Desolation Point

by Lisa Phillips

  Desolation Point

  Lisa Phillips

  Copyright 2019 Lisa Phillips

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Publisher Lisa Phillips

  Cover design Ryan Schwarz

  Edited by www.jenwieber.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  “I need your help.”

  Deputy Sheriff Ellie Maxwell shook her head and continued her trudge up the hill. Wasn’t talking to yourself the first sign of madness? She sure felt crazy being out here after midnight.

  Her flashlight bobbed with each step. The narrow path had an incline not quite steep enough to be unmanageable. Tough going in daylight, right now she had to keep her gaze on the dirt in front of her while her mind swirled with the details of this case.

  No, it wasn’t a case.

  Yet.

  She needed Drew’s help, that was a fact. How else could she appeal to his nature? That small town, protect-the-little-guy thing in him would surely mean he jumped to help her. Right?

  Ellie said, “I need you,” to the night.

  No, that wasn’t better. In fact, it was probably worse. There was no way she could say that to Drew. Not now and not back when she was fifteen, when he’d been the untouchable bad boy in junior year. The guy she’d wished said, “Hi” to her in the hallway. But, of course, Drew never did.

  She could do this by herself.

  Maybe.

  It would be hard to keep the sheriff in the dark when he’d already told her to drop it. She couldn’t let it go, though. Not when she would always wonder what there was to find. She didn’t want to ask Drew for help, but she had to.

  People were being pressured to sell their homes when they didn’t want to. Bribed, coerced and roughed up until they signed their property over. Or the bank made it look like they’d been foreclosed on. One guy had been laid off for no good reason and more than one family had found themselves in financial hardship. Forced to leave town. Businesses closing down, while the neighboring one flourished.

  By themselves, it just looked like life in a small town. Altogether, it was a pattern.

  Someone was controlling the town.

  Ellie’s boot snagged a clump of dirt and she stumbled. Normally she loved hiking this trail, part of the state park just outside of town. Three miles long, from the parking lot on the side of Highway 23 to Lookout Point. The view of the valley from up there was amazing. Well worth the six-mile round trip.

  Tonight the ground was hard with frost, and the low clouds worried her enough she should’ve checked the weather report. Was it going to snow? Hopefully not before she was back at home with hot chocolate and her favorite blanket pretending she didn’t have an investigation to look into. She had the second shift tomorrow, and she was looking forward to sleeping in.

  Some instinct she’d honed through years of being a deputy flared to life. Her torso shifted, halting her stride before she even realized part of her had registered...something. What?

  Ellie glanced around.

  An animal in the woods? There weren’t any other people out here tonight. Just her, and the man she needed to speak with. She’d have called on him at home, but she didn’t actually know where he lived. Which, considering her position with the sheriff’s department, was frankly kind of disturbing.

  Still, she knew Drew would be out here tonight, on the anniversary of his father’s death. At the place where his father had shot himself, and then jumped off Lookout Point to end it all broken at the bottom of the cliff. She didn’t want to stomp on his grief with her own problems, but she needed to talk to him somewhere no one would see or hear them. They could set a time to meet later for coffee, when she’d explained the problem, and then she could lay out all the particulars.

  A twig cracked somewhere to her left, maybe a hundred feet out. Ellie stayed still. While her senses assessed the world around her for some sign of danger, her mind went over—again—all the reasons why she shouldn’t be out here.

  How else was she going to track him down?

  She had to do this.

  She listened as she walked on. Headed for the lookout at the end of the trail. The lone figure sat on a rock, something in his hand. Like a paper. The moon was behind the clouds, but it wasn’t pitch black. There was enough light to see.

  A horse shifted, taking a side step.

  Ellie smiled as she glanced over. Winter. No, he’d gotten that horse before sixth grade. This had to be Spring, Winter’s daughter.

  She heard the unmistakable slide of a gun being pulled from its holster. “It’s Deputy Maxwell.” A flashlight clicked on, destroying what night vision her eyes had achieved. Ellie put her hand up like a visor. “Lower that, will you?” She wanted to wince, not meaning to sound that snappy.

  “I could’ve shot you.” His voice rang out.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” The flashlight lowered and then bobbed while he stuffed whatever had been in his hand into his jacket pocket. “I need to talk to you, though.”

  That feeling intensified. The horse shifted again, then shook its head. Drew Turner crossed the expanse of the clearing and stroked the animal’s neck. “Easy.”

  Even watching them didn’t rid her of whatever caused the hair on the back of her neck to itch. She shifted her shoulders under the padded jacket she wore. Her hands were cold even inside her gloves. The only reason her feet weren’t cold was because she wore two pairs of socks inside the boots her dad had bought her for Christmas.

  As the former sheriff, her father knew how to keep warm during long shifts.

