Page 29 of The Ashes of Summer

My truck jerks as I force it through a gap that isn't quite wide enough, but they make room. They always do.

A kid on the pavement catches my eye as I pass, small hand lifted, waving like I'm something worth noticing. Like I'm his hero. I lift mine back without thinking—an automatic gesture. His reaction hits a second later—jumping, pointing, shouting something to the woman beside him.

The sheriff waved at me.

Something pulls tight in my chest for half a second—an image that arrives before I can shut the door on it. Small hands. Her eyes. Our child. Something too new and too innocent to belong anywhere near the life I lead. I shut it down before it can take shape.

Not now.

Not while she's still out there.

The hospital comes into view and I throw the truck at the curb hard enough that the tires scrape concrete. The engine's still shuddering beneath the hood when I climb out, leaving the door hanging open behind me as I head for the entrance.

The automatic doors don't move fast enough. I hit them before they've fully opened, forcing my way between them as they finish sliding apart. The familiar smell of disinfectant and stale coffee settles over me, nurses weaving between bays, visitors drifting through reception with the kind of unhurried pace that only exists in places where the worst thing happening belongs to somebody else.

Not today.

"Sheriff—" the receptionist calls after me, as though she thinks she can help give me direction or answer any of my questions. She barely gets the word out before I cut her off.

“No.”

I don't have the time, the patience or the fucking interest in whatever she's about to tell me. If Benny wakes up, he gives me Moore. If he gives me Moore, he gives me Summer. Everything else can wait.

The elevator doors are halfway closed, already full. I don't even consider waiting. The stairwell is only twenty feet to my left.

I take them two at a time, boots hitting concrete hard enough to echo, breath steady but deeper now, heat building under my collar. A bead of sweat slides down my temple but it doesn't slow me. Nothing does. Not when every second stretches further than it should. Not when the thought of her keeps trying to push in where it doesn't belong.

I shut it down before it forms properly.

Focus. Clinic room two. That’s her office.

The door's already open when I get there.

Tamara's inside, perched on the edge of her desk while a nurse leans over her shoulder, the two of them smiling at photographs spread across a phone screen. A beach. Blue water. Somebody's fucking vacation.

I stop in the doorway. Every second they spend laughing over postcards and sunsets is another second Summer spends in Moore's hands, and the thought settles beneath my skin like acid.

"Out," I say. Neither of them hears me. Or they don't register the tone quickly enough. "Now. This is important."

The nurse turns at the sound of my voice, the smile slipping from her face almost instantly and looks at me like I’ve just taken a shit on her birthday cake. Her eyes travel over me like she's deciding whether I've got the right to interrupt whatever conversation they were having. I don't waste the energy caring. Whatever opinion she's formed of me in the last three seconds is worth exactly fuck all compared to why I'm here.

Tamara looks up from the desk with a crease already forming between her brows. "Will you excuse us?" she says, waiting until the nurse has gathered her phone before looking back at me. The shift in her voice is subtle, but it's there. Professional for the nurse. Irritated for me.

The door closes behind the nurse with a quiet click that leaves the room suddenly still.

"What's going on?" Tamara asks, studying my face for longer than she usually would. "What's this guy done? Rumor has it he's connected to Jackson Moore. Is it true?"

I hold her gaze without answering. She's already reading me, trying to work out why I'm here, why I look the way I do, why I've walked into her office like the building's on fire. She isn't stupid. Everybody in this county has to know by now.

“The man lying in that bed might know where Moore took my woman.”

Something flickers across Tamara's face. It's gone almost as quickly as it appears, but I catch it all the same. The slight hesitation. The tightening around her mouth. The way her eyes search mine as though she's waiting for me to take the words back.

“Your woman?” she repeats, one brow lifting.

I take a step toward her, then another, stopping close enough that she has to lean back a fraction to keep looking me in the eye.

“Yes.” My voice is quiet, but strikes exactly where I intend it to. “My woman. Summer Miller. Moore walked out of prison and came straight for her, and the man in that bed is tied to him. Whether he was helping him or working against him doesn't matter. He knows something.” I don't look away. “And if he knows something, I'm going to get it out of him.”