Special Agent's Perfect Cover. Marie Ferrarella

finished sewing together, Keegan scrubbed and then pushed the files together into one pile. “Be my guest,” he told Hawk. “I’ve already made copies of them for you.”

      Hawk scooped up the files. Already familiar with all the victims, he wanted to review the files in depth and was grateful to the coroner for making copies for him. Still stumped, he needed all the input he could get his hands on.

      “You’re pretty thorough,” Hawk commented.

      Keegan raised his slopping shoulders and let them fall again. “I’ve got the time to be. This is the most amount of action this office has seen in a very long while.”

      “What do you do the rest of the time?” Hawk asked, curious what occupied the man’s time when he wasn’t conducting an autopsy. He sincerely doubted that Wyoming was a hotbed of homicides.

      Keegan’s answer surprised him.

      “I’m a vet,” the older man replied. “Technically,” he explained as a look of disbelief came over the special agent’s face, “I don’t even have to be a doctor of any kind in order to become a coroner. I just have to be unusually observant and display a high tolerance when it comes to the dissection of dead bodies. Like this one.” He nodded at the draped body on his steel table.

      “Good to know,” Hawk quipped. Holding the files to his chest, he crossed to the door. “Thanks again for these.”

      “My pleasure,” Keegan answered, adding, “so to speak.”

      Closing the door behind him, Hawk blew out a breath. “Yeah,” he muttered to himself in a low voice. “So to speak,” he echoed.

      He squared his shoulders and made his way out of the building and back to his car. He was all out of excuses and reasons to delay his departure. He’d already gotten in contact with his team and told them to temporarily set up a “satellite FBI office” in a cabin several miles out of town.

      They were probably already there, he thought. Now it was his turn. Hawk turned his key in the ignition and listened to his car come to life.

      Next up: Cold Plains.

       Ready or not, here I come.

      Carly was standing outside the school where she had so recently taken a position, supervising the children as they made the most of their afternoon recess.

      That was where she was when she first saw him. First saw the ghost from her past.

      That was what she initially thought she was seeing, a ghost, a figment of her wandering imagination. A momentary hallucination on her part, brought on by a combination of stress and anger and the overwhelming need to have someone to lean on—just for a little while.

      For her, the only one she had ever had to lean on had been Hawk, but that had been a very long time ago. At least ten years in her past, she judged.

      Maybe even more.

      The bottom line was that there was absolutely no reason for her to see Hawk Bledsoe getting out of a relatively new, black sedan. The vehicle had just pulled up before the pristine edifice which housed The Grayson Community Center as well as the living quarters of several of Samuel Grayson’s top people.

      Or, as she was wont to think of them in the privacy of her own mind, Grayson’s henchmen.

      Her mind was playing tricks on her, Carly silently insisted. Any second now, this person she had conjured up would fade away or take on the features of someone else, someone who she knew from town. Someone she was accustomed to seeing day in, day out.

      She waited, not daring to breathe.

      He wasn’t fading. Wasn’t changing.

      Suddenly feeling very light-headed, Carly sucked a huge breath into her lungs.

      Ordinarily, fresh air helped clear her head. But it wasn’t her head that needed clearing, it was her eyes, because she was still seeing him.

      Or at least a version of him.

      The boyish look she’d known—and loved—was gone, replaced by a face that, aside from being incredibly handsome, was thinner and far more somber looking. Otherwise, it was still him, still Hawk. He was still tall, still muscular—the navy windbreaker he wore did nothing to hide that fact. And he still had sandy-blond hair, even though it was cut shorter now than it had been the last time she had laid eyes on him.

      And when he made eye contact with her from across the street, she saw that the apparition with Hawk’s face had the same deep, warm, brown eyes that Hawk had had.

      Eyes that could melt her soul.

      She felt her pulse accelerating, her heart hammering as if it was recreating a refrain from The Anvil Chorus in double time.

      Why wasn’t this image, this apparition, this ghost from the depths of her mind fading? Why was it coming toward her?

      Carly’s breath caught in her throat, all but solidifying and threatening to choke her. Even so, for the life of her, Carly just couldn’t make herself look away.

      She was still waiting for the image to break up—or for the world to end, whichever was more doable—as the distance between them continued to lessen.

      When Hawk had first driven slowly through the town, heading for its center, its “heart,” Hawk had to admit that he was rather stunned. The town appeared to have gone through an incredible amount of changes.

      When he had left, Cold Plains looked to be on the verge of simply drying up and blowing away, a dying town abandoned by all but the very hopeless. Those who were devoid of ambition and who couldn’t make a go of it anywhere else had chosen to remain here and die along with the town.

      There was no sign of that town here.

      This was more of a town that could take center stage in a children’s storybook. All around him, there were new buildings. The ones that looked remotely familiar had all been restored, revitalized, given not just a new coat of paint but a new purpose.

      The streets were repaired and clean. Actually clean, he marveled, remembering how filthy everything had appeared to be when he was growing up here.

      The smell of fertilizer was missing, he suddenly realized. Cold Plains now seemed like a town on its way to becoming a city rather than a hovel disintegrating into a ghost town.

      For a moment he thought that he was in the wrong place, that he had somehow gotten turned around while coming here and had managed to drive to another town. A brighter, newer town.

      But then he saw a few faces he recognized, people he’d known growing up. That told him that this was Cold Plains. At the same time, he began to take note of not just the newly constructed buildings but the people, as well. Briskly moving people. People who seemed to have a purpose.

      He saw several parents holding on to their children’s hands, heading for what appeared to be a playground.

      He did a mental double take. A playground? Since when was that part of the landscape? Or an ice cream parlor, for that matter?

      “Excuse me, young man, didn’t mean to almost walk into you.” An older man laughed, sidestepping around him at the last moment. Hawk couldn’t help staring at the white-haired man. He wore color-coordinated sweats, fancy, high-end sneakers—running shoes?—and he was holding navy-blue-colored weights in his hand that looked to be about a pound each.

      He was power walking, Hawk realized.

      Had everyone lost their minds?

      He looked around again. All the people who were out and about appeared to be smiling. Every last one of them. It was almost eerie. And then he looked closer at the women who were passing him. Smiling, as well, they were all modestly dressed. No jeans, no scruffy cutoffs or overalls. Each and every one of them, young or old, children or adults, they were all wearing dresses.

      Dresses that came down past the middle of their calves.

      Hell,