Jenna hauled the box down off the back porch and headed for the burn pile set up several yards away. The sun had already set and the only light came from the orange flames now licking at the star-dusted sky.
She settled the container near the pile and reached for the first of a mountain of old Reader’s Digests.
Her grandfather had never been one to part with anything, be it a nearly empty tube of Bengay or six large boxes full of faded magazines.
She tossed the first few issues into the fire. A spray of red embers spit back at her and she inched a few inches backward before tossing in another handful. The flames gobbled up the faded pages, sending a burst of smoke spiraling into the air.
A smile touched her lips as her gaze snagged on a cover that featured Ronald Reagan. James Harlin Tucker had never had a ready supply when it came to words of wisdom for his three granddaughters. He’d been an alcoholic barely able to take care of himself, much less the three young girls left behind when his son and daughter-in-law had died in a car accident. It had been Callie who’d been both mother and father to Brandy and Jenna when their parents had passed on. She’d doled out all the good advice in the family. The only words James Harlin had ever passed on were the occasional “If you want to make a really good moonshine, you have to add just a hint more honey,” or “George Jones might be a pretty good SOB, but he ain’t got nothin’ on Hank,” or “If we want to get this country back on track, we need another one like Ronald Reagan.”
Yep, he’d been as much a Reagan fan as he’d been into Hank Williams and hard cider shine. She curled the small magazine and shoved it into her back pocket before feeding another stack into the flames.
Not because she was a fan herself, or the least bit sentimental when it came to her grandfather. He’d been a selfish man for the most part, too intent on making his moonshine to spare any time for his granddaughters. But there had been those rare moments when he’d recited some joke from his beloved Reader’s Digest and actually coaxed a smile out of Jenna.
Brandy and Callie, not so much. They’d been older and had never found anything remotely funny about James Harlin. But Jenna had been younger, and so it had been easier for her to look past his faults and focus on the one redeeming quality about her grandfather—he could always make her laugh.
“Only because you have the same warped sense of humor,” Callie had told her too many times to count.
The same sense of humor.
The same green eyes.
The same I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude.
Yep, she was definitely a chip off the old Tucker block.
Which was her main problem in a nutshell.
She forced her fingers to move, fished the magazine out of her back pocket, and tossed it onto the fire. The flames breathed a fiery sigh across the cover, the edges blackened and curled. Just like that, Ronald Reagan turned to a thick gray wisp of nothing. The smoke burned her nostrils and her chest tightened. She stiffened and forced a deep breath.
The next two hours were spent hauling out the last few boxes from James Harlin’s old room, namely more Reader’s Digests, some old clothes that the church had turned down when they’d stopped to pick up donations, and a mountain of old receipts for all of James’s sugar and corn purchases that had been hiding in the back of his closet. He could barely remember his last name at times, but he’d kept pristine track of his shine.
“We’re going to make it big again,” he’d always told the girls while he’d searched for the original Texas Thunder recipe. “Bigger than back in the day. You mark my words.”
But the only thing he’d made had been a gross miscalculation that had caused an explosion that had destroyed his handmade still and everything within a twenty-yard radius. James Harlin included.
Jenna herself had been sleeping at the time. The boom had brought her fast awake, but when she and her sisters had made it out to the edge of the woods, the fire had been too widespread. They’d called 911 and watched helplessly as James and his still had gone up into a cloud of smoke along with the surrounding oak and cedar trees.
Her gaze went to what had once been a thick tree line. The spot had been leveled, the ground now bare until it reached the new tree line farther away. The branches quivered despite the lack of a breeze. Awareness whispered over her skin and she had the sudden feeling that she wasn’t alone.
Her ears perked and she listened, but only the buzz of crickets filled the night air.
Crazy.
Now that her sisters had moved out, the solitude was getting to her.
She focused on retrieving the last of the boxes Callie had packed up last year. While her sister had finally found the guts to put away their grandfather’s stuff, she hadn’t managed to do any more than stack the boxes. They had sat in the room, waiting for someone else to find the courage to finish what Callie had started. Brandy had stepped up to the plate next, moving everything out onto the porch and calling the church.
Only the First Presbyterian Church of Rebel hadn’t been too excited over a useless pile of outdated Reader’s Digests and so the magazines had been left behind and tossed back into the room, waiting for someone else—namely Jenna—to step up and finish the job. And since there was no trash pick-up so far out of the city limits, she was left feeding a burn pile.
She blinked against the sudden burning behind her eyes and reached for the last box. She hauled it through the house and pulled open the back door. She was just about to shove it onto the porch when a large, dark shadow filled her line of vision and a deep, familiar voice echoed in her ears.
“Get back in the house. Now.”
“Sheriff DeMassi?” she started, but before she could ask him what he was doing here, he gripped her arm, steered her around, and pushed her back inside.
“Wait a sec—” she started as he followed her in and slammed the door. The lock clicked as the one and only dead bolt on the decrepit door slid into place.
“If you want to find yourself staring down the barrel of a Beretta, keep talking.” He flipped off the lights near the back, plunging the kitchen into darkness and turned to peer past the edge of the curtains. “If not, then get the rest of those lights.” He motioned to the bulb gleaming in the hallway.
Jenna opened her mouth, but something about the stiff set to his broad shoulders stalled the words in her throat. She stiffened, turned on her heel, and flipped a nearby switch. Darkness descended, filling the hallway. The only other light that still burned was a lamp on James Harlin’s old nightstand. A few seconds later, she’d killed the switch on it and stopped off to make sure the front door was locked before finding her way back to the kitchen. The burn pile still blazed outside, edging the kitchen curtains in a pale orange glow.
“What’s going on?” she whispered after a few silent minutes of staring at his shadowy form standing sentry at the back window. Her heart echoed in her ears and her breaths came quick and shallow. “Sheriff?” she whispered again when he didn’t say anything.
Rather he simply stood there, waiting, listening.
Her ears perked and that’s when she heard it. The faint thud of footsteps. The crunch of grass. The cock of a trigger …
Just as the thought registered, the sheriff grabbed her hand, hauled her down to the floor and shielded her body with his. A shot echoed, wood cracked, and the first bullet bit through the door and whizzed overhead.