“I love you, too,” she said. “So much.” Then she gave a teary little burst of laughter. “Here we are in a hospital room, declaring our feelings for each other. No candlelit dinner or romantic sleigh ride for us.”

Eli smiled, squeezed her chin softly, dropped his hand. “Is this the part where I grovel?”

Brynne swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of the tatty old sweatshirt she’d put on to paint after her mom and dad left Bailey’s for their house.

“Absolutely not. Groveling can definitely wait.”

A crooked grin. “Good.”

She was serious again. “I love you,” she repeated. “But I’m honestly not sure I have what it takes to withstand the day-to-day realities of your job, Sheriff Garrett.”

He was quiet for a long moment—so long, in fact, that Brynne thought he’d dropped off to sleep. Clearly, that would be the best thing for him, given the beating he’d taken from Gretchen Lansing; his poor, battered body needed all the rest it could get.

But then he asked another question, one that surprised her a little.

“Would you really want to live in a world without cops, Brynne?”

“No,” she replied, after taking a few seconds to ponder her reply. “But I’d love to live in a world that didn’t need cops.”

Eli closed his eyes.

Another brief silence fell.

He ended it with a wistful, “Wouldn’t we all?”

With that, he slept.

Brynne sat there, watching him, for several long minutes. Then, weak-kneed with shock and weariness, she got to her feet and shambled out into the corridor, past the nurses’ station and into the waiting room.

Cord and J.P. were pacing, moving in opposite directions, passing each other without making eye contact. Neither one of them had said more than two words since they’d arrived; the constant walking was their vigil.

Sara sat huddled in one of the hard plastic chairs, talking on her phone.

Melba was absent; she’d probably gone home. Brynne certainly hoped so, because she’d been through a lot that day.

“He’s sleeping,” Brynne said, to everyone in general.

Dr. Marisol Storm, the coroner’s daughter and a staff member at Painted Pony Creek County Hospital, appeared in the wide doorway of the waiting room, holding an electronic tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other.

She was in her midthirties, a strikingly beautiful woman with raven-black hair and large, thick-lashed amber eyes. Her mother, Alec Storm’s ex-wife, was Hispanic, and Marisol had divided her growing-up years between the Creek and Mexico City.

Knowing she was Eli’s attending physician, everyone went still, their attention turned to her.

She smiled, and the effect was breathtaking, even under those circumstances.