This out-of-proportion response to a stray noise wasn’t like her.

But she was tired. It had been a long week, and she was stretched thin. Doing autopsies for six adjacent rural counties, not to mention the occasional private job she picked up, kept her on the move.

Add in that weird noise she’d heard outside the window of her rental house last night, and it was no surprise her usual calm was a mite wobbly.

Time to call it a night, go home, watch that old movie, and chill.

She returned to the desk, picked up her purse, and started to tuck her Beretta inside. Hesitated. Shook her head in annoyance.

This was farm country, for pity’s sake. Two and a half hours away from St. Louis and the types of crime that plagued all big cities. In the three years she’d been doing autopsies for the county coroners, homicides had been few and far between.

After all, if you couldn’t be safe deep in the heartland, where could you be safe?

Despite that little pep talk, she kept her weapon in hand—where it would stay until she was behind the wheel of her car and locked inside. It never hurt to be careful, as she’d learned the hard way.

She exited through the wide back door in the small foyer off the work area, filling her lungs with the warm June air as she gave the dim parking lot a swift perusal.

No beer-drinking teens in sight.

So much for that theory.

Nor was anyone else about. Whatever the source of the noise she’d heard from inside, it was gone.

More proof that letting her imagination give her a case of the shakes had been silly.

She closed the door behind her, tested it to make certain it was locked, and strode toward her Civic.

Six feet away, she came to an abrupt halt, stomach lurching.

Apparently the noise she’d heard hadn’t been innocent after all.

And despite her original suspicion that it had come from inside the cooler, this had been done by someone very much alive.

Backing up, she groped in her purse for her cell. Punched in 911.

And kept her finger on the trigger of her Beretta.

Sheriff Nate Cox hung a right into the parking lot of Larktree Mortuary and circled around to the back.

First call he’d ever gotten to a funeral home—but there’d been a ton of firsts since he’d been elected to the job four months ago.

A Larktree cruiser came into sight, and Nate pulled up beside it. Thank God local police were willing to respond to 911 calls until he or one of his deputies could arrive. With only seven of them providing 24/7 coverage for more than 750 square miles of territory, it wasn’t unusual to be twenty minutes away from a crime scene, even with sirens blaring and a heavy foot on the gas pedal.

But despite the courtesy response, the mortuary was beyond the town limits and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the local cops. Meaning this case was going to land on his desk.