Riverbend Road

“It was only two little boys,” she answered. “Lindy-Grace Keegan’s pair. And I was only a few minutes ahead of the fire crew.”

“My sister, the hero! That’s amazing. I’m so proud of you. Dad would have been too.”

“Thanks,” she answered, a little catch in her throat at the words.

“I mean it. Wait until Marsh hears.”

Their oldest brother, Marshall, was the sheriff of Lake Haven County. What would he think about her suspension? He would probably support it wholeheartedly, especially since Cade was his best friend.

“Can I bring you dinner tonight?” Kat asked. “I was thinking about trying out a new recipe for chicken divan.”

Her stomach gave a long, greasy roll at the offer. Kat was a fantastic, dedicated teacher, a good friend and a sweet, kindhearted person. She was also a terrible cook.

“I think I’m good. Thanks, though. I just need a little downtime, you know?”

“Are you sure? I’d love to bring you something. What about dessert? I’ve got more fresh rhubarb out back and was thinking about rhubarb-cherry tarts.”

Her mouth puckered. Kat was on a no-sugar kick these days and Wyn could only imagine rhubarb-cherry tarts without it. No thanks. She had an emergency Snickers bar hidden away inside her house that was calling her name right now.

“You’re so sweet, but really. It’s been a crazy day and I need to chill.”

It felt like another lifetime ago that she had been rescuing Aunt Jenny from the cow moose and her baby camping out in her driveway.

“I totally get that. After teaching twenty-five seven-year-olds all day, sometimes when I get home from school I just want to sink into a chair and not move until the next morning. I don’t know how I would survive without summers. Fine. But can we grab lunch or something this week? Don’t tell me you’re working double shifts! I won’t hear any excuses.”

“Okay. I won’t tell you that.” She didn’t add that she wasn’t working any shifts for several days. Kat would have no problem marching right down to the fire scene and giving Cade a piece of her mind. Her sister tended to lump Cade into the same category as Marshall and Elliot, just one more troublesome older brother.

She had never looked at him that way, but her sister did.

With the experience of long practice, she shied away from considering exactly how she looked at Cade.

“I could do lunch,” she said instead. “Let’s plan on it tomorrow.”

“Perfect. Oh, and you’re going to have to talk to Mom. She’s already called me three times, trying to see if I know anything about what happened to you.”

“Do I have to teach you again how to hit Ignore on your phone?”

“I wouldn’t have to hit Ignore, if you would just man up and talk to her,” Kat retorted.

“Yeah, yeah,” she answered.

She and her sister exchanged love yous and ended the call.

She did love Kat. They had always been close, the only two girls in a family of rambunctious, wild boys—just not quite as close as Wyn had been to her twin brother.

Her heart twisted with the familiar sharp ache she always felt when she thought of Wyatt, gone five years now.

He would have run into that burning barn too. She knew it in her bones. He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second and would have told his boss to screw off if the word suspension was even mentioned.

She would never be Wyatt—funny, brave, compassionate. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fill her twin’s shoes.

Yeah, Charlene was going to be freaking out.

She would call her mother the moment she was home, she told herself.

She turned the patrol car onto Riverbend Road, the long, winding road that ran parallel to the Hell’s Fury before it dead-ended.

As she neared her house, she spotted an unfamiliar minivan with Oregon plates parked in the driveway of a nearby house.

Oh, it would be lovely if someone moved in. The house had been cold and empty for too long, since before the river flooded the previous summer. She had always loved the little tan Craftsman house with the wide front porch and the cheery red shutters.

Moving to this area of town had been largely an accident. She had intended to rent something on the lake, similar to the house where she had grown up, but around the time she came back to help after her dad was injured and to take a job at the Haven Point PD, the renters who had been living in her grandmother’s house moved out. Her mother suggested she move in as a stopgap until she could find something else she liked, and Wyn had fallen in love with the whimsical charm of the stone cottage and this eclectic neighborhood along the river.

She loved that none of the houses were the same. Her house, constructed a century earlier of stucco and stones pulled from the river, seemed very different from the Craftsman just down the street, which in turn was nothing like Cade’s log house just across the road.

Somehow they all seemed to work together.

She spied a bike and a tricycle propped against the side of the Craftsman and a soccer ball resting in the grass. Despite the toys in the yard, the curtains were tightly drawn at the house and she couldn’t see any sign of activity, which she found a little weird.

The curtains at her own front window were wide-open, though, and a familiar face peered out, as if he had been perched exactly there in the deep window seat, waiting all day for her return—which was very likely.

When she turned into the driveway, that face—and the furry body it was attached to in the form of her yellow Labrador retriever—lit up with excitement.

When she unlocked the door, Young Pete waited for her just inside, his tail wagging with eagerness. “Hold,” she told him, then took two minutes to unhook her service revolver and her badge and lock them in the fingerprint safe in the hall closet before she rewarded Pete’s patience with a hug.

“There’s my favorite guy,” she said. “How was your day?”

Her dog nudged his head against hers and the quiet, steady affection made her throat burn even as she felt some of the stress of the day seep away.

What would have happened to Pete if she hadn’t made it out of that barn in time? She had to think Marshall or Katrina would have taken him in. He’d been their dad’s dog, after all, a link to the man John had been before his traumatic brain injury two years before he died.

“Need to go out? Do you?”

The dog gave one quick bark and she opened the back door for him and walked out onto the stone patio overlooking the river.

She needed to change out of her smoky uniform and shower but right now she wasn’t sure she could move from this spot.

After a moment, Young Pete finished his business then came back to sit beside her. The dog was ten years old and not young anymore but she still stuck the modifier on his name. Her dad had always called him that, in contrast to Old Pete, John’s previous dog.

Birds flitted through the branches of one of the big elms in her backyard, their song mingling with the breeze rustling the leaves and the river’s endless, soothing song.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the late afternoon sun.

She could have died today.

She wanted to think she’d had the situation fully in hand but Cade had it right. She had been foolish and arrogant to think she could take on that fire and win, especially without following protocol and keeping her radio on. It had been sheer dumb luck that she was here enjoying the beauty of a June afternoon.

The realization was sobering yet oddly invigorating, as if the heat and smoke had burned away something hard and confining.