“I imagine he only called us as a cop-to-former-cop courtesy thing,” Danny said. His sister’s fiancé, Reed, had once been a homicide detective. “Reed’s been really edgy lately. I think the pressure of having Nathan still on the loose is getting to him. He doesn’t let my sister out of his sight.”

“I can appreciate that.” Jed glanced at Mandy. “I worry about Nathan coming after Mandy. I’ve offered to stay at the inn, but she’s too stubborn to let me.”

And why was that?

“What about you?” Danny asked. “How do you feel about the cops not catching Nathan?”

“Pissed.” Jed’s jaw sawed back and forth. “If I run into him, I’m greeting him with a bullet to the head.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.” Danny didn’t have much patience for killers either, insane or not. “If I see him first, I’ll give him the message.”

“Appreciate that.” Jed grinned. He stooped down and gathered an armful of branches. Danny did the same. He followed the hunter to the rear of the property. They piled the small debris behind the garage and made a couple more trips. Then Danny helped him drag the larger limbs to the rear of the yard. By the time they’d finished, his entire left arm was shaking.

Jed leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees. His face had lost color and sagged with lack of air, pain, and disappointment. “I’ll have to come back tomorrow and cut them up. Just can’t seem to get back up to speed.” He wheezed and pressed a hand to his belly.

Danny massaged his forearm. Fire shot from his fingertips to his elbow. “I’m done in, too.”

Jed looked up. A wry smile crossed his face. “Not exactly prime specimens, are we?”

“Nope.” Danny snorted. “We suck.”

Jed barked out a laugh and straightened. “I need something to drink. Come on. Let’s see what Mandy has in the kitchen, and you can tell us what the detective had to say.”

Danny hesitated. He’d come planning on confronting her, but now that he was here, guilt poked him like a sharp stick. “She doesn’t want to see me. She wants to forget the whole thing.”

Jed shot him a hard look. Hard enough that Danny had no doubt there was some bad shit in Jed’s background. “Well, she needs to face facts. It did happen, and pretending it didn’t is stupid and dangerous.”

OK then. Jed was a straight shooter, and Danny couldn’t help but like him. Even if he was jealous as hell that Jed had Mandy and he didn’t.