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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

Right now Lucy’s ears were standing rigid. There was something outside. Jess could sense it out there, was 98 percent sure she wasn’t stuck in her head again, hearing phantom Taliban creeping through her front yard. Lucy whimpered once more, stood up straighter, glanced over at Jess, and took a couple of tentative steps toward the front door, and Jess knew neither she nor the dog was imagining anything. Whatever was out there, it was real.

She pushed the blanket from her lap. Stood, the light from the TV casting a bluish glow around the small living room. She crossed the room to the window and peered out into the night, saw nothing but empty road and dark forest—and then she caught the glint of moonlight against American steel, thirty yards down the road and almost invisible.

Jess stepped back from the window. Felt her heart rate ramp up. Hers wasn’t a road that saw much traffic, especially this time of night. It dead-ended about a quarter mile in the other direction, petered off into second-growth fir and cedar. Weren’t many other houses, either, not close by. The road wasn’t close to the highway, or even the water; unless you lived nearby, you wouldn’t think to come this far down—and that truck outside didn’t look like the neighbors’.

Damn it, Ty. Her husband had promised her a new house when she came home from her tour, something closer to town, something better than this: one bedroom, one bathroom, and a patch of grass in the backyard, which she’d fenced in so Lucy could do her business without Jess needing to worry she’d run off after a chipmunk and never come back.

Ty had been full of promises. A new house. A better truck. Hell, a family. Instead, Jess had come home a widow, come home to a load of debt and the same shack as ever, come home with not much more than bad memories and no clue what to do with herself next.

She stole another glance out the window. The truck hadn’t moved. She squinted, looked hard, but it was too dark to see inside, look for a driver. Too dark to catch the make and the model, even. Maybe just some hunter got lost, she thought. Some kids hooking up or something.

Beside her, Lucy was still staring at the door. And Jess saw the way the dog’s hackles were raised, saw the way she stood stiff, square, like she really was a guard dog, and she knew this wasn’t just a couple of horny teenagers fooling around. This was something else, something worse, and though Jess wasn’t sure exactly what it was, she knew Ty must have had something to do with it.