Death on Heels by Ellen Byerrum

fine.”
    The women spoke outside the courthouse, near an oversized bronze statue of a cowboy, reflecting the area’s ranching heritage. The attorney escorted Lacey up to the second floor, to the small waiting room outside the county courtroom. The building looked the same as Lacey remembered it, a midcentury concrete shell over the original blocky brick government building, constructed during the 1920s. The only thing new to her was the metal detector and gate they passed through at the top of the stairs, which guarded the entrance to the second-floor courtrooms.
    Tucker wouldn’t have far to travel to go to court. The Justice Center, which housed the police and sheriff’s offices and detention facilities, was just a few blocks away.
    The jail had once been housed below where Lacey stood, in the basement of the courthouse. The old cells were still there, left as they were the day the jail moved to the new Justice Center. Lacey wondered if they gave Halloween tours for charity. A Halloween “haunted jail” could conjure up the spirits of some of the most notorious outlaws of the Old West, all of whom had haunted the Northwest Colorado of yesteryear: the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, Tom Horn, Etta Place, and Queen Ann Basset, among many others.
    Feeling jumpy, Lacey paced around the table in the waiting room. Karen Quilby scanned court papers while waiting for her client to be delivered. The room was bare except for the wooden table and six padded chairs. There was nothing on the walls. The door was partially open. Through it, Lacey observed a few media types passing through the metal detector with their laptops. But no cameras. All cameras were being turned away at the gate.
    Eventually a deputy stopped at the door. Surprisingly, it was someone Lacey recognized from her days ofcovering the Sagebrush Police Department and the Yampa County Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Grady Rush had never been a ball of fire. He was still a deputy.
    “Long time, Lacey.” Deputy Rush smiled at her and inclined his head. He was big and baggy, with close-set eyes and thin lips, and he looked rather like a very large duck. When he smiled he looked a little crazy, but happy, his wide mouth barely closing over his crooked teeth. She supposed he couldn’t help it if he had some duck in his gene pool, somewhere along the line. He smoothed his dark hair back with one hand.
    “Hello, Grady. Nice to see a familiar face.”
    “Yeah, same here, and I guess I got someone here you want to see. I’ll be right outside this door. Now, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Deputy Rush moved aside and Cole Tucker stepped into the room.
    Tucker’s attorney stepped close and murmured something in her client’s ear that Lacey couldn’t hear. She stepped back.
    “Ten minutes, Cole. Then you and I need to talk again before we go see the judge. We don’t have many minutes to spare this morning.” Tucker nodded, and Karen Quilby left, closing the door behind her.
    Lacey and Tucker both drew a long breath. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself, if she could help it. She was the only reporter granted access to the prisoner. But he was more than just a prisoner. He was a part of her history.
    She held her breath for a moment. The room felt very close. Lacey stared at him. It had been seven years since she fled Sagebrush with Tucker’s marriage proposal still ringing in her ears. Her whole world had changed since then, but Tucker looked the same. Fit, tanned, trim, and muscular. His straight, light honey-brown hair fell across his forehead to his eyebrows. His face had a few more lines, but his eyes were the same deep brown eyes she remembered.
    Lacey had expected to see him in typical jailhouse blaze orange, but he was wearing a brown jumpsuit, the color worn by delivery guys everywhere, except for thewhite lettering on the back: Y AMPA C OUNTY J AIL . His hands were cuffed to a chain around his waist. On his feet he wore a