Hicks held up his hands. “Preaching to the choir.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SHERIFF WYATT HICKS
Two weeks earlier
“You’ve been looking at the file a lot,” Zoey commented from where she lurked over Hicks’s shoulder.
Hicks didn’t elbow her out of his space like he wanted to, but he shifted far enough back from his computer that she got the memo. She circled his desk, taking the seat across from him and propping her boots up next to his keyboard. “Who is she?”
Alessandra Shaw.
The girl had been on his mind since Peggy had dropped her name like it was nothing back in the cemetery. Before that even—when he’d gone to question Josiah about Molly, the memory of Alessandra had been there, too, between them so that she might as well have been standing on the porch.
Resting his interlocked fingers on his chest, he watched Zoey from his leaned-back position, trying to decide how much to tell her.
Keeping secrets came as naturally as breathing to him. He hardly even thought about it anymore; it was instinct to hoard, to protect, to hide. But there was something about Zoey he trusted. Her undemanding loyalty, the way she let him know she was on his side without forcing answers on the tough questions—that was part of it. But not all.
Zoey had been in Knox Hollow for only six months, and by all accounts he shouldn’t be telling her anything, let alone any of what he suspected was happening to these girls. These kids.
She’d come to him from a small county sheriff’s office about thirty miles north of Missoula, where she said she’d gotten tired of drunk college dudes wandering off into the wilderness. Hicks had warned her there wasn’t much more action around Knox Hollow, but she’d just shrugged.
The only other applicant for the job had been Jackson’s buddy Rory Klempt, who’d shot his own big toe off last Thanksgiving after too many beers. So Zoey it was.
Despite the fact that she hadn’t had much competition for the role, Zoey hadn’t slacked a day she’d been there. Hicks wasn’t one to delegate, not in Knox Hollow where the balance between the Church and law enforcement was so delicate, but Zoey had slid in like she was made for the place. Over the past months Hicks had found himself leaning on her in ways he hadn’t with his previous deputy, who had held the position for twenty-two years.
His eyes slid back to the picture of Alessandra on the screen. This was different, though. This wasn’t busting up a fight over at the bar or settling a standoff over a land dispute.
This was personal.
“Another runaway from about a year ago,” he finally said, clearing his throat as her brows lifted. “Friends with Eliza.” They climbed further. “And Molly Thomas.”
Zoey whistled low. “What are you thinking?”
Hicks rubbed his nose. “Not thinking anything.”
“That’ll be the day,” Zoey said, something like fond exasperation sliding into her voice. She waited a beat, then rapped her knuckles on the desk as if to get his attention despite already having it. “Come on. Spill.”
“I’m out of the business of throwing around accusations.”
Smugness sat in the corners of her upturned lips. She’d known him long enough by this point to get what he was talking about. “I knew it. You think something’s going on with the Church.”
“Haven’t you heard, I always think there’s something going on with the Church.”
“Right,” she drew out. “You’re crazy like that.”
They shared a look.
“Come on, I’m not the DA,” Zoey said, waving her hand in a lay it on me kind of way. “You think it’s Josiah?”
“I don’t even know what ‘it’ is.” Hicks knew she’d see through that and call him on it.
She did. “Teenage girls going missing. Two of them now.”
At least two, he wanted to say. He didn’t. He was scared to, if he were honest. Scared that someone else would look at the facts and come up with the answer he didn’t want to believe. “Could be Molly saw how well it worked for her friend. Copycat runaways.”
Dropping her feet to the floor, Zoey then leaned forward, arms on her thighs. “It’s the pastor, huh?”
Maybe. But there was more to this. More he wouldn’t even tell Zoey, that he couldn’t tell anyone. He knew he had a reputation for picking on the Church, for seeing evil in the most innocuous wrong step any of them made. Perhaps he was the boy who cried wolf; perhaps he really had lost all objectivity just like everyone said. This time, though . . . This time felt different. Yes, it was the missing girls, but that was only one part of it. The whole community seemed tense, unraveling at the seams. These days more and more of them were wearing that look he recognized from the mirror in the days right before he’d left the Church.
He picked the words carefully, knew they’d sound guarded, but that couldn’t be helped. Zoey was already watching him too closely anyway, eyes bright and intense beneath the fluorescent lights.
“You ever met Darcy Dawson?” He tracked the surprise that slipped across her face before she hid it carefully. He spared a second to wonder at the reaction. At the speed with which it had been controlled. Then he wondered if all this was making him paranoid.
“Just know her by sight,” Zoey said. He could practically see the cogs turning slowly. “You think . . . ?”
“No.” The denial lingered in his mouth as he held on to it, let it draw out so that Zoey would see how fragile it was. He wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. He had pieces of a puzzle, but just the blue ones for the sky. Where those fit in with the rest of the picture, he didn’t know. He was scared to know, really.
“Say it again and maybe I’ll believe you,” Zoey poked at him. She was good at that. Poking at him. She reminded him of Cora in that way.
“You ever hunt?”
“Here or there,” Zoey demurred like she always did when he dug for anything personal.
“I like to keep my eye on the folks in the Church, you know,” Hicks said, without making a big deal of how she liked to dodge straightforward questions. She wouldn’t be the only person in Knox Hollow running from a past she didn’t want to talk about.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” It was dry.
Hicks relented, sharing her smirk before sobering once more. “Darcy, she’s got that look.”
“The ‘Bambi’ look?”
“That’s the one,” Hicks said, touching his nose and then pointing at her. It wasn’t just Darcy Dawson who wore it. But she’d been one of the first he’d noticed had turned skittish, fragile almost.
Zoey sat back, finally. And it was only when she relaxed that he realized how alert she’d been. “The husband?”
Liam Dawson. Maybe. He had a temper and thick fists to boot. But that didn’t feel quite right.
“Saw her the other day down at Ford’s.” The diner served as a popular meeting place in town for those not old enough for the bar or those too “Church” for it. “She saw Josiah having lunch there. She all but dropped to the pavement to avoid him.”
“Hmmm.” Zoey’s eyes tracked to the back of his computer. There was no way she could see Alessandra’s file, but she knew it was still up. “So we’re back to it being the pastor. And the missing girls, for that matter.”