Too Fast to Fall (Jackson Hole 1.10)

Nate nodded, unconcerned about giving too much away.

“So can I get out of here?”

“Not sure. Deputy Davidson will be back soon.”

Ellis groaned and slumped back in his seat as Nate headed out the door.

“Hendricks!” Davidson called before he could escape. “Can you call your cousin? He needs to go out to the cabin and document which items are his and which were brought in. We also need to know if anything’s missing.”

“Sure,” Nate said, glancing toward the other suite before he headed toward his desk. He called Luis to give him the good news and pass on the request. His cousin seemed overcome with relief, though Nate warned him that the investigation wasn’t over. Still, Luis muttered something in Spanish so quickly that even Nate couldn’t make out more than Dios and Teresa. Nate was smiling when he hung up, but his smile faded quickly. He needed to talk to Jenny. Apologize. Explain. Ask if she’d be willing to give him another chance.

It wasn’t that he’d been completely irrational; it was just that he hadn’t gone with his gut, a cop’s number one sin. She’d felt trustworthy and sweet and bright, but he’d been so damn worried he was letting his lust overwhelm his instincts. Because there was a lot of lust. A lot.

Nate rolled his neck and pushed slowly to his feet. He tried to organize his thoughts as he walked. Tried to think of the perfect apology, but the only thing that came to mind was “I’m sorry. Forgive me?” Stupid, meaningless words. So generic she might just sneer and walk away.

In the end, the perfect apology would’ve meant just as little, because the interview room was empty, and Jenny Stone was long gone. Nate had missed his chance.

CHAPTER TEN

SHE’D ENDED UP running. She always did, after all. So what could she do but race to her apartment, throw a few essentials in a bag and take off? She couldn’t face Nate after that. It was too much.

So she drove away, deeper into nowhere, passing hardly anyone as she flew.

By the time she’d reached Idaho, she was too tired to think anymore. Too tired to decide what to do. Too tired to wind her way through any more mountains or high bluffs. She got a motel room and left her dead phone in the car and she slept.

Ten hours later, she opened her eyes expecting relief. That was the way she’d always felt before. Weeks of tension would precede her escape, but once she was gone, she felt new and happy and light.

But this time…this time she woke with shoulders knotted with stress and her teeth aching from the way she’d clenched her jaw all night. She didn’t feel relieved. She felt scared. And awful. She felt as though she wanted to go home.

Home. But not the home she’d been driving toward. Not Idaho.

She missed her place. And her job. And her friends. She even missed the ridiculous shit Rayleen was going to dish about Jenny’s brief trouble with the law.

Jenny didn’t care about the arrest. Hell, she was a career bartender. It gave her another story to tell. Another way to schmooze tips. Oh, you got into trouble? I got hauled in myself one time. Plus, now she had something scandalous in common with Grace.

Yes, she could handle the notoriety of being arrested. What she couldn’t handle was facing Nate.

She’d been helping Ellis, and she’d lied about it, and it turned out that he’d been growing pot. Worse than that, she’d been arrested in front of Nate’s friends and coworkers. The look on his face as he’d driven past…after what they’d done together… God. After the way she’d let him into her body. The way she’d taken him with complete abandon. If she had to look him in the eyes and see disgust, she’d die inside.

Because she knew that disgust intimately. She’d felt it a hundred times. A thousand. Every time she’d looked at her own mother. Every time she’d seen her mom high and glassy-eyed and vacantly ugly.

The hair rose on her arms. It had been like looking at a dead person sometimes. As if her mom weren’t even there. She’d been replaced. All her laughter. Her brightness. Her pride. Even her hot temper. It had all been replaced when Jenny was seven. First, with pain pills. Then sleeping pills. Then half a dozen different colors and shapes of tablets. Jenny had thought the lowest point had been when her mom, once a beloved first-grade teacher, had been fired from her school for drug use.

But that hadn’t been the lowest. Not by far.

And now Nate thought Jenny was like her. Like that. And she wanted to run.

But maybe she was finally growing up. Because she didn’t plan to stay gone. Maybe she was finally a stronger person.

Jenny got in her car and drove again, but this time she had a destination in mind. Her body knew the route by heart. It left her mind with nothing to do but take it in.

The little town where she’d grown up looked exactly the same. Amazing. Nothing had changed. She thought she’d forgotten it, but no. She’d forgotten nothing. There was the corner store where she’d bought jawbreakers and gumballs for ten cents every Saturday. And there was the tiny shoe store where they’d gotten new school shoes each August.

And there… God, there was the elementary school where she’d spent so many years, and where her mom had worked for a dozen more. The school that had held happy memories until her mom had been fired, and then it had been nothing but another site of humiliation.

Jenny turned her eyes to the road and dr

ove past it.