Ties That Bind by Natalie R. Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

Sam was completely speechless—even thoughtless. First Paul, now this—it was too much for one day. Every sentence that came to her lips seemed stupid or inappropriate. She felt the silence run on too long but couldn’t seem to make herself behave normally.
    Finally, the chief seemed to sense that the situation needed rescuing. He stepped forward and put his hand on Gage’s shoulder.
    “Sam, as you may know, this is Detective Gage Flint, Salt Lake City PD. He handled a case a while back involving some college kids and a suicide pact, and managed to put it to rest pretty quickly. I figure we can use his experience.”
    “But—”
    “No buts. We’re short staffed and he’s between cases. Consider him on-loan and at your service.”
    At her service. The man who—just six short months ago—had destroyed her first shot at a big-city career.
    “Something wrong, Montgomery?” Chief Roberson pursed his lips tightly after each sentence, as though worried the wrong words would come out of his mouth. Casually dressed in a too-tight polo shirt, faded Levi Dockers, and brown shoes that had seen better days, he didn’t look commanding. In fact, he looked a little dumpy. There was a stain on the shirt where his belly protruded, and his usually chaotic hair was more haywire than normal. Sam imagined he’d been comfortable in his worn-out recliner when this call came in, watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie, Matlock, or something equally hypnotic and mundane.
    The chief was rarely immaculate in the office, so his attire here was no surprise. His broad, ruddy face showed the wear and tear of years of police work, even though he had spent his entire career in a small town. In the thirty-five years Roberson had served on the force, Kanesville had seen kidnappings, murders, drug deals, sexual crimes.
    And suicides.
    When things were slow at the office, he liked to regale them with tales of Kanesville in the days of only one stoplight, but he rarely spoke of the serious crimes he had solved. Sam usually tried to keep busy to avoid his memory lane strolls. Sometimes, she wondered if he did it on purpose, just to keep everyone working.
    In short, the man was one to be reckoned with. Gage stood next to the chief, giving him several surreptitious glances. She knew Gage was summing him up. She almost wished he would make the wrong judgment call and underestimate Chief Roberson.
    She could also tell from the way they stood next to each other that they had never met until tonight.
    “Sam and I have worked together,” Gage said, getting right to the point. “We were on an undercover case last year.”
    “Oh, well, that’s good. Then you’re familiar with each other, and can quickly put together a top-notch team to stop this … whatever it is. I expect you’ll cooperate fully with Detective Flint, right, Montgomery?”
    A gleam in his eye told her he was perfectly well aware that she knew Gage and that this might be a volatile situation. She remembered the chief talking about his academy friend who was the “big honcho” in Salt Lake and felt her stomach begin to churn. Was this how she got the job in her hometown? Had Gage never really been gone from her life?
    Maybe the whole Clarkston fiasco been common knowledge for everyone in Kanesville, including her boss. Maybe she’d been hired out of pity. So where did Gage Flint measure in?
    Sam felt the sudden narrowing of her throat, the urge to cry abruptly, surprisingly strong. The one reaction that could bring her down. She swallowed back the tears. Maybe she owed Gage more than she knew. And that was a bitter bite of acid.
    She hated that he was the trigger.
    “I need to run down a few things with Flint, and then he’s all yours,” Roberson said. He motioned at Gage to follow him over to the computer, and Sam turned away and swallowed hard. She was pretty sure that it couldn’t get any worse. A difficult case—three cases—the man she loved in high school, and the