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time around their place. He’d taught her brother how to shoot his first gun. Her too. She noticed him holding yet another casserole and wondered if she should follow her instincts and ask him what leads they had.
    Or is that bad etiquette?
    “Hi, Sheriff. Thanks for coming.” Dusty gave him her polite, Julia-approved speech. “Can I get that for you?”
    “Sure.” Buck gave up his casserole dish. Dusty set it on the counter in the space Shane had cleared—there was now officially no room on the table—seeing the wariness in Shane’s eyes. She couldn’t blame him, if Buck had been the one who questioned him about Nick’s death.
    “I'm so sorry about your brother,” the sheriff said. “He was such a good boy. We're doing everything we can.”
    Boy. Everyone still thought of them as kids, she realized. Buck still referred to her as missy , for pete’s sake. She kept herself between Shane and the sheriff, keeping him out of Buck’s line of sight. Julia wouldn’t approve of raised voices or any sort of confrontation. Dusty’s outburst at the funeral home had been horrifying enough.
    “Do you have any idea yet what might have happened?” Dusty threw funereal etiquette out the window. Besides, Julia wasn't listening.
    “Not any more than the papers say.” He shook his head sadly. “Probably an animal. Bobcat, we figure. Horrible thing. Just horrible.”
    “Bobcat my ass.” Shane stood, chair scraping across the tile. So much for trying to stop a confrontation, Dusty thought, seeing the flash of anger in his eyes.
    “Someone at the funeral home said it might have been a cougar,” Dusty offered, feeling the tension between the two of them. It crackled in the air like heat lightning.
    “Shane.” Buck Thompson gave a curt nod, his jaw rigid. He looked back down at Dusty, his gaze softening. “No, sweetheart, that’s not possible. There are no cougars left in Michigan.”
    “Bullshit.” Shane gave a short laugh. “That’s what the DNR would like you to think.”
    Dusty smirked. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources had been claiming for years there were no cougars in the state.
    She looked back at Shane, interested. “You think it really was a cougar?”
    “No.” Shane’s eyes never left the sheriff’s. “It wasn’t a bobcat either. But that’s what the papers will say. And that’s good for business, isn’t it, Sheriff?”
    “Watch yourself, son.” Buck drew himself up to his full, towering height. He was a good half a foot taller than Shane’s six-feet. Both of them loomed over Dusty. “When’s your big brother due for parole again?”
    Shane didn’t answer, but it was his jaw that tightened now.
    “Listen, sweetheart, we’re doing our best.” Buck turned his attention to her, sounding both harried and defensive. She noticed his hair going gray at the temples too, but she remembered when it had once been thick and jet-black.
    “Your best,” Dusty breathed. She looked back at Shane, incredulous. She didn’t know what he saw on her face, but it made him come fast around the table, stepping up behind her as she turned on the sheriff, eyes blazing, hands clenched into tight fists. “Your best!?”
    She felt Shane’s hand on her shoulder, heard him murmur, “Easy,” but she wasn’t listening. The anger that had been simmering since that early morning phone call came to a full boil as she turned her rage onto Larkspur’s town sheriff, a man she’d known and loved her whole life. Her chest burned, throat aching with the bitterness of her words, and if Shane hadn’t grabbed her around the waist as she started forward, pinning her arms to her sides, she felt as if she probably could have torn the man apart with her bare hands.
    “Your best!” she hissed. Shane’s arms around her reminded her of the people in the next room, of Julia’s presence and her insistence on calm and order and proper behavior. Even though she struggled against his hold, she was, in some ways,