His shoulders dropped, but it took a minute before he responded. When he did, it was to set them back on track. “I know that. I do. Sometimes I just need to hear you say it in a way that I know you mean it?” He looked guilty for not trusting her the first time she’d said he was like her brother.

  Beth waited until their eyes were locked, and she knew his full attention was focused on her. “Heard.” Then she placed her palm over his heart. “You are my brother.”

  He nodded but took a beat before speaking again. “Okay, we can burn down the world, so long as the drugs leave the property, and you and I stay good.”

  Then Beth remembered Doug’s smile when he realized she had no idea what chicken fried steak was. “Doug has to be okay too,” she added to their list.

  “I knew you were falling for him,” Cameron gloated.

  “I am not. But he’s a good guy. We shouldn’t screw him over.”

  “And…” Cameron wasn’t going to let her off easy.

  “And he gives great massages?” she tried.

  “Ha ha, but fine. I’ll let it go for now. Back to the drugs. We can’t sell them, destroy them, or lose them. What else does that leave?”

  “Plant them.”

  “What?”

  Beth wasn’t sure how to answer that. She didn’t know what she’d meant. It just popped into her head and out through her mouth. Sell, destroy, lose, plant. What did she mean by it?

  “Are you suggesting we plant the drugs somewhere intentionally to make someone else look like the asshole?” Cameron expanded on his request for clarification.

  That sounded like a viable plan to Beth, and she really hadn’t been thinking about anything specific. “Yeah, we should do that,” she agreed.

  “Okay. Who takes the fall?” Cameron leaned back on the couch and crossed his ankle on his knee. He knew she was bluffing.

  Beth plopped her ass down on the old, ratty carpet. “I don’t know. Could we make it look like Craig?”

  “No, he’s supposed to have the drugs.” Cameron was right, and they both knew it.

  “Well crap. Are there any other club members who need to be pruned from the bush?”

  “No.” Loyalty was one of Cameron’s biggest strengths. Beth loved that about him, but right now it was frustrating. It would be so much easier if there was someone obvious to frame for stealing the drugs.

  “Maybe there’s a local around here?” Beth was grasping at straws, and she knew it.

  Cameron just looked at her, so she kept thinking.

  “Okay. Different option. If this is such a pain to solve, why not let my father figure it out? What would happen if Phil found out about the drugs?” she asked.

  “Um.” Cameron’s brow furrowed as he considered. “I guess, technically, Matt and Craig would be kicked out of the MC and stripped for doing business that wasn’t voted on.”

  “We could work with that.” Beth didn’t love the idea, but it was the best one they’d come up with so far.

  “Except it doesn’t solve the problem. Remember all the drugs in the cabin? Where, in your plan, do they go away?”

  “We’d send them off with Craig and Matt. They could do their thing or whatever, but they wouldn’t be affiliated with the club anymore.” Beth had a feeling the next thing Cameron said would make her feel naïve and stupid, but she couldn’t stop it from happening.

  “Do you really think Phil will send the drugs out into the world with Matt and Craig?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” she tried.

  “Would he even go through with kicking them out? I mean Matt’s his son.” And those were the words that lit up Beth’s lightbulb.

  “That’s it, Cameron!”

  “What? What’s it?”

  “Matt’s my brother. Phil won’t send him to his death. We can use that to convince Phil to strip them but let them keep the drugs so the cartel or the Russians or whoever don’t kill them.” It could totally work, but Phil couldn’t know any of it was coming from her and Cameron. That would be the tricky part.

  “This is a terrible idea, Beth. Like, way worse than your usual terrible ideas.”

  As much as it pained her to admit it, Beth had to agree. “You have a better one?” she asked.

  “Fucking damnit. How the hell does this happen to us?” Cameron swore softly.

  “Heard,” was Beth’s only response.

  After they both spent a few minutes accepting their plight, Beth got them each a drink and moved back to the couch.

