“Police!” a group of voices roared before men dressed in black from head to toe barged into her apartment with guns drawn. Behind a balaclava drawn over the face of the first man, Shelly met the bluest eyes she had ever seen. The last thought she had before the blackness took her over and she fell to the apartment floor was that this man was both her savior and her worst nightmare.
Chapter One
“Sheriff Savage, there is a call for you on line three,” his assistant, Jackie, called out from her desk just outside his office door. Signing the last paper at the bottom of the large stack he had been rummaging through all morning, Preston grabbed the phone on his desk, hoping that it wasn’t another call from the Lady Busy Bees hoping that he would participate in the town of Carson’s first bachelor auction. It’s not that he was opposed to helping the charitable group or thought the auction was a bad idea, but he figured he should leave the bids for the young guys who have moved into his town in the last few years.
Preston had watched the town grow by leaps and bounds since Jameson Connelly moved his software business to their ideal location and the tourists were drawn to the dozens of wineries and microbreweries that had grown like wildflowers in the valley. He was hoping that with the population boom, both the police and fire departments in Carson, North Carolina, could hire additional help because Preston’s two-person team was already stretched thin, and he knew Fire Chief Joseph Connelly felt the same.
“Savage,” he answered in a brusque tone.
“Sheriff, it’s Mayor Fitzgerald.”
While Preston was happy it wasn’t one of the Lady Busy Bees, he can’t say that he was overly thrilled for the mayor to be reaching out to him either. Calls like this usually meant he was going to be guilted into doing something he didn’t want to do or that the budget for the police department was going to be cut again. He was hoping it wasn’t the latter, not that the former seemed any better. But his deputy, Alexis, was trying to start a family with her new husband Cliff and Preston wanted to be sure he could provide paid maternity leave for her.
“Mayor, what can I do for you today?”
“Well, what makes you think that I need something when I call?” Fred Fitzgerald asked, causing a chuckle from Preston to bubble forth. They both knew that the only time the mayor reached out to him, he needed something.
“Do you need me to give you a list?” Preston retorted, earning him a low laugh on the other line.
“Fine, you got me. I wanted to make sure we were set with security for the Fourth of July parade next month.”
“Yes, sir. Not that we’ve needed it in the last few years, but Alexis, Cliff, Dylan, and myself are prepared.”
“You can never be too sure. With the riff-raff that keep trying to destroy our little town, we can’t let our guard down.”
Preston knew Fred didn’t mean anything by his offhanded comment, but he was still struck speechless. As if the community as a whole keeping him at arm’s length, causing Preston to feel unaccepted by the town he would give his life for, he had to remind him of how he hadn’t stopped a mad man from kidnapping Alexis a few months back.
“You don’t need to worry, Mayor. We will be diligent.”
“I know you will, son.”
The door to his office opened and Jackie walked in carrying another stack of paperwork with a sorrowful look on her face.
Sighing, Preston said, “Is there anything else you need, Mayor?”
“Any chance you’ve changed your mind about the bachelor auction?” he replied and Preston could hear that the old man was grinning wildly at the thought.
“Not a chance in hell. Have a good day, Mayor.”
Laughing, Fred ended the call just as Preston lifted the first page from the stack Jackie sat on his desk. More of his signature, more of his statements, more of his time wasted. He couldn’t help but think that there was more to life than sitting behind a desk in a small-town issuing tickets to speeders down Main Street or answering domestic calls when someone wanted to scare their teenagers.
He thought the slower pace would give him a sense of home and ground him in the way he had been searching for since he left college. But something inside him was missing the heavy cases, the chase, the bullets. The adrenaline rush that came with his FBI undercover work was a high that no drug on the market could hit. Thank goodness he was still in contact with his agent in charge of the bureau. Every once in a while, he’d get to join in an investigation, but those opportunities were few and far between now.
Preston sighed to himself as he raked a hand through his hair; the naturally dark strands had lightened in the summer sun. With the downtime he had acquired in the last couple of years, he took up fishing on the local lakes surrounding their valley. It was one of the only hobbies that kept the nightmares of his past at bay.
His hand began to cramp by the time he made it through half of the stack; that was when Jackie walked back into his office with a grim look on her face. A manila folder dangled between her wiry fingers. The moment his eyes landed on the top corner, he knew immediately what she held in her grasp.
The Harposia case.
He wished the drug cartel would have ended its reign when its leader was put behind bars, but if anything, the group grew more vigorous. And now they not only meddled in drugs, but human trafficking, and weapons dealings. Even in solitary confinement, the woman in charge ran a tight ship. If she hadn’t been the person to change the course of his life, he would probably be impressed.
Sifting out the sheets, Preston skimmed through a new affidavit noting Lev Dison as a right-hand man to Harposia. Lev had been the most recent man in charge, but he slipped up when he tried to kidnap his daughter Alexis, who just happened to be an FBI agent and Preston’s new deputy.
Signing the sheet, he slipped it back into the folder before standing from his desk. It was a cool Thursday for June in Carson and he hoped that he could enjoy a nice stroll through town on his way to lunch.
“Here you go, Jackie. I’m going to grab something at Angie’s. Can I get you anything?”