by T. L. Haddix
Table of Contents
Note for Readers:
Also by T. L. Haddix
Acknowledgements
Cast of Characters
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 Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Epilogue
BONUS Short Story
Also by T. L. Haddix
If You Liked Stormking Road
Streetlight Graphics Publishing
A division of Streetlight Graphics
Stormking Road
Copyright © 2014 by Tabatha L. Haddix. All rights reserved.
First Edition: November 2014
Visit www.tlhaddix.com for updates, news, bonuses and freebies.
www.facebook.com/tlhaddix
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Streetlight Graphics Publishing, a division of Streetlight Graphics.
Note for Readers:
Stormking Road takes place twenty years after the last time we got to see the Campbell family, which is in Amelia’s book, Cricket Cove. A couple of really important things happened to Sydney’s parents, Archer and Emma, between that book and this one. If you’d like to catch up with them first and read a short story detailing those important life events, just click here. If you’d like to skip that short story or read it after you’ve finished with Sydney’s book, just continue on from here. Happy Reading!
Also by T. L. Haddix
The Firefly Hollow Series:
Firefly Hollow
Butterfly Lane
Dragonfly Creek
Cattail Ridge
Cricket Cove
Stormking Road
The Shadows Collection:
Secrets in the Shadows
Under the Moon’s Shadow
Shadows from the Grave
Hidden in the Shadows
In the Heart’s Shadow
Deception in the Shadows
Seduction in the Shadows
Granny Theft Auto (A Leroy/Shadows short story)
Domestic Disturbance (A Leroy/Shadows flash fiction)
Writing as Mallory Love:
Sunset Motel, Book One
Sunset Motel, Book Two
You can connect with T.L. on Facebook and her website:
www.tlhaddix.com
www.facebook.com/tlhaddix
If you’d like to receive email notifications about future releases, please subscribe to T.L.’s newsletter at the address below.
www.tlhaddix.com/newsletter
Acknowledgements
Special thanks the following people: Cassie, Kathie (and her dad!), Candace, DeAnn, Anita. Y’all rock.
Cast of Characters
Sydney Marie Campbell Gibson - oldest daughter of Emma Campbell and Archer Gibson. First appears in Cattail Ridge.
Sawyer Carson Evans - retired Kentucky State Trooper, age 46. Now owns his own private investigation firm and is up to his eyeballs in paperwork.
Danny Napier - Sydney’s best friend, now a preacher.
Neala - Another of Sydney’s friends from childhood.
Owen and Sarah Campbell - the folks who started it all. Parents to (in order): John (wife Zanny), Emma (husband Archer), Ben (wife Ainsley), Rachel (divorced, mother of Easton), and Amelia (husband Logan, brother to Archer.)
Owen and Sarah are also grandparents to: Noah, Eli, Molly (John), Sydney, Graydon, Carter (Emma), Lily (Ben), Easton (Rachel), three boys and Sadie (Amelia.)
Leighton “Lee” Harrison - Rachel’s sexy new neighbor and a former co-worker of Sawyer’s. Also a state trooper.
Nan Carson - Sawyer’s grandmother.
The rest of Sawyer’s family - Jordan and Elise (parents), Frank and Matt (brothers), Christie (evil ex-wife.)
Chapter One
Home. Funny how the word could mean different things to so many people.
To Sydney Marie Campbell Gibson, home was the two-story adobe house in Hazard, Kentucky, that she’d grown up in. The sound of her parents’ voices echoing quietly up the stairs at night after she and her brothers were tucked safely in bed. Ink stains on her grandfather’s fingers from where he’d been writing and illustrating the books he authored. The smell of her grandmother’s apple spice cake that embraced a person when they walked into the farmhouse in which Owen and Sarah Campbell had raised their family.
Today, Sydney was coming home. But for the first time in her life she wasn’t going to that adobe house or to her grandparents’ farm. Today, she was bypassing town, driving to the new house her parents had built on a private, out-of-the-way piece of land not far from where her grandparents lived.
Emma and Archer Gibson had been planning their dream house for close to ten years now. Archer had bought the land the year before he’d married Emma when Sydney was five. They would have built the house sooner but the everyday craziness of raising three kids, working, of Emma running her photography studio, and simply having a life had interfered. Now that Sydney’s brothers, Graydon and Carter, were teenagers, Emma had seized the opportunity. And the land that had sat empty for the twenty-some
years Archer had owned it had become the site of the family’s new home.
