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“You spent the night with her!”
Felicity jolted, twisting toward the doorway. A weary sigh escaped before she could stop it, right as the sheriff’s darling sister barreled across the floor.
She rose from her chair. “That’s my cue to leave,” she said, shooting Bella a heavy scowl.
“How could you?” Bella ranted on at her brother, ignoring Felicity altogether. “After all she did, the pain she caused you … One day, and you’re back under her spell.”
Felicity shut the door, but Bella’s tirade still leaked into the dead-quiet bullpen, every gaze in the room riveted to the window and the showdown between siblings.
She scowled at her coworkers. “Mind your business,” she hissed, settling behind her own desk.
Finally, the door opened, and Bella stormed across the bullpen. The entire room seemed to heave a sigh of relief.
“Good riddance,” Felicity muttered.
She cast a look at the visibly upset man seated behind his desk, wanting to applaud him for sticking up for his ex-wife, but no way was she walking in there and confessing her role in his life after that altercation.
The opening she needed came several hours later when Andy Long’s autopsy report came through. “I’ll take it in,” she told Tobie, much to the young man’s relief.
She rapped on the sheriff’s doorframe. “Andy Long’s autopsy report is in.”
Beau looked up, his expression shifting from annoyed to surprise. “Already?” He motioned her in.
She placed the report on his desk. “He died from a catastrophic cardiac event.”
“Heart attack?”
“Yes. Death was instant.”
“Just as Rae had said,” he whispered.
Loathe to spend further time in his surly presence, but on tenterhooks with keeping the truth from him, she murmured, “Beau…”
His head snapped up
“Something else, Deputy Graham?”
Her nod was sharp. “We need to talk,” she said and stepped back, closing his door.
Beau frowned. “I’ve a lot on my plate. And I need to go out to the Long farm, inform Andy’s family.”
She approached his desk again. “This is important.”
He tilted his head toward the visitor’s chair. She gingerly took her seat, rubbing her hands over her knees, looking down, trying to find the right words.
“Whatever it is, just spit it out, Felicity.”
She looked at him through a blur of emotion she refused to acknowledge. “When my little sister needed me the most, I turned my back on her. She was the spunkiest kid I’d ever seen, but I was so filled with self-loathing, I couldn’t see past my own hurt. So, when she called me four-and-a-half years ago and asked a favor from me, the first ever, I jumped at the chance to redeem myself.” Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper, and her chest heaved, her eyes blinking furiously.
“Favor?” he asked, frowning, clearly having no idea what the fuck she was talking about.
“She asked me to move to this backwater town in Nebraska and keep watch over the man she loved while she helped put the monster who killed our mother behind bars.”
Time seemed to stand still as he looked at her, confusion slowly morphing into recognition. He sucked in a breath. “You’re Kat.” He sagged back into his chair.
She grimaced. “Kat died a long time ago, but yeah, I am Raegan’s sister.”
They stared at each other for several beats before she continued, “You should’ve seen her, Beau. Barely thirteen, a true hero.” She stabbed her finger in her chest. “My hero. That night…” She looked beyond his shoulder, back into that awful room, memories pressing in. “I trained a gun on my abuser, unable to pull the trigger. But not my sister. No, sir. She did what had to be done to save us, and then she hauled my ass down that dark tunnel—”
