Page 4 of In Her Shadow

“It’s bad, Jenna,” Jake said, his voice kept low against the backdrop of murmured conversations and the distant hum of machinery.His gaze held hers, steady and unwavering.“Really bad.The victim...it’s Clyde Simmons.The Mayor’s brother.”

Jenna felt the ground shift beneath her feet, a tectonic slide in the political and personal landscape of their close-knit community.Clyde Simmons—a name synonymous with Trentville’s modest power structure, the mayor’s own flesh and blood.

“Show me where,” she said.Jake nodded, turning on his heel to lead the way, and Jenna followed, her mind racing ahead to the sight that awaited her.She adjusted the brim of her sheriff’s hat against the relentless glare of the midday sun.“Walk me through it, Jake,” she directed as they moved side by side through the pasture

“A ranch hand found him just after sunrise,” Jake recounted.“Clyde was slumped against the fence over there.”He pointed toward the distant corner of the field, where the barbed wire barrier met a grove of gnarled trees.“No immediate signs pointing to how he died, but his clothes...they were torn, and there was blood.”

“Any witnesses of any part of it?”Jenna asked.

“None so far.And there’s something else,” Jake hesitated, a frown creasing his forehead.“He’s been branded, Jenna.Right on his chest—a mark like I’ve never seen before.”

“Branded?”A brand suggested a message, a statement that would ripple through the community like a stone cast into a still pond.

As they neared the spot where Dr.Melissa Stark was crouched, the scent hit Jenna first, the metallic tang mingling with the biting stench of charred flesh.

Encased in her white hazmat suit, Melissa’s attire stood out against the chaotic backdrop of officers and technicians moving meticulously around the taped-off area.A white sheet obscured the view of Clyde Simmons’ body,

“Melissa,” Jenna said, nodding to the coroner with both respect and a shared understanding of the grim task at hand.But just as Jenna was ready to signal the coroner to peel back the sheet, a piercing cry shattered the heavy silence that blanketed the crime scene.

“It’s about damn time you showed up, Sheriff!”The voice, sharp and laden with vitriol, sliced through the dry air like a blade.Mayor Claire Simmons was barreling across the pasture, her usual veneer of polished control eroded by raw anguish.Her hair, normally coiffed to perfection, now hung in disordered strands that framed a face twisted by sorrow and anger.

The mayor’s approach was unrelenting, her manicured nails clenched into fists at her sides as if gearing for battle.The sight of such composed ferocity stirred within Jenna a turbulent mix of empathy and wariness.She knew all too well the pain of loss, the gnawing void left by an absent sibling.

“Where the hell have you been?”Mayor Simmons demanded, stopping mere inches from Jenna.“My brother is lying there dead, and you’re out gallivanting in the woods on your day off?”

Holding the mayor’s gaze, Jenna fought to maintain an even tone.“Mayor Simmons,” she began.

“This is your job, Sheriff Graves!To protect the people of this county!And where were you when my brother needed that protection?”The mayor’s voice cracked the air, each syllable resonated with accusation.

Jenna’s gaze swept over the gathered crowd, all eyes pinned to this public reckoning.She could read their thoughts in the tense lines of their bodies, in the way they averted their gazes or found sudden interest in the periphery of the crime scene.It was a sensation she had seen before: the hunger for drama mingling with discomfort at being witness to it.

In the oppressive heat, Jenna felt the weight of her badge, the emblem of her duty and burden.She sought the right words, the balm for both the mayor’s anguish and the rift it was causing.“Mayor Simmons, I can understand—”

“Silence!”The word was a whip-crack, and Mayor Simmons leaned in, her sharp fingernail now an inch from Jenna’s chest.“Don’t you dare tell me what I’m feeling!”

There was no escaping the harsh reality; in the mayor’s eyes, Jenna had failed before she even arrived.

“Mayor Simmons, I understand you’re grieving,” she tried again.“Your brother’s death will not go unanswered.We will find who is responsible.”

Jenna watched the emotions play across Mayor Claire Simmons’s face, a tumultuous storm of grief and anger that had found its outlet in her direction.It was only Jake’s intervention that seemed to calm the tempest.

“Claire,” he said, and Jenna could sense the delicate balance Jake struck between comforting a bereaved sister and reminding a demanding mayor of their shared goal – justice for Clyde.“This isn’t helping.Let us do our job.We’ll find who did this to Clyde.”

The mayor’s fiery gaze, which had been locked onto Jenna with the intensity of a laser, flickered over to Jake.Her lips parted as if to spit venom at him too, but something in his earnest expression, or perhaps the realization of her own powerlessness in the face of tragedy, caused her to falter.The rigid lines of her shoulders softened, her stance less confrontational, the fight visibly ebbing from her posture.

“Just...find who did this,” she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of loss, shorn of its earlier aggression.It was a plea now, raw and vulnerable.“Find them and make them pay.”

Turning on her heel, Claire Simmons marched back to her car with a briskness that suggested she was almost running away from the scene, from the reality of her brother’s death sprawled out behind her.The door of her luxury sedan slammed shut with an authority belying her defeated demeanor, its sound reverberating through the stillness that had settled over the pasture.Moments later, the engine roared to life, the screech of tires tearing up the earth as she drove off, leaving behind a cloud of dust that seemed to mirror the chaos she left in her wake.

The dust settled softly in the wake of Mayor Simmons’ departure, and Jenna felt the residue of the confrontation begin to dissipate.She could sense the collected gaze of officers, forensic analysts, and curious onlookers; their stares were like pinpricks on her skin, each questioning her next move.

Jenna turned back toward where Dr.Melissa Stark knelt, an incongruous figure of clinical detachment against the backdrop of rural chaos

“Give it to me straight,” Jenna said, her voice betraying none of her unease.She locked eyes with the coroner, seeking the truth in the only way she knew how—unflinchingly.

Melissa hesitated for a fraction of a second before complying with a nod.Her gloved hands reached for the sheet that shrouded the day’s grim discovery, pulling it back to reveal what lay beneath.Jenna steeled herself against the onslaught of senses, the visceral reaction to death that never quite left her, no matter how many scenes like this she had witnessed.

The body of Clyde Simmons lay contorted, as though every muscle had seized in his final moments.He was bound hand and foot.His face, now a pallid canvas of horror.Jenna’s eyes moved instinctively to catalog every detail—the positioning of his limbs, the discoloration of his skin, the earth beneath his fingernails.But it was the grotesque insignia emblazoned upon his chest that ensnared her focus—a brand, dark against his flesh, depicting a tree with branches splayed like the veins of a leaf.

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