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slipped her hand from his grasp and turned away, feeling as if she’d just escaped a force field. He made a sound, and she decided to take it as acceptance of her apology, remembering that SEALs didn’t talk. They just grunted.
    Julia turned to the Sheriff and tried to smile. “I guess I owe you my apologies as well, Sheriff.”
    “Chuck.” The sheriff grinned. “We don’t stand much on ceremony around here.”
    “Chuck, then. I’m really sorry I caused all this commotion.”
    He rocked back on his heels. “Well, I won’t say anytime, because you gave me a fright there, Miss Anderson…”
    “Sally,” Julia said, hating the name.
    “Sally. As I was saying, I thought I’d caught myself a criminal. Mostly what I do is break up a few fights on Saturday night and arrest speeders. Not many of those, either.”
    “No, I imagine not,” Julia murmured. “Simpson seems like such a nice little town.” After all she’d been through that afternoon, what was a little lie? All right, a big lie. “Friendly and quiet.”
    Years of living abroad made it easy to say the pleasant, untrue thing. Julia remembered her mother saying kind things about the landscape around Reykjavik—a sere, treeless, lifeless expanse—to a delighted Icelander.
    The Sheriff beamed. “That it is. Glad you like it here. We’re always happy to welcome newcomers to Simpson. We need new blood. The youngsters keep leaving us, right after high school. I keep telling ‘em it’s a nasty world out there, but nobody listens. Can’t imagine what they think they’re gonna find out there.”
    Oh, I don’t know , Julia thought. Bookshops, cinema, theater, art galleries. Good food, good conversation, shops. Sidewalks. Humans . Then, because she’d always been told her face was an open book, she smiled and tried to think of something else. “You know what kids are like. I guess they feel they have to go and find out for themselves.”
    Out of politeness Julia turned to the man she’d brained. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Cooper?”

* * * * *
    Cooper started. He’d been thinking how easy this Sally Anderson was finding it to talk to Chuck even after five minutes’ acquaintance. He’d found it enormously difficult to tell Chuck how sorry he’d been when Carly, Chuck’s wife, had passed away.
    And then Chuck had just stood around morosely, patting him awkwardly on the back when Cooper’s own wife, Melissa, had left. Looked like beautiful grade school teachers didn’t have the kind of problems men did. Particularly not beautiful schoolteachers with red, no—he checked again while she wasn’t looking— brown hair.
    He could have sworn it was red. She looked like a redhead. He was real partial to redheads. Though truth be told, he’d never seen a redhead outside the movies as gorgeous as this one was.
    She was still scared. Her hand had trembled in his. It had been soft and small and icy cold. The temptation to keep holding it just to warm it up had been overwhelming. He’d let her go because she looked terrorized by him. It was hard to forget the look of sheer terror on her face as she’d held him at bay. The last time he’d seen anyone look like that had been under gunfire.
    She was hiding her fear well now, with a polite expression on that lovely face, but he remembered her trembling hand.
    There was a sudden silence, and Chuck and the teacher were both looking at him in expectation. The echo of Miss Anderson’s question hovered in the air.
    “Er…that’s right.” It must have been an appropriate response, because the teacher gathered her things and slipped out the door, Chuck patted him on the back and followed her and he was left alone in the school, except for Jim, out swabbing the corridor.
    He listened to the sounds of Jim whistling “Be My Baby” out of tune but in time with the sweep of the mop. Cooper moved towards the door and heard something crackle. The notes. The notes Sally Anderson had written. He’d come here to talk