Taming His Montana Heart(64)

“Yes.”

“When?”

He hadn’t expected that question. Maybe it was her way of easing into the discussion, her attempt to make things as easy as possible for him.

“Six months before I resigned from the force and a year before Uncle Robert insisted he needed me at Lake Serene.”

“Were you in danger? You had to shoot—is that what it was—to keep from getting shot yourself?”

Darn it! She shouldn’t have to draw every word out of him. After all, she’d given him a blueprint to follow.

“I wanted to be a cop from high school on. It was the only career I had any interest in.” Nervous energy driving him, he got to his feet and, after stroking her arm, walked to the window.

After looking at everything and nothing while thinking of the silent, nonjudgmental wolf, he faced Haley. “I had some unrealistic ideas of what the job would entail. I dug the uniform and being able to drive a vehicle that made people sit up and take notice. I thought my size and gun and the authority that went with the position would be enough. People would do what I told them to. The innocent would be safe while the guilty would pay.”

“But life isn’t that simple.”

“No,” he muttered. “Daron is already learning that. It took me longer.”

“I understand.”

Of course she did. “I loved being part of a brotherhood and when things got tough I took refuge behind cop humor. Making a joke is easier than thinking too deeply about such things as children trapped in situations they have no control over.”

She fingered her sweater. “Like my brother and I were.”

“Yes. I have a pretty good idea what the cops who came to your place that day thought. They wanted to apologize for not being able to protect you, but they couldn’t. They had a job to do.”

“It was pretty clear what had happened.”

“The big picture but not the details. Their job was to determine that a crime had been committed and your dad hadn’t acted in self-defense. The crime scene needed to be secured. You needed an ambulance.”

When she clasped her hands so tight her knuckles turned white, he knew he couldn’t draw things out any longer.

“The day it happened”—he started to lean against the glass then used the frame to support him—“was hot.”

“It?”

“I’d just chased some kids out of a motel swimming pool and was wishing I could dive into it myself when I was sent to a domestic violence situation. Those calls have the potential to be particularly dangerous because emotions are so raw. You understand.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’d been to that house before, a shack really. Two adult brothers and their mother lived there.” The words kept coming. “The brothers drank and when they did they fought with each other. The mother was a piece of work who’d had five children, none of them upstanding citizens. She’d periodically insist the police kick her sons out. Then she’d remember she needed what money they gave her to keep the lights on. She always took them back.”

He was vaguely aware that he’d closed his eyes. Haley deserved his full attention, but he didn’t know how he could keep going while looking at her.

One of the brothers had stormed out as he was approaching with his service revolver drawn since he knew there were weapons in the house. That brother wasn’t armed, but his sibling was, which Shaw discovered the moment he spotted the figure in the doorway. The second brother vacillated between waving the rifle at his sibling and at Shaw. It didn’t take Shaw long to figure out they’d been drinking. He repeatedly commanded the armed brother to put down his weapon. At one point the unarmed sibling tried to grab the rifle which earned him a knee in the groin.

There was a lot of swearing and yelling from the mother who remained in the house. The armed brother kept saying he was sick and tired of being pushed around and treated like trash by cops. He was a man, a man.

“That’s when he aimed at me and cocked the rifle. His brother stared at him and their mother stopped yelling. The silence—it was so quiet. I had all the time in the world and no time at all. He fired. I fired. Four times on my part.”

“Oh, my—were you hit?”

“No.” He didn’t know how to handle her disembodied voice so opened his eyes. Her hand was over her mouth. “He was a lousy shot. He was also dead.”

“Self-defense.”

“That’s what the grand jury concluded.”

“But you were in limbo until the grand jury made its decision?”

“Something like that.”

“No, not something,” she said. “I’ve followed a lot of cases involving law enforcement so I know something about how things are done. I have some idea how hard that was for you.”

“I had support from my fellow officers and my family.”

“Thank goodness.”

She joined him at the window but made no move to touch him. “I wonder where our wolf is. The way he hung around—Shaw, do you think his presence had anything to do with what we’re talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

“It probably sounds crazy, but I’m trying to make sense of what’s happening. Looking for a reason. Even my brother doesn’t know how guilty I felt all those years. How I snapped. I thought I could tell the shrink but when it got down to it I couldn’t. And now you know everything. I’m sorry. This is about you, and maybe the wolf.”