Once Dormant

Her father shook his head and shuffled his feet in the sand.

“It’s not that I don’t sympathize,” he said. “It’s a damn crazy useless life you’ve got—seeking justice for people who’re already dead, exactly the people who don’t need justice anymore. Just like it was for me in ’Nam, a stupid war there was no way to win. But you’ve got no choice, and it’s time to make peace with it. You’re a hunter, like me. I raised you that way. We don’t know anything else—neither one of us.”

Riley locked eyes with him, testing her will against his.

Sometimes she could best him, making him blink.

But now wasn’t one of those times.

She blinked and looked away.

Her father sneered at her and said, “Hell, if you want to be alone, that’s fine with me. I’m not exactly enjoying your company either.”

He turned and walked away down the beach.

Riley turned around, and this time she saw them all walking away—April and Jilly hand in hand, Blaine and Crystal heading their own separate way.

As they started to disappear in the morning missed, Riley pounded on the barrier and tried to shout …

“Come back! Please come back! I love you all!”

Her lips moved but made no sound at all.

*

Riley eyes snapped open and she found herself lying in bed.

A dream, she thought. I should have known it was a dream.

Her father sometimes came to her in dreams.

How else could he visit her, being dead?

It took her another moment to realize that she was crying.

The overwhelming loneliness, the isolation from the people she loved most, the words of warning from her father …

“You’re a hunter, like me.”

Small wonder she’d woken up in such distress.

She reached for a tissue and managed to calm her sobbing. But even then, that lonely feeling wouldn’t go away. She reminded herself that the kids were sleeping in another room, and Blaine was in another.

But it seemed hard to believe somehow.

Alone in the dark, she felt as though any other people were far away, on the other side of the world.

She thought about getting up and tiptoeing down the hall and joining Blaine in his room, but …

The kids.

They were staying in separate bedrooms because of the kids.

She tugged the pillow around her head and tried to go to sleep again, but she couldn’t stop thinking …

A hammer.

Someone in Mississippi got killed with a hammer.

She told herself it wasn’t her case, and she’d said no to Brent Meredith.

But even as she finally drifted back to sleep, those thoughts wouldn’t go away …

There’s a killer out there.

There’s a case to be solved.

CHAPTER FIVE

When she walked into the Rushville police station first thing in the morning, Samantha had a feeling she was going to be in trouble. Yesterday she’d made a few phone calls that perhaps she shouldn’t have made.

Maybe I should learn to mind my own business, she thought.

But somehow, minding her own business didn’t come easily to her.

She was always trying to fix things—sometimes things that couldn’t be fixed, or things that other people didn’t want to have fixed.

As usual when she showed up for work, Sam saw no other cops around, just the chief’s secretary, Mary Ruckle.

Her fellow officers teased her a lot for that …

“Good old reliable Sam,” they’d say. “Always the first to get here, the last to get out.”

Somehow, they never seemed to mean that in a nice way. But she always reminded herself that it was natural for “good old reliable Sam” to get picked on. She was the youngest and newest cop on the Rushville force. It didn’t help any that she was also the only female on the force.

For a moment Mary Ruckle didn’t seem to notice Sam’s arrival. She was busily doing her nails—her usual occupation during most of a workday. Sam couldn’t understand the appeal of doing one’s nails. She always kept hers plain and clipped short, which was maybe one of the many reasons people thought of her as, well …

Unladylike.

Not that Mary Ruckle was what Sam would consider attractive. Her face was all tight and mean, as if it were all pinched together by a clothespin on the bridge of her nose. Still, Mary was married with three children, and few people in Rushville foresaw that kind of life for Sam.

Whether Sam actually wanted that kind of life, she didn’t really know. She tried not to think too much about the future. Maybe that was why she focused so hard on every bit of whatever came in front of her on any given day. She couldn’t actually imagine a future for herself, at least not among the choices that seemed to be available.

Mary puffed on her nails and looked up at Sam and said …

“Chief Crane wants to talk to you.”

Sam nodded with a sigh.