ope rinsed her plate, then washed her hands with Lemon Joy. When she turned off the water, the sound of Shelly’s bootheels and the low hum of a motorboat out on the lake filled the silence.

“Sounds like Paul and the boys are back,” Shelly said as she walked across the kitchen.

Hope reached for a towel and dried her hands. She glanced out the back screen door into the shaded yard but couldn’t see anything. “I better get back across the street.”

“Stay a minute and meet my husband.” Shelly stuck her head into the refrigerator, looking for something. She was nosy, but Hope could appreciate her style. She’d invite Hope to lunch to pump her for info, nonchalantly slipping in personal questions between amusing stories, bits of gossip, and bites of crab. “Are you staying in the Donnelly house tonight?”

Out of habit, Hope hung the towel over her shoulder. “That’s the plan. My things are supposed to be delivered later today.” She leaned her behind against the counter and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “But the way my luck is running, my stuff is probably lost in transit. Probably fell off the truck in Vegas.”

The screen door opened, then slammed. “Gotta piss so bad my back teeth are floatin‘,” Adam Taber said as he ran through the kitchen.

“Where’s Wally?” Shelly called after him.

“At the boat,” he answered, then was gone.

“Hey, there, Adam.” A deeper voice spoke from just outside the door. “You know better than to go into somebody’s house without knocking.”

Only that morning, Hope had heard the same voice ask if she liked passion fruit. She straightened and dropped her arms to her sides.

“Why should he knock when his daddy never does?” Shelly asked.

Dylan raised one hand above his head and rapped his knuckles against the wooden frame. “Knock, knock,” he drawled. “Can I come in?”

“No,” Shelly replied and shut the refrigerator door. “You smell like fish guts.”

He came in anyway and walked toward Shelly. From across the kitchen, his broad back and shoulders filled Hope’s vision. He wasn’t wearing the battered hat he’d worn that morning, and his short hair stuck to the back of his neck. He advanced on Shelly, his hands out in front of him as if he meant to touch her.

“Stay away, Dylan Taber, and I mean it!”

He chuckled, three deep “huh-huh-huhs,” then asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll beat you up like I did in the fifth grade.”

“Come on, now, you didn’t beat me up. You kicked me in the bean bags, Shelly. It’s not right kicking a guy in the bean bags.”

“You touch me,” she warned, “and I’ll tell Dixie Howe you love the way she looked in that sequined tube top she wore to the T-ball game last night.”

He dropped his hands. “There you go. Hitting below the belt again.”

“Paul, get in here,” Shelly called out. “We have company.”

“Dylan’s not company.”

“I’m not talking about Dylan. Hope Spencer from across the street is here.”

Dylan shot a glance over his shoulder and slowly turned to look at her. His brows rose up his forehead, and the kitchen light above his head picked out the gold in his brown hair.

“So,” Paul Aberdeen began as he and Wally entered the house, “you’re our new neighbor. Welcome to Gospel. I’d shake your hand, but I’ve been gutting fish.”

Hope offered him a smile. “Thank you.”

Paul was big and blond and his fair complexion had been burned red except for a white strip at his hairline. He gave Hope a quick up-and-down with his eyes before turning to Dylan and shaking his head. “I’ll see your five and raise you ten.” He opened the refrigerator and stuck his head inside. “Would you like a beer, Hope?”

“No, thank you.” Although she couldn’t imagine why, she had a feeling that they were betting on her.

“Dylan?”

“Yep.” The word was barely out of his mouth before a Budweiser was lobbed at him. He caught it in midair and popped the top.

“Remember me?” Wally asked as he came to stand before her. Like his father, he’d been burned by the sun, but that was where the resemblance ended. He was clearly his mother’s child.

“Of course,” she said. “You rescued my purse.”

“Yep.” He nodded and looked at his mother. “Where’s Adam?”

Shelly pointed in the direction of the bathroom and Wally went out of the kitchen. “Hope’s writing an article for a Northwest magazine,” she informed the men.

