Then he could disappear.
Chapter Four
“How much longer you planning on keeping me locked up, Johnny Law?”
Nate gave serious consideration to killing his one and only prisoner. It was two weeks into his new life, and he’d thought about going out of it with a bang.
The station was quiet, with only Nate, his deputy Logan, and the prisoner currently occupying the neatly kept rooms. Nate leaned on the reception desk and considered the man in the small cell. Bliss County Jail was a tiny operation with two simple cells. If he could catch a serious offender and shove him in there with Max Harper, he might be able to solve a major problem. If said prisoner shivved the mouthy horse trainer, then Nate wouldn’t have to put up with the son of a bitch. Nate stared over at his deputy, Logan Green. The lanky too-young-for-a-uniform boy had his nose in a comic book. All in all, it was a long way from the Drug Enforcement Agency.
When Stefan had offered him the job of Sheriff of Bliss, it seemed like the perfect place to start over. Of course, Stef hadn’t mentioned that he’d have to deal with Max or crazy-ass Mel, who insisted daily that the aliens were coming. No one had mentioned that he would be the law enforcement liaison to a nudist colony, or that once a year the new agers came in to soak up the vibrations or some shit that Bliss gave off. It was a weird town, and he was rapidly getting fed up with it.
“Damn it, Max.” Callie walked into the sheriff’s office, pushing her cute little glasses up her nose. She was so adorable, Nate wanted to walk up to her and hug her. Of course, hugging would lead to rubbing, and he just knew if he laid a hand on her, he’d end up humping her leg like a dog. She was such a sweet armful. Even dressed in a denim skirt and blousy shirt, she was sexy as hell. Why hadn’t Stef bothered to mention that the woman of his dreams would be his secretary? Stef sure as hell hadn’t forgotten that he had a past with Callie. He just didn’t seem to care.
Callie completely ignored him. She blew past him, her hands on those curvy hips of hers, and plowed toward Max Harper. Callie never did anything without a great deal of energy. It was one of the hottest things about her. Callie was always moving, but Nate remembered a time when her energy had been spent, and all she could do was sigh. He’d give anything to get her underneath him again. But she was still off-limits.
Harper’s boots tapped against the floor. “Now, Callie, don’t you yell at me. Talk to that tight ass boss of yours. He’s pulling people off the street for no reason. He should be impeached. Rye would never have done something like that.”
Nate came off the desk, prepared to defend himself. He’d heard an awful lot about how the old sheriff handled things. Nate wondered if he would ever come out of the man’s shadow. Everywhere he went, he was compared to Rye Harper.
He couldn’t see her face, but he knew Callie was rolling her eyes. She just had that sarcastic stance. He’d learned an awful lot about reading Callie’s body language in the last two weeks. “Rye didn’t arrest anyone because he was as lazy as the day is long. I could barely get him to write a ticket. Sheriff Wright is an actual, honest-to-goodness cop, and not just some high school kid who didn’t want to work at Stella’s Diner.”
Logan’s head came out of the latest issue of X-Men. “Stella works too damn hard, if you ask me. This place is way calmer than the diner, what with all the tourists and having to deal with Nell and Henry’s protests. And seriously, have you seen what happens when you get that guy’s order wrong?”
Harper slapped at the bars of his cell. “I like my burger dead, man. Hal tries to cut corners by shoving a live cow in between two buns and calling it a burger. You want to arrest someone, Sheriff? Go arrest Stella’s short-order cook.”
Logan nodded as though happy to have confirmation of his life choices. “You see what I mean? Being a deputy is way less dangerous than working at Stella’s. And I graduated three years ago. Stop calling me a high school kid. At least move me up to college. Speaking of college…I’m thinking about taking one of those online courses. You think I could use the computer here?”
Nate narrowed his eyes, and Logan suddenly bolted out of his chair. “I’ll go catch some speeders. That’s a good idea.” Logan was smashing his hat on his head as he nearly ran out the door.
“Will you stop scaring the crap out of your deputy?” Callie frowned Nate’s way as the door literally hit Logan’s ass on his way out. The deputy yelped. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to get someone to agree to this job? This is a whole town full of antiestablishment hippies. They weren’t lining up to put on a uniform.”
Nate shrugged. Scaring the piss out of Logan was one of the highlights of his days here in Bliss. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Callie.” He attempted his most angelic look.
Now he could actually see the eye roll. It was an expression she used a lot on him. “Sure you don’t. I heard you recounting all of your so-called kills to him. Do you want to give that boy nightmares? And you…” She whirled back around to face the man in the cell. “What is your wife going to say?”
Max Harper grinned arrogantly. He wore jeans, a western shirt, and boots. He was all cowboy, all the time. “She’s going to say nothing because once I get my phone call, I’m calling Rye. He won’t tell Rach anything. I have too much on him. We’ve got a nice, mutually assured destruction balance going on.”
Nate sighed, a genuine sense of pleasure running through his system. This might even be better than giving Logan Green a bunch of baloney stories. This one was real. “Don’t worry about that phone call, Harper. I took care of it for you. Your wife said she’d be here as soon as she…what were her words? Oh, yeah, she’ll be here as soon as she sharpens a knife so she can cut your balls off.”
It took everything he had not to burst into laughter at how green Max Harper got. His hands fell to his sides, and he sat back on the little cot. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You asshole. We had a friendly little game going and you have to play hard ball?” Harper looked like a little boy who had his toys taken away.
“Friendly little game? You call doing seventy-five miles an hour in a forty mile an hour zone a game? Then you didn’t stop when I put on the lights and the siren.”
“I was looking for a safe place to pull over.” Harper shrugged.
“For ten miles?” He’d followed that son of a bitch all the way down the damn mountain.
There it was, that arrogant smirk that made Nate want to clobber him. “Those roads are damn dangerous. I was giving you a signal that I would pull over as soon as I could.”
“You flipped me the bird, asshole.”
“See, now is that any way for a cop to talk? When my brother was the sheriff, he would never have used that sort of language.”
“He cursed your name on a regular basis,” a stern female voice added to the mix.
Harper shifted back as though the bars wouldn’t keep him safe from the terrifying newcomer. Rachel Harper was roughly five feet two and, if rumors were true, expecting a baby. Maxwell Harper was utterly terrified of his pretty little pregnant wife. She crossed to the middle of the room and stared a hole through him.
“Hi, baby.” It was obvious Max was going for sympathy. All of the arrogance on his face had fled in favor of a sad puppy look. “That man does not like me. He looks for any excuse to mess with me.”
Rachel ignored him. She turned to Callie. “Does he need to make bail?”
“No,” Callie said.
“Yes,” Nate interjected.