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Jake’s words hit Jenna like a physical blow, snapping her into full alertness. “A body,” he’d said, found on a family ranch. Of course, his call meant that it wasn’t a natural death.

“Any idea who it is, Jake?”

“I don’t have much information yet,” came the reply. “Melissa Stark’s on her way, and I’m headed there too. I’ll send the GPS location to your cellphone.”

“Understood.” Jenna clicked off the phone and swung into action. Both her deputy and the coroner would get there before her, so she had to get going fast. Rising from the log, she packed away Piper’s guide. With a final glance around the tranquil pond and the sandpipers still fishing around its far side, she turned and hurried back through the trees.

When she reached her cruiser, Jenna slipped her backpack onto the passenger seat, the bird guide’s spine visible among the contents. Jenna hesitated for a brief moment—a silent acknowledgment to Piper that her quest wasn’t abandoned, merely paused. There was a duality to her life that few could comprehend, the dive into the depths of past mysteries while navigating challenges of the present.

Taking a deep breath, Jenna dispelled the mists of contemplation and anchored herself in the now. As she navigated onto the main road, the dense greenery of Shelby National Forest receded in her rearview mirror. As the cruiser ate up the miles back to Trentville, Jenna’s mind transitioned from the sandpiper’s elusive trail to the foreboding that clung to the discovery awaiting her. Another chapter was beginning, one that would demand all her intuition, intellect, and resolve.

The road stretched ahead, a ribbon cutting through the wild beauty of the Missouri landscape. It was familiar territory, each curve and landmark a reminder of the countless times she had traversed this path in service of Genesius County. Each passing mile was a step back into the world where she was needed most, where her skills as sheriff could make a tangible difference.

Dust billowed behind Jenna’s cruiser as she drove into the Hartley family ranch. By the time the homestead came into view, the mid-July sun hung high and oppressive in the Missouri sky, turning the atmosphere over the crime scene into an oven of searing heat and simmering tension. She squinted against the bright glare, the badge on her chest reflecting a sharp lance of light as if to underscore her duty.

As she parked, the cloud of dust settled slowly, grudgingly, onto the parched grass, coating the world in a fine silt that clung to every surface. Jenna stepped out of the vehicle, the sudden onslaught of heat wrapping around her like an unwanted blanket. She put on her Stetson and made her way across a pasture that swarmed with activity, law enforcement and medical personnel. The distant lowing of cattle seemed like a mournful lament.

The pastoral serenity of the place was shattered by a clutter of police cruisers and trucks. An ambulance idled, its doors ajar, as if uncertain of its purpose in this grim tableau. Other vehicles—pickup trucks and sedans belonging to ranch hands and curious locals—formed a disordered flotilla around the nucleus of the scene.

As Jenna walked towards the epicenter of activity, the scent of the parched earth mixed with something less natural—the chemical tang of fuel, the rubbery smell of hot tires, the faint but unmistakable hint of death carried on the breeze.

A voice called her name. It was Jake moving to intercept her, his usually easy-going features tight with urgency. His presence was welcome, his sandy hair and broad shoulders a familiar comfort in a sea of uncertainty.

“It’s bad, Jenna,” Jake said, his voice kept low against the backdrop of murmured conversations and the distant hum of machinery. His gaze held hers, steady and unwavering. “Really bad. The victim... it’s Clyde Simmons. The Mayor’s brother.”

Jenna felt the ground shift beneath her feet, a tectonic slide in the political and personal landscape of their close-knit community. Clyde Simmons—a name synonymous with Trentville’s modest power structure, the mayor’s own flesh and blood.

“Show me where,” she said. Jake nodded, turning on his heel to lead the way, and Jenna followed, her mind racing ahead to the sight that awaited her. She adjusted the brim of her sheriff’s hat against the relentless glare of the midday sun. “Walk me through it, Jake,” she directed as they moved side by side through the pasture

“A ranch hand found him just after sunrise,” Jake recounted. “Clyde was slumped against the fence over there.” He pointed toward the distant corner of the field, where the barbed wire barrier met a grove of gnarled trees. “No immediate signs pointing to how he died, but his clothes... they were torn, and there was blood.”

“Any witnesses of any part of it?” Jenna asked.

“None so far. And there’s something else,” Jake hesitated, a frown creasing his forehead. “He’s been branded, Jenna. Right on his chest—a mark like I’ve never seen before.”

“Branded?” A brand suggested a message, a statement that would ripple through the community like a stone cast into a still pond.

