CHAPTER ONE

      “IS THAT THE one that got away?”

      Jacob Marx placed his cell phone facedown onto the bar and glanced over his shoulder where Heather, the pool hall’s bartender, was so close, strands of her long, dark brown hair rested on his shoulder. The scent of peppermint filled his nose. Huh, must be a holiday thing—last month she’d smelled like pumpkin spice. Not that he paid much attention; he just rememb “Sweet for the sweet.” ered how it had left him craving a Starbucks pumpkin spiced latte.

      “No,” he said, turning his attention back to the rum and Coke he’d been nursing for an hour. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but sitting at the bar beat being alone every evening, thinking about the life passing him by in New York. He’d done that enough in his first few weeks in tiny Brookhollow, New Jersey, located right between Nowhere Land and Boringsville.

      Heather went around the bar and set down a tray of empty beer glasses. “Are you sure? ’Cause it would explain a lot,” she said, stacking the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

      Jacob picked up the phone, and closing the photo of his sister and eight-year-old nephew, he tucked it into his pocket. “Yeah, like what?” He leaned forward on the bar. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have, but the talkative brunette was likely to tell him what she thought anyway.

      “Like why you’re such a—”

      “Heather, we need another round on lane four.” Candace, the waitress working the bowling alley side of the local hot spot, passed them carrying a food order from the kitchen.

      The smell of the hot wings on the tray tempted Jacob to place an order of his own, but checking his glucose monitor, he decided not to mess with his currently stable blood sugars.

      “I’ll be right back,” Heather said, filling a tray with beers from the mini-fridge behind the bar.

      “Take your time,” Jacob mumbled. He’d rather not spend his evenings at the pool hall when he wasn’t on duty, but, unfortunately, in a town as small as this one, there were few options. Other than this pool hall/bowling alley/movie theater complex, the only other bar in town was the Green Gator, a karaoke joint. And he’d rather have his eyes poked out than go there.

      He watched Heather carry the drinks to the bowling lane and collect the cash from the under-forty league members. The teams were practicing for their annual holiday bowling tournament, which had been so well-advertised and talked about all over town that anyone would think it was the Super Bowl.

      A holiday bowling tournament was creating an excited buzz. Man, this town couldn’t possibly be more boring.

      But boring, quiet, uneventful was what he’d wanted, right?

      Jacob drained the contents of his glass and threw several bills onto the bar as he stood.

      “Hey, where are you going? We haven’t finished our discussion yet,” Heather said, returning. The holiday music had stopped playing, and she reached for another CD. More Christmas tunes. Same playlist every night that week. They’d already had the argument that it was too early to be playing that crap, but he’d lost and she’d only turned the music up louder.

      “We weren’t having a discussion. You were just insulting me, so I think I’ll head out.”

      “Look, I didn’t mean any offense,” she said, as the first few notes of “I’ll Be Home with Bells On” started to play.

      “Could have fooled me,” he grumbled, sliding into his leather jacket.

      “All I’m saying is people around here are curious about you. You’ve been here for four months, and no one really knows your deal.” She slid the other CD back into its case and turned to lean her hip against the bar.

      “My deal?” he asked, his gaze returning to hers.

      “Why you’re here.”

      “Because it’s such a quaint, idyllic town isn’t enough reason?”

      Heather shrugged. “Fine. But just so you know, when people around here get curious about someone, they start speculating on their own. Believe me, I’ve heard a dozen rumors already.” She turned away from him and resumed hanging a set of colored Christmas lights behind the bar.

      Again, too early, but at least she hadn’t asked for his help. Christmas wasn’t exactly his thing. Or at least it hadn’t been for the last few years.

      Jacob hesitated. He didn’t give a rat’s behind what these local people were saying about him, but his gut tightened at being the topic of conversation. Had someone actually figured out why he was there? Small-town gossip made him nervous, and while he had confidence in Sheriff Bishop’s discretion, he could never be too sure. Thirteen years on the job had made it impossible to trust anyone. Probably why he’d never gotten married. Actually, precisely why he hadn’t gotten married.

      Sighing, he sat back down. “Okay, let’s hear them.”

      Heather continued singing as the song reached its chorus, ignoring him now.

      “Hey, Talks-a-lot!”

      She turned with a wide smile that caught him off guard, and he felt the tips of his ears grow hot.

      He hadn’t meant to blurt out his secret name for her. The truth was he had one for almost everyone in town. Four months in sleepy, low-crime Brookhollow was driving him mad. He had to do something to entertain himself. And he didn’t want to get attached to anyone or anything. Nicknames helped.

      “Talks-a-lot, huh?”

      He shrugged.

      So did she. “I’m good with that. Been called worse. Okay, so here’s what I’ve heard.” She lowered her voice. “Blink once if it’s true, twice if it’s not.”

      “No.”

      She huffed. “Fine. Well, one story is that you shot a fellow cop in New York and you felt so guilty about it, you needed to get away.”

      “I have shot a fellow cop before. Don’t feel the least bit guilty.” The rookie officer had caught a bullet in his left butt cheek in a liquor store robbery shoot-out, after ignoring protocol and advancing on the perpetrator. He’d been lucky it was only his butt; if Jacob hadn’t fired when he had, the guy may not have walked away at all. “What else you got?”

      Her eyes widened for a quick moment, then she said, “Another theory is that you were fired, and no other big-city department would hire you.”

      That was a little closer. “Fired for what?”

      “The thoughts on that are varied. Some people say it was for withholding narcotics, others for killing an innocent bystander in a shoot-out. One person was kinder and said it was because you’d gotten strung out and went a little crazy.”

      That was kinder? “That all you got?”

      “Pretty much...the others are too ridiculous to be true.”

      Right.