It started with a gunshot and a woman’s screech. Ted leapt from his position with one foot on the metal rung to land with a puff of sand on the road leading to the shack.

Earl yowled behind me and threw himself to the ground, hands over his head. “Incoming!”

With legs much shorter than Ted’s, I stuttered across the Autogate already several feet behind his racing shadow.

It was hard to know what happened next, amid all the shouting, gunshots, and screaming. Inside the shack we saw silhouettes skittering in the dim light. Another gunshot roared.

Even at our flat-out pace, we hadn’t made it halfway to the house, so I knew this happened in a matter of seconds.

The front door burst open and slammed against the house. Only a concrete step separated the inside from the dusty yard, so scraggly it didn’t even have two blades of grass. Whoever opened the door—and it might have been the skinny girlfriend—didn’t get so much as a foot outside before being jerked back inside by her arm.

Ted’s shout sounded like a thundering bull. “Sheriff. Freeze!”

Watery yellow light spilled through the front door onto the dirt. Furniture and glass crashed inside, more shrieks, both male and female. Earl was right; it did sound like killing cats.

Then it got really interesting.

Still at a dead run, gun pulled, my focus lasered on the house, and straining to see around Ted, I concentrated on the open front door. The run-down structure, maybe thirty feet from front door to back, was literally a shotgun shack. The skinny woman appeared in the doorway and ran away from us, throwing open the back door. This time, she succeeded in escaping without anyone after her. But in the scant light from a bare bulb in the house, I could see she had not a stitch on.

By this time, Ted and I had both hollered warnings. Ted was nearly to the front door, and I veered off to intercept the runner. But before I could get beyond the house, a flare lit up the night between the shack and the barn.

Flames burst, and a high-pitched scream sliced through the dark. The naked woman slid to a stop. A column of fire darted toward me with a banshee wail.

From behind me, Earl let out an animal howl.

More crashing and smashing from inside the house. Ted charged through the open front door, adding his warnings and yells to the jungle confusion of noise. A window shattered.

Earl passed me with a whoosh. “Newt!”

I ran after the naked woman, who had whirled around and sprinted toward the pasture away from the barn and shack.

The figure in flames, which I assumed was Newt, took off toward the barn, where a windmill filled a stock tank that straddled the corral fence line. With a splash, the fire evaporated, and I was surprised to see Earl dive into the water. The two brothers fell to splashing, slapping, and shouting, so I couldn’t tell if they were fighting or overcome with joy that Newt had survived.

I kept after the runaway. “Stop. Sheriff,” I called out to the woman, thinking she’d be relieved the law had arrived. I wasn’t a dashing man on a white stallion, but I was here to save her all the same.

Hearing my voice seemed to make her double down, and she ran even faster to a three-wire fence and slid through the top two wires.

She had the advantage of no fabric to catch in the barbs and slow her down. But being fairly petite myself and having a lifetime of slipping through fences on the run from cows, bulls, and a brother or two, I was right on her tail.

It didn’t take more than a few yards into the pasture before the disadvantage of being barefoot brought her down. She yelped and stumbled when she planted a foot on a cactus, and I had no trouble catching up to her.

I reached down to help her up, grabbing her around a wrist that felt like a willow twig. It crossed my mind she might fill up on meth instead of potatoes and gravy. Couldn’t say her behavior argued against her being high, and cooking meth might be one good reason for Garner wanting to live in the run-down shack in the first place. But that could be sorted out later.

I tried to ignore all the nakedness going on, the hip bones straining against white skin, ribs plain in her back, and collarbones so sharp she could slice steak.

She pulled away from me, sounding desperate. “Let me go. I didn’t do anything wrong. It was Billie’s idea.”

With no muscles hidden under her skin and bones, I had little trouble drawing her to her feet. Just to be on the safe side, I cuffed her hands behind her back, careful to avoid brushing against points and valleys of bare flesh. “Not sure what idea you’re talking about, but I’m guessing it wasn’t a good one.”

Broken Ties, A Kate Fox Mystery #5
Genre: Traditional
Release: February 2022
Purchase Link

When her niece goes missing, Sheriff Kate Fox dives into a lethal investigation that unearths long-buried secrets—and a secret society desperate to keep them hidden. . .

Sheriff Kate Fox is wrangling her personal and professional life into order while still searching for her niece, who slipped her halter and took off almost two years ago. But when her ex-husband’s wife, Roxy, drops their infant on Kate’s doorstep and disappears with no explanation, Kate’s world is turned upside down.

Her search for Roxy takes her to a remote cabin in the Wyoming mountains and Kate discovers a fresh trail for her niece. Her instinct tells her the two women’s disappearances are related and may be connected to a mysterious society whose members are playing a dangerous game.

As Kate races to save the women, she turns to friends and family to help—but the society’s reach stretches far, and its most dangerous members are closer than she thinks. . .

About the author
After discovering her husband of fifteen years had been having an affair. . .in a town of 300 people, and she was the third to the last to know, it took Shannon Baker a while to get her sense of humor back. When she did, the Kate Fox mystery series was born. Set in the Nebraska Sandhills, population .95 people/square mile, Kate keeps law and order amid a cast of a dozen or so.

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