Deputy Trevor Bolton trusted his instincts. Always. Trusting his instincts had kept him alive more times than he could count. But the last few days…something felt…off. A creeping sense of unease settled in his bones. Someone was watching.
He glanced at Heidi, Shea’s German shepherd. The dog lay with her head on her paws, ears up, dark eyes focused on something Trevor couldn’t see or hear through the falling rain. The shepherd’s body remained tense, coiled like a spring ready to release. In the three months he’d been watching her while Shea was on vacation, Trevor had learned to read the dog’s moods. This wasn’t her usual evening alertness. This was something else entirely.
It had all started a few nights ago during his evening run. The sensation of eyes tracking him from the tree line near his property. Then, the moving shadows appeared—dark figures just beyond his line of sight. Every time he turned to take a deeper look, they disappeared. The feeling had been so strong, so visceral, that he’d cut his run short and jogged back to the house with his hand resting on his service weapon.
At first, he’d convinced himself it was nothing. A side effect of missing Shea, a trick of the light, an overactive imagination. God knew he’d been on edge since taking over as acting sheriff. The responsibility weighed on him differently than his regular deputy duties. Every decision felt magnified, every choice scrutinized. But when his motion-detector front porch light came on at three in the morning, then the next two mornings after that, he knew he wasn’t dealing with an animal. At least not the four-legged kind.
Trevor had checked the recordings from his security cameras each morning, but whoever was out there knew exactly where to stand to avoid detection. The blind spots around his property weren’t accidental—they were being exploited by someone who understood surveillance, someone who had studied his home with methodical precision.
The last two days had offered a little respite because of the rain, but now there was no doubt someone was watching him. Trevor set his empty tea glass on the small iron table next to his patio chair and moved to the porch railing. He squinted through the dark. Nightfall and rain made visibility nonexistent a few yards from the house. The familiar sounds of his neighborhood—dogs barking in the distance, the occasional car engine, the rustle of wind through leaves—all seemed muted by the steady percussion of raindrops against metal and wood.
When his skin crawled, he glanced at the dog again. Heidi still seemed to be on alert but not agitated. Her ears twitched at sounds he couldn’t detect, but she hadn’t started the low growl that usually preceded her protective stance. Whatever was out there, she sensed it but didn’t perceive it as an immediate threat. Yet.
“Come on, girl. Let’s go inside. I’ll bring you back out later.” Hopefully, the rain would’ve stopped by then.
Trevor spent the next hour trying to watch an action movie on the television. The familiar comfort of explosions and one-liners should have been a distraction, but his training wouldn’t let him relax. Instead, his gaze kept flicking to the window. Every shadow seemed to move independently of the swaying tree branches. Every sound outside made his muscles tense. He found himself reaching for his weapon twice before forcing his hand back to the remote.
A creak sounded outside. Then, a crash of thunder. He relaxed, chalking up any unusual sounds to the storm. The old farmhouse had weathered decades of Arkansas storms, and its wooden bones always protested during heavy weather. After a while, the combination of exhaustion and the rhythmic drumming of rain lulled him into an uneasy sleep.
Heidi’s barking at the front door startled him awake. The sharp, urgent sound cut through his consciousness like a blade. The dog’s hair stood on end, her hackles raised in a ridge along her spine. She scratched at the door with desperate intensity, her claws leaving marks in the wood.
Trevor grabbed his pistol from the coffee table and peered out the window. The rain had stopped. A full moon played peek-a-boo with the clouds, casting intermittent pools of silver light across his yard. The silence felt oppressive after hours of rainfall. He put a restraining hand on the dog’s head, feeling the tremor of tension in her muscles, then he carefully opened the front door.
Heidi dashed off the porch and into the woods, her dark form disappearing into the tree line within seconds. Trevor took a step to follow her, but stopped dead in his tracks.
A knife lay in the center of the porch, its blade catching the light of the moon. Rust clung to the handle like dried blood, but he recognized it immediately. The wooden grip, worn smooth by countless hands. The particular curve of the blade. The distinctive notch near the hilt where it had struck stone years ago.
