The Negotiation
Orion Security
Private Bodyguard
Full Force Fatherhood
Be on the Lookout: Bodyguard
Suspicious Activities
Manhunt
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
Foster Lovett—Once a hotshot detective in Seattle, this newest hire has moved back to his hometown to help redeem the sheriff’s department from its corrupt past. But it’s not until his beautiful new neighbor tries to convince him that her younger brother is in trouble that danger swiftly follows and he realizes the town he left behind has changed in a lot more ways than he ever imagined.
Millie Dean—Everyone thinks her brother ran away but his older sister knows something else is going on. After six months of searching for answers, she hopes the new lead detective at the sheriff’s department will listen, but things get complicated fast when she finds herself a target and the attraction between her and Foster becomes undeniable.
Fallon Dean—Younger brother to Millie, this twenty-three-year-old just disappeared one day without any explanation.
Brutus Chamblin—Interim sheriff and family friend to Foster, he’s not about to make the same mistakes as his predecessors.
Carlos Park—This deputy is one of the many locals who believe that the Dean family is nothing but trouble.
Lee Gordon—Forced to retire because of an injury inadvertently caused by Fallon, this former detective has the motive to make trouble for the Deans.
This book is for the readers who have followed my characters and stories throughout the years. We’ve just left the Nash family in Tennessee and now we’re meeting a ragtag group of misfits in small-town Alabama trying their best to make a difference. I hope you enjoy them all.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER ONE
Everyone in town went looking for Annie McHale when she first went missing. A year later and only three people went looking for Fallon Dean.
Detective Gordon was the third person to join the search. In his late fifties, he had been a week away from retiring and thought that Fallon had simply run away. But nothing had been that simple in Kelby Creek, Alabama. Not since the scandal known as The Flood had rocked Dawn County and nearly destroyed the small town. So, after conferring with the interim sheriff, he’d been encouraged to extend his stay to make sure nothing bad had happened to the twenty-three-year-old.
It had made the tired, grouchy man even more tired and even more grouchy. He’d done his investigation wearing an expression that looked like he always had a glass of spoiled milk stuck beneath his nose. However, worse than how he asked his questions during the investigation was the less-than-enthused answers he received.
The town had a lot of history it was trying to forget, but Fallon? He’d caused an accident that some weren’t ready to let go.
Then there was Larissa Cole.
Before Detective Gordon had been assigned the case, Larissa had been first in line to help. The moment the Dean family had come to Kelby Creek five years prior, she’d taken to them with an open heart and a maternal air that neither Dean sibling had felt in a long while. If she believed Fallon had left town of his own free will, it didn’t matter because she was worried, regardless. She had become Millie’s best friend and, while she loved Fallon like a brother, it was Millie who was hurting.
And hunting.
It had been six months to the day since Millie Dean had seen her little brother. In the time between first meeting with Detective Gordon to plead the case that something was wrong to now standing in her kitchen, looking out the window into the hot June daylight, only the smaller details had changed.
Fallon’s lease on his apartment had expired, and all of his belongings were in Millie’s guest bedroom. His cell phone was still paid for but had long since been off, just as his job at the newspaper had been filled. Even the rumor mill had gone on hiatus when it came to the Dean family.
They smiled and waved and had pleasant small talk with Millie at the grocery store or walking along the sidewalk of the neighborhood. They gave her the traditional Southern nod or half-wave when catching her eye while driving. They said it was about time Detective Gordon retired after only two months of searching, and they sure as the day was humid didn’t offer to help look for him, not even on the six-month anniversary of his disappearance.
As far as Kelby Creek was convinced, although he was a grown man, Fallon Dean was a runaway. The name had stuck ever since he ran away as a teenager. And now everyone was convinced he wasn’t missing.
Millie fisted her hand against the lemon-printed towel draped over the lip of the sink. Six months and one day ago she would have fretted at wrinkling the fabric. It was for light hand dabbing and decoration. Something she’d bought in the city on impulse because it had matched a sundress she’d once gotten a lot of compliments on at the grocery store.
But now?
Now she crumpled it in her hand like a wet paper towel.
Long gone was the woman in the lemon sundress. In her place had moved the sister who would do anything to find her only family.
Even if that meant starting over again.
She dropped the towel on the counter and turned on her heel. Her home had been built in the seventies but renovated by the owner before her. Nothing felt vintage about the two-bedroom anymore. It was all clean lines, whites, grays and wood, with accent walls of shiplap here and there.
One of those accent walls stood behind the eat-in table. On that wall was mounted a white board much too large for the space.
Millie traced her own handwriting across its surface.
Then she went to the coffee maker and started a new cup.
It wasn’t until her phone rang hours later that she realized it had gone dark outside.
