Deep Down (I) Read Free Page A

Lockwood.”
    “Jess? Sheriff Webb in Deep Down—Drew.”
    Her heartbeat kicked up even more. No one has ever called her Jess but Drew. Despite the coolness of the room, she shoved the duvet and covers off. She began to sweat. She’d know that voice anywhere, deep, husky. It was a voice she’d known since her earliest memories, one that haunted her. Something must be wrong at home, very wrong.
    “Drew, what is it?”
    “You were hard to trace. Cassie gave me your Lexington apartment and your lab number, but then I found this Hong Kong hotel number with a note in your mother’s kitchen. Jess, I know you’re thousands of miles away, but can you come home right away? I’m sorry to inform you that your mother’s missing.”
    She gasped. “Missing? What happened? Missing how?”
    “As best I can tell she went out counting sang and just didn’t come back. Vern Tarver dropped by her house after dinner yesterday evening but couldn’t find her, though her truck was there. He checked all around, called people, but she wasn’t at Cassie’s—nowhere—so he called me. I rechecked her neighbors and friends but no leads. I’ve had a search party out since daybreak—they’re still out, some even with hounds. But she covers a wide area, and I don’t know her sang counting spots. Do you?”
    She raked her fingers through her hair. “Some. I—I’m not supposed to head home until tomorrow. Maybe she twisted her ankle or something like that. Please keep looking. She knows those woods like the back of her hand.”
    “Yeah, but some of those spots are secret and deep in. I’m really sorry to have to call you like this. Be assured we’ll keep looking, all of us. You—you did know I’m sheriff here now?”
    “She told me. Be a good one, Drew. Please, please find her safe and sound. I’ll make arrangements to fly back as soon as I can, and I’ll call you. Here’s my cell number if you need it.” She recited it to him, and he gave her his.
    “But you know it’s better to use the landlines around here,” he reminded her. “Even now, the mountains make a difference. Jess, take care and see you soon.”
    The line went dead. For one moment, she stared at the sleek receiver in her hand, seeing Drew that last night, furious, hurt—naked. She’d just been told the last thing in the world she could bear to hear. And from the last and only man she had ever really loved.

Chapter 2
    2
    “Y ou want me to call in more guys with their hounds tomorrow?” Sheriff Chuck Akers asked Drew over the two-way radio. His former boss and mentor, sheriff of the Lowe County seat in Highboro, was out in the woods with one of the search parties for Mariah Lockwood.
    Drew was running the rescue effort—he hoped to hell it wasn’t a recovery operation—out of the old house that was now his police station: an apartment where he lived upstairs; downstairs, a reception desk and phone center behind a counter, both run by Emmy Enloe; his office; a supply room and two holding cells. He had no deputy, so Emmy was his entire staff. Today he’d moved her onto the front porch to keep track of volunteer searchers. Usually as quiet as the grave, his office and the whole town were in chaos today.
    Drew had just come in from using a search warrant to go through Mariah’s unlocked front door, which he’d secured and put police tape across when he left. Two days ago, he hadn’t gone farther than the kitchen when he went in, looking for Jess’s contact information when the numbers her friend Cassie had given him turned out to be dead ends. Mariah’s place looked neat enough. He’d need Jess to tell him if anything was really disturbed or missing, other than two pairs of old shoes he’d taken to scent the hounds with.
    “Drew, you read me?” came Akers’s scratchy voice.
    “I read, Sheriff. You’re breaking up, but go ahead.”
    “I got me two more groups I can send out tomorrow.”
    “I’ll let you know first thing in the morning. We need