Cold Case at Camden Crossing

Her head hit something, her shoulder ramming into the opposite side of the bus. For a moment, she lost consciousness.

Seconds or maybe minutes later, she stirred, her body aching, her leg twisted beneath a gnarled metal seat edge. She searched for Peyton, terrified she was dead.

They’d had a fight earlier. Stupid sister stuff.

She wanted to make up.

Suddenly smoke began to fill the bus. She struggled to free her leg, but she was trapped.

Someone was crying in the back. But the other screams had subsided.

She managed to raise herself and look into the aisle.

God, no... One of the girls wasn’t moving.

And Peyton and Ruth, where were they?

The bus rocked back and forth as if hanging on to a boulder. The smoke grew thicker. Somewhere through the gray haze, she saw flames shooting up toward the night sky.

She coughed and choked, then everything went dark.

Chapter One

Seven years later

“Your daddy is dead.”

Tawny-Lynn gripped the phone with sweaty palms, then sank onto the bench in her garden. The roses that she’d groomed and loved so much suddenly smelled sickly sweet.

“Did you hear me, Tawny-Lynn?”

She nodded numbly, fighting the bitter memories assaulting her, then realized her father’s lawyer Bentley Bannister couldn’t see her, so she muttered a quiet yes.

But the memories crashed back. The bus accident. The fire. The screams. Then half the team was dead.

Somehow she’d survived, although she had no idea how. She’d lost time when she’d blacked out. Couldn’t remember what had happened after the fire broke out.

But when she’d woken up, her sister and her friend Ruth were gone.

She’d been terrified they were dead. But the police had never found their bodies.

They had escaped somehow. Although half of Camden Crossing thought they’d fallen to foul play, that the accident hadn’t been an accident. That a predator had caused the crash, then abducted Peyton and Ruth.

Just like a predator had taken two girls a year before that from a neighboring town.

Bannister cleared his throat, his voice gruff. “He was sick for a while, but I guess you knew that already.”

No, she didn’t. But then again, she wasn’t surprised. His drinking and the two-pack-a-day cigarette habit had to have caught up with him at some point.

“Anyway, I suppose you’ll want to be here to oversee the memorial service.”

“No, go ahead with that,” Tawny-Lynn said. Her father wouldn’t have wanted her to come.

Wouldn’t have wanted her near him.

Like everyone else in town, he’d blamed her. If she’d remembered more, seen what had happened, they might have been able to find Peyton and Ruth.

“Are you sure? He was your father, Tawny-Lynn.”

“My father hated me after Peyton went missing,” Tawny-Lynn said bluntly.

“Sugar, he was upset—”

“Don’t defend him,” she said. “I left Camden Crossing and him behind years ago.” Although the crash and screams had followed her, still haunted her in her dreams.

A tense heartbeat passed. “All right. But the ranch... Well, White Forks is yours now.”

The ranch. God... She bowed her head and inhaled deep breaths. The familiar panic attack was threatening. She had to ward it off.

“You will come back and take care of the ranch, won’t you?”

Take care of it as in live there? No way.

She massaged her temple, a migraine threatening. Just the thought of returning to the town that hated her made her feel ill.

“Tawny-Lynn?”

“Just hang a for-sale sign in the yard.”

His breath wheezed out, reminding her that he was a heavy smoker, too. “About the ranch. Your father let it go the last few years. I don’t think you’ll get anything for it unless you do some upkeep.”

Tawny-Lynn glanced around her small, cozy apartment. It was nestled in Austin, a city big enough to support businesses. A city where no one knew her and where she could get lost in the crowd.

Where no one hated her for the past.

The last thing she wanted to do was have to revisit the house where her life had fallen apart.

But her conversation with her accountant about her new landscape business echoed in her head, and she realized that selling the property could provide the money she needed to make her business a success.

She had to go back and clean up the ranch, then sell it.

Then she’d finally be done with Camden Crossing and the people in it for good.

* * *

SHERIFF CHAZ CAMDEN glanced at the missing-persons report that had just come in over the fax. Another young girl, barely eighteen.

Gone.