Chapter 3 - The Sheriff Came SmilingAdrian carried me out through the back door because he said the front was too exposed.
I did not ask exposed to what.
Some questions were worse than answers.
Rain had started again, soft but cold, turning the alley behind Hal’s Diner into a long black mirror. A dark SUV waited there with the engine running. One of Adrian’s men opened the back door. Another stood watch near the dumpster with his coat pushed back just enough to show me he was armed.
I should have been afraid of them.
I was.
But I was more afraid of the deputies inside the diner.
More afraid of Jesse.
Most afraid of Sheriff Mercer, whose smiling campaign signs still stood in half the lawns in Bellmore.
Adrian eased me into the back seat. I bit down hard enough to taste blood again.
“You need a hospital,” he said.
“You said the police—”
“I said Mercer’s men are a problem. Doctors are still useful.”
“Doctors call police.”
“Not the one we’re using.”
I stared at him through one swollen eye. “You have your own doctor?”
He looked out the window as the SUV pulled away. “Among other things.”
That should have sounded arrogant.
It sounded lonely.
The clinic was not a clinic.
It was a brick house tucked behind a closed flower shop on a quiet street two towns over. The windows glowed warm yellow. A woman in her sixties opened the door before we knocked.
She took one look at me and said, “Exam room.”
No panic.
No questions.
Just movement.
Her name was Dr. Evelyn Marsh. She had sharp eyes, silver hair, and the kind of hands that made you feel like you could fall apart because someone in the room knew how to put things back together.
“Who did this?” she asked while cutting my diner shirt away from my bruised ribs.
Adrian stood near the door.
I looked at him.
He looked away.
“Four men,” I said.
Dr. Marsh pressed gently near my side. I gasped.
“Names?”
“Jesse Holland. Pete Rourke. Marcus Vale. Danny Bell.”
Her hands stopped for half a second.
“You know them?” I asked.
“In towns like Bellmore,” she said, “men like that are never strangers.”
She gave me medicine for the pain, cleaned my face, wrapped my wrist, and told me I had two cracked ribs, a sprained hand, and enough bruising to make me feel ninety years old for a while.
“Any internal bleeding?” Adrian asked.
Dr. Marsh glanced at him. “Not that I can tell. But she needs rest, fluids, and not another life-threatening incident before breakfast.”
“Noted,” Adrian said.
I almost laughed.
It hurt too much.
While she worked, Adrian stepped outside to take a call. I heard only pieces through the old wall.
“Mercer moved too fast.”
“No, don’t touch him yet.”
“Find the briefcase.”
“And bring me Jesse alive.”
Alive.
The word should not have comforted me.
It did not.
Dr. Marsh taped gauze along my cheekbone.
“You need to understand something, Lena,” she said quietly. “Adrian Voss is dangerous.”
“I noticed.”
“No. You noticed other men fearing him. That is not the same thing.”
I looked toward the closed door.
“Then why are you helping him?”
Her mouth tightened.
“Because sometimes the monster standing in front of you is the only thing blocking the worse one behind him.”
Before I could ask what that meant, someone knocked.
Not on the exam room door.
On the front door.
Three slow knocks.
Dr. Marsh froze.
Adrian came back in, no longer calm in a human way.
“Back room,” he said.
“I can walk.”
“No, you can’t.”
He lifted me again before pride could argue with pain.
The back room smelled like old books and antiseptic. Adrian set me on a narrow couch, then crouched in front of me.
“No matter what you hear, stay quiet.”
“What if it’s Mercer?”
“It is.”
My heart slammed once.
Then I heard the front door open.
Sheriff Cole Mercer’s voice filled the house like warm poison.
“Evening, Evelyn.”
Dr. Marsh said, “Sheriff.”
“I heard you had company.”
“I have patients.”
“I’m looking for one.”
Adrian did not move.
Neither did I.
Mercer sighed like a disappointed father.
“Lena Hart got herself mixed up in trouble tonight. Her coworkers are worried. Whole town’s worried.”
My hands curled into the blanket.
Whole town.
The same town that had watched me bleed.
Dr. Marsh said, “I haven’t seen her.”
Mercer laughed softly.
“Evelyn. Come on now.”
A floorboard creaked.
Adrian stood.
His face had gone empty.
Mercer’s voice changed.
“Well. That explains it.”
Silence.
Then: “Adrian Voss. In my county.”
“Your county?” Adrian asked.
Mercer laughed again, but this time it had a blade in it.
“You always did have a gift for walking into places where you don’t belong.”
“And you always had a gift for wearing a badge over rot.”
My breath caught.
Dr. Marsh whispered, “Gentlemen.”
Mercer ignored her.
“You don’t want this war.”
“No,” Adrian said. “You don’t.”
Another silence.
Then Mercer said something that made my blood turn colder than the rain outside.
“Hand over the waitress, and I’ll pretend you didn’t come home.”
Come home?
I looked at Adrian.
His face did not change, but something in his eyes did.
A past opened there.
Not for long.
Just long enough for me to see that Bellmore had not simply found him.
It had made him.
“You have until sunrise,” Mercer said.
“For what?”
“To remember what happened the last time you cared about a woman in this town.”
Dr. Marsh made a small sound.
Adrian stepped forward.
The floor creaked under him.
Mercer must have stepped back, because his voice moved closer to the door.
“Sunrise, Adrian. After that, every person who helped her becomes part of this.”
The front door closed.
I listened to the sheriff’s car pull away.
Only then did Adrian come back into the room.
I expected him to look angry.
He looked haunted.
“What did he mean?” I asked.
May you like
Adrian stared at me for a long time.
Then he said, “It means I should have burned this town down fifteen years ago.”
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