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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

Except now she couldn’t look at the shotgun without seeing that lead, and she couldn’t look at the lead without hearing what Mason Burke had told her, how Lucy was still alive and he planned to rescue her. And if the dog was still alive, and Burke planned to save her, then damn it, the notion of Jess blowing her head off kind of made it seem like she was abandoning the damn creature, giving up too easy.

Jess didn’t give Mason Burke a snowball’s prayer of rescuing Lucy from Harwood and his buddies, but the dog was still alive, and that meant she still had a chance, however infinitesimal. Jess wasn’t sure she had the energy for a fight, but damn it, the last thing she needed was to pile more guilt on her head, feel like she’d let someone else down.

She stared at the shotgun on the coffee table some more. She didn’t know what to do.

She’d always known, more or less, what to do. Her whole life Jess Winslow had had plans, a path spread out before her, and growing up had been as simple as putting one foot in front of the other.

Marrying Ty, that had been simple. He’d asked her out shortly after Kirby Harwood did, sophomore year, and he was ambitious and funny and cute and didn’t bully the freshmen, and she’d said yes and they’d gone into Clallam Bay to the movies, and afterward Ty had kissed her, and then they were going together, and that was pretty well how it happened. She felt safe with Ty, liked his dimples and the way he looked at her, and the way he talked about making something of himself, a real man, a highliner like his daddy used to be, resurrecting the family name and Deception Cove at the same time, doing something important. She liked that.

And even after they’d graduated, and Ty’s big ideas didn’t pan out the way that he’d planned, he always had other ideas, more schemes, and anyway, Jess was enlisting and there was no sense in waiting—kids in Deception Cove married their high school sweethearts, that’s just how it went—so they married before she set off to South Carolina, and then overseas, and by the time she came back from that first tour of duty, she’d been gone so long and seen so much that she wasn’t even sure she could recognize herself, much less the man she came home to.