Page 11 of Final Inning

"Harper had just celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday two weeks before she was killed. She was from this area. She grew up in the better part of Helery Springs, but she moved away five years ago with her family to a place just outside Wichita Falls, Texas. I spoke with her mother when I made the notification myself—after…Sheriff Johnson’s notification. I was never entirely certain why Harper was back in Helery County after she'd moved away several years ago. Her father said she never spent much time here anymore. I never did find out why. She was in college—the nursing program at FCU. She worked in the nursing field and planned to become a registered nurse. As far as we know, somehow Harper just randomly ended up in Buckbert and died.”

Well, that was what the sheriff and his goons wanted her to believe. But Hagan wasn’t going to just roll over and accept that. Something wasn’t right with what had happened to Harper.

And Hagan was going to prove it.

Chapter 7

First stop, Deputy Lindhour’s little outpost. All two hundred forty square feet, located in what had probably once been a shop on Main Street, Buckbert. The other half of the building, and the part that kept the lights on, Miranda suspected, was the Buckbert Town Hall. They were there for fifteen minutes, just long enough to go over what Deputy Lindhour had already collected superficially, before the deputy was ready to get started pounding the Buckbert pavement. So to speak.

Miranda suspected it would mostly be back roads and gravel lanes around this place. She’d been places like this before, after all.

Next stop—the crime scene. Miranda was good with that—she liked to work backwards. They needed to figure out why Harper Wycoff had been at the ballfield, first. Then…who else had been there. And go from there.

It looked like every other ball field Miranda had been at in her life. There was something about a ball field that always had her feeling a bit anticipatory. Antsy, like she was going to do something that mattered. When she’d been twelve, and experimenting with club softball, that was exactly what it had felt like. She knew the truth—her grandparents had put her in sports to help her adjust to what had happened to her mother and the sudden relocation to Masterson County within two weeks of the funeral. To her father not being able to keep her and her younger sisters with him at the time. A part of Miranda had known he was involved in some hush-hush governmental work at the time. Work he couldn’t have kids around.

She understood it now.

Her grandparents had put her in sports, Marin into nature-based activities, and little Meyra had been in so many different speech and occupational therapies until she’d met developmental milestones. And they had helped Miranda and her sisters get through losing their mother.

But it hadn’t made it easy for her—and definitely not for Marin and Meyra. Those two hadn’t understood at all. And they had been so scared. She’d never forget.

It had taken her a long while to not resent her father for that, for what it had done to her baby sisters to be left like that. Miranda’s biggest fear was that Bentley would resent her someday, too. Her heart hurt for her little man right now. She was homebound more than eighty percent of PAVAD or even regular FBI agents.

Unless she was in for a career change—she didn’t see any other solution.

And she couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. She knew exactly what distraction could cost. She closed her eyes for one brief moment, pictured her little boy’s precious face, pulled in a deep breath—then focused on what she was there to do. She was there to find out who killed Harper Wycoff. That was what she was going to do.

Compartmentalization. She was starting to get really good at it lately.

The woman next to her was waiting. Miranda had gotten the impression Hagan Lindhour was no-nonsense, in a lot of ways. She was young, but seemed highly competent. When the other woman spoke, she was knowledgeable. Unlike the sheriff of Helery County Miranda and her tall dark shadow had just met.

How sweaty. She could still partially smell the body odor he had to know he was exuding.

Johnson had looked at Miranda for a moment, studied her in that derisive way some men just couldn’t seem to help—and then promptly turned toward the one he considered his equal. The great and terrifying Dr. Allan Knight, of course.

Even with Knight he’d been a bit of a pompous ass.

Miranda had probably been the only one to see Deputy Lindhour’s little eye roll there. But she understood.

Sexism was alive and well.

“They’ve raked the fields already. Early spring tournaments. At least it’s probably warmer here than the ones in Wyoming. I remember those days.” Cold. So cold her fingers would freeze in her glove. They’d jog around the fields just to keep warm.

“You played?”

“From twelve until I was almost fifteen. I left during the great migration period.” She looked at Knight. He may not appear to be listening—but he wasn’t fooling Miranda. Knight was almost always listening. At least to her. He was a very attentive non-date, after all.

The man seriously looked out of place here. Hot, no denying that, but seriously out of place. “Most girls who play tend to quit by the age of thirteen, Knight. Organized sports in general. It’s sad, really. Sports can really give girls a place to belong. But…oftentimes it isn’t fun any longer. I quit because…well…I was going through my great innkeeper phase, as my grandmother called it. And there was a lot of drama with softball that I did not expect. I wanted to work and earn my own money in the family business. Plus…let’s be honest—club softball in Wyoming meant a lot of long hours in the car. I have never liked long hours in a car. Still don’t.”

“No kidding.”

Well, wasn’t he feeling almost chatty this morning? “If we are here long enough, I’d like to watch. Brings back memories. I don’t regret giving it up, for the most part. The drama was real. But the other benefits—I had more time for my friends, my family. No denying that.” Miranda turned toward the deputy. “Did you play?”

“Through JUCO. Scholarships helped pay the way. Softball was a great escape. I have my associate’s in law enforcement sciences.”

Miranda caught exactly what that meant. For Miranda, softball had just been something fun to do with her friends, but for Deputy Lindhour…it had been more than that. An escape—that was very telling. She wondered what the young woman could possibly have been escaping from. “Tell me about softball here in Buckbert, Oklahoma.”

“Everyone starts here on these fields, I guess. The fields here are significantly better than the ones in Helery Springs—so it just migrated here through the years. And there are twice as many fields.”