  “You’re a hard man to find.”

  “Apparently not that hard.” He glanced at the tree line beside the trail. A curl of hair peeked out from under his knit cap.

  “I need a minute of your time. I promise it won’t take long.”

  Drew glanced back. “Quick would be good.” He still held his gun loose in one hand, while the other continued stroking Spring. Because she was nervous…or he was?

  “I’m happy to pay your usual rates.” It wasn’t like the town could provide much work for a private investigator, right? There couldn’t be that many people who wanted evidence that their spouses were cheating on them. Besides, he didn’t even rent an office in town. A thought struck her then. What if he was homeless? “Or more, if you want.”

  “You can’t afford me.”

  “You don’t even know what the job is.”

  “I have enough going on right now.”

  Ellie thought back to the look on Sheila’s face when she and Brad had been escorted…no, evicted from their property. Ellie had been there as the deputy sheriff, to make sure the former residents obeyed the eviction notice and went peacefully—without destroying any of the property. Except Brad and Sheila had lived on that land for twelve years. They hadn’t been able to have kids. The land had been their legacy.

  And now they were gone from the town they called home.

  But not after Sheila had made that passionate plea to E
llie. Don’t let them do this to anyone else.

  Ellie needed Drew to look into this case—and any others like it—while she pretended like nothing was going on. The sheriff had advised her to let it go. Like Sheila’s words were nothing but the ramblings of a bitter person. Or so he’d assumed. And the woman had only been trying to manipulate Ellie’s feelings.

  Don’t let them do this to anyone else.

  She’d tried to find out why they were evicted, but on paper it appeared above board. They simply hadn’t paid their mortgage. Was that really what had happened? Why had Sheila looked so scared? Why had her husband looked to have recently been in a vicious fight? It also begged the question why Ellie cared so much about them when she barely managed to care about herself most days. She didn’t need to feel for the people she met through her job. If she felt this strongly for everyone she dealt with, she’d be overwhelmed by the pain.

  Instead, she kept a lid on any feelings. Too scared she would be dragged under the swell of her own pain. Drowned by the undertow.

  Drew took two steps and swung up on his horse. “Don’t stay out here too long. It’s gonna snow.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I have to get Spring tucked in for the night.”

  The care in his voice made her heart hitch. She steeled herself against it. “Then can you meet me for coffee, or something?”

  “In town? Like, where people will see us?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Like you don’t know? A deputy sheriff can hardly afford to be seen in public with someone like me.” He paused. “Until you need my help, that is.”

  He tugged on the reins and the horse shifted to the right. He was just going to leave her out here? It was almost eleven at night. What kind of gentleman did that? Especially when every instinct told her it wasn’t safe out here. Didn’t he feel that?

  “I can offer you something else,” she said. “If you don’t want money, what about information? Surely you can use a contact with access like mine. Information I can pass your way that will help you with cases.” So that wasn’t legal, but maybe it would get her his cooperation. She could figure out the particulars of the arrangement later.

  His teeth flashed, white in the darkness, and he actually laughed. “You know nothing about the kind of man I am, Eleanor. I could turn you in to the sheriff just for that.”

  Everyone called her Ellie, but her Mom had named her Eleanor. Just hearing it out loud stung. “Don’t call me Eleanor.” Her temper flared, warming her from the inside. “I thought you might like to do something good for this county. Maybe help some people. I guess I was wrong.”

  “I’ve got stuff going on.”

  Whatever that was, she didn’t care.

  A single gunshot rang out.

  The short scream escaped her mouth before she could pull it back. Her knee hit the frozen dirt, and she let out another cry. Head ducked. Pain sparking up her shin bone. She pulled her gun and scanned for the shooter even while she tried to figure out where to go. She needed cover. But she would also get shot if she made a run for it. Bullets were faster than she was.

  More gunshots sounded. A hunting rifle, but this was no sportsman.

  “Come on!”

  The horse came close. She heard the animal before she saw it and scrambled out of the way. Drew’s gloved hand appeared in front of her face.

  “Get on.”

  . . .

  She slapped her hand up against his forearm. They clasped wrists, and he pulled her up. Eleanor climbed on behind him and slid her arms around his waist. He kicked Spring with his heels.

  The horse shot between two trees, headed for home. Spring knew the way between here and his cabin well enough he hardly needed to direct her. But he kept a good hold on the reins anyway. His way of saying, “I’m here with you.” The only thing that worked. That helped his horse keep her cool while bullets flew.

  The worst time for a horse to freak was the second he needed her to help him keep his cool.

  Eleanor’s arms tightened around his bulky jacket. The deputy sheriff was stronger than she looked. Not that he’d been looking…except that one time she’d been choosing tomatoes in the grocery store. Her indecisiveness had been cute then. Now she was back to annoying him like the rest of the local law officers.

