an expert at being by herself. What she wasn’t good at was family.
Community.
Trust of any kind.
She hadn’t gotten where she was today because of those things. She now had an accounting degree and a potential start-up business in spite of all of them. Maybe that was why, after she got a fire going in the big hearth, she ignored her sisters’ gifts and unrolled a sleeping bag in the living area. Just like she used to do with her father when they would tell stories late into the night.
Disregarding the growl of her empty stomach, Amy hoped tomorrow she’d be stronger. Because tonight, all she wanted to do was to get in her car again and drive to Atlanta. Back to a place where she didn’t have to work so hard to fix relationships that had failed her.
* * *
THREE CUPS OF coffee into his day, Sheriff Samuel Reyes struggled to keep his tired eyes focused on the map in front of him. He hated this kind of research even on a good day—the boring-as-snot part of police work that kept him behind a desk. Today he was trying to make pieces of a resistant puzzle fall into some kind of meaningful order. He’d been over and over the map of Heartache’s quarry, trying to find a pattern or a clue in the pins that marked places where the sheriff’s department had discovered evidence in his current case.
The pins were old school, as was the paper map. But for him, there was no substitute for working with his hands and seeing the physical images.
Today, however, his brain was failing to connect any dots. Part of it was because he’d reviewed the same map a hundred times. But it was mostly because he’d spent the majority of last night pacing the floors with his infant son. A baby he hadn’t even known existed until three weeks ago. A baby his ex-girlfriend had handed him on his doorstep along with the news that she had grown weary and needed a break from the two-month-old she hadn’t seen fit to tell him he’d fathered.
So he’d been parenting the infant alone for the last three weeks. Nothing like trial by fire.
“Any luck?” Heartache’s mayor, Zach Chance, walked into the town-hall conference room that served as Sam’s office most days.
With his patrician features and perfectly pressed collared shirt, Zach looked the part of a slick politician even though he was a fairly normal dude. For a tech-company millionaire.
Zach had cleaned up in the digital security market before returning to Heartache from the West Coast two years prior. He still managed his virtual company from Heartache, but he was now the mayor. He’d also been the one who’d twisted Sam’s arm into leaving San Jose to become Heartache’s sheriff. Both men had grown up in Heartache, so it hadn’t been that big of a sacrifice to come back.
Sam liked small-town living more as an adult than he had as a kid, even if some days he couldn’t keep his eyes open while working.
“Nothing yet.” He gripped his empty cup of coffee and pitched the paper container in the trash can. “We need more evidence before Jeremy Covington goes to trial, but I’ll be damned if I know where we can get it.”
His eyes felt like sandpaper when he blinked. Hell, he’d barely managed to find a clean shirt this morning, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d slept in the pants he was wearing.
“I’ve gone over and over Heather’s statement, too. And I’ll be damned if I can find anything that helps connect what she saw to Jeremy’s previous crimes.” Zach dropped into a chair at the opposite end of the conference table.
He’d recently gotten engaged to Heather Finley, daughter of Heartache’s previous mayor who’d died while in office.
Heather had been the victim of an attempted kidnapping last fall, and Sam had arrested Covington, a former member of the town council, and his son on a number of charges, including sexual assault and stalking. But since then he’d been having trouble building a strong enough case to ensure both Covingtons served serious jail time.
Both Zach and Sam were convinced that Covington had stalked and assaulted many other victims—including Zach’s own sister, Gabriella, ten years ago. Sam had followed Gabriella that night, worried because she had seemed depressed and secretive. He’d found her desperately fighting off an attacker. Sam had managed to keep Gabby from being hurt and chased the guy away. But her attacker had been wearing a stocking mask and it had been pitch-black in the woods around the quarry road, so he sure as hell couldn’t identify him and neither could Zach’s sister.
Now that they’d caught Covington, Sam and Zach’s family finally had an opportunity to see justice done after an event that had altered all their lives.
“I dug out the notes I made about what happened to Gabriella, and me, too. I wish we’d gone to the police.” Sam drummed his fingers on the conference table, thinking back to that long-ago summer.
“You were a foster kid who’d had your own run-ins with the sheriff,” Zach reminded him, letting him off the hook. “And Gabby had just wanted to get out of town.”
Sam, Gabriella and Zach had moved to the West Coast. Sam got a GED and took college courses, eventually enrolling in the police academy. Zach went to college and started his tech company. They’d both looked after Gabriella, who had needed intensive counseling. These days, she ran a support group for victims of cyberstalking and assault.
“And your notes are all admissible as evidence, thanks to you,” Zach continued.
Sam had written a report about that night and mailed it to himself, as well as local police, as soon as he’d turned eighteen.
He’d kept his own copy—unopened but postmarked—and given it to a superior officer at the police academy along with his application. The cop had filed it with his records, helping preserve the evidence so it was still admissible in the case against Covington.
“Not that my notes help much to connect that incident to him.” Sam had berated himself a million times for not pulling the mask off the guy’s face instead of running after Gabriella to make sure she was safe.
“We’ll find something.” Zach pounded a fist on the table, making Sam’s map jump. “We’re going to find more victims, and one of them is going to have the piece of evidence that ties it all together to nail Covington’s ass.”
Sam had thought so at first, but months into this case with little progress, he was starting to wonder. Shoving back from the table, he headed over to the pull-up bar he’d installed in an archway between the conference room and the kitchenette.
The chin-ups at least got his blood flowing when his brain shut off. Reaching for it now, he began to haul his body upward until his chin was parallel with the bar. Then he lowered himself slowly and repeated the motion.
“Why don’t people come forward to prosecute scumbags?” He didn’t understand why anyone would remain under the thumb of someone who hurt them.
“You have to ask? We had reasons for not going to the cops as kids.” Zach reached for a bowl of peanuts on the conference table. They were left over from a retirement party they’d given one of the women in the clerk’s office.
He tossed a nut in the air and caught it in his mouth while Sam kept pounding out pull-ups.
“Yeah, child services could have separated you and Gabriella once they realized your mom wasn’t taking