  “We need to be really careful about how we set Phil up to find the drugs.” Beth needed to say it aloud. Cameron already knew it, but that would be the weakest part of their plan.

  “Yeah, maybe let’s shelve that until tomorrow, huh?” Cameron suggested.

  “TV?” They’d started the process. The details could wait.

  “MASH?” For a long time, when Cameron was really little, they’d had only an old TV with a built-in VCR and a complete box set of the entire MASH series. Beth remembered one of the club members giving her the used TV as a gift. She’d found the tapes in a corner of an abandoned closet. They hadn’t had cable, so it was MASH or snow with occasional flickers of local news. Not only could both of them recite every line of every episode, but it had turned into a symbol of their childhood. Things had been pretty fucked up for both of them, but when they hung out in Beth’s room and watched MASH, they could pretend they were normal. Of course, it didn’t last once Cameron was old enough to realize zero of his friends thought MASH was cool, but it was still a comforting memory from their childhood.

  “Heard.”

  The only time either of them spoke for the rest of the evening was to join Radar in asking for a Purple Kneehigh or to make fun of Hot Lips for being dumb enough to love Major Burns.

  CHAPTER 8

  Doug

  “Morning, Liz,” Doug called as soon as the bells stopped chiming to announce his arrival.

  “Good morning, Sheriff. I’m running a touch behind this morning, but I’ll have coffee for you in a minute. Are you taking a box over to the office?”

  “Is it Thursday?” Doug was a man of routine. He brought pastries into the office every Thursday. It helped everyone stay positive as they got ready for the stupidity that came with weekends, and despite Judy glaring at him and offering a half-hearted lecture about sugar, she would spend the day offering the treats to anyone who came by. It made her happy, and that made the whole office happy.

  “I’m gonna need about fifteen minutes. Do you want coffee while you wait?” Liz asked.

  Doug could see her in the kitchen, pulling trays out of one oven and putting different trays in a different oven. No way would he interrupt her and make her come all the way up front just to pour him a cup of coffee. “Nah, I don’t mind waiting. Do your thing.”

  “Alright. It won’t take long,” she hollered before letting out a soft string of swear words.

  “You okay back there?” Doug asked.

  “Stupid oven’s thermometer is busted, so my banana muffins didn’t turn out. It’ll be fine. I’ve been putting only small batches of stuff in there because I know about the issue. Normally I check the thermometer and adjust things manually, but I forgot this morning.”

  “You need anything, just yell for me.”

  “Yep.”

  In the silence that followed, Doug felt the presence of another person before he saw the man tucked into the corner of the back booth. He wasn’t wearing his cut, and his hair was messier than it had been at Colton’s, but Doug still recognized Cameron.

  “Morning,” he offered.

  “Sheriff,” Cameron’s response was guarded. It was different from the light-hearted, jovial mood he’d faced at the bar and far darker than the defiant delinquent attitude he’d gotten when he’d pulled Beth over.

  Doug believed that being nosy was part of his job, so he wasn’t inclined to ignore shifts like this.

  Instead, he sat down across from Cameron and stared at him.

  “What? Do you need something?” Cameron barked at him.

  “I don’t know yet. Is Beth okay?” Why he was asking about her instead of the guy in front of him, Doug wasn’t sure.

  Despite being completely accidental, the sideways approach worked. Cameron uncurled just a bit and relaxed a few notches.

  “She’s fine for now.”

  Those last two words made Doug want to leap from the table, hunt his woman down, and stuff her under the covers of his bed where she’d be safe.

  “You’re falling for her, too.” Cameron’s simple statement threw Doug for a loop more than anything any criminal had ever said to him before.

  Then he caught the full meaning of the statement. “You think she’s falling for me?”

  It was enough to make Cameron laugh. It wasn’t joyous and didn’t include a smile, but he relaxed even more. “Yeah, Sheriff. She’s into you. Maybe don’t be an asshole to her?” The glare that came with Cameron’s words made Doug think this young man was incredibly protective of the woman he viewed as a big sister.

