I climb in, the engine growling to life under my hands. As the gravel crunches beneath the tires, I make myself one promise—louder than the guilt, stronger than the rage:
I will find the man who put those bullets in her parents. I’ll take his life in pieces so small the devil won’t know what to do with them.
Chapter 20
Ghost With a Badge
Jacob
The road is quiet when I dump Benny’s carcass on the shoulder. The headlights bleach him pale, every bruise a dark brand across his face.
“Crawl if you want to live,” I mutter. Then I spit on the gravel, slide back behind the wheel, and dial.
It takes two rings before I hear the voice I want. “Sheriff.”
“Carter.” My tone is iron. He’s the only one I call when I need things handled. My right hand. My clean-up man. He’s been with me long enough to know what I need.
“Where are you?” he asks, low, cautious.
“I’ve got a problem.” My knuckles ache on the wheel. I flex them, feel the split skin stretch, the sting of exposed flesh. A reminder of how close I came to killing Harrow right there in the dirt. “I had to make an example tonight. Kid won’t be walking straight for months. You understand me?”
A beat of silence, then a sigh. “Yeah…. You want me to make it disappear.”
“I want it buried,” I correct him. “I want it stitched so tight no one ever finds the thread. You’re going to say you saw him drunk, got into a bar fight, wandered into the wrong end of town. I don’t care. Just make it stick.”
“I can do that Sheriff, where do I need to be?” Carter asks. His tone is steady, the way it always is when he’s locking away his conscience.
That’s why I trust him. He doesn’t waste time on right and wrong. He knows the only laws that matters are mine.
“Good,” I rasp. “I’m on Herringhorn Highway, about… 3 miles past the trailer park. Now tell me something. Other than me, you, and the two boys who stood in that living room, who else knows Elaine and Michael Miller are dead?”
“Got it boss,” Carter answers instantly. “Not a chance anyone knows jack shit. We locked it down. No reports filed yet, no chatter on the wire. Just us.”
“Then explain to me,” I bite out, leaning into the wheel, “how dipshit Benny Harrow showed up at my fucking house tonight with the news in his mouth.”
Carter goes quiet. I hear him breathing, slow and measured, like he’s running every possibility through his head. Finally: “I don’t know, Sheriff. If he knows, it didn’t come from us. I’d bet my badge on it.”
My jaw locks. That’s not good enough.
“You’d better be right,” I growl. “Because if there’s a leak in my department, I’ll find it. And when I do, there won’t be enough left of them to require a coffin.”
“Understood,” Carter says, clipped. He’s not stupid—he knows a promise when he hears it.
I hang up, slam the phone down, and sit there for a moment, fists tightening around the wheel until the leather groans. Fury claws up my throat, mixes with confusion until it’s poison. I could wait for Carter, but Summer is alone, and with everything that’s happened, I need to be home with her.
Fuck Benny. He can rot out here waiting for Carter. Maybe he’ll crawl into the road and get taken out by one of the HGV’s that frequent this road.
Hell, I would pay a year’s salary to watch this son of a bitch be mowed down by one of Mr. McGallie’s wagons.
I start my engine, pressing the pedal to speed back onto the dirtroad. The shoulder swallows my headlights as I pull away, leaving Harrow to bleed into the ditch and bargain with whatever God has planned for him. The road opens like a vein. I ride it hard.
No one should’ve known. No one. And yet Benny did. Which means either Carter’s wrong—or there’s something far worse in play.
Carter’s last words grind in my skull: Not a chance anyone knows jack shit.
Then how the hell did Benny?
The wheel creaks under my grip. My knuckles complain—split skin stretching, heat flaring. I flex, slow, until the sting spikes and settles, a clean pain I can stack others on. The truck smells like gun oil and iron and her—shampoo and salt and that small, wild thing she turned into when she bit me.
