Force of the Falcon. Rita Herron

he drove back to the house. A half hour later, he met his brothers in the library to strategize.

      “Sheriff Cohen thinks we’re raising mutant attack birds up here,” Brack said.

      Deke gave a belly laugh and Rex cursed. “Sheriff Cohen is a moron.”

      Brack’s sentiments exactly. “He’s determined to pin these attacks on us, and to run us out of town.”

      “We’re not scared kids anymore.” Rex sipped his coffee. “And he’s not running us or our families out of town again.”

      “I’d like to see him run out of office,” Deke muttered.

      Brack and Rex said amen to that comment.

      “He threatened to bring someone in from the state agencies to check out the birds, but I don’t trust him,” Brack explained. “I think we should call in our own wildlife biologist, someone who can help us figure out what the hell’s going on. If it’s up to Cohen, he’ll destroy the falcons and burn down Falcon Ridge.”

      “Over my dead body,” Rex snapped.

      “We’ll get to the bottom of it first, get the animal rights activists on board if we have to,” Deke assured him. “You were in the woods, Brack? What do you think happened to the woman?”

      The memory of Sonya’s terrified eyes haunted him. “I don’t know. I heard a horrific attack cry that sounded half human, half animal. And you’ve both seen the injured falcons. Something is literally ripping out their talons and mauling them to death.”

      “I’ve never seen birds prey on each other like this, or on humans,” Rex said. “We should have the remains of the mutilated birds tested.”

      “I’ll talk to the vet, Doctor Priestly,” Brack said. “In fact, I’ve been wondering how this predator catches the birds. We all know that’s next to impossible with a healthy raptor.”

      “Which means he may injure them in some other way first,” Deke said.

      “We haven’t found bullet wounds in them, though,” Brack said.

      “Maybe he’s poisoning them somehow,” Rex said. “Tainting their food source with something to make them ill. I’ll get the EPA out here right away.”

      Brack hissed, “And I’ll have Doctor Priestly run tests, look at tox screens.”

      “You said the little girl claimed a monster bird attacked her mother?” Deke asked.

      Brack nodded.

      The three men exchanged skeptical but worried looks. “There were talon marks on Sonya’s back.” Her wounds had looked odd, sadistic like an animal, but humans could be sadistic, as well. Often, psychopaths began their criminal activities by killing pets and other animals as children. Then their violence escalated. Perhaps that was the case here.

      “Is the woman going to be all right?” Rex asked.

      Brack nodded. “She’ll heal, she seems tough. By the way, they’re our neighbors. She and her daughter just moved in to that old farmhouse down the hill.”

      “The one built over the land that’s supposedly possessed?” Rex asked.

      Brack nodded. He didn’t know if Sonya had known about the rumor when she’d bought the farmhouse or not. But bad things had happened there before. A murder years ago. Another questionable death in the woods last year. Some said the land was tainted, that it held evil itself because of the miners who’d died and been buried below ground.

      “Maybe Elsie and Allison can stop by and see her,” Deke suggested.

      Brack nodded, remembering how difficult Elsie’s life had been. Her father had kidnapped her from her mother when she was four, then abandoned her in an orphanage for unwed mothers when she was thirteen. She’d been abused and traumatized and had only recently reconnected with her mother—all thanks to Deke. Then Deke had married her, and now they planned to open a center for troubled teens in town.

      “Hailey will probably want to go, too,” Rex said. “She’s joined this group in town where they deliver a basket of goodies to new residents.”

      Brack shook his head at his brothers. They were turning damn domestic on him.

      But he felt for his brother’s wife, Hailey. Hell, how could he not? Their lives had been intertwined since they were kids when his father had been accused of killing her parents. Hailey had witnessed the bloodbath the town called the Hatchet Murders when she was little, but she’d repressed the memory until she’d returned to Tin City. At the time, Rex had been trying to prove their father innocent of the crimes. Then someone had tried to kill Hailey to keep her from remembering, and Rex and Hailey had been thrown together.

      Brack was happy for his brothers, but he had no intention of giving up his freedom for a woman. No, he’d almost made that mistake two years ago in Arizona when he’d mixed business with pleasure.

      Erica Evans had poleaxed him when she’d come looking for a bodyguard for her and her child. He’d fallen hard for her, had even considered asking her to marry him.

      Then she’d hauled it back to her husband.

      In the end, she’d claimed he was too dark and brooding for her. Said he didn’t know how to socialize. Hell, she was right. He’d prefer a hike in the woods alone to a party any day.

      But the thing that disturbed him most was her final dig—she claimed that he scared her kid.

      Sonya Silverstein’s beautiful face flashed into his mind, then her little girl’s, and the mental wheels in his brain rolled like a freight train barreling ahead. But he refused to board that train again.

      “I’m going into the woods now, see what I can find,” Brack said. He strode from the room, needing to be alone.

      Needing to blend into the woods with the animals and forget that Sonya’s green eyes had momentarily made him want to bury himself in her and forget his vow of solitude.

      NIGHTMARES of the attack tormented Sonya. Katie’s terrified screams echoed in her head. Her own followed.

      She jerked awake and stared at the clock, her body tense. The nightmare was over. Katie was safe. And she was in the hospital.

      The clock read 6:00 p.m. She desperately wanted to go home.

      She could not spend another hour in this room. The smells, sounds…they were a part of her job. Yet in the back of her mind, other memories stood out. The night she’d given birth to her daughter. The problems with the delivery. The horrifying realization that something was wrong.

      The incubator where they’d placed her premature newborn. She’d been born six weeks early, and weighed only three pounds. She had struggled for days with her breathing. And then the tests…

      Hours of endless waiting. Days of not knowing. Stan’s denial.

      Then his withdrawal.

      As if only the perfect in society deserved love.

      She’d fought against hating him then. Not for herself but for the infant who needed him. And last night she’d come so close to losing her baby again….

      She had to go home. Tuck Katie into bed, touch her and know that they were both still alive.

      She beeped the nurses’ station and begged the RN to persuade the doctor to release her. Katie needed her tonight, and she needed to be with her in their own house.

      Even though she was beginning to wonder if the house was haunted. Had it had been built on tainted land as rumors in Tin City claimed? Land where evil bled through the ground and rose to leak a sinister danger in the walls.

      Dr. Waverman, a physician she had worked with more than once when she’d worked the ER rotations, stepped into the room. He was midthirties, had sandy brown hair, hazel eyes, and had displayed more than a passing interest in her since