“What kinda article?” Paul closed the refrigerator door and hung one arm around his wife’s neck.

“Hope is into flora and fauna.”

Dylan raised the Bud to his mouth and watched her over the top of the can.

“I’m working on a nature article. I want to get some pictures of native wildlife and indigenous vegetation.”

Dylan lowered the beer as one brow lifted slightly. “At first glance, I’d never take you for a nature lover.”

“You don’t know me.”

“True.” He moved to the sink and set the can on the counter, next to her elbow.

“If you want to see nature,” Paul said, “you might want to camp out at the falls. Now that’s some beautiful country.”

Dylan stood so close his arm bumped hers as he turned the water on. Her pulse picked up a beat or two, but she stood perfectly still and refused to let him know he made her nervous. “I might do that,” she said.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Have you ever camped out somewhere other than a motel room?”

Well, there had been that one summer at Girl Scout camp. “Sure, I camp all the time. I love to commune with nature.”

He chuckled and reached for the lemon dish soap. His T-shirt brushed her bare shoulder. “Careful,” he whispered next to her ear, “your nose is growing.”

Heat radiated from his big body and she slid a few steps down the counter and walked around him. Okay, so he did make her a little nervous. He was just too big, too masculine, and too good-looking, and he probably knew it, too. And she suspected he was trying to make her nervous.

“Remember that writer last summer?” Shelly asked. “What was he writing about? I can’t remember.”

“He said he was a survivalist,” Dylan answered.

Paul scoffed. “Yeah, but he had his pack filled with ready-to-eat army rations.”

“You should write something like that, Hope,” Shelly suggested. “All kinds of stuff is written by men, mostly Grizzly Adams he-man stuff. You could go on one of those survivalist treks. It might be interesting to read something like that from the point of view of a woman like you.”

He-man stuff? Survivalist trek? “Like me?”

Shelly made a palms-up gesture as if nothing needed to be said.

Paul said it anyway. “An indoor woman. If you went on one of those survivalist treks, you could write about eating wild onion and snakes.”

Her disgust must have shown on her face, because Paul quickly added, “Hell, it tastes just like chicken.”

“That’s true,” Shelly interjected.

“Maybe catch yourself a fat lizard,” the comedian at the sink added.

They were all crazy. All of them, and it was on the tip of her tongue to confess, It’s a lie, people. Get real. I write Bigfoot and alien-baby stories. I don’t eat reptiles!

The water from the faucet shut off and Dylan moved behind her. She felt him slide the thick towel from her bare shoulder. “I think I’ll just stick with writing about what I see around here.” She turned and glanced up at him. “I don’t think I can eat wild flora and poor, helpless fauna, anyway.”

He dried his hands and the leather band of his wristwatch. “Now, that is a shame.” He looked up from his watch and added, “There’s nothing quite like shooting helpless fauna and cooking it up with some wild flora.”

Shelly and Paul thought he was a real hoot, but Hope really didn’t see what was so funny. She got that twilight-zone feeling again. Like she’d been dropped onto an alien planet. Like she was living one of her own stories.

The sun beat down on Dylan’s straw cowboy hat as he pulled the cord on his old lawn mower. The engine sputtered, then died. Sweat dampened his armpits and spine, and he reached for his hat and tossed it on the front steps.

Sundays in June were for fishing or napping in a hammock with a hat pulled down over a man’s eyes.

Not for pushing a lawn mower around. Unfortunately, his grass was up past his ankles and the shrubs by his front door were so out of control a person had to fight to find the doorbell. Which didn’t bother him much, since everyone always came to the back door anyway. But his mother and sister had been down the week before and had bitched so much about it he’d started to feel kind of trashy. Like Marty Wiggins across town, who parked his old truck in the front yard and let his kid run around with gunk stuck to his face.

Dylan pulled his T-shirt over his head and rubbed a trickle of sweat from his bare chest and belly. He thought about giving the mower a good kick, but he figured all he’d get out of it was a broken foot. He glanced from the mower to his son standing on the porch near the biggest shrub, a pair of small grass clippers in his hands. Adam’s puppy, Mandy, lay near his feet.

