LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Officer,” he enunciated, “I’m retired and the least of anyone’s worries.”

      Ordinarily, that would suffice for her—except for the defeated and world-weary tone in his voice. “I appreciate that, sir. I’m Officer Alana Anders, Oak Grove P.D. And you are?”

      It took him a good while, but finally he offered, “Mack.”

      Alana could start to feel the roots of her hair follicles aching as she mentally visualized pulling them out of her head. “You’ll have to do a little better than that.”

      “Graves.”

      She had to lock her knees to keep from taking a step back. “Mack Graves.” Her heart went into such chaos, she couldn’t help but take several deep breaths for the skidding and colliding going on behind her ribs. Especially when she started to see something familiar about his face. “Fred’s Mackenzie?”

      “Just Mack. Mackenzie is my mother’s maiden name and it was hell getting through school with it, let alone dealing with the ridicule in boot camp.” The look he added suggested that if she remembered nothing else, she shouldn’t forget to avoid calling him that again. “But, yeah, Fred is my father. I angled down this way to see if he wanted to try again in the relationship department. I suspect if you know Fred, you know warm and fuzzy aren’t the first descriptions that come to mind.”

      Despite her training, Alana momentarily struggled with deeper emotions, and not only because Mack Graves had used the wrong tense. To her, Fred had been those things—although, she would allow, not to everyone.

      “You have been away for some time.” She wished she could delay telling him the bad news, but she couldn’t. “We were trying to find you. I’m sorry to say—so sorry to tell you—that your father passed away last month.”

      After another long look, the unusually self-contained man nodded once, twice, then simply hung his head and stared at the duffel bag between his feet.

      Alana had no problem picking up on the shock and turmoil going on inside him. She knew all about such emotions...and much more.

      So the prodigal son had returned. Fred’s ex-wife, Dina, had left him years ago—and had taken their eight-year-old boy with her. She had hated small-town living and Fred’s iron grip on their finances. Word had it that the boy had returned once, as a teenager during a summer break, but had left soon afterward, never to return. The gossip mill concluded that Fred had been abusive at the worst, and a cold miser at best. At the time, Alana had only started grade school and was preoccupied with horses and flying, the latter a passion her older brother had infected her with, so she had remained blissfully oblivious to all of that. It was only later that she’d come to learn how inaccurate the gossips were. That wasn’t to say that Fred hadn’t been a disciplinarian, and frugal, but what had he been dealing with in a boy who no longer remembered, let alone respected, him?

      “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, hoping he didn’t catch the hitch in her voice that had gone husky. He didn’t need to know that the loss of Fred was hard on her, too. “Although I can see the resemblance to your father, I’d appreciate seeing some ID. Then you can come with me to the station. There are papers you need to sign before we hand things over to you.”

      “He was cremated?”

      “Yes, but...” Alana hesitated in telling him everything yet, so she pointed across the street to the city cemetery. “We ended up placing the urn over there. Under the big oak at the northwest corner between his parents, your grandparents. I was talking about the keys to the ranch—house, truck, barn, things like that. You’re his sole beneficiary. That’s the other reason that we’ve been trying to locate you.”

      “I see.”

      After the slow, enigmatic response, Mack pulled out his billfold and took out his driver’s license. Despite her certainty that he was who he claimed to be, Alana still accepted it with her usual caution when dealing with strangers, then used her LED penlight to see that it was a current one from Virginia. The address was an apartment and she would bet anything he no longer considered it home. She also noted that he was born in mid-February, thirty-eight years ago. The photo was clearly the man before her, maybe ten pounds heavier, with fewer signs of life and its stresses. Returning the flashlight to her pocket, she tucked away the ID, as well.

      “Okay, I’ll hang on to this to make a copy at the station. Grab your bag and let’s go. Afterward, I’ll drive you out to the ranch.”

      “You don’t have to do that. I guess I remember enough to find it myself.”

      While he hadn’t been out of the service long enough to go soft, on foot a relatively healthy person might make Fred’s ranch by the first hint of daylight. Such a trek was neither safe at this hour, nor would it be considerate. “Fred was more than a neighbor and friend,” she said, by way of explanation. “He was like family to me. It’s the least I can do.”

      As Mack Graves put his duffel bag in the backseat of the patrol car and eased into the passenger side, Alana settled in the driver’s seat. “Which branch were you in?”

      “Marines.”

      Then he could definitely make the hike faster than most people, but she still wasn’t going to allow that. “Were you in Iraq or Afghanistan?”

      “Both.”

      Whoa, Alana thought. “Glad you made it back—and in one piece.”

      He turned away to look out the passenger window, but she took no offense; after all, she had just given him some life-altering news. What’s more, not everyone appreciated the “thank you for your service” attitude. She’d concluded more that some just wanted to fulfill their obligation and get on with their lives. On the other hand, a simple “Thanks” in return wouldn’t rupture his spleen.

      “I’m not trying to be chatty.”

      “I’m glad to hear that.”

      Lifting her eyebrows at the borderline-rude response, Alana knew there was no way she was going to be quiet and circumspect now. “Ah. You’re the strong, silent type. Then you’d better prepare yourself for Bunny. She’s our night-shift dispatcher. I’m quite shy, in comparison. In fact, I became a cop to force myself to be more outgoing.”

      She felt his sidelong look, but kept her eyes on the road. None of what she’d said was accurate, but she didn’t care. He’d made up his mind about her from the moment she approached him, and it irked that the news about Fred hadn’t softened his edges one bit.

      “Doesn’t your family worry when you go out playing commando after dark?”

      There it was, Alana thought with a wry twist of her lips. The derision she’d felt from him at first glance. But if he thought he was going to make her cower, he’d misjudged her more than he could imagine.

      “I don’t see any part of being a cop as playing,” she replied, maintaining her pleasant tone. “Security checks on strangers in the park included. And as far as family is concerned, Uncle Duke is it, all two-hundred-fifty pounds, six feet four of him. Since he’s the chief of police, and before that was a state trooper, and before that a marine himself, if he didn’t feel that I’d been fully trained to do my job, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now.”

      Mack’s soft groan and the way he dropped his head against the headrest had her lips curling into a satisfied smile.

      What she failed to add to all that was that Duke hated that she’d become a police officer and had been doing his best to marry her off or otherwise get her off the force from her first day on the job. The only thing that helped keep him semiquiet about it was the knowledge that if he didn’t allow her to be a member of their hometown department, she would go elsewhere...or take on a career that was even more demanding and dangerous.

      “Don’t worry, gyrene,” she drawled, using the marines’ favorite expression for themselves. Uncle Duke had told her about how it had evolved

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