Page 5 of In Her Grasp

Jenna reached across the table, her hand resting atop her mother’s. “Mom,” she began, her voice steady and sincere, “I’m proud of you. And whatever help you need, I’m here for you.”

Mom’s features softened, the lines around her eyes relaxing as if relief had washed over her. She offered a small nod, the kindthat carried more gratitude than words could express. Then, as if to shift away from the weight of her own struggles, she tilted her head curiously. “I saw on the news about that murder case. You closed it just yesterday, didn’t you?” The interest in her tone surprised Jenna; her mother hadn’t shown concern for outside affairs in so long, especially not for the successes that marked Jenna’s life.

“Uh, yes, I did.” Jenna was unsure how much her mother truly wished to know, or how much she herself wanted to reveal. Law enforcement, after all, was threaded with gritty realities best left out of kitchen-table conversations.

“Was it really who I heard?” Mom’s brow furrowed in disbelief. “Did he really turn out to be a killer?”

Jenna hesitated, memories of the flash of steel as the killer had reached for a gun before Jenna and her deputy subdued him and put him under arrest. “I’d rather not talk about it, though,” she added quickly, hoping to leave the darkness of that case behind her.

Mom Graves shook her head, a troubled expression settling on her features. “I just don’t understand what’s happening to Trentville,” she murmured, more to herself than to Jenna.

Jenna stood by the kitchen window, observing her mother’s disquiet. Was it true, she wondered? Had the town turned darker on her watch? And if something had changed, was it just the town of Trentville or the whole area of her responsibility as Sheriff of Genesis County, Missouri?

The ringtone of her phone sliced through the silence, startling them both. Jenna pulled it from her pocket and saw Jake Hawkins’ name flash across the screen. With an apologetic glance at her mother, she answered the call. “Jake, what’s up?”

“Jenna, we need to get out of Sablewood Reservoir right now,” he told her, his voice taut with urgency. “Chad Spelling just called. They’ve found a dead body.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Anything new from Colonel Spelling?” Jenna asked as Jake Hawkins slid into the passenger seat of the cruiser. He had been waiting outside the Sheriff’s Office to join her on the drive to Sablewood Reservoir.

Jake shook his head. “Just that it’s a male body. Spelling was cagey about it. I think he’s as much in the dark as we are.”

As they left the familiarity of Trentville for the open road, cornfields flanked them, the plants struggling against the drought, leaves curled and brittle. After another mile, Jake broke the silence that had settled in the cruiser.

“Quite the shift from our case this morning,” he mused. “Judge Fallon accusing everyone on his staff of stealing his gavel until we turned his office upside down.”

Jenna chuckled at the memory. “Judge Fallon’s gavel turned out to be right under his nose the whole time. In his bottom desk drawer, of all places.” She shook her head, amused by the thought of the cantankerous and somewhat addled judge’s red-faced embarrassment when he’d sheepishly admitted his mistake.

Jake glanced over at Jenna, “Your visit with your mom... how did it go?” His question was gentle, probing the edges of her personal life with care.

Jenna took a deep breath, the image of her mother’s tired eyes surfacing in her mind. “She’s going through some serious changes,” Jenna said. “She’s trying to stop drinking. She asked me to pour out the last of her bourbon. I did that for her. It was a heavy moment.”

“Must’ve been tough,” Jake said softly, recognizing the significance of the gesture in Jenna’s family saga, where alcohol had long been an unwanted companion. He understood thatJenna’s strength often came from confronting her demons, whether they were rooted in the past or waiting ahead at crime scenes.

“Oh, it was a relief, really,” Jenna replied. She glanced at Jake, his profile etched by the harsh afternoon light. “Maybe today’s a day for turning points. It’s moments like these, pouring out my mom’s last bottle, that gives me hope for a new beginning.”

“Sounds like she’s on a better path,” Jake replied, his tone encouraging.

Jenna hesitated before bringing up the other thing that most occupied her mind at the moment.

“Speaking of new paths,” Jenna ventured, “I had one of those lucid dreams last night.”

“A dream about …?” Jake asked quietly. He knew that her lucid dreams brought messages that seemed to come from the dead.

“About a woman holding a sandpiper,” Jenna continued, her gaze fixed on the road ahead. “The bird could mean something, a message perhaps.”

“From Piper?” he queried,

“I don’t think the woman was Piper,” Jenna admitted. “Her face was hidden in fog. But ‘sandpiper’—it can’t be a coincidence with my sister’s name. There must be a connection.”

Jake nodded slowly, processing the information. “If Piper was gone, really gone, you’d know, right? Through your dreams?”

“Only the dead visit me there,” Jenna reaffirmed, her voice a soft echo of her inner turmoil. “So I have to believe there’s still hope that she’s alive.”

“Then we keep hoping,” Jake affirmed, his words steady and resolute.

“Hope is a stubborn thing,” Jenna murmured, her voice barely rising above the hum of the cruiser’s engine. The silence that followed was not uncomfortable; it was thoughtful.

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