LITMIR.BIZ

      To my editor, Margaret Marbury, the woman behind the entire LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB series.

       Margaret, I’m in awe of your talent.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      One

      Spence Harrison scanned the dial in search of a weather update while he drove, half his attention on the highway, half on the sky. He had enough on his mind without heading into a patch of nasty weather. In this section of South Texas, scattered showers might mean anything from a few tepid drops to baseball-size hail. Yesterday’s prediction of scattered showers had produced a deluge.

      Luckily, traffic was light on the secondary highway. All he had to do was watch out for slow-moving tractors and a speeding ticket, as his foot tended to be heavier on the accelerator when he was under tension. For a district attorney on his way to the state prison to take an on-site deposition—one he didn’t trust anyone else to take—a speeding ticket would be embarrassing, to say the least.

      Reaching up, he loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. Damn, it was getting hot! He turned the air conditioner up another notch. Cutting back to a moderate sixty-five miles an hour, he tried to concentrate on the task ahead. The trouble came in trying to narrow his focus.

      The last call he’d taken before leaving his office had had nothing to do with the murder trial he was preparing to prosecute, or even the information he was hoping to uncover from this particular witness. Instead it concerned Luke Callaghan, a good friend, Virginia Military Institute classmate and old marine corps buddy who had dropped off the radar screen after arriving in Central America. It had been more than a week since he’d reported in.

      Considering his usual extravagant lifestyle, his disappearance would not have been surprising, but in this particular case it was definitely a cause for alarm. Luke was involved in a risky undercover rescue mission. Their former commander, Phillip Westin, had gone down somewhere in a Central American jungle—not a great place to go missing. Spence wasn’t privy to all the details, but from the few he did know he’d been able to extrapolate others with his well-honed power of deduction. A logical mind and the ability to reason were valuable tools in his particular line of work.

      At the moment, however, those abilities were being stretched thin. As the miles sped past, Spence’s thoughts ricocheted back and forth between Luke’s situation and recent revelations on an entirely different front that made it imperative that he find out just which cops had gone rogue. It was hardly the thing a man could ask if he wanted to stay healthy. At this point, not even Internal Affairs was above suspicion.

      Spence could count on the fingers of one hand the cops he could trust. It was a sad state of affairs, damned sad. Most were probably clean, but he couldn’t be sure. Not until he had enough evidence to trigger an outside investigation. He was counting on today’s deposition to add a few more parts to the puzzle.

      It had been the murder of Judge Carl Bridges that had shaken things loose. The judge had been a powerful man in Lone Star County—a man

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