“What do you mean he just disappeared?”
Sheriff Jed Turner towered over Harley and Tina, muscled arms flexed against his hips. Since he arrived at the scene, his attention had been solely on Tina, treating Harley as she had been to him since they were children, invisible. Behind him, two deputies emerged from the park where they had been searching for the man.
“Nothing,” one of the deputies called out to Jed.
“Let’s head on back to the station,” he told them. “Nothin’ of importance here.”
Harley wondered how often Jed replayed the vicious tackle that left his knee ligaments torn to shreds, ending not only his season but also his career in the NFL.
A year later, he had retired with millions to his hometown of Notchey Creek, the only place where he was still considered a hero. After a very brief and unsuccessful stint as a sports commentator for the University of Tennessee Volunteers, he had run for county sheriff, which he won by a landslide. In a county with meager crime rates where football was king, it mattered very little to anyone that Jed lacked prior law enforcement experience. To the still-wealthy Jed, acting as sheriff was a mere hobby.
“Harley doesn’t think it’s nothin’,” Tina said. “The guy said somethin’ weird to her before he took off, somethin’ about a boy.”
“What boy?”
“I don’t know. But it sounded like somethin’ bad might’ve happened to him.”
“We’ve had no reports of anybody missin’ or otherwise, especially no boys. Sounds like some kind of nonsense bein’ spewed by a drunk.”
“Harley thinks maybe he was a veteran. She says he might have information on file somewhere, so maybe we could contact his family.”
With a wave of his right hand, Jed dismissed all of their claims. In that moment, it was hard to believe that when they were children Jed and Harley had been unlikely friends.