Dead Certain. Carla Cassidy

with a combination of pain and anger.

      “Oh…was that insensitive? Sorry.” Scott sighed miserably. “How about an exclusive, Savannah?”

      “I’ll give you an exclusive. All reporters are pond scum.” She turned on her heels and started toward her car.

      She’d written him off as a reporter, Riley thought. He fumbled in his wallet and withdrew his business card and a copy of a newspaper clipping.

      “Savannah,” he shouted, and ran after her. She didn’t stop walking, didn’t indicate in any way that she had heard him.

      He caught up with her at her car. “Savannah…wait.”

      She whirled around to face him, her eyes flashing dark fires of anger. “No interview, no scoop…I have nothing to say.”

      “Please…I’m not a reporter,” he said quickly. She jumped in surprise as he grabbed her hand and pressed his card and the copy of the clipping into her palm. “Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

      He backed away and watched as she got into her car and drove out of the hospital parking lot. He hoped she’d call. He hoped she’d read the old news clipping, but there were no guarantees. For all he knew she might toss what he’d given her into the trash without even looking at it.

      “Did she say anything to you?” Scott asked eagerly as Riley returned to where he stood.

      “No, nothing.” He turned and looked at the young man he’d befriended two years earlier. “Thanks for calling me.”

      Scott nodded. “As soon as I heard the initial report, I knew you’d want to know.” Scott glanced longingly at the emergency room door.

      “Go on, Scott,” Riley said. “Go see if you can get a story, but try to be a bit more sensitive. Anyone you find to talk to about any of this will be in shock…in pain.”

      Scott flashed him another quick grin. “Got it.” As he disappeared into the hospital, Riley sat on a nearby bench, not yet ready to make the hour-long drive back to his home in Sycamore Ridge.

      The late-June night air was unusually warm, more in keeping with August than June. It had been on a hot August night that his world had been ripped asunder, and for the past two years he’d felt as if his life had been in limbo.

      He’d awakened each morning with unanswered questions plaguing his mind and had gone to bed each night with those same questions still begging for answers.

      He’d met Scott in the dark days following the event that had shattered his life. The brash young reporter had journalistic dreams of becoming the next Ann Rule and writing bestselling books about compelling crimes.

      Initially Riley had found the young man relentless and his questions an irritating breach of good manners and an invasion of Riley’s privacy.

      But when the cops had gone away, when the crime-scene investigators had packed up and gone home, Scott had remained. When the neighbors had stopped sending cards of condolence and the flowers on his father’s grave had withered and blown away, Scott was still around, sometimes asking insensitive questions but also offering friendship and support that Riley desperately needed at the time.

      The friendship had lasted, although there were times when Scott’s eagerness overwhelmed his tact. And tonight with Savannah had been one of those times.

      He turned his head as he heard the hospital door open and Scott walked through. He spied Riley and walked over and sat next to him on the bench.

      “What did you find out?” Riley asked.

      “Not much,” Scott replied glumly. “Thomas James is still alive, but he’s in a coma. I tried to get some information out of Glen Cleberg, the police chief, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. It’s going to be hell trying to get any information from law enforcement…you know, the brotherhood of cops, the blue wall and all that.”

      “I think that’s only a myth when a cop is supposed to be bad or corrupt,” Riley replied.

      “Who knows what was going on with Thomas. You know he was chief of police before Glen Cleberg. Maybe somebody had a score to settle with him.”

      “And so they banged him over the head and did what with his wife?” Riley asked.

      “I don’t know,” Scott admitted. “I’m just speculating here.”

      “I thought good reporters weren’t allowed to speculate. I thought they were just supposed to report the facts.”

      Scott grinned widely, exposing a chipped front tooth. “Who ever told you I was a good reporter?”

      “So, tell me about Savannah James,” Riley asked, changing the subject.

      “Her name is actually Savannah Tallfeather. She’s a homicide dick and a widow. About a year ago her husband, Jimmy, crashed into the old bridge over the Cherokee River. The wood was old and rotten and his car went over the edge.”

      Riley frowned. There should be a law—only one tragedy in a single lifetime. The fact that she was so young and already had suffered two seemed vastly unfair.

      “It’s eerily similar to what happened to your parents, isn’t it?” Scott asked. He wasn’t talking about Jimmy Tallfeather’s untimely death. He was talking about whatever had happened at the James ranch.

      “Yes…at least from the snippets of information I’ve heard so far.” Riley sighed and looked upward toward the night sky where the stars were obscured by the bright parking lot lighting. “But I hope it’s not the same.”

      He looked back at Scott, but his thoughts were filled with a vision of the lovely Savannah. He knew every agonizing emotion she was experiencing. He knew intimately the sensation of shock, the taste of uncertainty and the scent of your own fear.

      He knew the furtive glances of people willing to believe the worst. He knew the isolation of friends drifting away, uncomfortable and somehow afraid. He wouldn’t wish what he’d been through in the past two years on anyone, especially a young woman who’d already been touched by tragedy.

      “I hope they find Rita James alive and well. I hope she left for a planned trip hours before her husband was attacked.” Riley held his friend’s gaze intently. “I hope this is nothing like what happened to my parents. But if it is like what happened to my family, then God help them all.”

      It was near dawn when sheer exhaustion drove Savannah to bed. She’d been up for over twenty-four hours, and although her head wanted to keep searching for her mother, her body rebelled, forcing her to rest.

      The night had been a fruitless search. She and Clay had contacted half the townspeople to see if they knew anything about Rita’s whereabouts.

      They had contacted friends, relatives and acquaintances, all to no avail. Savannah had taken a photo of her mother to the bus station while Clay had checked all the rental car companies.

      Nothing. It was as if Rita had packed her suitcase, then disappeared off the face of the earth.

      Before crawling into bed for a couple hours of sleep, Savannah sat in her living room window and watched the sun peek up over the horizon as if shyly testing its welcome.

      Tears burned her eyes. Was her mother seeing the sunrise? Had she left on an unexpected trip and had no idea what had happened at the ranch? Or had whomever hurt Thomas also done something awful to Rita?

      Savannah had shed few tears all night, but as she watched the beauty of the sunrise, sobs choked in her throat, racked her body and ripped through her heart.

      She’d believed all her tears had been depleted on the day she’d buried her Jimmy, but she’d been wrong. A river of tears escaped from her until she fell into an exhausted sleep.

      Her alarm awakened her at nine. Gritty-eyed and half-asleep, she stumbled into the bathroom for a quick shower.

      As