Page 175 of Taken Away

He nodded once.

“The motive’s probably older than any of us. Our job is figuring out whose it was.”

The heavy glass door to the sheriff’s office rattled against its frame.

Every head turned.

Through the briefing-room window, a small woman in a floral headscarf marched across the bullpen with determined purpose.

Scout glanced toward the door.

“That’s June Wheeler.”

Burke capped his marker.

“Hold the rest of this.”

He nodded toward the bullpen.

“Scout, see what she needs.”

Scout pushed back from the table and slipped out of the room.

Jackson County Sheriff’s Department

Front Lobby

June’s knuckles were white around the strap of her oversized canvas purse, her face pale beneath the scarf. She didn’t pause at the low wooden gate separating the lobby from the bullpen; she marched straight up to the front counter.

Scout Wilson looked up from a stack of traffic citations, straightening. “Morning, June. Can I help you with something?”

“I need Burke,” June said, her voice thin but absolute. She didn’t glance at the waiting chairs. “Right now, Scout.”

“The Sheriff is in a closed briefing with the team,” Scout said gently, reaching for a clean intake pad. “If you’ve got a statement to make regarding the Blackwood property, I can take it right here. We’ll get it filed clean.”

June snapped her chin up, eyes flashing. “Nope. Nope, no one except the Sheriff. I’m not whispering a word of this to a deputy, Scout Wilson. Go get Burke, or I’m sitting on your front steps until he walks out.”

Scout recognized that look—the small-town stubbornness that wouldn’t budge for a badge. He set his pen down, stood, and walked back toward the glass conference room.

A moment later, Burke Scott emerged, his uniform shirt crisp, his eyes carrying the exhaustion of the timeline. He offered June a calm nod as he pushed the swinging gate open. “June. Come on back to my office.”

June didn’t speak until the heavy oak door of Burke’s office clicked shut behind them. She refused the chair he offered, choosing instead to stand by the window, fingers twisting the canvas strap of her bag.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, June,” Burke said, settling behind his desk. “What’s going on?”

“It’s about Red Stephens,” June whispered, turning sharply to face him. “I haven’t slept a full hour since folks found out Mabel didn’t die naturally, Burke. I keep replaying it in my head, and I can’t keep it inside anymore.”

Burke leaned forward, pen poised over a yellow legal pad. “Replaying what?”

“Three days before she died,” June said, her breath coming a little too fast. “I was over at the Victorian. Mabel had invited me for lunch—a light chicken salad and some hot tea in the dining room. We were sitting there, talking about the weather, when the front door didn’t just open… it slammed. So hard the china in the hutch rattled.”

Burke didn’t interrupt. His eyes stayed on her face.

“Red Stephens came storming right into the dining room,” June went on, her chest lifting and falling. “He didn’t even take off his mud boots. He was furious, Burke. Absolutely beside himself. “He said, ‘I heard down at Talley Feed and Tack that Mabel was fixin’ to sell the cattle farm.’”

“Sell the cattle farm?” Burke asked, his mind jumping to Luke’s interview notes.

“That’s what folks down at the feed store were saying.” June nodded quickly. “Red said everyone was talking about it. And it pissed him off like nothing I’ve ever seen. He marched up to the end of the table, leaned down in Mabel’s face, and told her what was what. He shouted she wasn’t going to sell that land out from under him—not after all his years of service, not after everything he’d sacrificed to keep those fences standing.”