Free Vows of Silence by Debra Webb Page A

somewhat relaxed again, her surroundings came back into full focus.
    Rick Summers entered the diner and walked over to where his deputy, Brad Brewer, sat. The two men spoke for a few seconds before Rick’s attention drifted across the room to settle onto Lacy.
    Every instinct warned her that he wasn’t here for breakfast, not really.
    He was watching them…waiting for one of them to take a misstep.
    As his intent gaze bored more fully into Lacy’s, she knew without doubt that she was the one he expected to falter.
    And he intended to be right there waiting for the fall.

Chapter 5
    “Y ou gonna order, Chief?”
    Rick dragged his attention from the four women seated across the diner. “In a minute.”
    Brewer looked from Rick to the objects of his distraction. “Even before you told me what you wanted me to do, I had a feeling you didn’t ask to meet me here for the sake of a decent breakfast.”
    No point arguing that. Rick had seen Lacy come into the diner. Mama Betty’s sat on the east side of the town square, directly across from his office. Since his office came with only one window, that was generally where his focus rested whenever he had something on his mind.
    He’d known that Lacy’s friends wouldn’t be far behind her. The foursome had always traveled in a pack. Some fifteen years out of high school hadn’t changed that fact. But it wasn’t their cliquish behavior that nudged his curiosity. Nope. It was the likely subject of this morning’s get-together—his visit to Lacy the night before.
    “You notice anything unusual?”
    “Yep.” Brad downed a gulp of coffee. “Been some damn tense moments during their discussion, but they kept it too quiet to overhear anything.”
    Brewer had always been able to anticipate Rick’s needs in a given situation. Rick had never appreciated that fact more than now. Not that he’d actually expected his deputy to overhear anything this morning. Rick had gotten just what he wanted: the climate between the ladies.
    Tense.
    That meant trouble.
    He’d watched these ladies from afar since junior high school, maybe even before. He’d been infatuated with Lacy for as long as he could remember, for all the good it had done him. Not once in that time had he ever seen these four suffer a falling-out. Always United appeared to be their motto. Through thick and thin, they backed one another up.
    That was how he knew for certain they were hiding something.
    There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Charles Ashland, Junior, had gotten himself murdered without one, and that would ultimately mean all, of them knowing it. He wasn’t ready to label one of them as the killer, but they knew something they weren’t telling. No two ways about that.
    Lacy’s gaze collided with his and heat immediately seared his blood. Rick didn’t look away. He let her stare. He needed her to know he wasn’t backing off. But the move cost him. Every single muscle in his body went on edge, tightened unreasonably. It irritated him to no end that she still held that kind of power over him after all these years.
    “Coffee, Chief?”
    Rick smiled for Katie Jo, the waitress who always made it a point to take his order no matter where he sat in the diner. “Sure thing, Katie Jo. I’ll take the usual to go along with that fine-smelling brew.”
    She grinned and blushed to the roots of her bottled-blond hair. “Coming right up.”
    Katie Jo Hawkins had gone to school with him, as well, but she’d been a couple years behind him. She’d already been married twice, but that didn’t stop her from looking for the next available prospect before the ink was even dry on the last divorce decree. Well, at least she’d had the good sense not to have any children. The kids were always the ones who paid the highest price when things went sour. Maybe that was why Rick had opted to remain single.
    After a three-year stint in the army, he’d chosen to focus on his career in law enforcement. He should