LITMIR.BIZ

      For my dad, who taught me that a person is measured

      by their dedication to honour, duty and loyalty.

      You lived those values, Dad. And they live on in me.

Chapter 1

      The knock on the door, as always, caused Corinne Farland’s heart to skip a beat. Some lessons, once learned, could never be unlearned.

      But after a year in Conard County, she found it a little easier to go to the front of the house. As always, she twitched the curtain aside at the front window by the door and looked out. She recognized Gage Dalton instantly, with his scarred face and his sheriff’s uniform. Gage was her main protector these days.

      She hurried to disengage the alarm system, then opened the door and smiled, an expression that sometimes still felt awkward on her face. “Hi, Gage.”

      He smiled back, a crooked expression as the burn scar on one side of his face caused one side of his mouth to hitch oddly. “Hi, Cory. Got a minute?”

      “For you, always.” She let him in and asked if he’d like some coffee.

      “I’m coffeed out,” he said, still smiling. “Too many cups of Velma’s brew and my stomach starts reminding me I’m mortal.” Velma was the dispatcher at the sheriff’s office, a woman of indeterminate age who made coffee so strong few people could finish a single cup. The deputies, however, sucked it down by the pot.

      She invited him into her small living room, and he perched on the edge of her battered recliner, his tan Stetson in his hands.

      “How are things?” he asked.

      “Okay.” Not entirely true, maybe never true again, but the bleak desert of her heart and soul were not things she trotted out. Not for anyone.

      “Emma mentioned something to me.” Emma was his wife, the county librarian, a woman Cory admired and liked. “She said you were a bit tight financially.”

      Cory felt her cheeks heat. “That wasn’t for distribution.”

      Gage smiled. “Husband-and-wife privilege. It doesn’t go any further, okay?”

      She tried to smile back and hoped she succeeded. Things were indeed tight. Her salary as a grocery-store clerk had been tight from the beginning, but now because times were hard, they’d asked everyone to take a cut in hours. Her cut had pushed her to the brink, where canned soup often became her only meal of the day.

      Gage shook his head. “I’ll never in a million years understand how they work this witness protection program.”

      Cory bit her lip. She didn’t like to discuss that part, the part where her husband, a federal prosecutor, had become the target of a drug gang he was going after. The part where a man had burst into her house one night and killed him. The part where the feds had said that for her own protection she had to change her identity and move far away from everything and everyone she knew and loved.

      “They do the best they can,” she said finally.

      “Not enough. It’s not enough to buy you a house, give you a few bucks, get you a job and then leave you to manage. Not after what you’ve been through.”

      “There was some insurance.” Almost gone now, though, and she was clinging to the remains in case of an emergency. She’d already had a few of

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