BooksBarbecue
Back Deception Cove
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

She stood over him and looked down into his lifeless eyes and felt something come back to her, some kind of humanity she’d scared off when Kirby was kicking her ass. Dale, dead. Bryce, too. The Whitmers were mean as shit, but they were dumb; they hadn’t come into this mess thinking it would end with the both of them shot. Hell, they’d probably bought every word of Kirby’s big talk, believed they’d get rich, as they were supposed to, and nothing bad would ever happen.

And look at you now, she thought. The end of the Whitmer lineage, shot all to shit in a dirty orange slicker.

It was sad, and it was sad because she’d grown up with the Whitmers, and even if she hadn’t much liked them, they’d always been a part of her town. She’d grown up with Kirby, too; hell, she’d almost been proud when she heard he’d made deputy, before all the shit with Ty had gone down. She’d been rooting for him to take over Kirk Wheeler’s position as sheriff, just so she could say something actually good had come out of Deception Cove, just once.

But this was Deception Cove in a nutshell, right here. Big dreams dashed, and people dying young.

Something moved in the forest behind her, spooked her out of her reverie, and she spun with the pistol and curled her finger around the trigger and waited as the bushes rustled and a branch snapped, and then Lucy came out into the open.

“Lucy.” Jess lowered the pistol, her heart pounding. “You nearly scared me to death, dog.”

But it was Lucy who looked scared. She wagged her tail a couple of times, yawned nervously, looked into the woods and then back at Jess and yawned again and whined a little.

“What’s up, girl?” Jess took a step toward Lucy, and the dog turned back the way she had come, started into the forest, and looked over her shoulder at Jess to make sure she was coming.

Jess got the point. She followed Lucy off the trail and down from the cliff, but closer to the lagoon side of the land this time. Apparently, the dog had been over there, silent, as Jess had worked her way across to Dale Whitmer. Without her collar, Lucy didn’t jingle when she walked, and the forest was thick enough that Jess could have walked right past her and not seen.

But she could see Lucy now, and she followed close, drawing her pistol and feeling her nerves start to wake up again. It had to be Burke, she knew, and the way Lucy was acting, it had to be bad.