“Don’t cut more than I showed you.” Dylan ran his fingers though his damp hair, pushing it from his forehead.

“I won’t.”

Dylan would never let Adam out of the house without making sure he was clean, his hair and teeth were brushed, and his clothes matched. A few shrubs didn’t make a guy trashy, for God’s sake. “And don’t cut off your fingers. I’m not any good at sewing stuff back on.”

“I won’t.”

He tossed the T-shirt next to his hat and pulled the cord again. This time the engine sputtered to life. The sound cut through the lazy quiet and sent Mandy jumping off the porch and running around the side of the house.

The grass was so thick in patches he had to lower the handle and raise the front wheels off the ground to keep the engine from stalling. Lawn clippings sprayed from the side, and when he got close to his dirt driveway, clouds of dust filled the air and little rocks peppered the ground like buckshot.

On his fifth pass, he ran over something that felt an awful lot like a big stick. He glanced to the left as chunks of tan plastic flew across the deep green grass.

Dylan cut the engine and stared down at the dismembered body of an X-Men action figure. The closer he studied it, the more it reminded him of the time, about ten years ago, when he’d just made homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department. He’d responded to an A.M. call on Skid Row, expecting to see a murdered transient. Instead, a bunch of beat cops stood around scratching their heads and staring at a torso sitting on a bench at a bus stop, no head or arms or legs, just the torso wearing a blue shirt, a tie, and a Brooks Brothers jacket. But seeing a torso in an expensive jacket on Skid Row wasn’t even the strangest part of the murder. Whoever had killed the man had also cut off his private organs. Dylan could understand getting rid of identifiable parts, but a guy’s jewels? That was plain cold-blooded. In the three years he’d remained in L.A., the case had never been solved, but he’d always figured the perpetrator had to be a woman.

“What was that?” Adam asked as he pointed to the mangled figure on the grass.

“I think it was your Wolverine.”

“His head’s chopped off.”

“Yep. How many times have I told you not to leave your toys around?”

“I didn’t. Wally did.”

There was probably a fifty-fifty chance that what Adam said was the truth. “Doesn’t matter. You’re responsible for your own stuff. Now pick up the pieces and throw them away.”

“Oh, man!” Adam complained as he scooped up the bits of plastic. “He was my favorite.”

Dylan watched his son stomp off before he restarted the mower. There were a lot of images he carried in his head that he would prefer to forget. The images still haunted him from time to time, but at least he no longer lived them. The biggest crime to hit Gospel since he’d been sheriff was the murder of Jeanne Bond by husband Hank. And while it had been unfortunate, it was one case in the past five years. Not one in the past five hours.

Dylan pushed the mower to the backyard and cut the grass around Adam’s swing set. His decision to move back to Gospel had almost been as easy as leaving. He’d left at the age of nineteen and attended a year and a half at UCLA before quitting to join the police academy. He’d been a twenty-one-year-old kid with ideas of catching the bad guys. Making the world safer. He’d turned in his badge ten years later, tired of the bad guys winning. He’d left Gospel a naive country boy with cowshit on his boots. He’d returned a lot older and a whole lot wiser. He’d returned with a much better appreciation for small towns and small-town people. Sure, everyone in Gospel owned a gun, but they weren’t shooting each other over the color of a bandanna.

The weird thing of it was, Dylan hadn’t even really realized he was tired of dealing with all the homicidal crazies until the day two-year-old Trevor Pearson had been kidnapped from his front yard and later found dead in a Dumpster. Dylan could always distance himself from other abuse cases, but Trevor was different. Finding that baby had changed him.

He’d gone home that night to his house in Chatsworth, taken one look at Adam sitting in his high chair with his little Tommy cup in one hand and Cheerios in the other, and decided right then and there he’d had enough. He was taking his son and going someplace where Adam could play. Where he could go outside and be a kid. Where his house didn’t have an alarm system.

