flashlight, and leave the warmth of the fire to head outside. When I get to the woodpile I lay the carrier out on the ground and start stacking logs into it one at a time while I contemplate the night’s sleeping arrangements. Two people, one bed . . . it doesn’t take a genius to do the math. Normally I’d be excited over the prospect of sharing a bed with Hurley, but with Izzy’s revelations about the new working arrangements and the whole no fraternizing rule, things have gotten much more complicated. I wonder if Hurley has heard about the budget cuts and the proposed changes, and if he has, what he thinks about it.
A few logs later, I hear movement in the trees off to my left. I freeze, listening, and hear it again . . . footsteps crunching on the carpet of dead and fallen leaves. I shine the flashlight in the general direction of the noise but the woods are so thick all I can see is an endless expanse of tree trunks.
I consider hollering out and asking who’s there, but it seems too much like those scenes you see in a horror movie just before the next horrendous murder. Then I realize that the flashlight marks my location like a bull’s-eye. Quickly I turn it off and stand there, still holding a log and hoping it’s enough of a weapon, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the moonlit darkness.
For a moment everything is quiet, but then I hear the footsteps again, moving even closer. As my eyes adapt to the nighttime light, I abandon my post and do a fast gimp back toward the cabin’s entrance.
“Hurley, there’s someone out there,” I say, trying to swallow down my panic. “I heard footsteps in the woods and they were coming this way.”
Hurley drops the log he was positioning in the woodstove, takes the flashlight from me, and then heads outside, taking his gun from his holster. I hover just inside the doorway, unsure if I should go out there with him. My instinct is to stay inside behind the security of the walls, but I feel an obligation to keep an eye on Hurley. Realizing I’ll be about as useful as teats on a bull, I wield my log like a one-handed batter anyway, hoping Hurley will shoot whoever’s out there before I have to use it.
He disappears behind the cabin and I wait, listening for any sounds of a skirmish, or for a shot to ring out. Instead, I hear Hurley call out my name.
Chapter 37
“Mattie, come here.”
Reluctantly I step outside and make my way along the side wall of the cabin to the back. Hurley is standing there next to my abandoned wood carrier, shining a flashlight into the trees. “Look,” he says, gesturing in the direction of the light. “There’s your culprit.”
It takes me a moment to see what he wants me to because at first all I can see are trees. Then something moves and my eyes focus on a deer—a magnificent-looking buck sporting an eight-point rack. He stands there, staring into the beam of Hurley’s flashlight, making no attempt to run off.
“Wow,” I say. “He’s beautiful.”
“That he is, and he’s also probably scared out of his mind since we’re smack in the middle of deer hunting season.”
We stand there having our stare-down for a minute or two more before Hurley lowers the flashlight and focuses it on the log carrier. He returns his gun to its holster and then bends down to pick up a log. “I’ll take the carrier in but let’s load your arms up, too,” he says, holding the log out.
I extend my arms and Hurley stacks five logs onto them before I tell him, “I think that’s my limit.” As he grabs the carrier and we both turn to head back inside, we hear the sound of crashing branches behind us as the buck dashes off deeper into the woods.
We make three more trips to the woodpile before Hurley deems our inside stock sufficient. I stir up the fire in the fireplace and toss another couple of logs onto it while Hurley finishes setting up the woodstove. Once he’s done, he lights the wood inside it and then pours water from one of the gallon bottles we bought at the store into a saucepan that’s so dented it looks like it’s been used as a baseball bat.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Heating up some water for hot cocoa,” he says. Among the provisions we bought is a box of instant cocoa mix and he takes two envelopes out of it, stashing the rest in one of the overhead cupboards. In a different cupboard he finds a couple of mugs, which he examines and wipes with the tail of his shirt before emptying the contents of the envelopes into them. There is something oddly sexy about this little slice of domesticity and with the night’s sleeping arrangement still an elephant in the room, I decide to talk about it.
“So, Hurley, did you hear about the restructuring that’s coming because of budget cuts?”
“I’ve heard rumors,” he says, staring into the pot on the stove as if he has Superman’s X-ray vision and can make it heat faster. “But nothing definitive. Why? Have you heard something?”
“I have.” I then proceed to tell him about the police corruption suspicions and the recent problems that have occurred with evidence collection. “According to Izzy, the solution for now is to increase oversight of the investigative and evidentiary process by creating a tighter working alliance between the police departments, the evidence labs, and our office.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning you and I will be working together more closely in the future whenever there’s a suspicious death.”
He looks over at me and there’s a hint of a smile on his face.
“It means we will be working together as a team in the future, to ensure there are no improprieties going on,” I add.
His face falls and I sense he’s figured out the ramifications. “Improprieties,” he repeats.
“Yes.”
The water on the stove has begun to boil so he busies himself for a few minutes pouring it into the mugs and stirring them. Then he carries them over to the couch, hands me one of them, and settles in beside me. “I take it these improprieties include you and me—” He lets the implication hang there between us.
“Yes.”
He nods and sips his cocoa, staring into the fire. After a moment of silence he says, “So in order for us to continue working together, David will get his wish.”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it, though I think David has finally moved on.”
“You’ve thought that before and it didn’t prove to be true.”
“I know, but there’s something different about him this time. Something has happened to make him change his mind.”
“We’ll see. Not that it matters, given the change in our job situation.”
“That’s assuming I still have a job.”
Hurley shoots me a troubled look. “I’m sorry I—”
“Don’t,” I say, holding up a hand to stop him. “As I said before, I walked into this knowing full well what the consequences might be. I did it willingly. You don’t need to apologize.”
We sit in companionable silence for a while, sipping our respective drinks and staring at the fire, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I keep reflecting back on what Izzy said to me about having unresolved feelings for David, and the unexpected urges I felt while he was staying at my house.
“Look, Hurley,” I say finally, after I’ve drained my mug. “I like my job. Oddly enough it suits me. I like working with Izzy. I like the puzzle aspects of figuring out what really happened, and I enjoy trying to gauge people to figure out what they’re really thinking.”
“You should enjoy your job,” Hurley says. “You’re good at it.”
“Thanks.” I lean forward and turn to face him. “I also like working with you. And while I can’t deny that I feel a certain . . . attraction to you, I’m pretty new at this singles stuff and I’m not sure I can trust my own emotions. I would hate to ruin a good working relationship by muddling it up with emotional baggage.”
Hurley looks wounded for a second, but then he sighs and says, “Fair enough.” He gets up from the couch and takes my empty mug, carrying it and his out to the kitchen. “Tell you what,” he says. “Let’s get some sleep. It’s been a hard day for both of us. Tomorrow we can tackle this case again, reanalyze what we know, and try to figure out where to go from here.”
