Free Wide Open by Deborah Coates Page A

talk to Dell before she died?”
    “Pretty sure,” Hallie said, like Are you kidding me with this?
    “We have her phone records.” He looked up. A crow, its black feathers gleaming blue in the parking lot light, dropped onto a battered green pickup truck twenty feet from where they were standing. It tipped its beak, cocked its head, and looked at them. “She’d called a lot of places.” He continued. “Turkey. Germany. New York. Missouri. Like she was looking for someone.”
    “She knew I was in Afghanistan,” she said. Had Dell hoped she was coming home? Had she asked her to? Sent her a message that Hallie never received? Wasn’t like Hallie could have picked up and gone. Maybe Dell had wanted help so badly, she’d made herself believe that Hallie could.
    “If you talked to her or she left a message somewhere, it might help me figure out what happened.”
    “Us.”
    “What?”
    “Us. The sheriff’s department. That’s what you meant, right? It might help the sheriff’s department figure out what happened.”
    “Us.”
    “I didn’t talk to her,” Hallie said.
    They looked at each other.
    “You need to be careful,” he finally said.
    Hallie drew herself up, her bones vibrating. “I need to be careful ? Dell killed herself, right? Or it was an accident? Right? Right? That’s what you told me. That’s what everyone tells me. So don’t tell me now that I need to be careful unless you’re also planning to tell me what’s going on.”
    His right index finger tapped against his thumb. Hallie was pretty sure he’d stop if he knew he was doing it.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    It sounded like the army: I don’t know meaning You don’t need to know.
    “Fuck you,” she said, digging in her pocket for her keys. “I don’t need—”
    Dell’s ghost hit her from behind like an insubstantial freight train, straight through her— blood, scream, fire, ohmygod, pain pain painpainpain, ohmygod, makeitmakeitstop!
    She dropped her keys, one hand on the gravel of the parking lot; the sharp point of a rock jabbing her knee. It hurt, like ice crystals in her lungs. It was … just to breathe. She felt as if she’d been standing outside at the South Pole in a blizzard. Cold like fire, like the Arctic Ocean, like death.
    “Hey.”
    Boyd touched her elbow, and it startled her so badly that she almost hit him, scrambling to her feet because she wouldn’t be vulnerable. Not in front of him. Not again.
    “Whoa.” He took a step back, his hip touching the passenger door of his car. “Are you okay?”
    Before she could answer, Boyd’s radio crackled to life, the sound a hundred times too loud. As he bent his head to answer it, Dell drifted back. She reached out her hand and laid it on Hallie’s face. Hallie flinched from the sudden, sharp cold and drew her breath in sharply.
    Boyd looked at her. “Hold on,” he said into the mike. He put his hand on her arm again and even through her shirtsleeve it felt warm, like the only warm thing ever. “Are you okay?” he asked again.
    “Stop asking me that,” Hallie said. “Jesus!” Anger as an antidote to pain.
    Boyd’s frown deepened. “I—”
    “Do you want to fuck me or something? Is that it? Because it’s not going to happen. And you don’t— Maybe I should file a complaint.”
    Bitch .
    She wanted him to call her a bitch or sputter about how he wouldn’t, couldn’t, never meant— She wanted him to be stupid about it, to be uptight and embarrassed and to go away. Just for fuck almighty’s sake, leave her alone.
    “If you need anything,” he finally said. “If you need help. You can call me.”
    Hallie stared at him. Take a hint, she thought. Go away.
    And, finally, he did.
    Hallie rubbed a hand across her face, standing there like an idiot for several minutes, watching where he’d gone.
    She walked back to her truck. It was going on one thirty in the morning, and she was tired. She didn’t realize her hands were shaking until she tried to