Of course, Adam’s mama hadn’t been too happy about his decision. Julie had made it real clear she wasn’t leaving. He didn’t blame her, but he’d made it just as clear he wasn’t staying. They’d argued about Adam, even though there was never really any question that he would go with Dylan. Julie wasn’t a great mother, but he didn’t blame her for that, either. She’d never known her own mother and didn’t seem to have the instincts everyone just assumed females possessed. She loved Adam, but she simply didn’t know what to do with him.

And Adam hadn’t exactly been an easy baby. He’d been premature and colicky, making the first few months of his life hell for everyone. If he wasn’t crying, he was projectile vomiting, and instead of smelling like a sweet, powdery baby, he mostly smelled like an old French fry.

It was Dylan who’d walked the floors with Adam at 3 A.M., rubbing his back and singing him old honky-tonk songs. As a result, when Adam got old enough to reach out, he reached for his father.

In the end, leaving Julie had been real easy. Maybe too easy, confirming what he’d secretly suspected. He’d stayed with her for Adam. His decision hadn’t been as easy for Julie, but she’d done what was best for all of them. She’d signed custody over to Dylan, making only one demand: that Adam spend the first two weeks in July with her.

Dylan had come home with his year-old son, and he’d never regretted his decision. As far as he knew, Julie didn’t have any regrets, either. She now had the life she’d worked so hard for, the life she’d always dreamed of having. When he’d talked to her the week before to confirm her plans with Adam, she’d sounded happier than ever. She had what she wanted, and so did he. He had his son he loved more than anything on the face of the earth. A little boy who made him laugh even as he made him scratch his head. Adam was normal and happy. He loved his dog, and had an obsession with rocks. He collected them everywhere he went, as if they were gold. He had shoe boxes full of them under his bed. He gave them out only to grownups he liked, or to the girls at his school he wanted to impress.

With the sun beating down on his bare back and shoulders, Dylan mowed the lawn below his deck and across his yard to the fenced pasture. Dylan and Adam’s horses, Atomic and Tinkerbell, stood beneath the shade of several pines, dozing, indifferent to the sound of the engine. When he was through, he pushed the mower to the weathered barn to the left of the pasture and stored it beside his John Deere.

He filled the trough with fresh water and then turned the hose on himself. Bent at the waist, he let the cold water run over his head, the back of his neck, and down the sides of his face until he felt his brain freeze. He straightened and shook like a dog, sending a spray of water in all directions. Droplets slid down his spine and chest and were absorbed in the waistband of the soft Levi’s hung low on his hips. He rinsed grass clippings from his boots, then reached for the spigot and turned it off. He thought of standing in Paul and Shelly’s kitchen earlier that day, washing his hands and listening to Ms. Hope Spencer.

“Flora and fauna,” he scoffed. Who in the hell ever used words like “flora and fauna”? And he’d bet his left gonad that her idea of communing with nature was to open the sunroof of her car as she tootled down Santa Monica Boulevard.

He wondered if she ever smiled, really smiled with her blue eyes shining, full lips tilting up. He wondered what it would take to put a smile like that on her face. Another place and another time, he would have liked to try.

She was too perfect. Her clothes, her makeup, her everything. She was the kind of woman his hands just itched to mess up real good, but for a lot of reasons, that kind of itch could get him into trouble. Especially with a woman like her. A writer spelled out big trouble in neon letters for him and Adam.

It wasn’t uncommon for writers to spend time in the wilderness area, working on travel guides or backpacking articles. Only MZBHAVN didn’t look like she spent much time in the great outdoors. He didn’t know the real reason for her move to Gospel, but he had a few doubts about her story. It was best if he just stayed away from her. Best if he didn’t even think about her, because when he did, it reminded him of exactly how long it had been since he’d made love to someone besides himself.

He walked around the side of the house to the front porch and reached for his shirt. Adam was making a mess out of the shrubs again, but Dylan couldn’t work up enough energy to care. He pulled his T-shirt over his damp hair and shoved his arms through the holes. The shrubs could wait for another day.