Sydney hadn’t seen the house in the flesh, so to speak, only in pictures. As far as that went, she hadn’t been back to Hazard and Perry County for over two years now. She wasn’t ready before. Now, at twenty-six, she was.
As excited as she was for her parents, she was a bit apprehensive. Feeling so full of trepidation was ridiculous, but there was a part of her that worried everything would have changed, that she’d not have a real home to return to now. That home wouldn’t be home anymore.
And Sydney desperately needed to be able to come home.
So much had happened to the family in the last decade or so. The loss of her great-grandmother, Eliza, and of Owen’s uncle, Eli. A bitter feud that had erupted between her cousins, Noah and Eli. Her aunt Zanny’s bout with breast cancer. Sydney’s own divorce. She needed to come home now, to try to figure out where her place was in the world. To try to reach for happiness and permanence, whatever that ended up meaning.
Finding the house was easy. She’d been to the property countless times over the years as she grew up, either to go hiking or to have a picnic or just to have a place to go and think. But when she saw the stone and glass structure that rose up from the side of the hill, looking as natural in the landscape as though it had sprouted there from a seed, she had to stop the car for a few moments to take it all in. To admire the beauty and peacefulness of the setting. Flowers bloomed along both sides of the wide gravel driveway, cheery red, yellow, orange, and white emissaries whose heads bobbed in the early June breeze. It was a warm welcome, and letting out a deep sigh, she continued up the drive.
Wanting to surprise everyone, she hadn’t called to let them know she was coming. So it was with some relief that she saw her father’s truck, the bed loaded down with mulch, parked in front of the three-car garage. Pulling in beside the truck, she took a sip of water from the bottle tucked into the car’s console, then got out and made her way to the wide covered porch.
Archer Gibson pulled the door open before she could ring the bell. The stunned pleasure on his face assured her that her arrival was not an unwelcome surprise.
“Oh, my God! Sydney? What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming? How long are you staying?” Archer’s laugh was soggy as he wrapped her in a bear hug and lifted her off her feet, twirling her around.
Laughing, crying, Sydney hugged him back just as tightly. He was still as solid as a rock, though his hair was shot through with gray and laugh lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. Sydney knew a lot of those gray hairs had come from her antics as a teen. He’d earned every one of them, something for which she still felt regret.
“I’m home. I wanted to surprise you all. And I’ll stay as long as you want me to.”
Archer sat her on her feet, grinning down at her happily. “Well, then, you’ll be here until you’re old and gray. Your mom is going to be so happy. I can’t believe you’re here!”
“Where is she?” she asked as he led her inside. “And the boys?”
“Emma’s shooting a wedding, and your brothers are out riding around in Graydon’s car. I’m piddling around here on my own today. Have you eaten? When did you leave Georgia?”
“A couple of days ago. I took the scenic route, came up through Tennessee. And no, I’ve not eaten. I’m starving.”
Archer winked at her. “We can remedy that. What sounds good?”
“Honestly? Mom’s spaghetti.”
They both laughed. Emma was a very talented, very competent woman in nearly every area of her life. Cooking, however, was not one of those areas. There were only a few dishes she could make with consistent results. Spaghetti was one.
“I think we can probably arrange that for dinner tonight. She’ll be so happy to see you,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
Sydney slipped her arm around his waist and leaned against him. “I can’t, either. I’ve missed you all so much. So show me this place. It’s gorgeous, Daddy.”
“We’re pretty happy with it.”
She looked around the wide foyer that opened onto the great room, trying to take it all in. While the house itself was new, many of the contents were familiar, and she felt the last of her nerves settle down.
Archer gave her the tour, stopping in the door of a bedroom upstairs that held very familiar furnishings. “This is your room. It’s probably not what you’d put together now that you’re an adult, but we wanted you to have a place to come to.”
Tears pricked her eyes and she had to sniff them back. She couldn’t speak, just hugged him again.
He kissed the top of her head. “Let’s get some grub and we can catch up on things.”
