Chapter One

      There was blood on the porch.

      That kicked up Deputy Reed Caldwell’s pulse a significant notch. He’d already drawn his Colt .45, but he called for backup because this wasn’t looking good.

      He walked to the end of the porch, his breath mixing with the early morning air and causing a filmy haze around him. Reed peered into the window of the dining room and saw that the table and chairs had been toppled over. There’d been some kind of struggle.

      Mercy. What was going on?

      No sign of any intruders or the owner—his ex-wife, Addison.

      But Reed was pretty sure she was inside somewhere. Alive. Or at least she had been a few minutes earlier when she’d made a frantic nine-one-one call to the Sweetwater Springs Sheriff’s Office. Reed had intercepted the call because he’d been on his way home after pulling a night shift and was driving right by her place.

       “Someone’s trying to break in.”

      That was the only thing Addison had managed to say before the line went dead. There was no bad weather to cause a dead phone line. No maintenance that he’d heard about. Just the frantic one-line message.

      Reed hadn’t been sure what to expect when he arrived at the small country house Addison had recently inherited, but he’d parked by her mailbox, twenty yards or so from the house so that the sound of his truck engine wouldn’t alert anyone. Even with the extra precaution, Reed had figured this would turn out to be a false alarm. Or else he’d find Addison cowering inside while some would-be burglars were making their escape.

      But he definitely hadn’t expected blood. Or the toppled furniture.

      Maneuvering