“It’s a waste of time,” Dalton says.

“Right. Inefficient, to put it a nicer way. If you don’t know how to build a fire, admit it. If we’re both too tired to come and get one going tonight, we won’t offer. I’d tell you where to find extra blankets. Eric would say, ‘Then you’d better learn.’ Either way, no one’s going to—”

“Speaking of wasting time …” Dalton says.

“Go home, Eric. I’ll get Casey’s fireplace going.”

“No.”

“It’ll take me five minutes—”

Dalton cuts him off with a snort.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anders’s words turn brittle.

“Five minutes? You go over there, you won’t leave again before dawn.”

Anders’s eyes narrow. He murmurs for me to “Hold on a sec” and then leads Dalton aside. They walk about ten paces, not far enough for me to avoid overhearing in the stillness of the night.

“You want to yank my chain?” Anders says. “Go ahead, but there’s a fine line between needling me and insulting me, and that crossed it.”

“How?”

“She just arrived today. Travelled all yesterday. Was trapped in a car then a bush plane with you for hours. Lands to find we have a body she can’t investigate. Then discovers we have cannibals in our woods and spends her night tramping around those woods, only to find a skull and severed legs. Do you really think I’d invite myself back to her place in hopes of getting laid? Seriously?”

“No, I think you’ll go back to her place and keep talking until the sun comes up. And then neither of you will be in any shape to search tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Dalton shakes his head and walks back to me. “I’ll get that fireplace going. Come on.”

Dalton gives no outward sign he’s unsettled by what we found in the forest, but I can tell he’s off his game by the simple fact that he forgets he’s supposed to be an asshole. He gets my fire going and shows me how to do it. He explains where to buy wood but advises that I learn to chop instead to save credits—downed trees are hauled into the woodlot, where they’re free to anyone who’ll chop them. Anders might be more comfortable explaining things, but Dalton is a damned fine teacher when he’s in the mood.

Once the fire’s going, I discover he’s somehow transported that bottle of tequila to my house. We go into the kitchen, and it’s there, and he’s pouring me a shot without asking if I want it.

He pours one for himself, too. Then he sniffs it with some suspicion, and I try not to laugh.

“Never had tequila?” I ask.

“Nope.”

“It’s not going to taste good,” I say.

“Then what’s the point?”

I shake my head and down my shot. It burns all the way, that delicious heat that muffles my brain on contact.

He eyes me and then takes his shot. He only gets about two-thirds in before sputtering and coughing. He squeezes his eyes shut, hands resting on the table. A moment’s pause. He opens his eyes. “Not my way, but I get it.” He finishes the shot, slower now.

“Long day, huh?” I say.

“Yeah.” He pauses, glass in hand, before carefully setting it on the table and looking over, meeting my gaze as if preparing some earth-shaking pronouncement.

“It’s not usually like this,” he says. “In Rockton.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. I burst out laughing and he looks at me, as startled as if I’d broken into song. He watches me, that look on his face, the one I’ve come to think of as his dissection look. Like I’m an alien life form he’s trying to understand.

After a moment, he says, “Yeah, I guess that’s obvious. At least, you’d hope so,” and he smiles, and when he does, all I can think is, Goddamn, sheriff, you should do that more often. It’s the tequila, of course, and the long night and the long day and feeling like I’ve been walking through a minefield on tiptoes. When he smiles, it is—in an odd way—reassuring, like the ground finally steadies under my feet. Things aren’t so foreign here. Even Sheriff Dalton can smile.

It only lasts a moment. He doesn’t wipe it away, as if remembering he’s supposed to be a jerk. It simply fades, and I realize that the “jerk” mode isn’t an act. We all have our different aspects. That’s one of his. So is the quiet, reflective guy who sat on the back deck with me and stared into the forest for two hours. There’s a lot going on in that head, little of it simple or uncomplicated, and most of it weighed down by the responsibility of keeping the lid on this powder keg of a town. Which doesn’t mean Eric Dalton is a nice guy. I don’t think he can be. Not here. This is as nice as he gets, and I appreciate this glimpse, the way I appreciate the smile, and I also appreciate that he doesn’t backtrack to cover it up, to be the asshole again.

I fill our shot glasses halfway. He takes his. We drink them. Not a word exchanged for at least two minutes afterward, until he says, “I’ll come by at ten. Yeah, not a lot of time to sleep …”

“But we have a manhunt to launch. I know.”

He nods and leaves without another word. I lock the door behind him, settle on the couch in front of the blazing fire, and soon fall asleep.

KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the internationally bestselling author of the thirteen-book Women of the Otherworld series, the Nadia Stafford crime novels and a new series set in the fictional town of Cainsville, Illinois, which includes the novels Omens, Visions and Deceptions. She is also the author of three bestselling young adult trilogies, and the YA suspense thriller, The Masked Truth. She lives in rural Ontario.