Free Virtue Falls by Christina Dodd

both her hands.
    “I don’t know. But it seems likely.”
    “Wow.” She was, she realized, holding the bone like a weapon. “That’s so unfeeling.”
    His impatience grew to something more, something close to violence. “I’ve barely got things under control in town, I’m running a fast perimeter check to survey damage and see if there’s anyone who needs help, and you want me to concern myself with old bones?”
    It took her a minute to realize that he had thought she was calling him unfeeling. “No! I meant … I meant it was cold of the town women to shove the prostitutes into such a lonely place.”
    “Oh. That.” He waved a dismissive hand.
    She flinched, and ducked.
    Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes.
    A bully. He was a bully.
    But he wouldn’t hurt her. After all, he was the sheriff.
    Although, if he did want to hurt her, they were 1.6 miles from town, there was no one to hear her scream, and he could dispose of her body by the simple act of shoving her off the cliff and telling everybody the crazy man’s daughter had fallen while filming the tsunami.
    “Was anybody in town hurt?” She hoped not.
    “We haven’t found any bodies yet. But people are trapped in collapsed buildings. Medical personnel are hopping. You should go back to town. Get that hand stitched.”
    She stepped sideways and caught the strap of her bag. “How did you know my hand needs stitching?”
    His impatience swelled again, and his voice was sharp and aggressive. “Because Rainbow Breezewing found me and shrieked that you were probably bleeding to death and I had to find you. Why else would I do a perimeter check now?”
    “I don’t know. But thank you. This was nice of you.” She inched away, bag over her shoulder, still holding the bone like a club.
    “Give me that damned thing!” He moved fast, grabbing the bone and twisting it out of her grasp.
    She turned and ran.
    Sheriff Foster was a man teetering on the edge of violence, and she wanted to be nowhere near when he fell.

 
    CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    Garik Jacobsen walked into his Las Vegas apartment, his home now for eight months. He flipped on the TV, flung his suit jacket on the chair, and placed the Styrofoam containers that held his dinner on the kitchen counter. As he headed for the bedroom, his stomach rumbled.
    Ever since the FBI had taken his badge, he hadn’t been eating regularly.
    But tonight, for the first time, he knew exactly what to do, and his appetite had come back with a vengeance.
    Yay for him.
    The bedroom was stark: blinds at the window, a bed, a nightstand, a reading lamp. He pulled open the drawer and looked down at the pistol he wasn’t supposed to own. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, checked to see that it was properly loaded. It was. And the safety was on. Putting the pistol back, he shut the drawer.
    He kicked his dress shoes in the direction of the closet. They banged, one by one, into the cheap wooden sliding door.
    He worked as a security guard at Nordstrom; the tie had been loosened as soon as he left the store. The jacket had come off as soon as he got to the court-ordered therapist’s office. Now it was time for T-shirt and jeans, and he donned them with the reverence of a man who wore them all too seldom.
    Opening the drawer again, he picked up the pistol. He shoved it into his waistband, and headed back to the kitchen. There, he kicked a discarded pizza box aside. He flipped open the tops of his Styrofoam containers and admired the contents.
    Yeah. Steak: thick, charbroiled, rare. Potatoes au gratin with enough cheese to give a cardiologist a heart attack. Green beans cooked with bacon.
    He might skip the green beans. He liked them, but what was the point of eating something good for him now?
    In the other container, tiramisu. In the paper cup, espresso.
    Yeah.
    He heated the skillet on the stove, melted a stick of butter until it was smoking, and slapped the steak in to crisp it up. He put the beans and potatoes on a plate and