The Secret of Cherokee Cove. Paula Graves

a gash on the side of his head that needed stitches, but Doyle said he hadn’t lost consciousness, so it looks like the worst of his injuries will be a broken leg.” The chief’s condition was really more than Nix should have shared with the Coopers, but given his reticence on the nature of the accident, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to share a little news that they could get with a phone call to Dana Massey. She hadn’t told them about the brake tampering on her way out, however, so he’d keep that information to himself.

      “He’s a good guy. A good cop,” Natalie said, her tone a little defensive.

      “Yes, ma’am,” Nix agreed.

      Her eyes narrowed at his polite tone, but if she thought he was patronizing her, she didn’t say so. He wasn’t, really. The chief was a good guy and, despite his jovial, laid-back management style, he’d already proved himself to be a good cop.

      Whether being a good guy and a good cop would be enough to unravel decades of bad practices, indifference and systematic corruption at the Bitterwood P.D. was a question that had yet to be answered.

      * * *

      DOYLE’S NEW HOME turned out to be a two-story log cabin nestled in a small, wooded hollow at the end of Laurel Road. It looked like one of those fancy tourists’ cabins you could find a dime a dozen in the Smokies, with names like Eagle’s Nest, Black Bear Lodge and Creekview. A large gravel parking area in front of the house suggested that at one time, at least, the cabin had been used for that very purpose.

      A wide wooden porch with rustic log rails spanned the front of the house. After retrieving her suitcase and overnight bag from the trunk of her Chevy, she climbed the three shallow steps to the porch and pulled the keys Doyle had given her from the pocket of her jacket.

      Seconds from sliding the key into the lock, she heard a noise from inside the cabin.

      She fumbled behind her back for her Glock 17 and remembered, with frustration, that she’d packed it in her overnight bag, not wanting to be armed at her brother’s engagement party. Setting the bag down as quietly as she could, she crouched and worked open the side zipper, where she’d put her empty Glock and a pair of loaded magazines. Sliding the magazine into the Glock, she chambered a round and tried the door.

      Unlocked.

      Suddenly, the door flew open. With her hand still on the knob, she overbalanced and staggered through the opening, slamming face-first into something hard and alive.

      Whoever hit her kept moving, shoving backward. Wheeling her arms to regain her balance bought her only enough time to hit the log rail with her shoulders instead of the back of her head, not that it saved her much in the way of pain. The crack of bone against wood sent painful tingles shooting down both arms, and the Glock bounced away from her suddenly nerveless fingers, skittering across the porch. The back of her head scraped against the second rail as she hit her tailbone with a jarring thud.

      She scrambled for the dropped weapon, but by the time she closed her hands around the grip, the two dark figures running away across the front yard entered the woods and disappeared almost immediately into the gloom.

      Grimacing with pain, she sat up and assessed her condition. She’d have a big bruise across her shoulders in the morning and a lump on the back of her head. Plus, she’d broken a heel on a brand-new pair of shoes. But it could have been much worse.

      She could have been dead.

      She entered the cabin with care, finding the light switch next to the door and flicking it on. To her surprise, the living room seemed virtually untouched by the intruders she’d just startled.

      The same could not be said for the next room she checked. It was a corner room with big windows looking out on the dark woods. In the daytime, she supposed, the windows would probably let in a lot of light, which was probably why Doyle had chosen this particular space as his home office.

      Here the intruders had concentrated their efforts. All of the drawers had been pulled out of the walnut desk against the wall, their contents lying scattered across the hardwood floor. File cabinets stood open, spilling papers and files haphazardly from their metal depths. A framed photograph lay torn in its broken frame, a jigsaw puzzle of glass covering the floor in front of it. On the wall above, there was a combination safe. It remained safely shut, though clearly someone had tried to crack the code.

      Dana backed out of the study and checked the rest of the house. The kitchen drawers had all been opened and searched, some of their contents now lying in a jumble on the counter and floor. Likewise, Doyle’s bedroom had been tossed, an explosion of clothes covering every available surface, thrown aside to assist a thorough search of the chest of drawers by the bed. A second bedroom had received similar treatment, although the mess there was limited because all the drawers and the closet were empty.

      Back in Doyle’s bedroom, Dana moved aside a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt and sank on the end of the bed, pulling out her phone to dial 911. But before she pressed the first number, she changed her mind and called another number instead.

      Natalie Cooper answered on the second ring. “Dana. Hi.”

      “Hi. Are you still at the hospital?”

      “Yeah. The doctor just stopped in to reassure us that Doyle was doing fine. They’re letting him wake up a little more from the reduction and then they’ll put him in a regular room.”

      “Good,” she said, genuinely relieved. Her little brother was strong and tough, but things could still go wrong during any medical procedure. “By any chance is Walker Nix still there?”

      “Tall, dark and silent?” Natalie asked, lowering her voice a little.

      “That’s the one.”

      “He’s across the room staring stoically out the window,” Natalie answered in a wry tone. “Why?”

      “I need him to call me as soon as possible. Give him my cell number.”

      “Is something wrong?”

      Dana didn’t know how to answer that question without potentially sucking Doyle’s old friend and former partner into a procedural mess, so she hedged. “Nothing big. I just need to ask Detective Nix something about an ongoing investigation Doyle’s been involved with. Can you give him my message?”

      “Sure.” Natalie hung up and Dana ended the call from her own end, trying not to be immediately impatient for the callback.

      It came before she started chewing her nails. “Natalie Cooper said you wanted me to call you?” Nix’s gravelly voice rumbled like distant thunder across the telephone line.

      “I know you’re there to guard Doyle and Laney,” Dana said, already beginning to second-guess her decision to bypass emergency response. “Never mind. I’ll figure out something else.”

      “Wait,” Nix said before she could end the call. “Something’s wrong.”

      “Yeah,” she admitted, looking at the chaos surrounding her in Doyle’s bedroom. “Something’s very wrong.”

      * * *

      DESPITE THE CHAOTIC condition of the chief’s study, it was the bloody mass of hair at the back of Dana Massey’s head that drew Nix’s immediate attention. “Your head is bleeding.”

      Dana turned away from the mess and lifted her hand to the back of her head, looking surprised to find blood on her fingers. “I didn’t realize.”

      She looked a little stunned all the way around, Nix thought. She might be a tough lady, but nobody could walk in on a burglary in progress and not be affected. That she’d had the presence of mind to snap a bunch of photos with her cell phone was notable enough. That she’d done it with a goose egg on the back of her head was damned near amazing.

      “Am I dripping blood all over the crime scene?” she asked.

      “No, seems to be oozing, mostly. It’s in your hair and on your shirt.”

      “Damn