This was just one of the reasons Deke loved the Hollow. For a place associated with hauntings and eerie goings-on, the people were amazing, good and kind.

  He and Tara queued up in the line for food. It was a necessary break. The search could go on the rest of the day...or for the next several days. Staying hydrated and energized for activity was important. Jacob was depending on them to find him and his folks.

  Once they were seated on the bleachers, Collin joined them, and he and Tara went over where they were with the search and incoming tips.

  “Patricia called me,” Collin said before taking a draw from his drink.

  Deke had met Collin’s wife. Nice lady. A little on the odd side.

  Tara said, “The kids okay?”

  “They are. She says wherever Jacob and his parents are, it’s dark.”

  Tara frowned. “Like in a cave?”

  Deke immediately thought of the cave on Falling Rock Trace.

  Collin shrugged. “Dunno. She just said it’s dark. They’re okay, but it’s dark and they’re scared.”

  “Thank her for the info,” Tara said. “If you hear anything else from her, let me know. Right now, I’ll take any tips I can get.”

  Collin nodded at Deke. “She’s the real thing.”

  Deke gave a nod. Like Tara, he didn’t care where the tips came from, he just wanted them to keep coming.

  From the moment Tara issued the alert, the Sheriff’s Department quickly sent out the information and readied a staff to take incoming calls and information, all of which would be forwarded to Tara and Collin in the field. More deputies had arrived to help. Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department uniforms were sprinkled throughout the crowd in the gym.

  Deke forced himself to take a bite of his burger. It tasted good, like everything else Delilah prepared, but it was difficult to enjoy the food. He ate for fuel.

  Tara picked at her fries. Nibbled at her burger. Finally, she set her paper plate aside and turned to Deke. “It’s time for the briefing. This won’t take long and then we’re back out there in the search.”

  He nodded, forced another bite.

  Tara and Collin moved to a higher level on the bleachers and called the crowd to attention. Taking turns as if they’d practiced for this moment, they explained the lack of leads, which very well could indicate Jacob was still close, adding another layer of urgency to the local search. If he was close, he might not be for long. Tara encouraged the volunteers to finish up with the break and grab a new assignment at the table by the door. Tom Collier, a retired local deputy and avid researcher of Dread Hollow history, had volunteered to map out grid areas for the searchers. With his wife at his side, they would be handing out assignments to groups of ten.

  It still amazed Deke how they’d pulled this together so quickly. He was immensely grateful.

  When the briefing was finished, he and Tara followed the crowd to the table at the exit. Collier had laid out the remaining areas of the Hollow into ten manageable sections. He used a larger map to indicate each section. Smaller maps would be given to the groups.

  The groups already working together split off, the group leaders coming forward one by one to accept assignments.

  The group Deke and Tara joined had Scarlett Peterson from the library as their leader. Tara and Collin might have to break away at any moment, so they didn’t take leader roles in any of the groups. Smart move in Deke’s opinion.

  With surprising speed, the groups filtered out of the gym.

  Deke walked alongside Tara, still marveling at how quickly all these steps had been set in motion.

  Tara paused at the driver’s-side door of the Wagoneer and took a call. “Hey, Dad, what’s going on?”

  Deke waited on the opposite side of the hood before getting in. If her father was calling, he’d either heard something or thought of something helpful.

  Deke was game for either.

  “We’ll be right there,” Tara assured. She tucked her phone away. “Dad says he has some information he wants to show us. He believes it’s relevant to what’s going on with Jacob and his family.”

  “We heading to Forrest Hills?”

  “Yeah. He says he has it all laid out for us.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Hope pushed into Deke’s chest. It was the first he’d experienced all morning.

  Tara navigated out of the parking lot and onto Main Street. “Let’s be prepared for the possibility this may be a theory the less-reliable part of his brain has created.”

  Deke understood. Her father was fine—or so it seemed—but sometimes he went off on a tangent that made no sense whatsoever.

  “There’s a lot of memories about the Hollow stored in that man’s head,” Deke said. “If we’re lucky, he’s tapped into something no one else has thought of or has reason to know.”

  From the stories Tara had told Deke, Tarrence Norwood had handled people and situations a little differently than most sheriffs. He used his own judgement at times rather than following the letter of the law. Deke could see him doing that. He was a good man, a fair man and sometimes the law left no room for mercy.

  “He’s very fond of you,” she said as she made the turn onto Dread Hollow Road that would take them to Forrest Hills.

  She didn’t look at him when she made the statement.

  Was she afraid of what he’d see in her eyes? Though she fought the idea, he was well aware she still wanted him on some level. He intended to fuel that want every chance he got.

  “I’m fond of him.” Deke grinned to himself. Another first for the day. “I’m fond of you too.” He thought of their conversation late last night. “I apologize for going too far with my call. I guess I got a little excited.”

  A little? Hell, he’d lost all control. He wouldn’t tell her what he’d had to do when that call ended. It was either take matters in his own hands or snap.

  She cleared her throat. “Apology accepted.”

