CHAPTER FOUR
Selena pulled up outside the Sheriff's department in Elmsview. The morning air was still cool, but she knew things would heat up as the day progressed.
The building sat low and square behind a narrow strip of lawn that had gone yellow at the edges. Two patrol SUVs occupied the front spaces, both dusty from county roads. The flag near the entrance hung limp in the humid air.
Selena cut the engine and sat for a moment with both hands on the wheel.
The last time she had walked through those doors, the town had been carrying the fear of the Nolan Pruitt murders, and she had been carrying fifteen years of history with the Sheriff inside.
Now she was back because another body had been found in another isolated place.
A different case, but the same county; the same Sheriff.
Her coat felt too heavy already for the Harlan summer.
After opening the car door, Selena took a deep breath. Pine carried on the morning air from the trees beyond the lot, sharp and clean beneath the heat. She removed her coat, folded it over the passenger seat, and checked the file bag beside it.
No need to look armed with paperwork before she had even said hello.
The pavement held the sun and pushed it up through the soles of her shoes. By the time she reached the front door, a thin line of sweat had begun at the back of her neck.
The glass door had closed blinds behind it to block the sun. Her reflection looked back at her, pale and slightly warped. Dark suit trousers. White blouse. Her blond hair less controlled than she had intended after sleeping in a motel with an air conditioner that rattled like loose change in a tin.
Selena frowned at herself.
“Professional,” she murmured. “Let’s attempt that, at least.”
Something had shifted in her since her last visit. Her old home county had woken something she thought Washington had buried.
She gathered her hair and began fixing it into a ponytail.
The door opened fast.
Selena stepped back just in time, the glass missing her face by inches.
Connor stood in the doorway with his hat tucked under one arm, broad shoulders filling more of the opening than seemed fair.
His Sheriff's uniform was pressed, though the sleeves had been rolled once at the cuffs.
Brown hair, a little untidy from the hat, caught the morning light.
Concern moved across his face before anything else could.
“Selena. Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She lowered her hands, ponytail half secured. “I see the classic Connor Chase welcome initiation is alive as ever, though.”
His mouth shifted. Not quite a smile. Enough to soften him. “Usually we save that for new deputies.”
“Generous of you to include federal guests.”
Connor stepped back from the threshold. “I wasn’t expecting someone to be standing right there.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to use the door like a baseball bat.”
That got the smile properly.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Connor offered his hand.
Selena took it.
His grip was warm. Familiar in a way that cut through the morning, the case, the distance she had been carefully maintaining since last night. A handshake should have been simple. This one wasn’t. Connor’s eyes held on hers, and the moment stretched a beat longer than it needed to.
“Connor,” Selena said.
“Yeah?”
“Can I have my hand back?”
His gaze dropped, and he released her at once. “Right. Sorry. I was just surprised to see you like this.”
Selena tilted her head. “Why? Didn’t you request me?”
“Well, kind of.” Connor shifted his hat under his arm. “I called your office and spoke to Meg. I told her we needed help and that we’d be happy to see you assigned. She didn’t tell me if you were coming or it’d be another agent.”
“Meg likes to keep her cards close to her chest.”
“She seems good at it.”
"She's world-class." Selena glanced past him into the department. "Well. It's good to be back."
The words came out easier than expected.
Connor heard it, too. His expression changed by a fraction, but he didn’t press.
“Good to have you back.”
A silence rose between them; awkward, familiar, almost welcome. Selena adjusted the strap of her bag and stepped into business before the silence could become something else.
“Can we debrief on the case?”
Connor looked toward the parking lot. “I was just heading up to the scene. We had a report someone tried to break into it last night.”
Selena’s attention sharpened. “Break in?”
“Looks that way. A man walking his dog along Ridge Creek Road heard glass shattering around midnight and called it in this morning after hearing about Warren.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Yeah. I need to make sure the place is secure in case you want more forensics or whatever else the Bureau throws at us.”
“Let’s go,” Selena said. “I’ll follow you. It’d be good to see the scene anyway and get a feel for it.”
Connor nodded toward his SUV. “This way.”
As he walked ahead, Selena secured her ponytail properly and crossed back toward her car.
The day had begun.
And already the crime scene had changed.
