Just… not like that.
Sara was family.
Within months, every deputy at the station had her back.
Not because she needed rescuing—Sara would’ve chewed through steel before she asked for help—but because she was one of them. She worked hard, and cared about people like it mattered.
And she was alone here.
Single. No family in Sylva.
So the department became her people.
They watched out for her.
And now, with no Sara to climb back behind that wheel, it felt like the whole station had a hole punched clean through it.
Scout stood in the wet cold beside her cruiser and stared into the trees.
It wasn’t the same.
Somewhere out there was a man who staged bones like trophies and left a badge like a calling card.
Somewhere out there was a man who wanted them afraid.
He breathed in, slow and controlled, forcing his thoughts into line.
Steady gets you through.
He could still hear her saying it—quiet, certain, like it was a promise she’d made to herself long before she ever came to Sylva.
Scout’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He’d bring her home or go down trying.
5
Miller’s Ridge—Highway 73
Command Post/Saturday Morning
By Saturday morning, the cold front had settled over Sylva like a hand pressed flat against the town. The temperature had dropped hard overnight. Frost glittered along the shoulders of Highway 73.
The sky was clear, sharp blue over the ridgelines.
Too pretty for what was happening.
Deputy Sara Parker had gone missing at 2:47 a.m. Friday—exactly one week after Thanksgiving.
They’d searched all day Friday—through the ridge, through the creek bends, through brush thick enough to swallow a person whole. They’d searched until darkness forced them back, until headlamps turned the woods into a tunnel of shadows and every snapped branch made men reach for weapons.
They’d come back empty.
And now, Saturday morning, Sylva had shown up.
The town lined the barricades like it was a vigil and a war roomat the same time—faces pale in the cold, hands tucked into coat pockets, eyes fixed on the tree line. Fear on every face.
Behind the tape, tents were going up in the road—portable heaters humming, folding tables unfolding, coolers being dragged into place. Coffee steamed from thermoses. Radios crackled.
It didn’t feel like a search anymore; it felt like a town bracing for a word everyone knew and no one would say out loud: body.
