Stone Cold Heart (Tracers #13)(37)

Nolan’s boots crunched on the rocks beside her. She caught a faint trace of his scent—male sweat with a hint of shaving cream or maybe cologne. She wanted to ease closer, but she resisted the urge.

“Look,” Nolan said.

She turned around. His gaze was trained on a distant cliff. Above it, Sara caught the glow of fireworks.

“Where is that?” she asked.

“Belmont Hills Golf Club. You drove by it on your way into town.”

They watched a series of red, blue, and green starbursts. After a few minutes, Sara resumed her flashlight sweeps.

“So,” she said, searching for small talk. “What’s your family doing on this nice Fourth of July evening?”

He smiled, seeming amused by the question. “Well, let’s see. My sister and her kids are camping on Padre Island. My brother is hosting his annual chili cook-off, which I’m not invited to.”

“What, you don’t cook?”

“No, I win every year. So this year, he suggested I take a shift.”

“Your brother uninvited you to his annual party?”

“He was kidding. Sort of. But then all this came up, and I ended up having to work anyway.” Nolan steadied her arm as she stepped over a deep rut. “Let’s see . . . and then there’s my parents. They’re at a picnic with some friends.”

Picnics and chili cook-offs. It sounded like the sort of settled suburban lifestyle that might have been hers if she’d gone through with her wedding, and she felt a strange combination of wistfulness and relief.

“Sara?”

Damn, he’d asked a question.

“Sorry. What?”

“I said what about your family? Are they in Maryland?”

“Yeah. My parents and my brother’s family. He’s got twin girls, Ellie and Erin.”

“You see them much?”

“No.”

It had been since Christmas. She’d intended to fly up for a weekend, but she’d been busy with work, and all she’d managed to do was send birthday presents for the girls.

“I keep inviting them to visit, but I doubt they will,” she said. “My parents are hoping this is temporary.”

“What is?”

“My living here. This job with Delphi. They’re hoping it’s a phase, like when I moved to Guatemala.”

“Is it?”

“No.”

The word jumped out before she could think. But it was true. This wasn’t a phase. She loved her job at Delphi and fully intended to stay.

“Anyway, I’ll probably go visit them for Thanksgiving. My mom’s already hounding me.”

Nolan drew closer, keeping step with her. “Tell me about Guatemala,” he said.

“What about it?”

“What was it like there?”

It was the second time she’d been asked that in less than a week. She swept the flashlight over the ground.

“It was hard,” she said. “Stressful. There were so many lives lost, or else broken beyond fixing. I learned a lot from it.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . what my limits are. And that I could never go back to my cozy job at the university, where the most dire question was whether or not I’d make tenure. I realized I wanted to make more of an impact. Anyone can teach human osteology to undergrads.”

“Not anyone.”

“Well. Many people can. Not everyone’s good at the forensic side of things. It’s dirty. Smelly. The cases can be depressing. And there’re the midnight callouts, the long hours, the distraught families.” She looked at him. “You know.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“But I’m okay with all that. I guess that’s why I feel obligated.”

He stopped. She stopped, too, and looked up at him, studying the contours of his face in the dimness. Her pulse started to pound as he gazed down at her.

“What?” she asked.

He reached down and brushed a lock of hair from her eyes, and her heart flip-flopped. He turned away, and they resumed the search.

What had just happened? She shouldn’t have gotten personal. But he sounded genuinely interested, and she didn’t know why that surprised her.

“We have something in common,” he said, and his low voice seemed to wrap around her in the dark. “We’re both trying to prove ourselves.”

“You?” She scoffed. “The hometown hero? Everyone loves you.”

“Not everyone.” He paused, and she waited for him to explain. “I left Austin PD under a cloud of suspicion. There were some allegations being investigated by Internal Affairs.”

She stopped and looked up at him, surprised. “Were they legit?”

“No. IA cleared me.”

“Good.”

He looked away, and it seemed like there was more he wanted to say on the topic, but she didn’t want to pry. Still, she was curious. What sort of “suspicion”? She wanted him to open up to her. But intimacy was a two-way street, and if he opened his life to her, he’d expect her to do the same.

Nolan shook his head. “This case has been hard on everyone. I intend to solve it. People need answers—although I don’t think they’re going to like what I find.”

Sara eased closer. “How do you mean?”