“Hello?”
Millie’s stomach growled in tandem with her answering the call. Larissa’s voice came through in a rush.
“Zach just called and asked who the man was moving into the rental next to your house. He said there was a moving truck out in front of it at the curb when he drove past to go to church and was still there when he came back.”
Millie pushed out of the dining chair she’d nearly grown roots on as she’d gone over every detail of her own investigation into Fallon and made a path back to the kitchen window. A streetlamp stood sentry between her mailbox and the rental house in question, but its light showed an empty road.
“I didn’t see a moving truck earlier and I don’t see one now. Are you sure Zach saw right?”
There was motion on Larissa’s side of the phone. She repeated the question to their coworker Zach, who must have been in the background. He responded but Millie couldn’t hear him.
“He’s sure. He said your car was in the driveway both times too so you must have seen him.” Larissa paused. Millie could picture the forty-two-year-old perfectly despite the distance between them. Her round face arranging into a harmless, comfort-filled expression, glasses in need of being pushed back up the bridge of her nose and brown eyes that held more maternal concern than Millie or Fallon had ever gotten
from their own mother. “What have you been up to today?”
Millie only ever felt guilt about her determination to find her brother when she decided to lie to her best friend about how determined she still was. Larissa had tried to take off work to spend the day with Millie, knowing it was the anniversary, but the truth was that Millie had woken up that morning with one goal.
To finally get answers.
No matter what.
Telling that to the levelheaded, good-intentioned mother hen who had seen firsthand how Millie had changed in the last six months?
It only made the worry in Larissa grow from her heart and fan out into her own life.
And Millie didn’t want that.
So she lied and said she wanted to spend the day alone, lounging and catching up on her TV shows.
“I’ve been stuck in TV land all day,” she said now. “Community has six seasons and I was only on season two. You know I’m a completist when it comes to shows.”
There was a hesitation again but then Larissa seemed to accept the fib.
“Well, make sure you get some food in you since I know how you can forget to eat sometimes when you’re focused,” she said. “I’m still coming over to drop off some cookies after my shift around ten. You better show me some dirty dishes to prove you ate.” Larissa’s soothing tone switched as quickly as the topic. “Now, go next door and find out who your new neighbor is. It’s not every day someone moves to Kelby Creek.”
They ended the call and Millie looked at the clock. She had a few hours before Larissa’s well-meaning check-in.
That was plenty of time to retrace Fallon’s last known stops around town before he disappeared.
Millie grabbed her purse and hurried out to the driveway. Just like the moving truck, she barely noticed the man walking parallel to her along the driveway next door, a box in his arms. On reflex she nodded a hello when their eyes met.
The light from his front porch showed him returning the gesture. Millie noted, the way one notes something when your mind was already filled with other pressing matters, the easy facts.
The man was young, at least younger than Mr. Tomlin, the tenant before him, had been. She guessed he was closer to her twenty-eight than Mr. Tomlin’s sixty-two. Taller too. Built wider and sturdier if the large box he carried with ease was any indication. Millie couldn’t get a good grasp of the color of his hair other than it was lighter than her black, and he had a lot of it. Shoulder length and with a matching beard. It felt hot just looking at it. Then again, it was summer in Kelby Creek. That meant even the night gave little respite from the heat and humidity that plagued South Alabama. Past those quick flashes of detail, Millie didn’t stick around to register any more.
She had a brother to find, Southern hospitality be damned.
* * *
FOSTER LOVETT HADN’T been back in Kelby Creek since he’d run off and married Regina Becker straight out of high school. Not the smartest thing he’d done in his thirty-two years of life but not the dumbest either. He and Regina had a good five years of married bliss before the dam of young insecurities, naive hopes and work had started to crack between them.
When that thing blew, the next five years of marriage had been all about surviving the flood.
They hadn’t.
Now Foster was back in his hometown sweating through his jeans, cursing the mosquitoes and wondering who the woman next door was even though he’d sworn off the opposite sex the moment he’d signed the divorce papers and lost his house, his car and the dog two years ago. Sure, he’d gone on a few dates since that fateful day, but the lesson he’d learned from Regina was still seared into his brain.
Women were trouble.
And the woman who’d all but run and jumped into her car before speeding off? Well, he guessed she might be that with a capital T.
Foster was done with trouble. Or at least the woman kind. Professionally he had run back to Kelby Creek and jumped right into the sack with a damned mess. One he hoped he could help clean up.
He hefted the box of dishes high as he opened the front door to his rental home and jostled inside. The AC had been running since that morning, but the air was still on the stale side. He scrunched up his nose at it and slid the box onto the kitchen counter just as his phone started blaring. He eyed the oven’s clock. It was almost seven at night.