  “I try to keep my asshole in my shorts,” he replied. “Besides, why don’t we focus more on what’s bugging you today.”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “Normally, I’d respect that and leave it. But you just said Beth has feelings for me, and as you noticed, I’ve got some feelings of my own. Knowing you two live in the same house means your trouble is likely to ricochet around and eventually hit her, which makes it my business.”

  Cameron tilted his head and chewed on his lip. “It’s your business because of her, but not because you’re the sheriff?” he finally asked.

  Doug thought back through what he’d said. Cameron was right. That was exactly how he’d worded it, but that wasn’t what he’d really meant. “I am the sheriff. So yeah, that also makes it my business.”

  Doug fought with everything he had to school his face and hide his inner panic. He had no idea what he’d meant by saying that Beth’s business was his. He should have focused on his job. That was what made it his business. Was Cameron right? Was Doug falling for Beth? Could he after just one night together? That was crazy. That’s not how love worked, right?

  “Oh boy, Sheriff. Looks like you’ve got your own shit to sort through.” Well fuck. Cameron had clearly seen a large portion of Doug’s face. He usually had a great poker face, but even Mac had called him out for thinking dirty thoughts the other day. He’d guessed it was Beth who Doug was thinking about too.

  “Let’s refocus for now. What going on?”

  “As I said, it’s nothing you need to worry about.” Cameron’s voice was firm. He’d not be giving way on this.

  “Fine. I just need to know one thing,” Doug let a lot slide in this county. He picked which battles were worth fighting. It was how he kept his sanity, and the key to his re-election.

  “What’s that?” Cameron asked.

  “You can hear the full story from anyone in town, but my sister died of a drug overdose. That means my tolerance there is nil.” At the last second, Doug decided to rephrase his question as a warning statement. “If you are storing any drugs anywhere on that property, I will not turn a blind eye. I’m not saying I condone anything illegal. I’m just letting you know that I take drugs in my county very personally.”

  All of Cameron’s relaxation disappeared. He curled back into himself. Doug was in the middle of standing up to return to the counter when he heard Cameron’s whisper, “Yeah, Beth and I both feel the same way.”

  Before Doug could figure out how to respond to that or what follow-up questions to ask, the bells above the door chimed again, and the woman herself walked through the door. Her dark brown hair was swirling from the wind, and Beth’s arms were full of her phone, a notebook, some very messy papers that looked to be folded in unnatural ways, and a handful of pens. It was just enough to keep her focused on her juggling act, so she didn’t notice Doug staring at her.

  He hated how stressed and frenzied she looked, but he had no idea what to do about it. Odds were good that the issue was something illegal. He wanted to help her with it, but he also didn’t. Or maybe he couldn’t because of his job?

  The pens slipped from her fingers and scattered across the floor like a game of pick-up sticks, and that was the moment Liz stepped out from the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Beth,” she called.

  “Morning, Liz.”

  Doug noticed the deep inhale and tensed up muscles that marked the second she spotted him, and he hated it.

  “Ready for me to get your order together now?” Liz asked him. She was oblivious to Beth’s tension. “Any special requests this week?”

  Doug had no idea what to do with Beth, but he did know she liked coffee. In his world, a good cup could fix a lot of things. So, he turned to Liz and amended his order. “Will you actually add Beth’s coffee to mine and make hers first?”

  Liz grinned at him and leaned across the counter to whisper, “She does look like she needs it this morning.” Then she winked at him and started pulling shots of espresso.

  By the time Doug turned around, Cameron was already helping Beth pick up the pens and move everything to the booth he’d been sitting in. As they dumped everything onto the table, Doug saw one of the oddly folded papers partially unfold itself. It wasn’t enough for him to see the whole thing, but he didn’t need to. He was intimately familiar with that particular map of the National Forest. Beth’s property was tucked into an edge of it.

  “Will you take this to Beth?” Liz prompted him as she passed over the cup of coffee.

