Page 1 of Engaging the Deputy

CHAPTER ONE

Ghostlike shapes of abandoned houses appeared on the darkening skyline ahead. Olivia Brooks had been nervous enough about this night but now felt a sense of foreboding she couldn’t shake off. Why had she agreed to this? She hated this place and especially this fool idea of how to spend Halloween night. The settlement of Starling, Montana, was desolate and deserted, the anti-government group long gone but not forgotten. She hadn’t liked the way it made her feel in the daylight, let alone late at night.

“The graves of lost dreams,” her date said next to her in the back seat of his friend Dean’s king-cab pickup. As Cody Ryan looked out his side window at what was left of Starling, she remembered why she’d agreed to this Halloween date. She’d missed Cody. He’d been the boy next door, her best buddy growing up, her high school sweetheart. When she thought of him, she thought of home.

The idea of spending time with him had appealed to her maybe more than it should have since it hadn’t been all that long ago that she’d been engaged to someone else. She’d come home to heal. She’d missed having a friend whom she shared a childhood with. Now that she was home again, Cody was a huge part of those memories. Mostly, she missed the closeness they’d once shared as kids.

“Slow down,” Jenny ordered Dean from the front seat of the pickup as he took a curve too fast on the narrow road. Weeds that had grown up between the two dirt tracks scraped the bottom of the truck like fingernails down a blackboard.

Olivia and Cody exchanged a look. Dean and Jenny both seemed tense, not that they didn’t have every reason to be. She wondered whose idea this date had been, given they both were married to someone else.

Behind them, the headlight beams of the second vehicle suddenly filled the pickup’s cab as Dean hit the brakes and came to a dust-boiling stop. Emery Jordan laid on his van’s horn as he roared up, barely stopping before crashing into the back of the truck.

“Just like old times,” Cody said, shaking his head as he looked over at her. He didn’t sound as if he was enjoying this any more than she was. They’d run into each other at the local bar in town last night. Olivia had been the outlier, going away to college and not coming back for six years.

At the bar, they’d all been drinking and laughing about old times. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this hometown comradery, especially with Cody. She hadn’t talked to him since they’d broken up when she’d left for college. Like most of their other friends, he hadn’t left the small Montana town. He’d been working at his father’s local hardware store for as long as she could remember.

That night at the bar, being around old friends, especially Cody, felt so right that she’d questioned why she’d ever left. He looked the same but different in a good way. Mostly, he felt familiar and comforting, like finding an old worn flannel shirt she’d forgotten about that still fit perfectly.

Talking at the bar, it was as if they’d never been apart. When he’d asked her to come with him tonight, along with several of their old friends all now in their twenties, it felt almost as if she could rewrite history. She’d often wondered what her life would have been like if she had never left.

Inviting her must have seemed like a good idea at the time, even though Cody didn’t seem so sure now that they were out there, especially when Rob’s plan was that they all had to stay until midnight. Their friend Rob Perkins had been celebrating the other night at the bar. He’d been offered a really good position in Seattle. He was excited about the condo he’d purchased on the coast and this opportunity to change his life.

“Let’s do something epic on Halloween,” he’d said.

“Let’s go to Starling!” Emery Jordan had said and thrown an arm around Rob.

“Great idea,” Rob had agreed and grinned. “Let’s go look for the gold.” Everyone had groaned at even the mention of the legend—let alone going out to the abandoned community. Folklore claimed that the anti-government leader and founder of the Starling community, Elden Rusk, had taken all of his followers’ money, converted it into gold and hidden it somewhere in the town before his mysterious disappearance. The gold, if it had existed, had reputedly never been found.

“But we have to stay until midnight,” Rob had said. “That’s when the really scary stuff happens. Unless you’re all chicken,” he’d taunted. Never the kind to back down from a dare, especially when they’d all had a couple of beers, their old group had quickly agreed. It was a date.

Olivia had looked to Cody, who’d given her that familiar grin. “What do you think?” he’d asked.

She’d nodded, warmed by the alcohol and her old friends. There was nothing quite like the people she’d grown up with, the boys she’d dated, the friends she’d known, the memories they’d made. She’d been the dreamer, determined to go to college, to have a career, not to end up like her mother had.

Six years ago, her friends hadn’t understood her need to chase her dream—especially Cody, she thought as she looked out at Starling, unsure now what they were doing there together.

As they exited the truck into the darkness, she was having misgivings. She didn’t want to give Cody the wrong impression. She wasn’t interested in taking up where they’d left off. She just wanted that boy-next-door friend she’d missed.

Rob and Emery and their dates piled out of the van, shouting and yelling. She saw that Emery was helping Rob unload a cooler full of beer from the back of the van and realized what those two had planned.

Emery and Rob had brought dates as well, although the women were much younger than Olivia and the old crowd. Tammy and Whitney had their heads together, giggling over something. Clearly, that carload had been drinking on the drive out to the middle of nowhere and the remains of the Starling community.

“Okay, whoever finds the gold, remember, we split it,” Rob said, laughing. “Except for anyone who wimps out before midnight.”

Olivia took the beer Cody handed her and popped the top as they all stood around the cooler for a few moments. Rob and Emery retrieved their dates and headed down the hillside to some of the houses along the creek. She could hear Rob relating the story of Starling and its tragic end with relish as they went off to explore the dozen structures scattered across the hillside.

Jenny and Dean sat on the tailgate of his pickup, engrossed in each other even though married to other people. She saw that Dean had brought the mattress from his front porch futon and put it in the bed of the pickup. Seemed everyone had something in mind tonight. This wasn’t going anything like she’d expected.

“Take a walk?” Cody asked as if as uncomfortable as she was. At the bar, they’d all been having fun together. Now they had broken off into real dates.

With growing discomfort, she walked away from the vehicles with Cody. It felt as though the bad part of their past had been hiding out here in the dark, waiting for them. The skeletal remains of one of the weather-beaten houses rose before them, etched against the night sky. She didn’t want to think about the last time she’d seen Cody before she’d left town. They’d argued. She knew that she’d hurt him and hated that. But she also knew that was why she’d stayed away so long.

The air felt heavy, as if a storm was blowing in. Clouds scudded past as silent as wispy ghosts and blotted out the stars and moon, making the night darker than usual. Gusts of wind caught her long blond hair, lashing it across her face. She grabbed a handful and forced it into a ponytail with the scrunchie she’d brought.

“Aren’t you worried that we might see the ghost of Evangeline?” she asked and took a sip of her beer, the eerie hillside scene making her jumpy as much as Cody’s silence. She felt him glance at her as if he understood what she was doing. He knew her better than most anyone because of all those years they’d been inseparable.

“She probably ran away,” Cody said. “Had enough of small-town living. Wanted something better.”

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