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Back Deception Cove Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Forty-Five
  52. Forty-Six
  53. Forty-Seven
  54. Forty-Eight
  55. Forty-Nine
  56. Fifty
  57. Fifty-One
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Fifty-Seven
  64. Fifty-Eight
  65. Fifty-Nine
  66. Sixty
  67. Sixty-One
  68. Sixty-Two
  69. Sixty-Three
  70. Sixty-Four
  71. Sixty-Five
  72. Sixty-Six
  73. Sixty-Seven
  74. Sixty-Eight
  75. Acknowledgments
  76. Discover More
  77. About the Author
  78. Also by Owen Laukkanen

That was it, then. She hadn’t run from the bastards. She hadn’t run from her mama, turned tail on her home. She’d stood her ground, and shit, that was something to be proud of. One fucking woman against four or five men.

The fire was getting hotter, smoke starting to billow. Shelby stuck her rifle out the bedroom door, fired a couple of shots down the hall to keep the men honest. Then she closed the door, firm. Turned back to the bed.

“We put a hurt on them, Mama,” she said. “They won’t say we didn’t go fighting.”

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Six

The shots rang out, two of them. Across the backyard, Shelby Walker’s small house went still. There were no other gunshots.

Then the kitchen door opened, and the scar-faced man stepped outside, the stranger whom neither Mason nor Jess had ever seen before. He walked down the steps and stood on the grass, slipping a sidearm into a holster on his belt and turning back to study the house with a preternatural calm.

Crouched in the trees that lined the boundary of Shelby Walker’s property, Mason spoke to Jess without looking at her.

“So that’s it, then,” he said, eyeing the unfamiliar man, little more than a silhouette against the house’s white siding.

Jess didn’t answer right away. She didn’t move, either, and for a moment Mason imagined she’d slipped away somewhere. But then she sighed.

“We weren’t going to save her, Burke,” she said. “That girl wasn’t leaving without her mother.”

“We could have—”

“We didn’t,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Mason started to reply. Started to argue. Stopped when he saw the look in her eyes. It was anger, and it was hurt, and it mirrored how he felt exactly. She might not have liked Shelby Walker, he realized, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hate that the girl had to die.

Mason raised the shotgun. Took aim at the man across the backyard, fifty feet away. At this range, he hoped, he could blow the man’s head off. At the very least he could be sure he’d do damage.

But Jess reached out, put her hand on the barrel, and pushed it down toward the dirt. “Not yet,” she told him. “But trust me, Burke: soon.”

*  *  *

The fire department was on scene by the time Joy emerged from behind the Walker house. Harwood stood at the street by Dale Whitmer’s county cruiser, watching the volunteers roll up in their pumper truck, a line of pickups with Deception Cove Fire plates behind. The pumper came to a stop beside Whitmer’s cruiser, and four firemen jumped out. Three of them circled to the back of the truck, began unrolling hoses. The fourth was Brad Anderson, the Deception Cove FD’s lead volunteer. He came directly to Harwood.