“Are you about done?” he asked as he tucked the ends of the old cotton shirt into his jeans. “I think it’s about time we cooked those trout we caught today.”

Adam put down the shears and dug into his pocket. “I found a pretty rock. Do ya wanna see?”

“Sure.”

Adam jumped off the porch as a Dodge truck turned into their dirt drive.

“Don’t be rude,” Dylan warned as he watched Paris Fernwood pull the truck to a stop. She got out and walked toward them with a cake in her hands.

“I don’t like her,” Adam whispered and shoved his rock back inside his pocket.

“Be nice anyway.” He looked up and smiled at Paris. “What have you got there?”

“I told you I’d bring you an Amish cake.”

“Well, now, isn’t that sweet?” He nudged his son. “Don’t you think that’s sweet?”

Adam’s idea of being “nice” was to purse his lips and not say a word. He didn’t like women paying attention to his father. Not one little bit. Dylan didn’t exactly know why, but he figured that it more than likely had something to do with Adam holding onto a fantasy that his mama would someday come and live with them.

Dylan picked up his cowboy hat and brushed his hair back with his fingers. “I’d invite you in, but I’m afraid you’ve come at a bad time,” he said and pushed the hat down low on his forehead. “Adam and I are busy cutting back these shrubs.” He reached for a pair of hedge trimmers and whacked off some foliage. “Adam, why don’t you take that cake from Paris and run it in the house.” Dylan had to nudge him a few more times before he did what he was told.

“I really can’t stay anyway,” she said and turned her head to watch Adam walk away. Her braid fell over her shoulder. She’d woven daisies into her fine brown hair.

“Paris, you put flowers in your hair. I like a girl with flowers in her hair.”

She patted the braid and blushed. “Just a few.”

“Well, you look real pretty,” he said, which she took for an invitation to chat for a good half hour. By the time she left, Dylan had whacked the hell out of one shrub and had started on another.

That night, as he and Adam ate dinner, Adam looked up from his plate and said, “If you weren’t so nice to all those girls, they wouldn’t come around here.”

“All those girls? Who you talking about?”

“Paris and Miss Chevas and”—he held out his hands as if he were holding up watermelons— “you know who.”

“Yeah, I know who.” Dylan bit into his corn bread and watched Adam pick a bone from his fish. “Miss Chevas? You mean your teacher from kindergarten?”

“Yep. She liked you.”

“Get out of town.”

“She did, Dad!”

“Well, I don’t think she did.” Dylan pushed his plate aside and looked into his son’s big green eyes. Even if what Adam said was true, Dylan wasn’t looking for a wife. And ultimately, that was what all the single women within a hundred miles wanted. “You’ve got to quit being so ornery to the ladies. You’ve got to be nicer.”

“Why?”

“ ‘Cause it’s a rule, that’s why.”

“Even the ugly ones?”

“Especially the ugly ones. Remember when I told you that you can’t ever hit a girl, not even if she kicks you in the shins? Well, this is like that. Men have to be polite to ladies even if they don’t like them. It’s one of those unwritten laws I’ve told you about.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “What time is it?”

Dylan glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eight. Put your plate in the sink. Then you can go turn on the TV.” Dylan gathered the other dishes on the table and rinsed them in the sink. He washed the heavy oak table, scooted in the four matching chairs, then set Paris’s cake in the middle.

Living in the same town with Paris was like belonging to the dessert-of-the-week club. He really wished she’d quit bringing him food, but he just didn’t know how to tell her. He knew of her marital intentions, of course. Hell, he was the best prospect in Pearl County, but compared to the other contenders, that wasn’t exactly a compliment. Then there was Dixie Howe. He didn’t know if she was interested in marriage or just sex. Either was out of the question. Just the thought of it shriveled him.

