Scene Of The Crime: The Deputy's Proof. Carla Cassidy

had a ridiculous impulse to step forward and pull her into his arms. Instead he stepped toward the back door. “I’m just trying to keep you safe, Savannah. That’s my job.”

      “If I felt unsafe, I would have called Sheriff Walker,” she replied.

      “Maybe you aren’t in a mental state to know what’s safe and what isn’t.”

      He knew he’d spoken the wrong words by the flash of unbridled annoyance that filled her eyes and stiffened her stance.

      “Contrary to popular belief, I’m perfectly sane. I know people think I’ve become a weird recluse who only comes out at night to work at the local haunted hotel, but that’s my choice. The way I live my life is nobody’s business but my own.”

      “Point taken,” Josh replied. He opened the back door. “I’ll see you at noon tomorrow. Good night, Savannah.”

      She shut the door behind him with more force than was necessary, and he headed for his patrol car parked at the curb in front of her house.

      He got into the car and started the engine but didn’t immediately drive away. Instead he sat and stared at her house. No lights shone from the front windows just as very little light had shone from her eyes on the occasional times he’d seen her in the last two years.

      Despite his intense attraction to her two years ago, since that time he’d tried not to think about her. It was only curiosity about Shelly’s “ghost” that had brought him here tonight.

      Guilt was a terrible thing, he thought as he finally pulled away from the curb. Savannah was broken. She’d been broken since Shelly’s murder...a murder that had never been investigated as vigorously as it should have been.

      As a deputy, Josh had followed orders, but as a decent man, he had known nobody was doing enough to close the case. Closure might have made a difference to Savannah.

      Yes, she was broken, but he had no hero complex. He wasn’t the man to fix her, but what he could do was make sure she was safe if she insisted on doing her ghostly walks.

      He couldn’t go back in time and do things differently in the case of her sister, but he could see to it that if Savannah insisted on continuing her haunting ghostly walks, at least the tunnel she used was safe.

       Chapter Two

      Savannah awoke with the unaccustomed emotion of anger tightening her chest. It had been so long since she hadn’t awakened with the familiar grief that it took her a moment to recognize the new feeling that pressed so tight inside her.

      Then she remembered the night before and Deputy Josh Griffin and knew immediately he was the source of her unusual anger. He was going to be here at noon and insist he go down into the tunnel with her, and when he did, he’d ruin everything.

      He’d see that it wasn’t just a single tunnel but rather a network of tunnels. Word would get out, people would start to explore and her nights of ghost walking would be over forever. She’d never hear Shelly’s name again except in the deepest recesses of her broken heart.

      She rolled over in bed and stared at the opposite side of the bedroom. The wall was covered with pictures of Shelly and Savannah, hugging each other when they were ten and eleven, Shelly dressed for prom at sixteen with Savannah posing with her, moments captured in time of the closeness of the two.

      A desk held items that had been special to Shelly—the dried flower corsage that Bo McBride had given to her on prom night, a framed picture of the Manhattan skyline at twilight, a ceramic frog and a variety of other knickknacks.

      Savannah had unpacked the items from the shed after Mac had moved out, comforted by the little pieces of Shelly that now remained in the room the two had shared for so many years of their lives.

      She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Just after ten. Normally she’d sleep until at least noon or one due to her overnight work hours at the Pirate’s Inn. She’d be sucking wind tonight if she didn’t get a nap in sometime during the afternoon or early evening.

      Minutes later, as she stood beneath the shower spray, her thoughts turned to Josh Griffin. Before Shelly’s death, she’d thought him one of the most handsome, hot single men in town.

      He’d only grown more handsome in the past two years. As he’d sat at the table the night before, she couldn’t help but notice on some level how his dark hair enhanced the crystal blue of his eyes.

      It had been impossible not to notice how his broad shoulders had filled out his khaki deputy shirt and that he’d smelled of spicy cologne that had stirred her senses on some primal level.

      She didn’t want to like Josh Griffin. As far as she was concerned, he was just part of the law enforcement in town that had botched her sister’s murder case. And now he was going to ruin the only thing that made her feel just a little bit alive.

      She dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a light blue T-shirt and then made a pot of coffee. The silence of the house was comfortable to her. When she and Mac had shared the house, there had always been shouting and cursing. Now the silence was like an old familiar friend.

      Mac had been one of the loudest voices proclaiming the guilt of Bo McBride in Shelly’s murder. But he’d always thought Bo wasn’t good enough for her. Sometimes Savannah wondered about her brother...but she never allowed the perverse thought to take hold.

      She sat at the table to drink her coffee and stared out the window that gave her not only a view of her own backyard but also a partial view of her neighbor’s.

      Jeffrey Allen was out there now, weeding a flower bed, his bald head covered against the July sun by a large straw hat. Jeffrey wasn’t a pleasant man. In his midfifties, he worked as a mechanic at the local car repair shop and for the past five years or so had had a contentious relationship with the Sinclair family.

      She only hoped he finished his lawn work before Josh arrived to check out the tunnel. The last thing she wanted to do was give Jeffrey any ammunition to work with to get her out of this house.

      He’d made it clear that he wanted to buy her house for some of his family members to move into, but Savannah had no plans ever to sell.

      By eleven forty-five, Jeffrey had disappeared from his yard and gone back into his house, and a nervous energy flooded through Savannah’s veins. Within a few minutes, Josh would arrive and destroy the one thing that had kept Shelly relevant beyond her death.

      Savannah was still seated at the kitchen table when Josh appeared at the back door. She wanted to pretend he wasn’t there, ignore the soft knock he delivered, but she knew he wasn’t going to just go away, especially since he could see her through the window.

      Reluctantly she got up to let him inside. Josh worked the night shift, like Savannah, and so instead of his uniform, he was clad in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt.

      With his slightly unruly black hair and his usual sexy grin curving sensual lips, he looked like the proverbial irresistible bad boy. He was a bad boy. He was about to rock her world in a very adverse way.

      “Good afternoon,” he said when she opened the door.

      “Not particularly,” she replied, embracing the alien emotion of the anger she’d awakened with. It felt so fresh, so different from the pervasive grief that had possessed her for so long. “It would be a good day if you’d kept your nose out of my business.”

      He frowned, the expression doing nothing to distract from his handsome, chiseled features. “Savannah, I’m not the enemy here.”

      Yes, he was. He just didn’t realize it yet. Right now he was the beginning of the end of her world. With even Shelly’s ghost gone, Savannah didn’t know who she was or where she belonged.

      “Let’s just get this over with,” she replied. She noticed that he carried a high-beam flashlight, and she walked to the cabinet