Page 21 of Driven By Impulse

“You’re a good egg, Darcy,” she managed. “Doctors say he’ll make a full recovery. It’ll just take time.”

Darcy clicked her tongue. “Can you imagine that sort of thing happening out here, in our very own Bitterroot? This town has changed, I’m telling you.”

The town had changed, as all small towns did. Progress for the sake of progress could be thoughtless and destructive, but moving with the times could lead to new industry, growth, resources, and possibilities. When Hanna had been growing up, Bitterroot had been a back-country town with barely two hundred students in every graduating class, small, but not as much as some of the tinier villages and towns further into the mountains.

In the years since, new apartment buildings had been put up, and the town had expanded with the addition of an annex campus of the university several hours away. Houses had been built, yoga studios opened, coffee shops added along the tree-lined main streets. A secret, quiet little town was a dream, but without jobs and resources, that dream could quickly fade. Like many of the people in Bitterroot, Hanna had been grateful for the growth and possibility.

Except that hadn’t been the only marked shift over the years.

She dug her nails into her palm, hoping Darcy didn’t see the strained expression on her face. The whole reason any of this was happening, why Grace had been taken and Frankie had been stabbed, why she was searching for clues on the faces of people she’d worked with for years…

Was because of Magnus Ralston III.

Ash hadn’t wanted to hear about it, but Ash hadn’t been back to Bitterroot in over a decade. When he had left, Ralston Junior had been little more than a preacher with a big voice and a pulpit that stuck to the outskirts of town and whatever cable slot they could afford.

Since then, the church had relocated, taking up an enormous plot of land at the southern entrance to Bitterroot, deeper into the woody mountains. The building itself was three times the size of the original. Hanna had visited on a few occasions during construction and not long after it had opened, and it could have easily fit over two-thousand people, more than even the high school auditorium. The main room was expansive, with a high ceiling that came to sloping point toward the back, and the crisscrossing beams had made her feel like she was on the inside of a whale’s skeleton, an irony that had haunted her all the way home.

Since they’d completed work on the church when she had still been a rookie, the calls to law enforcement had dwindled and disappeared. Unlike other churches and houses of worship in town, they were never invited to Ralston’s ship. No one ever called for permits to throw parades or host food and clothing drives. They never volunteered their flock to support the community or asked for the resources afforded by the town for work training, tutoring, or education.

As Ralston’s flock had grown, the distance between him and the town had grown too, an invisible barrier that could only be walked through once. And Bitterroot felt it. Hanna had seen more than one friend and neighbor walk through the doors of the church only to slip away. They still shopped in the same stores and lived on the same streets, but they no longer showed up to book clubs or greeted familiar faces on the street.

And it had all gotten so much worse after Magnus Ralston Junior had died.

“Sheriff, forgive me for saying so, but you look a little peaky.” Darcy placed a cool hand on Hanna’s own, and Hanna nearly shot out of her skin. So much for not letting her emotions get the better of her.

“Are you quite all right, dear?” Darcy had the utmost respect for the law and the position of sheriff, especially since, according to her, it was damned time they had a strong woman to hold the town in check. But every once in a while, her instincts seemed to get the better of her, and she would slip into her nurturing grandmother mode, telling Hanna to eat something, or draping a blanket on Hanna’s shoulders when she fell asleep on the couch in her office after a long shift.

Please don’t let it be Darcy.

Hanna forced a smile. “I’m sorry, Darcy. I was just thinking about Frankie and got a little lost there. Can you tell me, is Wyatt in?”

Darcy’s face softened. “Got in a few minutes before you did this morning. I believe he’s with Carson.”

Carson was Darcy’s grandson. Just out of high school and interested in following a job in law enforcement, he’d come on as an intern of sorts, which meant he typically got saddled with the jobs no one else volunteered for, from copying lost dog flyers to cleaning out the drunk tanks. To his credit, Carson had never complained.

Hanna bid Darcy a good morning and slipped down the hallway toward her office. Before reaching the door, she headed out into the bullpen, where her other deputy, Wyatt Henderson, sat at a computer next to Carson.

“Boss, you’re back!” Wyatt quickly closed the tab they’d been looking at.

Hanna rolled her eyes. “You know government computers have safe search.”

Wyatt shook his head. “We weren’t!”

Hanna glanced to Carson, who always seemed to want to tell her the truth, no matter how much the rest of the guys on the team hated him for it. “We weren’t, Sheriff! It was just a video of a dog driving an ice cream truck.”

Hanna sighed. “One, please tell me you know those videos are fake. And two, I’m quite certain there’s something both of you can be working on.”

Carson stood up so quickly the chair almost tipped back. “Of course, Sheriff. I’ll be in the file room.” He darted off without a second glance.

Hanna turned to Wyatt. “Got a minute?”

Wyatt nodded and followed her to her office. Hanna unlocked the door, and for a moment, held her breath. She didn’t know what she’d find when she opened it—her filing cabinets open? A thumb drive shoved into her computer? Her motherboard in pieces on the desk?

But when she pushed the door open, not a single thing was out of place. It was as if nothing had happened in the time before and the time since Grace’s disappearance.

“What’s going on, boss?” Wyatt asked, after Hanna had closed the door. “It’s not Frankie, is it?”

Hanna shook her head. “Nothing like that. Frankie’s out of danger, and now just needs to focus on his healing journey.”