Page 3 of Montana Justice

Piper

My heart hammered against my ribs as Lachlan said my name. He remembered me. After eight years, he actually remembered me.

The sound of my real name on his lips sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the mountain air seeping through the tavern’s windows. For months now, I’d been Carol or Lisa or whatever name seemed safest in the moment. Hearing “Piper” felt like putting on clothes that actually fit.

“You do remember,” I managed, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course I remember you.” His brown eyes held mine, and I could see genuine warmth there—no pity, no disgust, just… recognition. Like I was someone worth remembering. “Piper Matthews. You lived on Elm Street with your family. Your bike chain used to come off all the time.”

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it, rusty from disuse. The sound surprised me. When was the last time I’d laughed? Really laughed, not the fake sound I used to deflect attention or smooth over awkward moments with strangers.

“That stupid bike. I swear it had a vendetta against me.”

“I fixed it for you once. You were maybe ten years old, sitting on the curb looking like the world had ended because you couldn’t get home.”

I couldn’t believe he remembered. I’d been crying that day—not about the bike, but because I’d come home from school to find my mother sporting a fresh black eye and my father in one of his rages. The broken chain had just been the final straw.

But Lachlan had knelt down on that dirty sidewalk in his good clothes and gotten grease on his hands fixing my bike. Then he’d walked me halfway home to make sure it didn’t break again. He’d been sixteen. Most sixteen-year-olds were too self-involved to do much of anything.

It had meant everything to me. Knowing he remembered it too made something clench in my heart.

But memories weren’t going to get me food. I pressed my lips together and took a sip of my soda, using the moment to scan the room again. I needed to figure out who might be carrying cash and might be distracted enough that I could lift some from them.

“So what was the celebration about?” I asked, nodding toward the crowded table where his friends kept raising their glasses.

Lachlan’s whole face lit up, transforming him from merely handsome to absolutely devastating. “We were celebrating me officially being named sheriff of Garnet Bend.”

Sheriff . My blood went cold for a heartbeat before I forced myself to smile. Of course he would be sheriff. Of course the one person in this town who’d shown me kindness had grown up to be the very person whose job it was to arrest people like me.

“That’s incredible,” I said and meant it, despite the irony. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I can hardly believe it myself. Charlie Garcia finally decided to retire after thirty years, and the town council chose me to replace him.”

That explained the festive atmosphere and the multiple rounds of toasts I’d witnessed.

His friends had mostly left, but I let my gaze drift around the room again, automatically cataloging details.

The man in the corner booth had pulled out his wallet three times to buy rounds—definitely carrying cash.

The woman at the small table by the window kept checking her phone in a designer purse that probably cost more than I’d seen in six months.

But even as I mentally tallied potential marks, part of me was genuinely happy for Lachlan. Sheriff was exactly the kind of job he’d been meant for.

“You always wanted to be in law enforcement, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. My father wanted me to go into real estate brokerage with him, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to help people.”

That’s exactly how I remembered him. He’d been one of the few people in town who’d looked at me like I was a person instead of the garbage the town thought I was because of the Matthews name.

I remember how I’d cried for three days after he’d left for college when I was twelve, because he’d been the only bright spot in my increasingly dark world. He’d never known about that, of course.

“Makes total sense,” I said. “Did you go to college?”

“Yeah, Montana State. Majored in Criminal Justice. Then came back here and became a deputy.” He grinned. “Actually, I’m the youngest sheriff in Garnet Bend’s history, which means I’ve got a lot to prove.”

The pride in his voice was unmistakable, mixed with just enough uncertainty to make him seem human instead of perfect. I found myself leaning forward slightly, drawn in despite myself.

“What about you?” he asked. “Did you end up going to college? I know you had the smarts for it.”

The question stabbed deeper than it should have.

I’d dreamed about college once upon a time, spent hours in the school library researching programs I’d never be able to afford.

Business, maybe, or advertising. Something that would let me use the quick thinking and people-reading skills I’d developed out of necessity for something good instead of just survival.

