion. Oh yes. She couldn’t think. Inside her head there was nothing but noise, a babble of voices all shrieking at the top of their lungs, like a town hall meeting gone berserk.

I want him to leave!

I want him to hold me…

I want to be alone!

I’m so tired of being alone…

I want to run away, far, far away!

But I’m so tired of running.

All this emotion-I hate it! I was calm before-I want to feel calm again!

Maybe you weren’t calm, just dead.

At least I didn’t hurt!

That’s what dead is, dummy. It’s pain that tells you you’re alive.

Outside on the stoop, Roan was folding his cell phone, ready to come back in. Mary watched him through the divided panes with narrowed eyes and pounding heart, quivering inside. Turning the volume down on the voices, she prepared herself, ready to stoke up the fire of her anger again, because at least anger was a choice-something that let her be in control.

He came through the door, tucking the phone into its holster on his belt. He closed the door behind him, then