CHAPTER ONE

      FINN DONOVAN CRADLED the small child in his arms. The little girl couldn’t be more than three years old, and her cries went straight to his heart, to the memories that were both happiest and darkest.

      “Where’s Mama?” she kept wailing.

      Finn hated accident scenes.

      The pile of nearby wreckage had once been a car and a pickup truck, the now twisted metal gleaming in the dark each time the flashing lights from the ambulance and his cruiser strobed the area. The hash of red and blue made the whole scene appear purple, and the noxious smell of spilled gasoline hung in the air. Hands down, this was the absolute worst part of his job.

      Finn had hoped to leave all that behind in Chicago—the tragedy and loss—but his move to Barren, Kansas, apparently hadn’t changed that after all. He’d thought as the sheriff of sleepy Stewart County he’d rarely have to deal with such scenes. This was his first here, and part of him wished he could hand the child off to his nearest deputy.

      The little girl clung, arms tight around his neck, face buried in his shoulder as if she already trusted him to keep her safe. “Mamaaa!”

      Her tears soaked through his cotton shirt. Finn could feel his heartbeat drumming in his chest, his ears. Get away, he thought. Put her down. At the same instant, he pressed one hand against her skull, his fingers in the fine silk of her hair. The pint-size blonde sweetheart, who wore only a light cardigan over a T-shirt with a Disney character on it and a pair of tiny jeans, made his heart ache. Her miniature sneakers were the kind with lights that flashed like those of the ambulance. She shivered in his embrace, and Finn’s pulse caught. Cold. Except for a few scrapes she hadn’t been hurt in the accident, but the mid-October night had chilled. Was she going into shock? So small, so helpless...but she shouldn’t rely on him.

      She needed a warmer place and a quick removal from the frightening views all around them. On his way to his cruiser, Finn passed the paramedic who’d been breathing life back into the driver of the car. She turned to him, shaking her head.

      “It’s bad, Sheriff,” she whispered.

      Another EMT was now loading the stretcher onto the ambulance. Finn turned away enough to shield the child from the sight—shield himself, too. The open doors, the harsh light inside and the sight of the gurney, the woman’s body no more than a still lump under the blanket, unnerved him. To his relief the child he held hadn’t even tried to look, but at least her earlier cries had subsided into whimpers.

      The paramedic’s gaze met his. “Anyone we know?”

      Was she asking about the woman? Or the little girl he still carried?

      When he’d pulled up to the scene, Finn had run the victim’s plates, her driver’s license.

      “Wyoming ID.” He didn’t supply the name. “Twenty-nine years old.”