LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      This was wrong. All of it. The squad car speeding along the winding mountain road, heading away from town and deeper into the Maine wilderness. The blood dripping down her arm and onto the leather seat. The silence of the two deputies who had arrested her.

      Deputies?

      Special Agent Wren Santino wasn’t sure about that.

      Not anymore.

      They hadn’t used their police radios. Not to call for medical assistance for her or for the deputy who had been shot. Not to call in a location, call for backup or do as she requested and ask for the FBI Boston Field Office to be contacted.

      She might not be an expert on much, but she knew law enforcement protocol, and, after nearly a decade working as a special agent for the FBI, she knew this was going down all wrong.

      She shifted in the seat, the scent of leather mixing with the odor of stale vomit and sweat. Blood oozed from the bullet hole in her forearm and snaked around her wrist, sliding under the metal handcuffs. She should be heading to the hospital. Not the town’s small sheriff’s department. And Ryan? The deputy who had been shot? The closest thing to a brother she’d ever had? They should be life-flighting him to a trauma center.

      The thought of him as she’d seen him last—lying in a pool of his own blood—made her even more desperate to escape.

      She twisted her uninjured wrist, hoping the seeping blood would make it easy to slip her hand out.

      But, of course, that wasn’t how cuffs were designed.

      She knew that.

      The same way she knew that she was in trouble.

      She glanced out the back window. Her SUV was a dark smudge against the sepia tones of the forest behind it. She could still see Deputy Ryan Parker’s squad car, parked just behind the SUV, pulled a little crookedly onto a grassy area beside the road.

      She shouldn’t have stopped. Not on a road like this. Not at this time of night. He’d have understood if she’d put on her hazards, slowed her pace and continued driving until she’d reached a less lonely stretch of road. That was the advice she gave students in the women’s self-defense classes she taught.

       Don’t stop if it feels unsafe.

       Any legitimate officer will understand.

       Hazards on.

       Slow your speed.

       Keep going until you reach a more populated area.

      She hadn’t followed her own advice. She’d seen the lights, and she’d pulled over. Maybe because she hadn’t expected trouble. Maybe because she was always prepared for it. She hadn’t been carrying her service weapon, but she’d had mace in the pocket of her jacket and a repertoire of self-defense tactics that had served her well in the past.

      At thirty-six years old, she knew how to defend herself, and how to guard against danger and trouble.

      She hadn’t thought it would come to her on the lonely stretch of highway between town and the farm belonging to her foster mother, Abigail, but she should have been able to extricate herself from it.

      She turned her attention to the two men dressed in Hidden Cove Sheriff’s Department uniforms. They looked legit. The jackets. The badges. The shirts and hats that were pulled low over their eyes. Clean-shaven. Caucasian. One with fair skin. One with an olive complexion. The fact that she could see those things meant they weren’t trying to hide their identities. She wanted to believe that was a good thing, but her gut was telling her something different.

      No legitimate law enforcement officer left a man lying on the ground bleeding.

      “What about Deputy Parker? You can’t just leave him there. He needs medical attention,” she said, trying to engage them in a conversation that went beyond the Miranda rights they’d read her before they’d cuffed her and shoved her in the back of their squad car.

      “You probably should have thought about that before you shot him,” the driver said. Mid-to late-twenties. Slim build. A small scar on his jaw. His hair was hidden, but Wren would guess it to be dark to match his tan skin.

      “I already told you, I didn’t shoot him. The shots were fired just before you arrived.” Ryan had pulled her over. She’d realized it was him after he’d gotten out of his squad car. He’d told her that he was in trouble and that he needed her help. She’d stepped out of the SUV. Before he could explain more, a shot had been fired, and he’d gone down. She’d reached for his service weapon and had been shot while trying to free it.

      Not a kill-shot.

      Not like the one that had taken Ryan down.

      She swallowed a wave of grief. Like Wren, Ryan had been one of Abigail’s foster kids. A teenager with no future who’d been

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