  Drew thought he remembered her from high school. He had this one particular memory he thought for sure was her, but couldn’t be sure. Most of the time, he tried to forget that time of his life. The same way he tried to keep a good distance between himself and the county’s finest. It made for a much more solid state of mind when he didn’t have to pretend they were doing a good job.

  Thankfully the rifle fire had stopped. Drew didn’t let Spring slack off on her pace though. She would, too. The horse was lazy most of the time—which was why he had to bring her on long rides in the cold just to get her out of her comfort zone.

  He blew out a breath, and it puffed white in the cold night air. He’d have to interrupt Spring’s journey home to circle back to the parking lot where the deputy had probably left her vehicle. It would be warmer to head to his cabin and then drive her in his truck. After he dropped her off, he could go hunting.

  Five minutes later, Spring began to slow. That momentary rush of energy was gone, and she was back to her usual unmotivated self. He wanted to smile but had to face the fact that this sheriff’s deputy had almost been killed in front of him. It didn’t sit right, regardless of who had been the target.

  “Someone trying to kill you?”

  “They aren’t very good at it if they are.”

  That depended on the kind of equipment the person had access to. They probably would have hit her if they’d had a heat scope.

  “Maybe they were trying to kill you.”

  Drew pressed his lips together. “Or trying to scare you. Or me.”

  “Maybe both of us.”

  “Maybe.” He wasn’t so sure about that. It wasn’t like they knew each other. He hadn’t known she would be there tonight, but she seemed to have known he would be. Nor had he known she would show up at the spot where his father had thrown himself off Lookout Point in order to commit suicide. How could anyone have known they’d both be there together?

  That meant it was more likely that he had been the target.

  She said, “I’m glad they didn’t hit Spring.”

  “You know my horse’s name?”

  “Winter was her mother, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” How did she know that?

  “She chewed through your fence that one time. Wandered into town. My dad found her eating the flowers at the church.”

  He remembered that. “That must have been fifteen years ago.” Long enough he’d lived several lifetimes since then. Or at least it felt that way, when he had to force his aching body out of bed in the morning. He was pushing thirty, but only barely. Why did he feel so old most of the time?

  Spring headed for the back of his cabin. Probably because the barn was where her feed box was located. He tugged on the reins before the open door and said, “Hop off, yeah?”

  Eleanor did as he asked, and Drew took care of his horse. When he shut the barn door he found the deputy in the same spot, except she now had one foot out. Tapping the dirt. Working herself up to some kind of argument he wasn’t going to like.

  “Do you have an open case right now that might make someone target you?”

  Not what he’d been expecting. “Right now, no.”

  “So you have in the past.” She tipped her head to the side. “Jealous husband?”

  Was that all she thought he did? He’d been right, she really had no clue what his job entailed. She thought he was just a regular private investigator. Most people saw what they wanted to see. Thought what they wanted to think, too swayed by emotion to see the truth right in front of their faces.

  “I’ll get the keys to my truck. Take you back to your car.”

  Hopefully it would start to
night. He should’ve replaced it two years ago, but he’d had expenses then and was almost done saving for a new one now. One more contract and he would have enough to buy the vehicle he really wanted.

  The deputy followed him around to the front door of his cabin. She stood peering inside while he retrieved his truck keys from the kitchen counter.

  When he wandered back to her, she said, “Huh.”

  Did he really care that the inside of his house was not what she was expecting? Not really. Part of him might want to know what she had going on that she thought he could help with. Professional curiosity, he’d call it. The rest of him didn’t want to have any time for someone who made judgments about people like that.

  It’d been happening all his life.

  He’s the kid whose father killed himself.

  Obviously didn’t love him enough to stick around.

  The bad kid.

  The rough kid.

  Those labels were hard to shake. Even he believed them sometimes—and that would be all the time if it weren’t for the couple who’d taken him in. The job he’d found. The life he had made away from this town, where no one knew his reputation.

  That time was enough to store him up for when he came home and had to face the side-looks and glances. He still wore a leather jacket, though the one he had now was different than the one he’d worn in high school. The motorcycle was on blocks in one corner of the barn.

  The deputy gasped and brushed past him into the living room. Drew glanced at the ceiling, then flung the front door shut. What on earth was up with this woman? “I kinda thought you’d want to go.”

  “This is…it’s a North picture.” Her voice sounded breathy. “I’ve never seen this one. It’s beautiful.” She glanced at him, a look of awe on her face. “My best friend runs this gift shop in town, and she sells North pictures. I have three of them in my house.”

  A smile tugged at his lips. He didn’t want to soften at her appreciation of his artwork, a photo of Lookout Point where she’d found him just a short time ago. A reminder to not let one event in the past define him.