Page 6 of Final Inning

“Not much. From what I understand, and I have Dani digging deeper already, there has been a bit of a war going on. A Sheriff Johnson who believes it was a drug deal gone bad, even though the victim showed no signs of drug use at all, and a local deputy who found the body and knows the victim—who believes the exact opposite. But just what that opposite is…I don’t know yet.”

“Well, then…I guess we know what we’re going to find out first.”

Chapter 3

There was a handy-dandy sheriff’s deputy waiting for them when Miranda stepped inside the small Helery County Sheriff’s Department—without her Knightly shadow. He was on his way from the parking lot somewhere behind her, but she hadn’t waited. She’d needed time to breathe for a moment. Knight in her personal space on a small airplane—yes, that always made her need to breathe when she made it back to land. Probably always would.

Miranda focused on the deputy who had obviously been waiting. She strongly suspected the younger woman had been pacing while she waited.

Deputy Hagan Lindhour was maybe five years younger than Miranda, eight inches shorter, and looked almost too delicate to be a cop. She had deep, rich brown hair and a shy smile. She reminded Miranda of a good friend of hers back in Masterson. Claudia, too, was only a few inches over five feet and probably didn't weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet. Claudia more than made up for it in fight.

Hagan had the same kind of fire in her big hazel eyes.

She’d been waiting outside the sheriff’s department when they’d driven in. Obviously impatient to get started.

It was somewhat surprising, parking the car. The station was three blocks over from the parking lot here in Helery Springs. Small towns. Miranda loved them. Each one she'd ever been to was just as quirky in its own way. This town looked clean, but a bit run-down. And like so many others she had seen before.

The deputy was watching her, apprehension in her eyes she probably didn’t even realize was showing.

“I love small towns. Tell me about Helery Springs. Tell me the good, the bad, the ugly, and where to find the best food, especially ice cream." She could sense that the woman was nervous. Maybe a little irritated. And…almost scared? She wanted to get that scared look out of the woman’s eyes. To make something right for someone, somehow. It had already been that kind of day.

And…the look in the woman’s eyes had Miranda just knowing.

There was something going on here. She could feel it. She just kept that feeling to herself for now—Knight would tell her she was being emotional again, to wait for the facts, not jump the gun, follow her training not her instincts, that kind of thing.

The man was so linear at times. Drove her insane, but…Dr. Allan Knight was very, very good at what he did. Then again, so was she. They just got to the finish line taking different routes each time, though.

Miranda looked around the small station house. The precinct was not as neat and tidy as the town outside it. Definitely not. There was 1970s paneling on the walls. An inch of dust coated every yellowed newspaper clipping tacked to those walls. Cigarette smoke somehow still lingered. And…was that the underlying smell of…body odor?

It was. She was almost sure it was.

Miranda doubted the station had changed much at all since the 1970s—and it might not have been vacuumed in just as long. Some stations she'd been in just had that kind of feel about them. The lived-in thing.

This wasn’t lived in though—it was neglected. Almost purposefully so. Weird.

It wouldn’t surprise her if there were bugs in here. The actual creepy kind—not the surveillance. The creepy, bitey kind. Ick.

Talk about neglect.

Like that neglect was deliberately shoved into the face of everyone who entered.

And…there were men watching her now. And none of them looked too friendly. Great.

This case might be more complicated than it first appeared.

She shot them her best smile, because…why not, right? None of the six men or one woman in the room smiled back. Okay…

Because small towns had small-town politics as well. That was something she'd seen before. Miranda found that extremely fascinating. There were studies that had spanned the relationships between American citizens, not the political machinations of government entities. She’d read so many of them now.

Miranda would one day write her own.

She added Helery Springs to her list of places to research more in depth when the time came. She intended to spend her retirement doing nothing but studying the sociological aspects of small towns. There wasn't much money in it, of course, but thanks to her father's investments, she should be able to manage it when the time came.

She resisted the urge to check her phone to see if there was anything from Bentley. Now that she had had him long enough for him to feel safe with her, he was acting out. She knew theoretically what and why—but being in the thick of things was more difficult than she had anticipated. Trauma rewired brains, no matter how old someone was. And Bentley was so little.

The last thing she wanted to do was mess things up for him.

Parenting was terrifying. Scariest thing she had ever done.