He shifted his shoulders to release the tension. He was not going to take a desk job, no matter what his boss thought. With a tighter grip on the handle of his cane in his left hand—the same side as his injured leg because he wanted to keep his right hand free for his weapon—he pushed down the cool metal lever and moved from impressive marble to institutional carpet.

“Hey, Zach,” the young, brunette, four-months-pregnant dispatcher said.

“Hey, Margo.”

“Off the crutches!” she enthused.

“Just today. The boss in?”

She grimaced. “He’s been waiting for you. You really leaving?”

Zach had already packed up the stuff he couldn’t live without—precious little—and donated the rest to a thrift store. He’d sold his ’Vette as soon as the news came that he wouldn’t be able to drive her since his ankle and foot wouldn’t work the clutch. When he’d been stuck in a wheelchair. Another pang twisted his insides, and he kept it from showing on his face.

Margo looked at him with pity, as if his lapsing into silence were okay instead of answering her question. And Margo would gossip about everything except official police business, and soon he wouldn’t be a cop, so he said, “Maybe I’m leaving.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “I hope you stay. I like you, Zach.”

He raised his brows. “Kind of you to say; plenty don’t.”

“They’re just plain jealous and resentful ’cuz you did so well with the Billings city cops in Yellowstone County. You’re one of us, no matter what else anyone says.” She sniffed.

Zach would have liked to believe her, but he didn’t. He pulled folded papers from his pocket and put them on her desk. “My recertification to carry a weapon.”

“I’ll process that for you right away.”

“Thanks.”

Her intercom buzzed, and Sheriff Walder said, “Send Zach in, Margo.”

“Of course!” She beamed at Zach and he moved—slower than he’d wanted, but balancing with a cane was different than using crutches—to the thick oak door of the sheriff’s office and entered.

His boss stood, came around the big, scarred desk, and offered his hand, scrutinizing Zach from under heavy, thrusting gray brows. “I was hoping I wouldn’t be seeing you yet, that you’d give matters more thought.”

Zach had already spent too many stretching-infinite months thinking. He shook his boss’s hand.

“How’s the ankle and foot?”

“As good as they’ll ever be,” Zach said, suppressing bitterness, lowering himself to the client chair as smoothly as possible. The bullet had struck his tibia just below the knee, shattering the bone and severing the peroneal nerve. Now he had foot drop and couldn’t control the flexing of his left ankle. Couldn’t control his own foot! His jaw clenched.

Sheriff Walder went back and sat in a chair that creaked under his big body as soft classical music played in the background. Walder liked that stuff. Atop his polished desk he had a line of manila files—four. “You do good work, Zach, and I want you to stay.”

“Sorry, can’t do that.”

Walder tapped his forefinger on his desk, his thinking mode. The next gaze he leveled at Zach was intense. “I would have made the same mistake as Lauren and you, Zach.”

Anger speared, sharp and brutal, setting off a trail of other little explosive feelings inside, messing with his head, screwing up his breathing. But he met the sheriff’s eyes.

The sheriff continued in a measured manner, his gaze fixed to Zach. “If I’d been sitting shotgun with Lauren that night, not only would she have recognized the truck or the driver, I would have, too. And I’d have let her go up and talk to the drunk driver first, just like you did.”

Images flashed through Zach’s mind like the bar lights on top of their vehicle that night . . . the drunk driver weaving, Lauren telling him the name of the guy and that he was an ex-policeman on the town force, from a family of cops.

“Lauren didn’t check him for guns, wanted to talk to him, maybe take him home,” the sheriff said.

“I know,” Zach said.

“And I’d have agreed with her.” The sheriff sighed. “She didn’t check him for weapons, and I wouldn’t have corrected that mistake of hers. Just like you didn’t.”

Zach recalled walking up to the truck, the drunk turning belligerent, reaching for a gun. Zach lunging, the gun going off, the god-awful pain of a shot to his leg. He blinked the vision away, but sweat dampened his back.

Hoarsely he said, “The jerk might not have pulled on you.”

The sheriff shrugged. “No one knows. Thing is, Lauren made a mistake, you made a mistake, and it was one most of the people in this department would have made. Not one any of us will make again, but you paid the price for that reminder, and I’m sorry for it.”

Zach nodded. The whole damn state knew of his situation because there’d been a television crew in from Billings, investigative reporters. They’d heard the shot and were nearly the first on the scene, and they hadn’t let it rest.

And, of course, the investigative news folks had followed up. The ex-cop had often been pulled over by others, but not cited. Why not? Why had he been let go previously? Why hadn’t his license been jerked? Why hadn’t the former policeman been given help? Why hadn’t Zach’s rookie partner handled herself better? She must have needed more training, or the training the county was doing wasn’t sufficient. All the myriad ways the situation could be spun bad, it was.

Bad enough for Zach.

The county commissioners had come through with a fat pension and disability for Zach due to public outcry, but the whole damn thing left a nasty taste in his mouth. Some of his colleagues saw him as the one who’d betrayed them, the outsider. Not the drunk ex-cop.

And in those circumstances, Zach’s own feeling of betrayal cut all the more.

“Zach?” Sheriff Walder asked, but his eyes showed he knew the trail Zach had gone down.

“I’m sorry, too.” Zach managed a sour lift of his mouth. “So is Lauren; she can’t seem to apologize enough.” But whatever respect he’d had for his partner had vanished.

“We’re a sorry bunch. Me, the department, the county. The drunk driver’s family, and him, rotting in a cell where he belongs,” Walder said with more bitterness than Zach thought the man had felt.

“A bad man cost me a good one, and I’ve never liked that.” His nostrils flared, then he tapped the first folder. “I can transfer you back up to the departmental station in the northern part of the county, this time put you in charge. You’re closer to Billings there, and you have a good rep with that force since you helped break that multicounty meth ring.”

“I can’t stay.”

Another sigh, out of Walder’s nose this time. He set aside the first folder, moved to the second. “In fact, I reached out to the Billings police and they would be happy to welcome you to their force.”

“Another desk job.”

The sheriff’s silence indicated that Zach had hit that nail on the head.

So, finally, the time had come. Zach ached inside and his fingers shook as he touched the star in his pocket. His hand closed between the points for an instant, and then he placed it carefully on the desk, not looking at it. He’d carried a badge as a police officer or deputy sheriff in one department or another for thirteen years, the star here for three. He’d wanted to live in the West. “I’m not staying in Montana.” His voice was thick.

“Where are you going?”

“Out of Montana.”

“The quickest way out of Montana is south, Wyoming and then Colorado. Your mother is in Colorado, right?”

In a gracious mental facility there. “Boulder,” Zach said. He’d been born in Boulder, but the college town wasn’t a good fit for a conservative military family.

Walder slid over another file and opened it, took out a card and a sheet of lined notebook paper with writing in his small blocky penmanship.