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Elliot had gone home last night, although he’d checked in with me by text to let me know he’d gotten there safely, and again this morning to let me know he might or might not be here for dinner. He’d sent me periodic pictures of the things he was finding in the house, asking if I remembered this or that. It distracted me a little, as had Doc’s daily text of a picture of Pet curled up on one of his massive thighs. He’d also asked how I was feeling, which meant Taavi’d snitched on me.

By the time Smith got done with Taavi and my parents, I had worked myself into a bit of an agitated state—why, I have no fucking idea. As far as I could figure, none of us had done anything wrong, although I was a bit paranoid about what might happen to Taavi, given the amount of growling and barking he’d done.

Smith had been talking to everyone else in the kitchen—one at a time—but he came to me in the living room, rather than making me get up off the couch, although I really could have.

“Hart,” he said by way of greeting. “How’s the side?”

“Mostly okay if I don’t move,” I replied.

“And if you do?”

“Hurts like a bitch,” I answered honestly.

“Give how much blood Jellenik said you left on the sidewalk, I’d imagine so.”

I hadn’t been paying attention to the name tags on the beaten-up cops. “Which one was that?”

“The guy you dragged off the pavement. Thanks for that, by the way. It could’ve gone a lot worse for him.”

I shrugged, then winced. “I wasn’t going to let him get beaten to death out there.”

Smith’s blue eyes studied me for a few minutes, and I almost said something else, but then he spoke. “Richmond lost a good cop when you quit,” he said as softly as his gravelly voice probably went. “It’s a shame they clearly didn’t know what they had.”

I felt my ears flush. “Um. Thanks?”

“You ever want to come back here, I’d put in a word for you,” he told me, his voice serious. “Although I get the feeling this isn’t your kind of town.”

“Not really, no. But I appreciate the thought.” I grimaced. “Don’t tell my mom I said that.”

He chuckled a little. “My lips are sealed.” Then he put down his leather satchel and settled in my dad’s chair and tapped the tablet, turning on the screen. “Ready to give me your statement?”

I nodded, then walked him through everything that had happened from getting stuck in traffic until my world had gone black.

“And you didn’t feel it?”

“Not a damn thing.”

He made a note of that.

“Taavi saw him.”

Smith nodded. “So he said.”

“Snowball’s chance in hell, I assume?”

“Of catching him? Yeah, pretty much.”

I’d known that, but I’d hoped that the description might have helped in a small town like Shawano. I shifted carefully, trying to adjust without aggravating my side. “Were they all from Shawano?” I asked.

Smith looked up, then shut off his tablet and set it on the side table. “No, but you didn’t hear it from me.”

I licked my lips, which were dry and cracked, probably from a mixture of winter and stress. “They did the same thing in Richmond last year,” I told him. “When the protests turned violent. A lot of the people we arrested weren’t local.”

Smith leaned forward, lacing his fingers together, elbows on his knees. “I want to call in the FBI,” he said.

“Okay?”

“You’ve worked with them before, right?”