Instead, I’d spent the last eight years learning how to read people for entirely different reasons. How to spot who carried cash versus cards. How to identify the ones who wouldn’t make a scene if they caught me. How to disappear into a crowd when things went wrong.

“College wasn’t really for me,” I said, the lie sliding out smooth as silk. “I’m more of a free spirit, I guess.”

Lachlan nodded, but I caught something in his expression—like he could sense there was more to the story. Those perceptive brown eyes had always seen too much. I needed to redirect again, and fast.

“So you always knew you wanted to come back to Garnet Bend?”

He nodded. “Always. This place… It’s home, you know? And with everything that’s happened here in the past few years, all the good changes, I wanted to be part of that.”

“Changes?”

As he told me about the Resting Warrior Ranch and Pawsitive Connections, I found myself genuinely fascinated despite my situation.

A place for people dealing with PTSD, a program that trained therapy animals—it sounded like something out of a dream.

The kind of help people like my mother could have used, if she’d ever been willing to admit she needed it.

“That’s wonderful.” I truly meant what I said. The idea that this little town had become a beacon of hope for people who needed it most… It was exactly the kind of thing I would have expected from a place that had produced someone like Lachlan.

But even as we talked, part of my mind was calculating.

The woman by the window had left her purse hanging on the back of her chair when she’d gone to the bathroom five minutes ago.

The man in the corner had definitely had too much to drink—his wallet would be easy pickings if I could get close enough.

I hated myself for thinking it. Hated that I was sitting here with the one person who’d ever made me feel like I might be worth something, and all I could think about was how to steal from his neighbors.

But I had less than twenty dollars to my name and nowhere to sleep tonight. Good intentions wouldn’t fill my empty stomach or keep me from freezing to death under some bridge.

And they definitely wouldn’t keep me safe from my father.

“Resting Warrior and Pawsitive have been really good for the local economy too,” Lachlan continued. “New shops, restaurants, people. The town’s thriving in a way it never did when we were kids.”

When we were kids . The phrase hung in the air between us, heavy with unspoken history.

“When you were still here,” he corrected quietly.

There it was. The topic we’d been carefully avoiding. My family’s disgraceful exit from Garnet Bend eight years ago, driven out like the criminals we were.

I stared down at my hands wrapped around my glass, noting how the bruises on my knuckles had faded to a sickly yellow. “That was a long time ago.”

“I was there that night.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

“When your family was forced to leave. I was a new deputy then—barely twenty-four, green as grass and trying to prove myself. Sheriff Garcia had me there as backup when he and Mayor Davidson paid your father the visit.”

Heat flooded my cheeks as the memories came rushing back.

The sound of heavy boots on our front porch.

The way my father’s face had gone white when he’d seen who was at the door.

How he’d tried to bluster and deny everything while my mother had quietly started packing our few belongings like she’d been expecting this moment for years.

It hadn’t been legal exactly. But it hadn’t been entirely illegal either, and everyone knew my father had been running cons on half the town for months.

He’d taken Mrs. Henderson’s life savings with promises of doubling her money through some investment scheme.

He’d convinced the Johnsons to mortgage their farm to fund a business opportunity that never existed.

The authorities could never prove it—my father was too careful for that—but the people who mattered in Garnet Bend had known. And they’d decided they’d had enough.

“I saw your father loading boxes into that old truck,” Lachlan continued, his voice gentle. “Saw your mother helping, moving like she was hurt. And I saw you.”

“Lachlan—”

“You looked back. Right before you got in the truck, you looked back at the town like you were memorizing it.”

I had been. I’d known even then that I might never see Garnet Bend or Lachlan again. That I was leaving behind the only place that had ever felt remotely like home, even if that home had been more like a prison.

“I always wondered what happened to you after that,” Lachlan said softly. “Whether things got better once you grew up and got out on your own.”

The question was so loaded with assumptions I didn’t know where to begin correcting them. Things hadn’t gotten better. I’d never gotten out on my own. Every day since we’d left this town had been an exercise in survival, in keeping my head down and my mouth shut and my bruises hidden.