  “Yeah.” It would give him an excuse to get a better look at the map and ask a few questions, too. The National Forest wasn’t really his jurisdiction, but considering the majority of illegal stills out there were owned by people from his community, he and the forest service worked closely together on a regular basis. Collin was always saying one of his favorite things about moving from the FBI to the forest service was the true collaboration between agencies. The forest service didn’t have enough personnel to decline support, and too many calls to the sheriff’s department were a result of things happening on national forest land for them to ignore the overlap.

  Was Beth taking a page out of the local’s book and using the forest to hide illegal goods and activity?

  Doug was careful to find a clear spot of table to set Beth’s coffee on before asking, “What’s the map for?”

  “Oh, um, hiking?” Beth tried.

  Even Cameron snickered.

  Doug raised an eyebrow. “You know the other night when we ran into each other at Colton’s?”

  “Yeah,” Beth agreed.

  “You’ve met my deputy Mac before. But I don’t think you know the other guy sitting at that table. That was Collin. When Collin met Gloria, he decided to leave the FBI and work with the forest department instead.” Doug watched Beth’s face as he spoke, but she kept it completely blank. Maybe she could be a poker player after all.

  “It’s a big forest, Sheriff,” Cameron pointed out.

  “And I’ve been living here my entire life. That’s more than thirty years of navigating by landmarks and investigating every cave.” Doug was still looking at Beth.

  Beth pursed her lips before responding, “So if you needed to make something disappear, you’d know where to stash it?”

  That was not at all what Doug expected to hear.

  “I think maybe I should join you two for coffee and get the whole story,” he suggested.

  “No.” Cameron’s voice was a deeper rumble than Doug had heard before. “Beth, do not be this stupid. He is wearing his damned uniform. Let the man go to work and do his job.”

  Beth’s eyes darted between Doug and Cameron.

  What would he do if she confided in him? Would he arrest her? How bad was it? He didn’t know, and the thought of being asked to choose between her and his job made him want to hurl. There was a part of him that was relieved to hear Beth agree with Cameron.

  “Yeah, I appreciate it, but Cameron’s right, Doug. You should head over to the station.”

  Doug pictured Beth inserted into some of the scenes he’d been called to take charge of. He couldn’t let that happen to her.

  He leaned down close to her and asked, “Do you still have my card?”

  She rolled her eyes but admitted, “Yeah, I tucked it into the back of my phone case.”

  “Good. That’s my personal cell number on the back, and I will always answer your call. It doesn’t matter what time it is or how small the issue seems. Even if you’re just bored and want to say hi. Call me; text me; doesn’t matter.”

  Beth thought about it for a second. “What if it’s,” she considered her word choice, “messy?”

  “We’ll figure it out. Just promise you’ll let me know if there’s anything you need.” Doug didn’t know how he’d figure it out, but he would deal with that when the time came. Based on the map and conversation thus far, the time would come. It might even be sooner than any of them were ready for. Doug should give Collin a heads-up. Maybe he could keep a closer eye on the area.

  “Okay,” Beth agreed, but she hadn’t said the words. She hadn’t promised Doug, and it reminded him of the way his sister used to agree without really agreeing to stop doing drugs. He couldn’t have this end the same way.

  “Beth,” he prompted. They were staring into each other’s eyes with enough focus that the world around them disappeared. In that moment, Doug was more man than Sheriff and more lover than law enforcer.

  “Yes. I promise I’ll reach out if we need help.” Her serious tone shifted to teasing as she added, “Do you want an update every time I leave home, too?”

  “Actually, I’d love that, but mostly because I’d like to hear from you.” Then Doug admitted the truth that made his feeling for Beth different from anything he’d experienced before. “Knowing what you’re doing and where you are and how you are would always make my day, Beth.” Usually, he hated clingy women who didn’t have a life of their own, but constant updates from Beth about nonsense like what plants she harvested from her garden each day sounded like a dream.

 

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