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He tried again.
The same thing happened.
Sly was just about to try again when his communicator made a high-pitched beep, then a loud, vibrating buzz. It was an emergency call, cutting through all channels to reach the one that was specifically assigned for members of the Hamlet Sheriff Department.
His deputies rarely used it. Sly liked to consider himself an approachable boss, and he gave them all personal to use his personal line if they needed to reach him. Unless it was a true emergency—like when that volunteer firefighter was committing arson right before Grace and Rick’s wedding—he preferred them to stay away from the emergency line.
Was it a coincidence that, right when Sly was thinking the worst could have happened to his beloved partner, the emergency line was buzzing?
No, as it turned out, itwasn’t.
His fingers were numb as he pressed the receiver. Swallowing roughly, he said, “Sheriff Collins.”
“Sly? Sly, come in. Are you there? Can you hear me?”
When Sly first met Natalie Newton—before she was Natalie McAllister—she was just a kid in her early twenties who had a noticeable crush on Ricky. She joined the severely understaffed HSD to get close to him, but when she realized that his heart only beat for his ballerina, she stayed on. She was a good deputy, normally clear-headed, and was an asset to the squad. Since marrying Kade, bringing the former private investigator onboard as another deputy, she proved to be trusty, reliable, and mostly unflappable.
So why did she sound like she was panicking almost as much as he had been?
“I can hear you, Nat. What’s going on?”
She was breathing heavily as her high-pitched voice came through the speaker. “Okay. So you know Ashes, right? Kathryn’s cat? Well, he got up in the dang tree again and I was getting him down when Phil came by. He almost ran me down with his cart and, oh jeez, Sly… I’m so sorry, so, so sorry… but—”
Sorry. Why was she sorry?
He waited for her to take a breath. Then, squeezing his radio so tightly he was afraid it might crack, he said, “Natalie? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Phil. He was coming back with this week’s mail, put-putting down the highway, and he started heading back toward Hamlet when he saw… hesaw—”
“Nat.”
“There was a car,” she blurted out. “He saw a car on the other side of the gulley and, shit, Sly, it’s Maria’s green car. I went and checked it out myself. It’s in the same spot that Kade crashed, and none of us would go there… but it’s there. I saw it, too.”
He felt like someone slugged him right in the gut. Maria had lived in Hamlet her entire life. She could probably find the gulley with her eyes closed while driving, and every villager knew to avoid the overgrown path on the left side of the gulley that inevitably led to a dead end… so what was she doing there?
Wait—
“You saw her car?” he clarified. “What about Maria, Nat? Where’s Maria?”
“I don’t know. Because when I peeked into the car… her communicator was on the passenger seat, and so was a cellphone and her purse… but she’s gone, Sly. She’s… she’sgone.”
CHAPTERFOUR
PRESENT DAY
As much as he enjoyed his work, lording over St. Paul’s ER as its self-proclaimed god of emergency medicine, Lucas De Angelis lived for moments like these.
It was a lazy Monday in September, and after pulling a pair of doubles over the weekend, he had the entire day off. On his way back to the apartment after his shift ended last night, he brought dessert home to go with the dinner Tessa had waiting for him. Drunk on wine, the rich cheesecake he shared with his wife, and the knowledge that they could spend the whole day in bed tomorrow if they wanted to, they cozied up on the living room couch together, watching a movie. Halfway through, they took their evening to bed.
They stayed up late, enjoying each other, and Lucas had every intention of sleeping in the next morning. Compared to his usual schedule, he did. Instead of being up by six a.m., showered, dressed, and ready to head out by six-thirty, he didn’t wake up until eight.
Tessa—as his stay-at-home wife—had her own routine. After years of getting up for school, both when she was a student, then when she was employed as a teacher, she admitted she wasn’t a morning person. She’d get up to eat breakfast with Lucas if that’s what he wanted, but he preferred letting her get her rest.
And not only because he got an obscene amount of pleasure laying next to her, watching her sleep while knowing that there was a goddamn thing in this world or any other that would take this woman away from him.
As she slowly stirred a little past ten, smiling warmly,trustinglyto see the way he watched over her while she slumbered, Lucs knew that he’d kill anyone who tried—and it wouldn’t be his first time, either.
Together, they had a lazy breakfast in bed before conserving water by showering at the same time. Of course, considering how long they were in there, they probably blew through more than most of their neighbors in Strawberry Village—the name of the apartment complex in Dayton where they’d been living these last couple of years—but Lucas was in an immaculate mood as he returned to the kitchen, getting another cup of coffee for himself.
