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Gregory, Vaughn’s own mother, and Hector were the only people Vaughn had ever loved, he thought. Taking care of the old guy, and doing what Gregory asked was the least he could do. Gregory had taken good care of Vaughn’s mother. And Vaughn. Even if he really hadn’t had to. That mattered.
No denying that.
Vaughn knew what loyalty was. He was loyal to two people in the entire world. The moron beside him, and Gregory.
Gregory was concerning him. No doubt about it.
Going on and on about some woman namedBonita. Vaughn half that she had to be a figment of Gregory’s imagination or something, the way the old man kept saying she was going to replace his Denita.
That Bonita was even more perfect.
Gregory was damned obsessed withperfect.Fool should have learned long ago—there was no perfect woman out there. Not really.
Vaughn was going to have to keep a better watch. Make sure Gregory wasn’treallylosing it or anything. Vaughn didn’t want to lose the only real family he’d ever had.
He just didn’t. No one wanted to be out there in the world alone.
27
The second timehe saw the woman, Murdoch was out by the Old Coleson Hollow Hope Life Church. Again.
It was starting to be a popular place.
He’d gotten a call from the former pastor, saying he’d seen a car he didn’t recognize on the road. And the car was the small kind. Would probably get stuck in the small-car-eating potholes.
Murdoch had been in the area anyway—the number that kid had called Zoey from had pinged the nearest Garrity cell tower again the night before. North side of his territory.
But finding that phone was becoming a little harder than anticipated. The damned thing had been an unregistered burner phone. Paid for with a prepaid credit card—registered to a Sam Brown. That had been it. Just plain old Sam Brown. With an address on Coleson Hollow Road that just didn’t exist. Almost like someone was trying to hide something. Murdoch wasn’t stupid.
He was rather…insatiably curious, actually.
Of course, the registered user of that phone didn’t exist out there either. Murdoch had no Sam Brown in Garrity listed anywhere.
There were a damned lot of Sam Browns in the world, though. He’d decided in a fit of boredom—on his day off—to drive out to the area and see just what was out there again. Might as well check on the woman in the small economy car the older man on the phone had laughingly said was just taunting the gods of Garrity to strand her along the way.
Murdoch didn’t want some random woman breaking down in Coleson Hollow. He was pretty certain that part of the region was where the vampires and werewolves lived.
He’d heard stories, he’d heard stories.
He'd do his sheriff-ly duty and make sure she didn’t run into trouble, then he’d head back to his place and daydream about ways to seduce a Zoey Sofia if he ever got the opportunity.
There the car was.
Someone was at the church again. Definitely a popular place. He doubted this church had had ten visitors in the last year—and two of those had been Murdoch and his favorite brown-eyed woman on the planet.
To his surprise, he saw his pretty Coleson lady friend, looking down at the largest grave in the entire cemetery.
Her again. Interesting.
He parked.
She watched him.
Murdoch climbed out and joined her. “Well, fancy meeting you here. Still out tracking down family history?”
Coleson Hollow was a good ninety minutes from Finley Creek. A good ninety away from Garrity proper, too. And she was dressed for work. That would make for a long, long day for her. “Looking for something specific, Nurse…Bonnie?”
“I visited the library today, Sheriff. It’s only open two days a week. And today would have been my stepmother’s birthday. I brought her this.” She held something obviously precious in her hands. Murdoch looked. It was a small ceramic plaque. With a photo screened on it. “Her four daughters. My half sisters. Me, my sister Angela as well. We lost Angela eighteen years ago to cancer.”
