They took their menus, and Cat remarked, “Everything is good, but everyone raves about the steak sandwich.”
Cat ordered the chef salad. A light lunch seemed best when she didn’t know how the conversation would go. Her stomach was already trying to knot. As she expected, Duke ordered the steak sandwich.
While they waited, he looked unflinchingly at her across the table. “You’d much rather volunteer to hike up and down Mount McKinley than be sitting here.”
Actually, she would. She loved the mountains. “That obvious, huh?” Might as well be blunt, although she was bothered by being so readable. She’d tried for years to suppress that tendency in herself.
“I can’t say I blame you.”
Well, well. The admission surprised her. “Then you get it?”
“Yes.” Their lunches arrived, and he sat back to allow the plates to be banged down in front of them. Coffee, dark and aromatic, filled their cups. She reached for one of the small creamers and dumped it in hers. Ordinarily she preferred her coffee black, but the way her stomach was feeling...
He glanced at his sandwich, then lifted half of it as though reluctant. He raised it partway to his mouth and looked at her over it. “I didn’t ever not get it,” he said before biting off a mouthful.
She paused with a container of blue cheese dressing hovering over her salad. “Then what was this all about?”
“Informing your office. Making a few things clear. Setting the boundaries I need to stay inside. Regardless, if you don’t get the murderer, I will.”
She believed him. She also feared what he might do if driven by rage. This man was trained to kill. “Then why do you want to know the boundaries? Isn’t this a pointless exercise if you just want to shoot someone?”
“I might like to prevent this bastard from ever breathing again, but I’d prefer to see him locked up for life.” He looked down a moment. “In my opinion, life in prison is a far worse sentence than a quick death.”
She nodded, stabbing her fork into a swirl of chef’s roll and salad. “I’d agree with that.”
“But I’m not leaving here without finding him. I have three weeks.”
“Now we’ve got a time limit?” She arched a brow.
“It’s good to know the boundaries,” he said, echoing himself and Gage’s earlier remarks. “For both you and me.”
She supposed it was. And now her favorite salad and dressing had become flavorless. It was then she faced needing to get a handle on herself. Most of what was going on was in her imagination. Maybe he hadn’t pressed as many buttons as she’d thought. Maybe he wasn’t here to rip up half the county in his search for his brother’s killer. Maybe he didn’t want to barge through this place like a furious bull.
It was time to find the common ground where they could work together. Because that was basically what Gage had handed her. A job that required finding that ground. With the major. She wondered how much of an eye she’d need to keep on him and if it was going to be full-time. She supposed she’d find out, but it would be a heck of a lot easier if she didn’t start out in complete opposition.
He amazed her by saying, “I guess I didn’t create a very good first impression with you.”
“No. You didn’t. You had death in your eyes.”
“Hardly surprising,” he retorted. He was already finishing the first half of his sandwich.
Cat had hardly made a dent in her lunch. She forced herself to take another bite before speaking. “Look, we’ve got to work together now. We need to find some mutual understanding.”
“I thought the sheriff had made that clear.”
“He set the rules. Repeatedly, if I know Gage. But this is about more than rules. You’re going to have to work with me on this. I can’t have you doing things and telling me about them later.”
“Understood.”
Oh really? she wondered.
“Let me make something clear, Deputy. I’m a military officer. I follow rules all the time, some of them quite restrictive. My own judgment generally comes into play only in combat and tactical operations where the situation is constantly shifting. I have to stay within the Uniform Code of Military Justice. On the other hand, when my superior tells me something like Go take that hill, I have to figure out how. There’s a lot in the balance, not the least the safety of my soldiers.”
“Okay,” she answered, willing to listen.
“There’s not really a conflict here.”
Time would tell, she thought. At least now she could taste her salad. “How do you want to set this up?”
Which was giving him a lot of leeway. Still, she wanted to know how he envisioned what they were going to do together, then decide how much of it was possible. She could still try to be the rein on him. Try probably being the operative word.
He glanced away, ruminating as he finished his sandwich. “I want to get to know people who knew Larry. Try to figure out if they know anything or sensed anything. Sometimes people find it easier to talk to a grieving relative than a cop. Or am I wrong?” His gaze snapped back to her.
“I’ve been a cop since I started dealing with cases like this. I can’t say for certain. One thing I do know is that friends and family try to avoid saying anything disparaging about the deceased.” She almost winced as the word came out, knowing that it sounded cold. He was probably far from wanting to call his brother deceased.
“Never speak ill of the dead,” he remarked. “Thing is, Larry wasn’t perfect. Nobody is. Do I think it was impossible for him to have an enemy? Absolutely not. His job often made people furious at him. He could just as well have affected others