She followed him downstairs to the state-of-the-art kitchen, whistling when they walked into the airy, clean space. “You know, I’d figured I would find my own place once I got here but now, after seeing this house… I’m not too old to move back in, am I?”
Archer laughed. “You’ll never be too old to move back in. So how are Kathy and Charles? I imagine they didn’t want to see you leave.”
Sydney smiled ruefully. “No, they didn’t. And honestly, I hated to leave them. But Charles’s nephew and niece and their spouses and kids are there, and they’ll be okay. He’s settling into retirement finally, and for once, he’s leaning on Kathy. The hip replacement took a lot out of him. I think it’s actually made her stronger, having him need her.”
“I can see how that would.”
Kathy was Sydney’s great-aunt, her grandmother Sarah’s older sister. She’d been in a fragile emotional state for decades thanks to a horrific and tragic event more than fifty years ago that had cost Kathy the man she loved and her children. She’d moved to Georgia to escape the memories, where she’d eventually remarried. Her second husband, Charles, was an attorney in the Savannah area. Sydney had worked as his assistant for the past three years.
“So what are you planning to do now? Live a life of leisure? Eat bonbons and hire cabana boys to fan you all day?” Archer asked.
Sydney rolled her eyes even as she smiled. “Daddy, you’re outrageous. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Something I can stay busy at, that’s for sure. I don’t need the money, and I’m not sure what jobs I’m qualified for around here. Something like what I did for Charles, maybe.”
After coming back to Kentucky for a few months to lick her wounds after her divorce nearly four years earlier, she’d fled to Savannah. Though her degree was in history, Charles had hired her. She’d always been close to Charles and Kathy, and he’d offered her a job at the law firm he was partners in when he saw that she needed to do something to stay busy. Since he was nearing retirement by the time Sydney was hired on, the work hadn’t been terribly intense, but it had succeeded in keeping her mind off the tatters of her personal life.
“I might know something,” Archer told her now. “Let me see what I can come up with.”
“Ooh, what kind of something?” she asked as they sat down at the table in the kitchen’s breakfast nook.
“Remember Sawyer? He needs a receptionist. Secretary. Assistant. Hell, whatever you want to call it. He needs someone to take care of the office for him.”
Sydney’s heart stuttered at the name. Sawyer Evans. Tall, dark, too handsome for words, broody. Totally out of reach and quite naturally, therefore, the man she’d had a crush on for what felt like most of her life.
“I’m hardly liable to forget Sawyer, seeing as how he arrested me when I was a teenager. But don’t the state police have people to do that kind of work?”
“He’s retired. Been out of uniform for about a year now. He set up his own firm, private investigations and the like. His office is only a few doors down from your mom’s shop. You should swing by there next week. He’s had a couple of people in there,
but they haven’t worked out. You might just fit.”
“Um, sure. I bet we’d fit well,” she told him, her voice full of laughter. “But Sawyer isn’t old enough to retire. What is he, forty?”
Archer snorted. “More like forty-six or seven, I think. He’s about six years younger than me. He was with the state police over twenty years, kiddo. Time’s marching on. We’re getting old.”
“No, you’re not.”
The concept was impossible for Sydney to grasp. A fluttering disturbance went through her belly at the thought.
“Oh, we’re definitely feeling our age some these days. Sawyer had to have major knee reconstruction last year, which is what spurred his retirement.”
She shook her head. “I can’t imagine him not being active.”
She thought about the last time she’d seen him, when she was nineteen and foolish and head-over-heels in love with him. He’d been so virile and masculine then, thinking of him withering away into retirement caused her breath to hitch painfully in her chest. Thankfully, she was able to cover the hitch with a sip of cola.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t still active. If anything he’s more active now than he was,” Archer said. “He’s not riding a desk all day, and he’s able to get out and about. The knee surgery was due to injury, not to his being old and decrepit. We’re not ready for the grave yet, thank God.”
Sydney lightly punched him on the shoulder. “Good. I’d hate to have to go pick out a nursing home.”
“Watch it, missy, or you’ll be grounded before you even bring your bags in. I still can’t believe you’re really here.” He ran a hand over her dark hair, his smile soft as he looked her over. “You look so much like your mom, personality and all. Just a smaller version and with glasses.”
“Gee, thanks, Daddy. I’m going to tell Mom you said that.”