Even if there was a woman he wanted to bring home for the night, he couldn’t. He had a young son, and he didn’t believe in exposing children to that sort of thing. He couldn’t park his car outside a lady’s house for very long without the whole town knowing about it, talking about it behind his back, and speculating on a wedding date. Not only did he want to avoid being the object of rumor for Adam’s sake, he was the sheriff, an elected official, and couldn’t afford that kind of gossip. Especially not after Sheriff Donnelly had been caught with his pants down.

Dylan tossed the dishcloth into the sink and moved to the entry to the living room. He leaned a shoulder against the wall as the theme music for Adam’s favorite television show, Heaven on Earth, filled the room. Fluffy clouds, blue sky, and the beautiful face of Adam’s mother filled the screen. Golden springy curls waved about her face as if she really were the angel she played. America’s sweetheart, Juliette Bancroft, rolled her eyes toward heaven and a light appeared above her head.

The Julie he knew was nothing like the angel she portrayed. When she’d lived with him, she hadn’t been so soft-spoken, and as far as he could remember, she’d never spent one hour in church. Heck, her hair was really brown, the color of their son’s.

“Come sit by me, Dad.”

Dylan pushed away from the doorway and sat next to Adam. Just like he always did, Adam scrambled onto Dylan’s lap and laid his head on Dylan’s shoulder. And as always, Dylan wondered if Adam really understood that what happened on television wasn’t real. That his mother wasn’t really an angel who spread goodness and saved souls. They’d talked about it many times, and Adam had always shrugged and said he knew. Dylan wasn’t so sure. “Remember what we talked about last week?” he asked.

“Yep, Mom’s not a real angel. She just acts like one.”

“Your mom’s an actress.”

“I know,” Adam answered, distracted by the opening scene.

Dylan held Adam close and kissed the top of his head. “I love you, buddy.”

“Love you, too, Dad.”

Hope stared out the window of Number Two Timberline, at the crescent moon hanging at the top of the Sawtooth Mountains like an ornament placed atop a Christmas tree. Its pale light spilled across Gospel Lake. Stars crammed the inky-black night, one almost on top of the other, and Hope was sure she’d never seen so many stars in her life. Like the night before, she was once again struck by the utter silence that surrounded her. No cars, no sirens, no helicopters buzzing overhead. Not even the bark of a neighbor’s dog to drive her nutty.

Her focus changed to her own wavy refection in the glass and the light splashing across the porch and into the dirt yard. Gospel, Idaho, had to be the loneliest place on the planet.

She let the heavy green drape fall back into place. She’d accomplished a lot since that first day. The downstairs of Number Two Timberline was clean, and she’d taken the bearskin from the wall and placed it over the bloodstain on the floor. She’d unpacked some of the boxes that had arrived with her things and cleaned the bedroom across from the bat room. She’d added her own personal touches, and hung her clothes in the closet. There was a lot more to do, but it was past time she got to work.

She moved into the dining room and booted up her laptop as well as her other computer, which also had arrived that afternoon. She placed a throw pillow on the hard chair, then sat at the long table. After the previous night’s chicken bone story, she figured her muse was back. With her fingers resting lightly on the keyboard, she closed her eyes and cleared her mind, freeing the clutter.

Half an hour later, she jumped to her feet. “Shit,” she swore as she grabbed a bottle of Windex and a soft cloth. When another hour passed and cleaning the house hadn’t uncovered her muse, she dragged out her fingernail kit. She chose a polish to fit her mood and painted her nails a deep blood red.

Blood red. She glanced over her shoulder to the fireplace in the other room. She didn’t write true-crime stories. She didn’t write about real people or the secrets and demons that drove them.

Hope rose and blew on her nails as she walked into the living room. With her toe, she pushed aside the bearskin and gazed down at the dark brown stain on the hardwood floor. She wondered what had been so horrible that the old sheriff had felt the only way out was a bullet through his head.

Shelly had mentioned something about kinky sex. People didn’t kill themselves because they liked to be spanked, and Hope wondered just how kinky things had gotten in this house and how much the people in town knew about it.