Eli walked toward a nearby maple tree, stepped behind it and lost his lunch.

Some hero.

As it turned out, the woman had a pair of black eyes and a broken arm. The kids were thoroughly traumatized, but physically unharmed, as far as he knew.

After the state police arrived, with their CSI team and the county coroner, Eli had returned to the sheriff’s department—the very office he was sitting in now—to write up the required reports. Then sheriff at the time, Dutch McKutchen, had been out of town that day, taking his wife, Clara, for her first round of chemotherapy, so he’d missed the action.

Upon his return, Dutch made up for lost time by reaming out his “brain-dead idiot of a deputy” for the better part of half an hour. “When you approach an armed suspect,” he’d raged, “you have your weapon drawn and ready. You do not go into a situation like some fricking hotshot TV cowboy—you could have been killed!”

After the lecture, Dutch had bought Eli a drink over at Sully’s Bar and Grill, told him not to come near the department until he’d been (1) debriefed by the appropriate state officials, and (2) cleared by an officially sanctioned shrink.

Eli smiled sadly, remembering Dutch. The old man had died of a heart attack ten years ago, a month into his retirement, while fishing up at Flathead Lake.

Deciding his thoughts had taken an unnecessarily grim turn, Eli lowered his hands, sat forward with a creak of the springs under his chair and stood.

Given some of the problems he’d faced, he reckoned a potential blizzard wasn’t the worst thing that could happen in his county. Not by a long shot.

Most likely, the storm would fizzle out before it did any real damage. Those weather people, in his opinion, were given to drama.

Just the same, Eli felt a little uneasy.

His sister, Sara, would say he was borrowing trouble.

Dutch McKutchen would have told him to pull his head out of his backside and be grateful for all the good things in his life. Like his two best friends, Cord Hollister and J.P. McCall. And his job, which he loved, about 85 percent of the time. He had a fair amount of money put away, savings and an inheritance from his and Sara’s paternal grandparents, and he owned his house and a few acres of land outright.

Had a good truck, too. Paid for, and still under warranty.

And then there was Brynne Bailey, back home to stay.

Brynne, his high school sweetheart. The girl he’d essentially betrayed