Chapter One
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The turn in the road was coming. Deputy Laney Sutton felt it in her chest before she saw it, the way a person sensed a bruise before the touch. Every weekday morning she braced for it.
For the place she wished she could erase from the map.
The two-lane farm road stretched empty ahead, save for a jackrabbit zigzagging across the gravel shoulder. A common sight here on the outskirts of a small town like Redwater, Texas. She tried to focus on the rabbit. On anything other than what lay ahead.
Laney lifted her coffee, letting the heat settle in her hands, steadying herself for the seconds it would take to pass the culvert. All she had to do was get past it, and she could let out the breath she was holding. She could focus on the day ahead and not the past.
But then she saw the truck.
A dark blue pickup sat at an odd angle on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. The sight hit her harder than she was ready for. No one pulled over out here unless it was some kind of emergency.
Dread hit her hard, an instant punch that stole her breath. This was where her husband, David, had gotten the injuries that’d led to his death.
Where her world had turned on a dime.
Four years hadn’t dulled the image of flashing lights, twisted metal, and the sound of his ragged breathing as she knelt beside him. She drove this stretch every day because avoiding it meant adding miles and hours she didn’t have. But she never lingered. She usually pressed the gas, kept her eyes straight, forced the memory back into the dark corner where she kept it.
She couldn’t do that now. Not with that truck parked just up the road by the culvert. Because someone might be in trouble. The badge meant she had to stop, had to render assistance if needed.
Even if this was the last place she wanted to be.
Laney’s gaze swept the scene. No hazard lights flashing on the truck. The driver’s door was closed.
She pulled onto the shoulder, which put her close to the culvert that held all those horrific memories. She radioed her location to the dispatcher at the Redwater Sheriff’s Office where she worked, and she stepped out into the stillness. The crunch of her boots on the gravel sounded too loud in the quiet morning.
“Hello?” she called out, moving toward the truck.
A man stepped from the ditch near the culvert. He was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing worn jeans and a faded ball cap. The brim shadowed his face, but the moment he looked at her, her stomach tightened.
Harlan Creed.
It had been months since she’d seen him, but the sight of him was its own kind of flashback. Not flashbacks to the wreck, not to the blood on her hands, but to a different life entirely.
He stepped onto the shoulder of the road, his stance easy but watchful. Former Special Ops, now an operative with the elite security outfit, Crossfire Ops. Her husband’s best friend and the very man who’d sworn to protect her when David died.
What the heck was he doing here?
This spot carried its own ghosts for him, too. And Crossfire Creek was miles away, and this stretch of road was far from any beaten path.
Harlan walked toward her, the brim of his cap shadowing his eyes. “I got a text,” he said.
He held out his phone. The message on the screen was short, from an unknown number.If you want to know who killed David, come to the spot where he stepped on the bomb.
Her stomach clenched so hard that it hurt. And for a couple of endless seconds, Laney couldn’t breathe.
Oh, and the stream of memories came. Mercy, did they. They were relentless. Consuming. And they were drowning her where she stood.
David.
God, David. Not just her husband but also her fellow deputy. The man she’d worked alongside on patrols, swapping quiet jokes on long shifts, the man she’d loved and built a life with. Four years ago, he’d been chasing a DUI suspect who’d run from a traffic stop. On this very road, in the dark and chaos, David had stepped on an IED buried in the ground next to the culvert.
He’d lived long enough for Laney to reach him, long enough for his blood to soak into her uniform as she tried to stop the bleeding. Long enough for Harlan to arrive on scene. Then, David had died at the hospital a few hours later.
No one had ever been charged. The DUI suspect had died in the explosion too, which had left investigators with no clear answers as to who’d planted that bomb.
