“You’re intimidating.” Sort of. He might be fair and listen and not be a jerk, but he still had a job to do and she may have tiptoed a wee bit over the line of what was appropriate when it came to welcoming the island’s newest visitor.

He’d surprised her and she panicked. Ben got that part right. After fifteen minutes of debating how to get down from the cabin’s loft and get by the guy, she’d been wound up and the breaker switch was right there, so . . .

“This isn’t my first day on the job, Maddie.”

Her mind raced with justifications and excuses. She blocked them all out and went with denial. “So?”

“I know guilt when I see it. You saw a guy and panicked, or you were in that cabin for a reason. Either way, Connor got hit.” He nodded in the general direction of her front door. “Grab your coat and let’s get this over with.”

She refused to believe he was some sort of human lie detector. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re really going to play it this way?”

Until the very end . . . or until she came up with a logical reason for what happened last night. “I think so. Yes.”

“This is going to be interesting.”

Chapter 4

A half hour later they pulled up to Whitaker’s version of a police station. It was a small office attached to the far end of the building that housed the library. Maddie knew from her few previous trips in to pick up extra work assignments that it consisted of a small reception area, Ben’s office, a conference room, and a jail. The old furniture and peeling green paint on the walls only added to the Whitaker-doesn’t-have-much-crime ambiance.

Ben walked through the empty reception area, past the table piled with years-old magazines, and headed straight for his office. She joined him because she didn’t think she had any other choice. With each step she followed Ben’s lead and stripped off her winter coat. By the time they slipped into his office he had his off and was reaching for hers to hang them both on the coatrack in the corner.

Her hands froze in midair with the coat dangling off her fingers when she realized they weren’t alone. He was in the chair in the corner. Him. The guy with the bandage on his head. The same one who was about to cause her a lot of trouble because she’d panicked. An uncharacteristic move that she would now pay for, and she deserved it, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try to run from this like she did everything else in her messed-up life.