2

      5:03 p.m.

      Jared Morgan dropped the previous day’s reports on day clerk and dispatcher Norma Headly’s desk. “Let Curtis handle them if you want. I’m out of here. See you in the morning.”

      “Just a second, Chief. I have Garth Powers on line one. He says there’s something out at the high school that you’d better see.”

      Jared waited for more information, but Norma didn’t elaborate. “Does he want me to play twenty questions? What’s up?”

      “I asked. He won’t say. He’s concerned someone will hear and start a scare ‘again.’ Those were his exact words,” she added with emphasis.

      Jared didn’t like the sound of that. There weren’t many things that would prompt the ex-jock-turned-administrator to call for outside help. It would have to be more than a hastily tossed-away reefer or a racial situation that had gone beyond the name-calling stage. A firearm brought to school? All possible these days, but none of those things would make Garth so secretive, and that had the hairs on the back of Jared’s neck rising. He could have done without the inflection on again.

      “Tell him I’m on my way to pick up my car. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Slipping on his cowboy hat and sunglasses, he exited the white-brick building, resigned that the cold beer he was looking forward to at the house would have to wait a while longer.

      Split Creek’s police station was located on the northeast corner of Main and Dogwood, in a three-streetlight downtown. The community itself was one of the more resilient in Wood County, but that was hardly due to brilliance in city planning or any law enforcement. Situated between Dallas and Shreveport, Louisiana, and nestled in the heart of the photogenic Pineywoods, it also lay in the fork created by Big Blackberry Creek that eventually fed into the Red River on the east, and Little Blackberry that emptied into the Sabine River on the west. In other words, the town transformed itself into a virtual island during spring’s and autumn’s heavy rains. Hardly impressive strategy by anyone’s standards, but the addition of bridges over the years had improved the situation somewhat.

      It was the residents, however, who made the rustic, visually quaint community stand out. They were an odd assortment of old-fashioned eccentrics, economic progressives, religious conservatives and creative liberals. That strange brew could make things percolate during political elections, and passions didn’t quiet down much during high school football or basketball season, either; nor when the competition was on for spring and autumn tourist traffic. But so far, the only blood shed was from the occasional bruised nose on the playing field…or when a picnic involved one beer or wine cooler too many.

      Well, almost, Jared thought with a pang of sadness.

      Overseeing this motley group had been his responsibility for almost five years. He’d been a member of the department for nine. Like many East Texans, his ancestors had emigrated here from the deep South—Georgia, in his case. For the first half of his life, he’d bounced around the Lone Star State as his father dealt with transfers with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Later there followed a stint in the marines and, finally, a last year down in Austin to finish getting his college degree, before returning here to move into the family home. The unexpected death of his parents had precipitated that. Now thirty-five, he was all that remained of his side of the Texas Morgans.

      He often thought things should have turned out much differently, but it would be dangerous to dwell on that. It was Garth’s call that had triggered the reminder, had triggered too many memories. He didn’t need that.

      Only as he crossed Main Street and approached Ramey’s did it become easier to push away his gloomy thoughts, thanks to the sight of Michaele Ramey bending to pick up something from the concrete floor in the garage.

      Damn, he thought. For a slip of a thing, she could snag his attention faster than a bored bull could pick up the scent of forbidden heifers in a distant pasture.

      “Hold that pose, Ramey,” he drawled as he drew nearer, “and you’ll cause a traffic pileup out here the likes of which Split Creek’s never seen before.”

      Michaele glanced over her shoulder, her expression showing she was anything but impressed with his humor. “Just once I’d like to see you come and go without making a sexual innuendo.”

      “It’s a free country—I suppose you have a right to dream.” He grinned to hide the more complicated emotions she stirred in him. “How’s my car?”

      “Not much better than your line of bull. I swear, Morgan, you’re only across the street. Why can’t you get this thing serviced on a regular basis? This old oil is thick enough to sculpt with!”

      “Blame yourself. If you didn’t turn me down every time I ask you out, I wouldn’t need so long between visits to heal my wounded ego. Exactly how much rejection do you think a guy can take?”

      She didn’t waste so much as a blink on him. “Have Red or one of the others bring it over.”

      “You stay away from Samuels,” Jared said, pointing at her. “He’s a happily married man with two growing boys needing three big meals a day if they’re going to bring home another division football title this fall.”

      “Idiot.” Michaele punched the controls, and the lift began its slow descent.

      The failure to get even a hint of a smile out of her told him that her day wasn’t ending any better than his. He knew why; he’d seen the reason as he’d crossed the street. “I take it Buck’s sleeping off another binge?”

      “No, I fed him rat poison with his lunch, and I’m just waiting for dark to bury the body.”

      “And Faith’s running late?” There was no sign of her red Trans Am.

      “Who knows? And from now on, I refuse to care. She’s about to graduate, she turns twenty-one in two months, and, so help me, the minute that happens, I’m washing my hands of her.”

      “Sure you are.”

      Blue eyes clearer than any dream and sharper than any laser sliced into him. “Watch me,” she said.

      “Caretakers don’t know how to shut off, honey. Even the ones trapped in dysfunctional families.”

      She kicked the lift’s power unit out of her way, and reached for the clipboard on the nearby workstation. “‘Dysfunctional’ doesn’t begin to cover my zoo. Why don’t you cheer me up and tell me you shot a bad guy today and saved us taxpayers a bunch of money on a trial?”

      “My, you are in a bloodthirsty mood. Let’s see…I wrote two speeding tickets this morning, spent lunch listening to the mayor worry about another store for rent on his block, moved a small mountain of paperwork off my desk. Nope, didn’t empty so much as one chamber. Wait! I did run over a water moccasin, driving in this morning. Does that count?”

      “Knowing you, it was probably an accident.”

      He liked that she sometimes saw through him better than others did. Because of his military background and his hard line regarding certain types of legal infractions, some in town considered him a hard-ass. To be accurate, he had his calluses and edges, even an unhealed wound or two; but as long as people didn’t probe those too much, he considered himself one heck of an amiable guy—and patient. Particularly where one diminutive career cynic was concerned.

      As Michaele finished filling out the invoice for his car, he reached out to wipe at a streak of grease along her jaw. Like the rest of her, that chin was finely contoured, in total contrast to her personality and occupation. Barely tall enough to reach his Adam’s apple, and easily a hundred pounds lighter than him, she made most people