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“I’m going to take all the time I need, Angel.”
Jesse walks me to his car. The logo for the Wait County Sheriff’s Department is printed across the side.
“You’ve finally lost your last brain cell,” I say. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
He opens the back door and sits me down in the back on the hard plastic seat, protecting my head with his hand, but doesn’t belt me in.
Jesse stares at me, hard.
“I’ll make sure the food gets to the homeless shelter. Stay here while I search your car and get your things.”
I sit there and seethe, my cheeks coloring and heating as regulars at my diner drive by, staring out their car windows at us. I’m around the corner from Main Street, and even though the tourist season is ending, this street is plenty busy.
Jesse comes back holding my purse.
“I’m going to impound the car,” he says.
And then he does something that I don’t expect.
He reaches up and taps the body cam so that it shuts off. Wordlessly, he removes me from the back of the squad and takes the cuffs off, fingers light against my wrists. Jesse hands me my purse.
“I’ll be in touch. You’re free to go.”
“What do you?—?”
But Jesse Taylor has already dismissed me. He’s walking back toward the Hyundai, talking on his radio, and I’m left shaken, wondering what kind of mind game this is. And why I care.
Two
JESSE
Whenever Marci Walsh is involved,I make dumb decisions. My ears are hot from the verbal ass-whooping the sheriff gave me once I got back to the department.
I want to regret it. I don’t.
My squad rattles on the dirt road that leads up to the quarry. It’s a family dinner night at Cash’s place, at least for the siblings.
Cash bought this place for June, or Jayjay as I like to call her, in a romantic gesture that had the wives in Heatstroke nudging their husbands in the ribs and pursing their lips. But that’s Cash’s style. Grand gestures. Concerts. Celebrity moves.
I squeeze the steering wheel, tension banding across my shoulders. Tonight’s the night I tell them. Maybe. If I can bring myself to do it. Fuck.
A flash of light grabs my attention as I’m taking the turn away from the quarry road toward the main house, and I tap the brakes, frowning.
There’s someone out by the quarry in the dark. While Cash has pretty much kept this place open to tourists and localsduring the day, even though it’s technically private property, the quarry is closed at night.
This won’t be the first time some rebellious teens have come out here to party.
I smile and slam the squad into reverse.
I’m not a ballbuster. I don’t like ruining people’s fun—I remember what it was like to be a kid, doing shit you weren’t meant to be doing—but the quarry’s dangerous at night, and this is my brother’s property.
The quarry is deep, the water a midnight blue, reflecting the stars in the night sky. I put my car in park and then jump out, grabbing my flashlight, but keeping it off.
Waves lap the shore, and the moon is so full tonight that the ripples on the water’s surface are visible. I search for the trespassers, but there’s no one around. True, they probably saw the car coming and scrambled into the trees that ring the water, but no noise whatsoever? No evidence that they were here?
I open my mouth to call out, but stop when movement at Diver’s Point, far above, catches my attention.
A naked woman has climbed over the railing of the lookout spot, and my pulse picks up.