Connor’s SUV led the way out of Elmsview, past the last brick storefronts, past a church with a peeling notice board, then onto county roads that narrowed with each turn.
Selena followed at a measured distance. The road lifted toward the woodland north of town, where fences gave way to tree lines, and roads became gravel, then dirt. Sunlight came through the canopy in broken strips, flashing over Connor's rear window and across her windshield.
The landscape looked greener than it had the evening before. More alive. More leafy shadows to hide things.
A weathered sign for a campground appeared on the right.
Ridge Creek Camp.
Closed.
The entrance road beyond it was chained off, weeds growing thick around the posts.
Selena eased off the gas without meaning to.
She remembered that place.
Not the official campsites with numbered posts and fire rings, but the clearing past them, the one people reached by cutting through a deer path and pretending that counted as wilderness.
Connor had taken her there once before the divorce, back when money had been thin and pride had been thinner.
They had brought a tent that leaked at one corner, two cans of beans, a cheap bottle of wine, and a guitar Connor had borrowed from a cousin.
He had played three songs badly. Same three chords, different speed. Selena had sat beside the fire and pretended the performance wasn’t awful because the concentration on his face made her want to laugh and kiss him at the same time.
“You’re enjoying this,” he had said.
“I’m enduring it.”
“You love it.”
“I love that you think this is music.”
Then he had played louder, grinning through every wrong note.
Selena blinked and looked back at the road.
Connor’s SUV turned left ahead.
The memory faded, but not cleanly.
A few minutes later, the hunting lodge came into view through the trees.
It had a low roof and tired siding. Porch boards worn by the weather and old boots. Police tape crossed the front at an angle, but one end had been torn loose and hung from the porch rail. Connor parked.
Selena pulled in behind him.
The lodge looked larger than the crime scene photographs had made it seem. Places often did. Photos flattened them into evidence. Standing there in the heat, with insects moving in the grass and trees pressing close, the building had presence.
Connor was already looking toward the side wall.
“There’s the broken window,” he said.
Selena followed his line of sight.
One of the side windows had been smashed inward. Jagged glass still clung to the frame. Shards glittered in the dirt below the sill and across the interior floor beyond.
Connor frowned. “That was intact yesterday.”
“Did anyone post a guard overnight?”
“No. Tape and a locked door. We don’t have the manpower to babysit every scene around the clock.”
“I’m not criticizing.”
“I know.”
But she heard the defensiveness beneath it, and maybe the fatigue, too. Harlan County did not have Washington resources. It had deputies, radios, a stretched budget, and a sheriff who had to decide which impossible thing needed attention first.
Connor lifted the fallen tape enough for her to pass.
Inside, the lodge held yesterday’s violence in stillness.
The front room was dim despite the morning. Old chairs. Empty rifle rack. Stone fireplace. A photograph hung crooked on one wall. Beyond the doorway, the dining room waited with its long table and dried blood darkening the wood at one end.
Selena stopped before entering.
Crime scenes had moods. Not supernatural. Not mystical. Human. The mood left behind by choices. This place had the controlled feel of someone who had done exactly what they meant to do.
Connor stepped into the dining room. “Doesn’t look like anything’s disturbed.”
“That we know of.”
He glanced back.
Selena moved closer to the table. The blood had dried into patches and streaks, black brown against the wood grain. A chair sat near the far end, righted now but still tagged from the initial processing. Evidence markers remained in place. The envelope and paper were gone, taken for analysis.
“Could be forensics missed something,” Selena said. “Killer came back for it.”
“Maybe. Could also be local kids wanting to see a crime scene.”
“Of course.”
“But you don’t think so.”
"Killers sometimes return to the scenes of their crimes to either relive the experience or cover up something they overlooked."
Connor gave a small nod. “If it is that, then what was overlooked?”
Selena looked around the room. “Talk me through the scene as though it were still all arranged.”
Connor stood opposite her, near the end where Warren had died. "Warren was found here, seated at the table. Shot once. Entry to the temple. Weapon found on the floor near the rear wall."
“Suicide staging?”
“That was the first thought from Arnold. Matt Price didn’t buy it. Neither did I.”
“Why?”
“Gun placement. Entry angle. No note. The paper in front of him was blank, and there was an envelope with his name typed on it. All a bit weird.”