Night's Landing

No affairs, anyway. She’d learned not to be impulsive with men.

The telephone rang, interrupting her mind-wandering. She set her glass on a rickety old table and reached for the ancient, heavy dial phone that had been wired up for use on the porch for as long as she could remember. It would never die. The phone company would have to come for it and tell them they couldn’t use it anymore.

It was probably a solicitor. Not many people knew she was home. Her parents, but they were in Amsterdam. Rob, but he was on duty in New York—she’d promised to get up there soon to see him. Her Scottish friends.

The president, except Wes Poe didn’t call that often.

Virtually none of her Tennessee friends and relatives knew she was back in Night’s Landing. It had only been a week—she had only just recovered from jet lag.

She lifted the receiver but didn’t get a chance to say hello. “Sarah.” She barely recognized her brother. “God…” His voice was weak, breathless.

Sarah gripped the phone hard. “Rob? What’s wrong? What—”

“I made Nate call you. I…damn.”

“Are you in New York?” She could hear sirens in the background, people shouting, and felt panic rising in her throat. “Rob, talk to me! What’s going on? Who’s Nate?”

A fat bumblebee landed on the rim of her glass. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, as she waited for her brother to answer.

“I’ve been shot. I’ll be okay.”

“Rob!” She jumped to her feet. “Rob, where are you? What can I do?”

Another voice came on the line. “Miss Dunnemore? Nate Winter. I work with your brother. Is someone with you?”

“No. No, I’m here alone. Rob—”

“He wanted you to hear the news from him. A paramedic’s with him now. We’ve got to go. I’ll call you as soon as I can with more information.”

“Wait—don’t hang up! Where was he shot? How bad is it?”

“He took a bullet to the left upper abdomen.” Nate Winter’s voice was professional, unemotional, but Sarah thought she heard a ripple of something else. Pain, dread. “Paramedics are coming for me. Sorry, I’ve got to go. We’ll get you more information. I promise.”

His words sank in. “Have you been shot, too? My God—”

The line went dead.

Sarah’s hands shook so badly she had trouble cradling the receiver. Was Nate Winter another deputy U.S. marshal? She knew very little about her brother’s work. He knew even less about hers. Historical archaeology—he’d say he didn’t even know what it was. Traditional archaeology studies prehistoric people and cultures. Historical archaeology is a subdiscipline of archaeology that studies people and cultures that existed during recorded history.

She’d given Rob that explanation dozens of times.

He chased fugitives. Armed and dangerous fugitives. She knew that much.

Had one just shot him?

Her teeth were chattering, and she was pacing. Gulping for air.

“Ma’am?”

Ethan Brooker, her parents’ new property manager, walked slowly up the porch steps, his concern evident. He had on his habitual overalls and Tennessee Titans shirt, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, at least a two days’ growth of scruffy beard along his square jaw. He was tanned and muscular and had a black graphic tattoo on his huge right arm.

“Miss Sarah, you don’t look so good.” He spoke in an easy, heavy West Texas drawl. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I need—” She took in another breath, but couldn’t seem to get any air. It was as if her entire body was trying to absorb the shock of Rob’s call. “I need to wait for a phone call. My brother…” She couldn’t finish, just kept trying to get air into her lungs.

The old porch floor, painted a dark evergreen, creaked under Ethan’s weight. He was a year or two older than she was at thirty-two and taller. Her parents had found him down on the dock fishing when they were home for a few days. Trespassing, really, but he’d explained that he’d just moved to Nashville and was looking for work. Since they’d come home to a leaky ceiling in the living room and an overgrown yard, they offered him a job. He’d worked hard every day since Sarah had arrived in Night’s Landing a week ago. He lived in Granny Dunnemore’s old cottage down by the river, close to the woods between the Dunnemores and the Poes.

Granny had lost a husband in a logging accident, a son in World War II. Her surviving son’s first wife had died after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Granny had built the cottage for herself after insisting he and his very sick wife move home.

Sarah knew the story of how her father had almost withered away here in Night’s Landing after his wife’s death, until he met her mother, twenty-two years his junior, the young and vibrant Betsy Quinlan, a woman even Granny Dunnemore had come to believe had changed the Dunnemore luck.

Sarah could feel her heart thumping in her chest.

Not another Dunnemore tragedy…not Rob…

“What about your brother, Miss Sarah?”

Ethan was invariably polite and deferential. She suspected he was a country-western musician looking for his big break in Nashville. She’d heard him playing acoustic guitar on the cottage porch early in the morning and late in the evening.

“Ma’am?”

“Rob—he’s been shot.”

The words felt no less surreal now that she’d said them herself.

Biting back tears, trying to breathe normally, she told Ethan about her brother’s call from New York, Nate Winter, his promise to call her as soon as possible.

“What a shame, Miss Sarah. What a crying shame.” He shook his head and exhaled forcefully, as if it would ease his own tension. “Who’d want to shoot two people like that?”

“Rob’s a deputy U.S. marshal. They’re called deputies. I didn’t know that when he first started. A U.S. marshal heads up each district—they’re not deputies. They’re appointed by the president. I—” She didn’t know what she was saying. “I don’t know what Rob was doing.”

“The marshals must have an office in Nashville. They’ll send someone out here. You just sit tight.” Ethan spoke with confidence as he withdrew a faded red bandanna from his back pocket and wiped away the dirt and grease stuck between his fingers and under his fingernails. “You’re your brother’s closest kin in the country, aren’t you? The marshals will take good care of you.”

Sarah’s stomach twisted. “My parents. They’re in Amsterdam. Oh, God. Who’s going to tell them?”

“Let the marshals do it. You don’t have enough information yet. If you try calling now, you’ll just scare them, maybe unnecessarily.”

Ethan’s steady manner helped her to regain her composure. She felt as if someone were standing on her chest—she couldn’t get air—and made herself breathe from the diaphragm, counting to four as she inhaled through her nose, then to eight as she exhaled through her mouth.

“Rob was able to talk,” she said. “That’s a good sign, don’t you think?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Why don’t you go inside and throw some cold water on your face? That always helps me when I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me.”

Cold water. She wondered if she looked as if she was going to pass out.

“Go on,” Ethan said calmly. “I’ll go down to the cottage and get cleaned up, then come back here and stay with you until the marshals get here or this deputy you talked to calls back.”

“You don’t think he will, do you?”