Page 118 of Forever Gone

“Let me call for a warrant, first, so we can search her home,” Kelly said, picking up her phone.

“Okay…” Connor said with a yawn. “Then we go.”

“Connor,” Selena said gently, seeing the tiredness in him. “We’ll go. You stay here and keep looking into this woman’s background.”

He shook his head. “I’m the sheriff of this town, Selena.”

“And you called us in to help,” she said. “So let us do just that.”

He ran his fingers through his hair as if to make himself less disheveled. “I’m going to Carol’s house.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m the sheriff.”

“You’ve been awake most of the night, and you nearly nodded off ten minutes ago.”

“I closed my eyes.”

“You were sitting upright with a pen in your hand.”

Connor pushed his chair back. “Three people have been murdered in my county. I’m not waiting behind a desk.”

Selena stepped closer before he could stand. “You can coordinate every patrol car searching for Carol’s Civic, keep Dana working the HearthSpace records, and dig through Carol’s history. Kelly and I can execute the warrant.”

“I don’t need you deciding what I can manage.”

“No, you need someone willing to say it before you make a tired mistake.”

His jaw tightened. The phone beside him vibrated. Connor checked the screen, silenced it, and placed it inside a drawer.

Selena noticed, but the argument had reached the point where another question would close him further.

“Stay here,” she said. “Find out where Carol might be going. That helps us more than having you follow our car in the dark.”

Connor held her stare, then lowered himself into the chair in defeat.

“Take two deputies.”

“Thank you, Connor.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

By the time Selena and Kelly left the station, warrant in hand, night had settled across Eagleton.

Carol Fen’s road began beyond a row of newer houses and narrowed between wooded slopes. Wind pushed leaves across the pavement in restless groups. The sedan’s headlights found mailboxes, drainage ditches, and bare branches reaching over the road.

Kelly checked the map. “Last house on the left.”

A cruiser followed several bends behind them. The second deputy had taken another road to approach from the rear.

Carol’s property appeared at the end of the lane.

The single-story house stood beyond a short gravel drive, its pale siding dull beneath the clouds. Woodland crowded the rear boundary. One neighboring home showed through the trees almost a quarter mile away, marked by a porch light and two lit upstairs windows.

No car occupied Carol’s drive.

A lamp burned somewhere near the back of the house. Every front window remained dark.