  He watched her. Studied the way she moistened her lips and blinked a couple of times as if recalling something she didn’t really want to remember.

  “You didn’t get excited?”

  She turned into the parking area of Forrest Hills. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You were breathing pretty fast. Getting a little heated maybe.”

  She shoved into Park and glared at him, her cheeks red with something like indignation. “That was frustration you heard. And the only heat I felt was anger at your inappropriate remarks.”

  Now she was mad.

  “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “I’m glad one of us was having fun.”

  She was out and marching toward the entrance before he could remove his seat belt. There he went again, shoving his whole foot into his mouth. In this case, he was mostly latching onto a distraction to prevent losing his mind.

  He hustled to catch up with her. “You’re right. I was being a jerk.”

  “You were. That call was way out of line.”

  “I meant just now,” he said. “I don’t regret the call, just the pushing boundaries part.”

  She paused at the door, stared up at him. “Just remember, payback can be a bitch.”

  She opened the door and stormed inside.

  Stunned, he watched. The door closed in front of him, snapping him out of his trance. He rushed after her.

  When they’d signed in at the desk and walked on, he asked, for her ears only, “What does that mean?”

  She kept moving, making the turns in the corridor that would lead to her father’s apartment. “You’ll see.”

  He wasn’t sure whether to be excited or worried.

  She knocked on the door and it opened. Her dad waved them inside. “Wait until you see what I’ve figured out.”

  He had cleared his model-assembling tools from the table and spread pages on it. His laptop sat in the middle, the screen open to an online article.

  “What’s all this?” Tara asked.

  “You told me on the phone about the house on Falling Rock Trace. The one you think is owned by Melanie Grant. You think the remains you discovered are hers.”

  Deke surveyed the pages as they spoke. Most were about Treat Foster.

  “We haven’t confirmed it yet,” Tara reminded him, “but yes, that’s where I’m leaning.”

  “You’re probably right. Grant would be about eighty by now. Anyway, after you called, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and that house.”

  Tara shared a glance with Deke, then asked her father, “Are you feeling okay, Dad?”

  He waved her off. “I’m fine. Fine. Better than fine. Listen to me.”

  “Okay,” Tara agreed.

  “Long time ago, when I was just a deputy, I don’t recall the exact year, but before I became sheriff...”

  Deke watched him closely, noted the struggle with getting his words out that he’d never noticed before. Maybe it was only because the man was agitated, excited, whatever. But the idea of him struggling sent an ache through Deke.

  “When I was just a kid,” Tara offered.

  He nodded. “You’d just had that princess birthday party.”

  There it was, the year. The princess birthday party had been when Tara was two. Deke smiled. “She was a cute kid.”

  Her father’s face softened. He relaxed. “She was.” He blinked. “Anyway, I got a call from dispatch to go out to Falling Rock Trace. The house turned out to be the one where the recluse lived. That’s what folks around here called her.” He shrugged. “Some were unkind about her. She was a little strange. She rarely came into town, but when she did, she was often dressed in her housecoat and barefoot. Sometimes she’d wear nothing but a slip—the kind your mother wore under her dresses.”

  “She may have had a mental illness,” Tara suggested.

  Her father nodded. “She did. At the time, there were rumors she’d been in Moccasin Bend, but she wasn’t listed as having been a patient. Maybe she had an alias. I can’t say about that.”

  He reached for the laptop, pointed to the screen. “If you do a search on her name, nothing about her comes up. There are lots of Melanie Grants but not that Melanie Grant. I remember she didn’t have a record. No family. It was like she was completely alone in this world.”

  At every pause, Tara waited patiently. Deke had to hold himself back from saying and...?

  “So I went to her house that night. She’d called in about an intruder. When I arrived on the scene, there was no one there except her. She was wearing a dirty nightgown and her hair was a mess, like she hadn’t combed it in weeks. She was very upset. Crying. I didn’t smell any alcohol on her breath. I concluded that she was having an episode. I calmed her down and ushered her back into the house.” He shook his head. “It was piled high with stuff. Like one of those people...hoarders. It was truly sad.”

  “You didn’t find any signs of anyone having been there?” Tara asked.

  He shook his head. “I checked every window, inside and out. I walked all around the yard, checked the tree line. Couldn’t find a thing. Finally, she seemed satisfied that no one was about. She wanted tea.” He laughed, a sad sound. “Of all things, the woman wanted me to make her tea. I rummaged through her cabinets and found an old box of the peppermint stuff. Little bags. Finding a clean cup was the hard part. Anyway, I made her tea—without the requested honey because she didn’t have any. While she drank it, she told me she hadn’t always been like that. I asked what she meant and she gestured to her dirty gown and the mess around her house.”

  He fell silent again. Deke and Tara shared a glance as they waited.

  “She said her father abused her horribly. Her mother died when she was a kid and her father was a demon, for sure. She ran away from home when she was seventeen. Then every man she thought might love her only used her and tossed her away. By the time she was twenty, she found herself pregnant with no place to go. She tried her best to take care of the child, a girl named Gillian, but by the time the little girl was in school, it was no longer possible to hide her lack of ability, financially and otherwise, to care for the child. Social Services took her and she never saw the child again.”

