LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      The whirring of the tow truck’s motor sliced through the cold, eerie silence. A thin layer of ice coated the freshly fallen snow. Chief Brett Eggert chose his steps carefully as he walked along the curved country road. Head bent against the blinding snowstorm, he examined the quickly disappearing tire tracks that left the road at the curve and vanished into the black, murky water through an ominous opening in an otherwise frozen lake.

      Not a good sign.

      The red and white flashing lights of Silver Lake’s rescue vehicles—all three of them—swept across the dark form of the lone diver waist-deep in the frigid water. If the diver drifted away from the ring of artificial light, the black night would swallow him. A chill skittered down Brett’s spine. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his lined jacket, relieved and guilt-ridden that it wasn’t him outfitted in a wet suit performing the search and rescue.

      “Please let it be a rescue,” he muttered to himself.

      The rugged soles of Brett’s boots fought for purchase on the icy incline as he navigated his way to the edge of the lake. There, Officer Ed Hanson, forehead wrinkled in concentration, took copious notes on a thick stack of papers on a police-issue clipboard. Brett suspected the young officer had missed his calling as a novelist.

      “Chief.” Ed’s eyebrows shot up and the lines eased from his face. He pointed his pen toward the road. “Tracks indicate car missed the curve. Tough to tell more than that. This beast of a snowstorm is messing with my accident scene.”

      “Any victims?”

      “Car was empty.” Ed brushed the snow from his paperwork and made another note.

      Those three simple words pinged in Brett’s brain. “What happened to the driver?”

      “The dive team’s still searching.” Ed scrubbed his leather glove across his face, his nose red from the punishing lake winds. “The water’s moving quickly. Afraid the driver might have exited the vehicle and been swept away.” Ed’s confident tone slipped on the last word. Perhaps because he didn’t want to believe the driver had perished in the accident.

      The tow truck’s motor whined at a higher pitch. The bumper of a Nissan Cube broke through the surface. Sludgy brownish-green water sluiced down its sides and apprehension pricked the back of Brett’s neck.

      He knew that car. His stomach pitched as he ran his cold fingers over his lips.

       The driver was missing.

      Ed jabbed his pen in the direction of the vehicle. “Isn’t that...? I’ve seen that car around town.” He turned to face Brett. “You know who I’m talking about, right?”

      Fear burned Brett’s gut like a bowl of diner chili on a midshift break. “Yeah. I know that car.” He cleared his throat, hoping he could keep his voice steady. “I believe Nicole Braun drives a lime-green Nissan Cube.”

      Ed pushed his hat up on his forehead. “I’ve seen her around town a few times. She had a kid with her. Oh, man...” he added, as if he had just realized the missing driver was a mom who might have had a young passenger.

      “Any sign of a child on the scene?”

      “No, sir.”

      Brett had never heard about a child. Maybe Ed was mistaken. And if Brett hadn’t seen Nicole around town himself a few times over the past few months, he might have assumed Ed was mistaken that this was Nicole’s car, too. When Nicole had left town years ago as a teenager, Brett figured she’d never return to Silver Lake.

      Considering this tragic twist, Brett wished she had never returned.

      Ed angled his body away from Brett and the punishing winds to call in the license plate. Brett stared at the vehicle, wondering what Nicole had been up to since she left Silver Lake. Unexplainable regret wormed its way into his gut now that he’d probably never find out.

      Ed pulled the phone away from his ear. “The plates are registered to Nicole A. Braun.”

      Brett shook his head and the pain in his gut showed no sign of letting up. Sometimes he hated his job.

      Really hated his job.

      Brett scanned the snow for footprints, but realized he’d never be able to discern Nicole’s prints from those of the rescue personnel.

       If she had gotten out.

      “Any chance the driver made it to safety?” A sliver of hope splintered the shell around his heart. The shell that protected him from the darkness threatening to crowd in on him. A person couldn’t do this job without coping mechanisms.

      Part of him wondered why he cared. Nicole had been nothing but a source of misery to his family. Yet he took strange solace in knowing he hadn’t lost all compassion in the course of doing a tough job.

      Brett was empathetic, or so he tried to convince himself, but familiar anger and emptiness swirled inside him at the thought of Nicole. He scanned the murky water and the fine hairs at the back of his neck prickled to life.

      He’d never wished her dead.

      “She’d be soaking wet if she made it to shore. She couldn’t go far.” Ed squinted against the snowflakes.

      “She has a name. Nicole Braun.”

      The officer gave him a subtle nod. “If Miss Braun had made it to safety, she would have gone to the closest house.” Ed jerked his chin toward a well-maintained home overlooking the lake. “Mr. Hendricks, the neighbor who called us, is home. He would have been there to answer the door.

      “Mr. Hendricks was a little uncertain about what happened. He thought he saw two sets of headlights coming around the curve with one vehicle missing the curve.” Ed gestured with his thumb toward the water. “It ended up here. It’s been snowing pretty hard. The more I talked to the witness, the more he started to wonder if he had seen only one car. The headlights bounce off the falling snow. Either way, good thing he witnessed the accident. Miss Braun’s car could have gone unreported for...I don’t know how long.”

      “No one else reported an accident?” Not one car had passed since Brett had arrived.

      “No. Afraid not.”

      Brett nodded, staring at the mud-caked wheel wells of the Cube. The tow truck’s spotlight lit on a fish magnet on the back of the car. Nicole didn’t seem the type. Had she truly changed that much since her wild teenage years?

      He scratched his head. What did it matter now?

      If he believed in God and heaven and all that stuff—stuff his parents had shoved down his throat to the point he wanted to puke—it might have been a source of comfort. A sign she believed.

      Now, it only made him doubt everything he had thought he knew about his deceased brother’s girlfriend.

      Brett ran a hand along his jaw. He stared at the vehicle as the tow truck driver secured it to the back of the truck. “I’ll contact the family.”

      Ed cut him a sideways glance. “You sure you’re up for that? I understand—”

      Brett held up his hand. There were many benefits of living in a small town, but everyone knowing when

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