LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      Someone was watching her.

      The hairs on her neck prickled a warning. Dana Lang glanced around the coffee shop but saw no one looking her way or appearing fixated on her. Still, her instincts were never wrong. As a television investigative journalist, she was used to people recognizing her, but this felt different. This felt like daggers in her back.

      She tried to shake off the feeling and tell herself she was being silly. No one in this sleepy little town of West Bend, Missouri, knew her. She glanced at the television mounted to the wall while she waited for her coffee to be ready. The news channels were still reporting about the embassy attack six weeks earlier and the heroic eight-man team of CIA-contracted security operatives who’d rescued eighteen Americans trapped inside. Five people had died in all, including two of the operatives involved in the rescue.

      She accepted her drink as her own interview with one of the contractors replayed in her mind. She’d stumbled upon a gold mine when Michael “Rizzo” Ricardo had contacted her wanting to tell his story about the night of the attack and how the US government had ordered the operatives to stand down. They’d defied orders instead and become national heroes in the process. He’d felt betrayed by his government’s response to the attack and wanted to let the world know it. Until his interview, only the names of the two operatives who had died—Tommy Woods and Mike Piven—had been released.

      Dana ignored the reminder that she needed to be back in Chicago—or anywhere but West Bend—digging in to Rizzo’s life and trying to uncover the identities of his teammates to corroborate his story. So far, Rizzo was the only one to come forward to tell the tale of being abandoned by their country during the attack.

      But she resisted the urge to pack up and leave. Every reporter in the nation was vying for that story, and while uncovering the names of the other operatives would be a monumental boost to her career, the case she was focusing on now would impact her life so much more. Five days ago, the night before her interview with Rizzo, she’d discovered a box in her late mother’s belongings that had shattered her world and sent her on this quest to West Bend to uncover the truth about her lineage.

      The box she’d found had contained adoption papers. Dana had never even known she’d been adopted. But the surprises hadn’t ended there. She’d also discovered a newspaper article about the murders of Rene Renfield and her infant daughter, Alicia, along with a photograph that looked suspiciously like one of Dana’s own baby photos. There was also a letter from the preacher who’d arranged her adoption that explained to her parents how she’d been left at the church, which had been considered a safe haven, by someone he trusted who’d insisted the child was in danger and needed to be believed dead. And there was a short note from the person who’d abandoned her. She didn’t know if her parents had ever discovered anything solid in their questioning, if they’d taken the preacher’s word and decided not to rock the boat, or if her father’s death in a car wreck when Dana was eleven had ended their search for answers. Regardless, now that she knew, she was determined to finish their investigation and uncover the truth. Was she Alicia Renfield? And, if she was, who murdered her birth mother and left her for dead?

      Dana exited the coffee shop and headed back to her hotel. As she walked, she noticed the stares and curious glances of the townspeople. She’d heard small towns were notorious for their gossip grapevines, but she’d only arrived yesterday. Did these people know she was here to investigate a thirty-year-old murder, or had they recognized her from her job as a TV cold case reporter on Newswatch? For all she knew, they could be staring because she was an unfamiliar face in a town where everybody knew everybody else.

      But these stares didn’t feel sinister, not like the one she’d felt in the coffee shop. Her friends had tried to warn her that she wouldn’t be accepted into a small town as a stranger poking her nose into the town’s business, but it was her business, too. This terrible crime had left West Bend in a state of shock, but it may have also forever changed her path. She’d try to confirm her suspicions, and if they were true, find out who killed her mother and why.

      As she walked, she checked off her itinerary in her head. She’d already been to the local library and made friends with Lila, the librarian, who’d told her all their newspaper archives from thirty years earlier were still on microfiche. Their digital records only went back twenty years. Tomorrow, she would make a day of checking out the old newspaper articles on the murder. This evening, she was heading to the sheriff’s office to have a closer look at the police files for the case. The records clerk, a lovely woman named Beverly Shorter, had been pleasant enough on the phone and offered to help her in any way possible, but when Dana had mentioned the Renfield murders, she’d insisted the records were not available for public access since it was still an open case. Dana was confident she could change Beverly’s mind. She’d built a successful career by breaking news stories and you didn’t do that by accepting no for an answer.

      She stopped suddenly and turned,

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