It was identical to the one his brother, Troy, had used twenty years ago. The same blade that had cut into Trevor’s flesh when his brother stabbed him five times, leaving him to bleed on the forest floor. When he’d bent over him, Troy had whispered, “You won’t be the favored one anymore.” The memory of those words, spoken in a voice so like his own yet filled with such malice, still had the power to make Trevor’s blood run cold.
Trevor’s hand clenched at his side, his pulse hammering against his ribs. The scars along his torso, five parallel lines that had faded but never disappeared, began to ache with phantom pain. His gut told him this wasn’t a message. This was a warning. From whom? Who would’ve known where Troy had hidden the knife he’d used not only on Trevor but on a handful of others? The weapon had been evidence in his brother’s trial, but it had disappeared from the police station years ago during a move between facilities.
Frowning, Trevor forced himself to think like a deputy instead of a victim. He needed to preserve any potential evidence. He entered the kitchen and pulled a rubber glove from a drawer, his hands steady despite the adrenaline coursing through his system. Then, he returned to the porch and picked up the knife.
The weight felt wrong in his hand—too light, too familiar. It brought back memories of hunting trips with his father, back when they were just boys and Troy hadn’t yet revealed the darkness that lived inside him. They’d used knives like this to field dress deer, their father teaching them to respect both the tool and the life it had taken. Trevor wondered if his father had ever suspected what Troy would become, if there had been signs even then that they’d all missed.
Troy was still in prison. Trevor had checked last week—something he did regularly, a ritual that helped him sleep at night. The knowledge that his twin brother was locked away behind bars had been one of the few constants in his life since the attack. Why would someone leave the knife now? There were always crazies, people fascinated by violent crime. A fan of his brother’s?
After whistling for Heidi for several minutes with no response, worry began to gnaw at him. The dog was well-trained and rarely strayed far from the property. But she had sensed something out there, something that had sent her racing into the darkness. He entered the house and placed the knife on the kitchen table where he studied it for several long minutes. The rust wasn’t just age—there were dark stains that could have been anything. Or everything.
Realizing he’d get no answers so late at night, he locked up the house, checking each window and door twice. Sleep, when it finally came, was filled with nightmares of running through dark woods while something pursued him, always just out of sight but close enough that he could hear its breathing.
After a sleepless night, he sat at his desk, or rather Shea’s desk, at the sheriff’s office. The knife, now in an evidence bag, rested on the desk, the rusted blade as familiar as the scars in his side. Five deep wounds, five moments of agonizing clarity before he had collapsed. He’d been fifteen years old, still believing that his brother could be saved, that the darkness in Troy’s eyes was just a phase he’d grow out of.
His jaw tightened. The fact that someone had found the knife Troy had hidden all those years ago scared him more than he wanted to admit. It meant someone had been researching his brother’s crimes, following the old trails, perhaps even visiting the original crime scenes. The level of planning and dedication required suggested this wasn’t a random prank or a crime of opportunity.
Coffee. He needed coffee. Leaving Heidi sleeping on a dog bed in the corner—she’d returned just before dawn, her fur damp with dew and carrying scents of the deep woods—he headed to the break room and poured a cup of sludge, which the department called coffee. The familiar routine helped center him, gave his hands something to do while his mind worked through possibilities. Hoping to make it palatable, he added a healthy dose of cream and sugar, then returned to the office.
He paused in the doorway, his heartbeat speeding up.
Shea whipped around to face him. “What is this?” She pointed at the knife.
Her presence filled the room with an energy he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. Sheriff Shea Callahan had a way of making everything seem manageable, even the impossible cases. Her auburn hair was pulled back in its usual practical ponytail, and her green eyes held the sharp intelligence that had made her the youngest sheriff in the county’s history.
- Publisher : Winged Publications
- Publication date : April 12, 2025
- Language : English
- Print length : 332 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1965352758
- ISBN-13 : 978-1965352755