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Tess murmured softly in response. She didn’t say anything in particular, though the sound was one of agreement.
Before ending the call with the sheriff of Hamlet, Lucas got enough details to make him realize that he had no choice but to return home. His beloved sister was inexplicably missing, had been fortwo days, and it became obvious that someone took her.
No one knew why. No one knew how. Despite Hamlet being the sort of super tiny small town where everyone knew your nameandyour business, the way she seemed to vanish reminded Tess that no one was safe there.
What made it worse—though she wouldn’t confess it to Lucas in this state—was that, this time, they weren’t responsible for the latest crime that seemed to have stunned Hamlet. Just like earlier this year, when there was someone setting fires, trying to sabotage Rick and Grace Hart’s wedding, someone else was targeting Lucas and Tess’s friends and family.
But they made a mistake, Tess thought, eyeing her husband’s steely profile. They went afterMaria De Angelis, and there was no one in hell that Lucas was going to let that go.
The last thing Sly told Lucas before they ended their call was that he was heading back into Hamlet; without any cell service in town, he’d needed to drive out toward the highway in order to get a signal strong enough to dial out. Nothing was going to stop him from continuing to search for Maria—that, or wait to see if her kidnappers contacted him for a ransom or something like that—but his phone wouldn’t work back in the village.
Without one of the Hamlet radios of his own, Lucas would have no way to contact the sheriff to let him know they’d arrived. That’s when Sly told him that, if he wasn’t at the station house already, plotting his next step, then whatever deputy was watching over the HSD building would get in contact with him.
They were in luck. Flying past the most recent ‘Welcome to Hamlet’ sign that Maria painted for the town—thankfully obscured by the continuing drizzle or, like always, Tess would’ve felt a jolt at seeing it—Lucas guided them straight to the station house in the center of Hamlet.
The single-floor building surrounded by a parking lot that was usually emptier than not didn’t just give Tess a jolt. As Lucas pulled into the nearest spot, Tess squeezed his thigh so tightly, he shifted in his seat once he killed the Mustang’s engine.
“I’m sorry, baby. I know you don’t want to be back here—”
She didn’t. Staying overnight in the HSD holding cell after she “drank too much” and caught Mason Walsh’s attention down at the local watering hell was the biggest part Tess had to play during Jack’s murder. It was essential that she had an alibi—considering most Hamlet locals distrusted outsiders, and she would’ve been the main suspect of his death without it—and using Sheriff De Angelis’s own deputies and station house made it unbreakable.
Of course, while Tess was “sleeping it off” while Sly worked at the desk, Lucas was sneaking into the Hamlet Inn to strangle Jack with a length of rope. Just being back here… she couldn’t help but think about her husband’s last moments.
He had to die. Lucas convinced her of that. He had to die, and she did her best to ease his passing by drugging his drink so that he wouldn’t feel it… but being back at the station house?
It was rought.
For Lucas, though? She’d do it.
Tess would doanythingfor him.
Removing her hand from his thigh, she found his hand instead. Lacing her fingers with his, giving it a reassuring squeeze, she said, “I’ll be fine. Your sister’s in trouble right now. That’s all that matters.”
Lifting their entwined hands to his lips, he kissed the back of her hand. “Cuore,” he breathed out.
She gave him a shaky smile. “Come on. Let’s go see if the sheriff’s in.”
As it turned out, the single cruiser parked in the lost belonged to Sheriff Collins. It belonged to Sly.
They got very lucky. Having just relieved Natalie from desk duty, Sly was sitting at the spare desk—as always, leaving the bigger one for the HSD mother her, Willie Parker—poring over what had to be hand drawn maps of Hamlet.
“Two days,” Lucas said as he marched into the station house, his voice so short, so clipped, Tess knew that he was struggling to control his rage. “You waited two days to tell me my sister was gone. Explain yourself.”
One of the things that Tess remembered the most about the small town life was how there seemed to be a hierarchy among the villagers. There was a mayor as a figurehead, and a town council that really created the laws and bylaws that governed the two hundred residents, but the true head of the community was Hamlet’s sheriff.
It used to be Caitlin De Angelis, but after her murder, Sylvester Collins stepped into the role. It didn’t hurt that he’d carried on a relationship with town sweetheart, Maria, for four years before they finally got engaged last spring. Sly commanded Hamlet’s, and he earned it.
But, in Tess’s opinion, Lucas was the prodigal son returned. It didn’t matter that he left the village behind to marry an outsider, or that he left them without a doctor of their own. Once a local, always a local, and though Sly was firmly entrenched in the community, he was still a transplant. Born and raised in California before he did his tours as a Marine, Sly only moved to Hamlet when he followed Hamlet-born Rick Hart to the village nearly half a decade ago.
Lucas was born there. Until a chance meeting on the outside led him to fall in love with one of his students… and then everything that happened after that… he planned on dying there. But when it came between Tessa or Hamlet, Lucas chose his second wife—and, yet, as he narrowed his icy blue eyes on the sheriff who had pushed his chair back before rising to his feet, there was no denying who was in charge at that moment.
Or who would win this confrontation.
* * *
There wasa reason why Lucas always seemed so ice-cold and in control: because, angry as he was, he was on fire with it and he’d burn anyone in his path if he lost that control.
Right now, Sylvester Collins was severely testing his patience. Only knowing that his sister would never forgive him if he took his frustration out on her fiance had Lucas fisting his hands at his side as Sly tried his best to explain himself.
