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CHAPTER ONE
WHEN MRS. YVONNE WEATHERFIELD hesitated at the corner of Poplar and Main, spared one disdainful glance at her and kept on walking, Sara Hanrahan knew she was finally home.
She also wished she wasn’t.
The trip from Dallas, over eleven hundred miles north in a rusted SUV with a faulty heater, hadn’t been bad. Her stay in Ryansville promised to be much less fun.
This time, she was back with a whole new attitude and a lot less tolerance. Straightening out a few people would do her heart good. But she needed to blend in, not set the townsfolk back on their heels. She knew her job too well to make that mistake.
“So what do you think, Harold? Just the place you’d like to be?”
He looked up at her, his eyes wise and patient, letting her know that any place on earth was fine as long as he was at her side.
Reaching down, she rubbed him under the collar, then grinned when the old dog leaned against her leg and wagged his tail. “At least you’ve got good taste.”
She sensed, rather than heard, someone very large come up behind her. Too close.
With the instinct born of three years with the DEA—Drug Enforcement Administration—and three years before that as a city cop, she spun on her heel and took a step back into a slight crouch. Swiftly assessed the man who’d approached.
Tall, dark, and startled, wearing the navy blue uniform of a deputy sheriff, he was assessing her as if she just might be a criminal who’d come into his territory.
Her gaze riveted on his, and she gave him an embarrassed, helpless smile. “Y-you surprised me, Officer. I had my purse stolen a few months ago, and I get nervous whenever someone comes up behind me.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” He didn’t look particularly sorry, though he did appear a tad suspicious.
She glanced at the name badge on his uniform, then stared at him, taking in his vaguely familiar green eyes, raven-black hair, strong jaw, and the high cheekbones. He sure had changed since she last saw him in late elementary school. If Elvis had stepped out of the next alley, she wouldn’t have felt greater disbelief.
The local deputy sheriff, a man named Roswell, had been discussed during the DEA briefing, but there were numerous families by that name in this county, and she hadn’t thought to associate a sheriff with the lofty, elite branch of the family that had dominated the local social and political scene for generations. “You’re Nathan Roswell?”
A corner of his mouth lifted in wry acknowledgment, and suddenly she knew that his career choice hadn’t gone over well with his wealthy family. His parents had probably been horrified at the thought of their precious son wearing a badge.
“You’re...a Hanrahan, right?” He paused, considering. The corners of his mouth turned down. “Kyle’s sister?”
An easy guess, given her family’s propensity for freckles and deep auburn hair, but she had to give him points for remembering her surname and managing to maintain a neutral expression.
As a teenager, her brother had given the local law enforcement officers a run for their money. And Dad...well, he’d been far more memorable. “I’m Sara.”
“Just passing through?”
“I’m not sure.”
“The job market around here is sorta tight.”
Hearing a veiled warning beneath his words, she wondered what he’d do if she flipped out her ID. Instead, she gave a nonchalant shrug. “That would affect my plans, I guess.”
Standing there, tall and lean and resolute, with a Glock holstered on his belt, he reminded her of a sheriff from the Old West. She half expected him to add a piece of friendly advice about not making any trouble in town.
Instead, he bent over and ruffled Harold’s gray fur. “Nice German shepherd. Had him long?”
“A while.”
He gave her an approving glance. “Do you find him at a shelter?”
Sara hesitated. The truth could spur questions heading down paths she couldn’t walk. Not until she knew that he didn’t have connections to the suspected drug operation just outside of town.
Preliminary reports from the DEA indicated that the deputy sheriff wasn’t a shareholder in the company she’d come to investigate, but turning a blind eye had been a lucrative deal for the local cops in several cases she’d been on, so it didn’t pay to take chances. “The dog’s owner...passed away.”
“I’m sorry.”