The caller ID of a man whose first name was honest-to-God Brutus popped up on the touch screen.
Foster straightened and answered.
“Yello.”
“Hey there, Love, sorry for calling when you requested some quiet while getting settled,” the weathered and deep voice of interim sheriff Brutus Chamblin answered. “But I heard through the grapevine that you were being a grump at Crisp’s Kitchen no more than half an hour ago, so I figured you were probably still up to no good.”
Foster rolled his eyes and started to open the box he’d just put down.
“I wasn’t grumpy, I just wasn’t chatty. That’s all.”
“That’s the same thing when you live in a town with only eighteen hundred or so people. You should know that already, or has living big in Seattle made you forget the niceties of being Southern?”
The sigh escaped him faster than the packing tape split on top of the box.
“I moved back to help redeem the image of this town and the sheriff’s department. You’d think that would earn me a little leeway when I don’t spend a half hour talking to Quinn Cooper about the fish he caught at the creek two months ago while trying to finish my dinner.”
Brutus laughed.
Sheriff Chamblin laughed.
Foster was going to have to get used to the idea that his father’s old friend was now acting interim sheriff until someone else was elected. That meant giving the man a little more formality than came naturally to him. Especially since Foster was now the lead detective in his department.
“Well, it might not kill you to fake the smiles and interest for a while. At least until things get a little more normal around here.”
Foster started to pull out the plates while making a mental note to go out and buy new silverware. After the divorce he’d moved in with a buddy from the Seattle Police Department before segueing into a studio apartment. Somewhere during the different moves he’d lost more and more furniture, odds and ends, and, weirdly enough, forks. For the life of him he had no idea where they’d all gone to.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he finally said. “Just as long as you remember I’m not here to fake nice. I’m here to solve cases.”
“Speaking of which...” Foster paused, plate in midair. He hadn’t had an active case in almost two months. Just the thought of one got his blood pumping. There was a rustling on the other side of the phone. “I still don’t have anything other than cold cases sitting on your desk. Maybe you can help make sense of at least one of them. Lord knows the people of Kelby Creek could use a win, and with a rock-star detective like you joining our ranks, maybe we can finally get them one.”
Foster resumed his unpacking and nodded to himself. He never liked being called a rock star, but he was proud of his above-average closing rate that had made him somewhat famous within his career in law enforcement.
“I’ll take a look at them first thing in the morning,” he said.
“Good. I’ll stop in to check up on you after my meeting with the interim mayor. He thinks since we’re both temporary that we should be in constant talks about the town.” Brutus sighed this time. “The man could drive a nun to drink, I tell you what.”
Foster laughed and adopted the older man’s earlier tone.
“Now, now, Sheriff. Don’t you go forgetting your Southern niceties.”
Brutus grumbled.
“Yeah, yeah. See you in the morning, Love.”
The call ended, and Foster spent the rest of the night unpacking. The rent
al house was a two-bedroom but on the smaller side. At least for the town; for his studio in Seattle? Not so much. It wasn’t until he was done that Foster realized the house still looked mostly empty.
It should have bothered him, he thought, but then again, when had he ever been a homebody?
Foster showered and then jumped into bed, mind already on the files that would be sitting on his desk in the morning. It wasn’t until a few hours had passed and he got up for a glass of water that he noticed the woman from next door hadn’t come home yet.
He wondered who she was again.
“You’re wasting your time,” he told himself out loud, empty glass in his hand. “You’re here to work. Not make nice with the neighbors.”
The small reminder was enough. Foster went back to bed. His routine kicked in after that.
He slept. His alarm went off and woke him. He ate. He dressed. He hopped into the used red Tacoma he’d bought a few weeks before and drove to work. His mind took in details around him in quick succession even though his focus was on something he hadn’t even read yet.
He nodded to Libby at the front desk, said a few words to a deputy he hadn’t formally met yet and passed by Brutus’s closed office door before going to the end of the hall and hanging a left.
Detective Lovett was etched on a new nameplate next to one of two doors down the small hallway.
But his door wasn’t closed.
In fact, not only was it open, there was someone sitting just inside it across from his desk.
Foster didn’t recognize the dark curls, but he did recognize the concerned face as he walked around the stranger to his chair.
It was the woman from the night before. The woman in a hurry.
His neighbor.
“Good morning,” he said, adding a question to his greeting. “May I ask who you are and why you’re in here?”
With better lighting Foster was able to see just how beautiful the stranger was. Hair as dark as night, a mixed complexion that made her amber eyes even more bright as they took him in, and long angles that made him think of the description of royalty before he could stop it from popping into his head. Her long eyelashes brushed against her brown cheeks as she followed him with her eyes.
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