  Deke knew that kind of story all too well and he hated it. “I’m sure she appreciated you listening to her story.”

  Mr. Norwood nodded. “She said she’d never told anyone before. From there, her life only got worse. It wasn’t until she was forty and nearly starved to death that she found her brother. He’d run away the same time she did.”

  Beside Deke, Tara’s breath caught. “Treat Foster.”

  Her father nodded. “He bought her that house on Falling Rock Trace. Course, I didn’t have a clue who he was. She just called him T, like the letter, anyway. But now I know.”

  “How’d you figure it out?” Deke asked.

  He lifted his hand and tapped a finger next to his eye. “The sunglasses.”

  Deke had no clue what he meant.

  “When her brother ran away, he changed his name. Started a whole new life.”

  “His last name was originally Grant,” Tara said knowingly. “He changed it to Foster. Foster Grant, the sunglasses you said were so popular when you were a kid.”

  Her father nodded. “The one and only. Anyway, when I asked how to contact him, she closed up like a turtle in its shell. I’m guessing he didn’t want his past associated with his present. He was on his way up in the banking world.”

  “Thank you so much, Dad,” Tara offered. “This helps tremendously. Jeff Callaway, Jacob’s father, did work at the Grant home. If Treat Foster left some of the money he took with his sister, that would explain how Callaway came to have it.”

  “That’s not the end of the story,” her father said, his eyes gleaming.

  “There’s more?” Tara prompted.

  He nodded. “She told me that night all those years ago that her brother helped her to find her daughter. Grant just wanted to make sure she was okay. And she was. The girl was living in Nashville at the time. Gillian Randall, her foster family had adopted her. She had gone to college and become an accountant. Grant’s eyes just lit up when she talked about her, even though her daughter had asked her not to come back. Grant didn’t hold that against her. She understood. She was just so thankful that her daughter had married a well-to-do young man by the name of James Hanson. He worked for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations.”

  “Wait.” Tara looked taken aback. “Hanson? James Hanson?”

  “You got it. I just looked up James and Gillian Hanson. They have one child, a boy—well, a man now. He’s an FBI agent assigned to the Chattanooga office.”

  Deke rallied from the shock. “The FBI guy! He has to know. He’s at her house now.” It wasn’t likely the man was involved in the abductions. “He has to know the remains in that house probably belong to his biological grandmother.”

  “And,” Tara said, her tone just shy of outrage, “he must be aware that Treat Foster is his biological uncle.”

  “Why the hell would he keep this from you when the Foster case connects to your missing persons case?” Deke asked.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t want to reveal his connection to Foster.” She hugged her dad. “Thanks, this is incredibly helpful. I gotta go.”

  Deke gave her dad a nod and followed Tara into the corridor. “Are you planning to confront Hanson?”

  “Damn straight, I am. He’s guilty of a number of crimes already, obstruction in an ongoing investigation for one.” She pushed through the exit doors and into the sun. “We have a nine-year-old boy missing. What the hell is Hanson thinking?”

  Deke figured they were about to find out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Falling Rock Trace, 3:00 p.m.

  Tara felt furious. She took a curve faster than she’d intended. Her grip tightened on the wheel.

  “You might want to slow down just a little,” Deke pointed out.

  She shot him a glare.

  A skidding stop in front of the Grant house startled even her. When the rocking stopped, Deke dropped his hands from the dash, where he’d braced himself.

  “We made it.” He wrenched his door open, muttered under his breath, “Miraculously.”

  Tara ignored his jab and climbed out. She stalked toward the house, ignoring the new crime-scene tape and the white-clad techs coming in and out.

  “May I help you, ma’am?”

  She stopped just short of barreling into a well-polished suit—another fed no doubt.

  “Deputy Sheriff Tara Norwood. I’m looking for Agent Hanson,” she managed to demand. Her throat was tight with fury.

  “I’m afraid he’s not here, ma’am.”

  Beyond the agent, she could see just far enough inside to recognize they were taking the house apart, one wall at a time, down to the studs.

  “Find anything yet?” she asked. She was aware Deke had joined her. He hovered right behind her, probably glaring at the guy.

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.” The fed glanced at Deke.

  “Where is Hanson?” she demanded. That she didn’t shout was a sheer miracle.

  “He needed some privacy for holding a teleconference. One of the other deputies went with him to let him into the substation.”

  A new blast of fury roared through her. “Thank you.”

  Deke had the good sense to step away just in time for her to stamp back to her vehicle. He pulled up the rear, climbing in as she started the engine.

  “Maybe I should drive,” he offered.

  She didn’t respond, just cut him a look that dared him to say it again.

  When you knew a man the way she knew Deke Shepherd, you had earned the privilege not to mince words.

  Drawing in a couple of calming breaths, she drove more judiciously to the substation. When she confronted Hanson, she needed to be calm and rational. It wouldn’t be easy considering she had three missing persons, one being a child. She didn’t have time for games.