“All right.” I squinted up at him. “Can I ask why this is so important first thing on a Saturday morning?” And then I had a thought. “Did you rig the election?”
“No, I didn’t rig the election,” he snapped at me.
“Are you running for sheriff?” Maybe that was it.
“No, I’m not run—” he growled, which was weird, clearly frustrated with me. “I’m a councilman, you idiot.”
“Like I would know this if you didn’t tell me,” I groused at him. “And why you’re growling at me when I’ve had no coffee is beyond all logical comprehension.”
“You know, Jules said she should have come with me, but I said no, I said it would be fine, I said Brann’s my friend, he’ll get it, but now I realize that I’m gonna fuck this up, and—”
“Spit out whatever the hell is going on, will you please?”
He exhaled sharply. “Part of my job is to work closely, at election time, with Barbara Madden, the county clerk who’s also the election administrator, and with Danny Powell, the recording and election office manager, to ensure that we never have the issue we were faced with two years ago.”
“The vote tampering, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay.”
He crossed his thick brawny arms across the brick wall of a chest and glowered down at me. “So that explains why I’m here. Now, tell me, did you happen to notice the ads for the guy running against Reed for sheriff?”
“No,” I drew out the word, indulging him. “Who is it?”
“It’s Shawn Barr, the guy who you put down on the soccer field, the first day you were here, for going after Emery.”
I scowled at him. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That guy?”
He nodded.
“Mal, that guy would not be a good choice.”
“I agree. But there’s been a development on a third candidate.”
“Oh, good.” I sighed, rubbing my arms because I was getting colder by the second. He wouldn’t notice, of course, as he was swaddled up in the same kind of layers I usually wore, a zipper-front fleece hoodie under a heavy leather jacket. I, on the other hand, was in socks and sweats and a sleep shirt. “But let’s go inside and have coffee, all right? The caffeine is necessary for life. Plus, I’m starting to freeze to death.”
He shook his head. “Here’s the thing, Brann,” he began, almost wincing. “Remember when you told me that you thought it was kind of weird how nice Thomas was being to you all the time, even from day one?”
“Sure,” I agreed, inching toward the front door.
“And how he took you all over Ursa with him almost every day?”
“I remember mentioning that to you,” I said, my hand on the knob. “How ’bout you just let me grab a—”
“Listen,” he said, exhaling before running a hand through his thick, wavy, black hair.
Mal was a handsome man, built like a tank, and with his square jaw, piercing blue-black eyes, and a full beard, he looked like some kind of hot mountain man that you wanted to wait out the winter with. I knew, from more than a few overheard conversations, that many women in town thought Julia Jezic was a very lucky woman. “It seems like Thomas had an agenda that no one knew about.”
“Agenda?” I asked irritably. Man, did I hate to be cold. That was the one thing about serving in the desert—that had never been an issue.
“Are you listening to me?”
“I’m seriously freezing to death, Mal,” I apprised him. “In Chicago, I’m in my car or on the L, I don’t just stand around outside turning into a fuckin’ Popsicle.”
“Fine, let’s go in, but so you know, from the write-in ballots we’ve already counted as well as the absentee and mail-ins, the mayor wanted me to give you a heads up that you’re more than likely going to be the new sheriff-elect of Ursa, Montana.”
I had no idea what he was, or could, be talking about.
“Brann?”
One of us was on some really good drugs, and it certainly wasn’t me.
“Of course, we won’t have an official count until the twentieth, but since you already have more votes than we’ve had in the last two elections… the chances of you not winning are practically nonexistent.”
And then my hearing switched off, and all I heard was white noise. There was good news, and there was bad news concerning that. The good news was, I wasn’t cold anymore. The bad news was, he was talking to me, he had to be, I was the only one out there with him, and I could see his lips moving, but… there was no sound.
Nothing.
It was like someone put him on mute.
What was strange was that I could remember having snow blindness years before. I hadn’t been able to see anything, not a sliver of color, or even a trace amount of light under the wrappings covering my eyes, but I recalled that it had nearly split my skull in half. Then later, once the molten lava of cluster headaches receded, there had been nothing at all, not until my vision returned.