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take a New York winter any day over a Maine winter.
    "But we go," she muttered, "whenever and wherever the work takes us."
    That was another thing she was beginning to hate. The work. She refilled her cup and hoped like hell a second shot of caffeine would get her on the way to feeling remotely human. Three or four more cups between now and flight time and she might just attain that elusive goal.
    She trudged back to her bedroom. Pack, get dressed, then take the train to LaGuardia. A short flight to Portland, then a ninety-minute rental-car drive to Youngstown. Whoopee.
    No doubt a welcoming committee would be waiting for her.
    Something else she intensely disliked. Sarah downed the last of the coffee.
The people
. Wherever her work took her she could always count on being the passing freak show.
    The locals would stare at her. Whisper behind their hands. Make up weird shit to say about her in their insignificant little newspapers. Bring up crap from the past and call her unreliable. Then, when she was finished, they would really go for the jugular.
    A charlatan who just got lucky when she stumbled upon what no one else had found. A burned-out pessimist who got off on damaging the lives of others with her harsh, tell-all reports of truth in relation to so-called real life in small-town America.
    The truth she worked so hard to uncover was never what anyone wanted to see or hear, no matter that the mystery was ultimately solved in the process.
    Sarah's view on the subject of truth was simple. It was fact. No amount of steadfast determination, relentless hope, or desperate prayer changed it.
    It is what it is.
    Once she revealed the facts, her job was done. She left and then for months or even years the good citizens would blame her for their every misfortune.
    She stared at her beat-up old suitcase and shook her head. "Man, I love this job."

CHAPTER 3

    Youngstown, Maine
, 6:00 A.M.
The Overlook Inn

    From the broad expanse of windows in his parlor-turned-lobby Barton Harvey gazed out across the sleepy harbor below. Morning mist still shrouded the vessels docked there. Floating aimlessly in the chilly water like abandoned pirate ships, the schooners waited patiently for their protective covers to be removed. The scraping and painting and other maintenance work that had gone on the better part of the winter was finished now. The fishing boats were already venturing daily into the icy waters.
    The peaceful village that had been his home from the day he was born clung to the side of the gently ascending cliff, rooftops jutted stubbornly through the lingering fog. Chimneys puffed the smoke of survival.
    As stubborn as the houses their ancestors had built centuries ago, his friends and neighbors were ready to plunge into the work they loved—dredging the sea for its generous bounty and playing host to tourists from far and wide.
    In a couple of months or so his inn would be filled to capacity. For most folks life would move smoothly into the tourist season as it did every year.
    His jaw hardened. But not for Barton. Not this year.
    A young girl was dead. Another was missing.
    And
she
was coming.
    Barton turned away from the picturesque view. He had duties to see to. No matter how he worried. The facts would not change.
    Murder was murder… new or old. Didn't matter.
    Someone would have to pay.
    She
had a reputation for finding the truth, however crude and dispassionate her tactics.
    Barton glanced at the blazing fire he'd meticulously prepared to chase away the morning chill. Guests loved arriving in the lobby of his inn to a glorious fire roaring in the massive stone fireplace. One guest or an innful, he never liked to disappoint.
    He crossed the quiet room and stepped behind the two-century-old registration desk. His grandfather's grandfather had imported the intricately carved mahogany greeting-counter from Spain. The matching hutch that hung on the wall behind the counter and housed messages for guests and room keys had been