BLINKED, MADE a rough sound and ran a hand over his face. Damn. He hadn’t expected to flash back like that. If he was going to go back at all, it should be to the night when Sheila was taken from her bed. When—
“Shit,” he muttered, getting into his car. Flashing back to the kid he’d been? What good would that do? He had to look at the crime with a cop’s ability to be dispassionate. To do that, he needed to get past the memories.
Paige had never said anything to make him think she knew about his past. He sure as hell hadn’t told her. Didn’t plan to unless it became absolutely necessary. Except for his regular six-month visit to this damn house, he was focused on the future not the past.
As he pulled away from the curb, he took a last look at his childhood home and felt an unexpected pang. How many times had he thought of searching for his brother? Too many. Kids or not, they’d parted as bitterly as their parents had. Chances were they’d pass on the street without even recognizing each other. There was no going back.
Then why am I trying?
A good question. It wasn’t as if he believed in the psychobabble about needing closure or any crap like that.
But he couldn’t deny that the tragedy had shaped his life and still hung over him. He would soon be starting a family of his own. He wanted the foundation to be solid, that was all.
* * *
ZACH CARTER’S GAZE roved unceasingly as he drove, touching on his rearview mirror every few seconds before scanning for movement on each side of the street. He identified the speed of cars ahead and behind without conscious thought. Although returning to patrol had been an adjustment for him, the instincts were still there. He made constant, automatic judgments.
The man coming out of a garage? Homeowner. The cluster of tattooed young guys clustered around a car with its hood raised? Currently harmless, although the way they all turned as a unit to watch as he passed had him keeping an eye on them in the rearview mirror for another block. Car that swerved and corrected course? A momentarily distracted driver.
He’d been on the job for not quite three weeks. The population of this rural county wasn’t large but the square mileage was. Logging trucks still traveled an east-west highway that followed the river deep into the forested foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range. Only one big lumber mill remained in operation, however, which meant logging as an industry was in decline.
The dairy farms he remembered from when he was a kid had mostly disappeared. In fact, the east county communities all had an air of desperation. For Rent, For Sale and Going Out of Business signs were common, boarded-up shop windows even more so. It was beautiful country, but tourism hadn’t taken hold. Didn’t help that the couple motels he’d spotted were pretty run-down, in keeping with the general atmosphere.
So far, he’d been assigned to patrol the river valley part of the county. Today’s route combined new developments, older housing sprawls just outside the city limits of the county seat and farms.
It had been an incredibly mild winter. With it now the first week of April, daffodils were showing hints of bloom and tulips would follow, weeks earlier than usual. He’d seen the fresh green spikes of corn in fields. Peas weren’t the big crop they’d been when he was a kid, but were still grown, and strawberries, too.
He’d already discovered that the older neighborhood he’d just turned into was heavily Hispanic. New immigrants and probably some undocumented aliens provided cheap labor for agriculture. He’d been instructed to leave Customs issues to ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—and stick to local law enforcement, which was fine by him.
Whatever his assignment, Zach varied his route every day, trying to learn every byroad. Despite flashes of familiarity, most of it was new to him. What kid paid attention when he was slumped in the backseat of a car?
The stretch of county closer to the freeway had changed the most. Real estate in Seattle and its suburbs was priced beyond a lot of people’s means these days, which meant if they wanted to own a home, they bought farther out and resigned themselves to a two-hour-plus round-trip commute to work. Most of the residents of the newer, more upscale developments eating up what had been farmland were commuters. Midday, he could drive up and down the winding streets of any of those developments and hardly see a soul.
In contrast, this neighborhood was what he thought of as in-between: the houses modest but still decently cared for. At least some were owned rather than rented, at a guess. No traffic and the last human he’d seen had been a couple of blocks ago: an old man peering suspiciously from his front porch.
A rack of lights atop a car down the block on a cross street caught his eye. Surprised, Zach made the turn. What was another sheriff’s department car doing here? By necessity, patrols didn’t have a lot of overlap and he hadn’t heard any calls from dispatch that would have sent another deputy out here. Currently empty, the police car was parked on the gravel verge—no sidewalks in this neighborhood. Guy might live here, it occurred to Zach. He’d taken his own lunch break not half an hour ago.
He was still half a block away when he spotted two men arguing. They stood toe-to-toe on a concrete walk leading to the front porch of a small house. Whatever was happening was intense. The one with his back to the street wore the same olive-green uniform as Zach’s. Then... What the hell? The deputy pushed the other guy, pulled his arm back and punched.
Oh, shit, Zach thought. No. The cop was using his baton, not his fist. Hammering with it. Blood sprayed.
Zach slammed to a stop and leaped out, now able to hear the snarls, the cries for help.
A good thirty feet away, he broke into a hard run. A woman was tearing across the lawn toward the men from the house beyond, too. She was screaming.
Showing no awareness of anyone else, the deputy threw his baton away and began using his fists instead. “I warned you! Stay away from her. But—” smack “—did you listen?”
“¡Socorro! ¡Socorro!” The Hispanic man stumbled back.
Zach caught a glimpse of his face, already battered to a pulp before another fist caught him dead-on and his lights went out.
Time seemed to have slowed. Zach saw what was coming and knew he was too late to stop it. The Hispanic guy toppled back. His head struck the edge of the concrete step. The sound was terrible. A pumpkin being smashed.
One step too late, Zach grabbed the deputy’s shoulder and yanked him back. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled.
The guy staggered, righted himself and lurched around in a fighter’s stance. Face crimson with rage, he started to swing at Zach before recognition dawned in his eyes and he stopped himself.
“He went for my gun.” He gasped for air. “He went for my gun, goddamn it! I had to defend myself.”
Hayes, that was his name. Andrew Hayes. Big, beefy guy starting to go soft. Ugly sense of humor. Zach knew him only from the locker room.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Keening, the woman had dropped to her knees beside the victim, who wasn’t moving. “Is he dead? I think he might be dead.”
Hayes looked past Zach and said sharply, “Ma’am, you need to back away. This is police business. Return to your house.”
She lifted her head to sizzle him with green-gold eyes. “Antonio is harmless. You killed
