Tangled Past (Hope Island Securities #6)

Prologue

Hope Island, Maine

Twenty-Five Years Ago

The storm arrived like something from his nightmares.

At first, it was nothing. Just an electrical chill in the air, a nervous flutter in the trees. Then the wind seemed to find its voice, and the driving rain lashed sideways, flattening the grass in the backyard.

Eight-year-old Asa Dutton watched it from the kitchen window, his nose pressed to the glass, his eyes fixed on the lane where the darkness swallowed the trees.

He should have been asleep, but when the police radio clipped to his father’s hip crackled with static, followed by the familiar female dispatcher’s voice, Asa crept back down the stairs to see what was going on.

His father, Police Chief Raymond Dutton, was standing at the kitchen table, jacket on, jaw tight, his flashlight already in hand.

“Loose ends at the Hardesty barn,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled, her tone tense.

Asa didn’t understand what that meant, but his father definitely did. Asa could tell from the silence that there was trouble. The set of his father’s frame seemed to confirm Raymond Dutton was uneasy.

The Hardesty place that bordered their land had been empty for years, so why was there a call out there? It didn’t make sense.

His father had knelt in front of him, hands firm on Asa’s shoulders, his voice steady even though something tight lived behind his eyes.

“I’ll be back soon, son,” he said, holding Asa’s gaze. “Stay inside. Lock the door.”

Asa nodded, though unease pressed heavily in his chest. It had been just them for more than two years now—since his mom had gotten sick from cancer and never came home from the hospital.

After that, the house grew quieter. His father washed clothes, packed lunches, attended Asa’s school events, and pretended the ache didn’t exist.

They were more than father and son—they were a team. Asa had never known his dad to leave him without reason, which confirmed this call was serious.

The storm had already knocked out power along the road. The island went dark in a way that swallowed sound and sense alike.

Asa nodded, but the second the door clicked behind his father, the house felt wrong. Too still. Too big.

Asa’s panicked heartbeat ticked off the minutes. Two. Three. Five. Then came a sound that didn’t belong. Not thunder. Not wind. Something sharper.

A crack.

Asa’s stomach flipped. He grabbed the skinny flashlight from the kitchen drawer, pulled on his raincoat, and slipped into the storm.

The deer path through the woods beside their house was one he knew well.

His father’s footprints were clear in the light’s beam.

Seeing his father’s steps on the path should have been comforting.

He’d gone down this way all his life, yet now it felt strange.

Shadows moved wrong. Familiar stumps looked like crouching figures.

Every step was a question, and the unmistakable sound that sent him out into the night scared him to death.

Asa reached the edge of the clearing bordering their family home and the Hardesty place.

The barn slumped like a tired old man. The house beyond was equally dark and unwelcoming.

Rain ran in rivers off the sagging roof of the barn.

One of the doors hung ajar. A sliver of light bled out between the boards.

“Dad?” he whispered.

No answer.

He crossed the clearing, the rain drowning out his footsteps. Asa pulled the barn door with both hands. It groaned open.

The smell hit him first. Wet hay, rust, and something metallic underneath. Something terribly wrong.

His flashlight beam trembled over the floor. An old hay bale. A pile of rope. His father’s badge caught the light.

And then his father’s face. Lying on his back, he wasn’t moving. His eyes were open. Unblinking.

A strangled sound tore from Asa’s lips. He rushed toward his father. “Dad?” Asa shook his shoulders without a response. “Dad, wake up.”

From somewhere in the barn’s recesses, a gasp behind him had Asa swinging toward it. A little girl stood there, barefoot in a blood-smeared nightgown, peeking out from behind a hay bale. Her arms wrapped tight around a stuffed rabbit with one ear missing. Her dark hair was soaked. Eyes wide.

Asa stepped toward the child, not sure what to do, not wanting to leave his father’s side.

Before he’d taken a second step, a voice came from the shadows to his left, low and cold. Distorted. Unrecognizable.

“You never saw this, kid.”

Asa turned toward the voice. A man stood just outside the beam of light. All shadow. Calm. Measured.

“You take three steps back. You run home. You lock the door, and you forget you ever came here.”

The words didn’t carry a direct threat. That made them worse.

The man didn’t raise a weapon, but Asa heard it. A click. The kind his dad had taught him to recognize.

Asa backed away. One step. Two. His gaze collided with the frightened little girl’s eyes, silently begging him to stay.

“Don’t look back,” the man said. “Get out of here.”

Asa obeyed.

He ran down the path. Briars tore at his clothes. A branch cut across his cheek. His boots sank in the mud.

He raced toward the nearest neighbor’s place and tore up the porch steps. Asa pounded on the door with everything he had left. Mr. Pike opened it, wide-eyed, and Asa collapsed into his arms.

◆◆◆

The birth of a new day pushed past the rain clouds, lighting the sky.

Hope Island was waking up to a different kind of storm.

The next few hours passed in a blur of police vehicles moving in and out of the Hardesty farm while Asa waited with Mr. Pike near the barn.

Sirens wailed. Yellow police tape fluttered in the rainy morning.

They found Raymond Dutton in the barn, just as Asa had left him, and in the same barn, the little girl. She wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t move. Just held her rabbit and rocked.

She had no name. No memory of what happened.

The police car drove away with her in the back seat. Her eyes met Asa’s once as she passed, and then she was gone.

Soon, so was Asa. The ferry horn moaned as Asa and his mother’s brother, Uncle Jonas, rode across the bridge separating Hope Island and the nightmare that Asa would carry with him forever.

The badge. The blood. The voice in the dark—“You never saw this, kid.”

Yet he had seen it.

He remembered.

And one day, he would come back.