Page 228 of Slipping Away
She passed under the iron arch. For a fleeting second, she glanced toward the road.
Luke froze, waiting to see if she would look back.
If she saw the cruiser, she didn’t show it. She crossed to her own car, climbed in, and drove away, taillights disappearing.
He watched until the red glow was gone.
Only then did he let himself relax back into the seat, fingers drumming once on the steering wheel.
He huffed out a laugh.
But as he looked back through the gates, to where the fresh headstone sat under the young maple, his humor faded.
Lauren Pierce. Twenty-four. Never got the chance. Sara almost didn’t.
She was tough. Smart. Competent as hell.
Luke put the cruiser in gear.
“Yeah,” he said softly, to no one, to the snow, to the womanwho’d just left and the ghost of the one who never would. “Yeah… I’ll keep an eye on her. For as long as she lets me.”
He eased away from the curb, headlights sweeping briefly over the gate, the stones.
As he turned back toward town, a faint train whistle threaded through the cold—distant, steady, right on time.
He aimed the cruiser toward the station, the paperwork, the next case.
He drove a mile before he admitted it to himself. He wasn’t sure when it shifted from duty to something else. Maybe it was the hospital room. Maybe it was the way she’d refused to break. Maybe it was the way she still showed up here.
But it had.
And for the first time in a long time, protecting someone didn’t feel like obligation.
It felt personal.