As they neared the spot where Dr. Melissa Stark was crouched, the scent hit Jenna first, the metallic tang mingling with the biting stench of charred flesh.

Encased in her white hazmat suit, Melissa’s attire stood out against the chaotic backdrop of officers and technicians moving meticulously around the taped-off area. A white sheet obscured the view of Clyde Simmons’ body,

“Melissa,” Jenna said, nodding to the coroner with both respect and a shared understanding of the grim task at hand. But just as Jenna was ready to signal the coroner to peel back the sheet, a piercing cry shattered the heavy silence that blanketed the crime scene.

“It’s about damn time you showed up, Sheriff!” The voice, sharp and laden with vitriol, sliced through the dry air like a blade. Mayor Claire Simmons was barreling across the pasture, her usual veneer of polished control eroded by raw anguish. Her hair, normally coiffed to perfection, now hung in disordered strands that framed a face twisted by sorrow and anger.

The mayor’s approach was unrelenting, her manicured nails clenched into fists at her sides as if gearing for battle. The sight of such composed ferocity stirred within Jenna a turbulent mix of empathy and wariness. She knew all too well the pain of loss, the gnawing void left by an absent sibling.

“Where the hell have you been?” Mayor Simmons demanded, stopping mere inches from Jenna. “My brother is lying there dead, and you’re out gallivanting in the woods on your day off?”

Holding the mayor’s gaze, Jenna fought to maintain an even tone. “Mayor Simmons,” she began.

“This is your job, Sheriff Graves! To protect the people of this county! And where were you when my brother needed that protection?” The mayor’s voice cracked the air, each syllable resonated with accusation.

Jenna’s gaze swept over the gathered crowd, all eyes pinned to this public reckoning. She could read their thoughts in the tense lines of their bodies, in the way they averted their gazes or found sudden interest in the periphery of the crime scene. It was a sensation she had seen before: the hunger for drama mingling with discomfort at being witness to it.

In the oppressive heat, Jenna felt the weight of her badge, the emblem of her duty and burden. She sought the right words, the balm for both the mayor’s anguish and the rift it was causing. “Mayor Simmons, I can understand—”

“Silence!” The word was a whip-crack, and Mayor Simmons leaned in, her sharp fingernail now an inch from Jenna’s chest. “Don’t you dare tell me what I’m feeling!”

There was no escaping the harsh reality; in the mayor’s eyes, Jenna had failed before she even arrived.

“Mayor Simmons, I understand you’re grieving,” she tried again. “Your brother’s death will not go unanswered. We will find who is responsible.”

Jenna watched the emotions play across Mayor Claire Simmons’s face, a tumultuous storm of grief and anger that had found its outlet in her direction. It was only Jake’s intervention that seemed to calm the tempest.

“Claire,” he said, and Jenna could sense the delicate balance Jake struck between comforting a bereaved sister and reminding a demanding mayor of their shared goal – justice for Clyde. “This isn’t helping. Let us do our job. We’ll find who did this to Clyde.”

The mayor’s fiery gaze, which had been locked onto Jenna with the intensity of a laser, flickered over to Jake. Her lips parted as if to spit venom at him too, but something in his earnest expression, or perhaps the realization of her own powerlessness in the face of tragedy, caused her to falter. The rigid lines of her shoulders softened, her stance less confrontational, the fight visibly ebbing from her posture.

“Just... find who did this,” she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of loss, shorn of its earlier aggression. It was a plea now, raw and vulnerable. “Find them and make them pay.”

Turning on her heel, Claire Simmons marched back to her car with a briskness that suggested she was almost running away from the scene, from the reality of her brother’s death sprawled out behind her. The door of her luxury sedan slammed shut with an authority belying her defeated demeanor, its sound reverberating through the stillness that had settled over the pasture. Moments later, the engine roared to life, the screech of tires tearing up the earth as she drove off, leaving behind a cloud of dust that seemed to mirror the chaos she left in her wake.

The dust settled softly in the wake of Mayor Simmons’ departure, and Jenna felt the residue of the confrontation begin to dissipate. She could sense the collected gaze of officers, forensic analysts, and curious onlookers; their stares were like pinpricks on her skin, each questioning her next move.

Jenna turned back toward where Dr. Melissa Stark knelt, an incongruous figure of clinical detachment against the backdrop of rural chaos

“Give it to me straight,” Jenna said, her voice betraying none of her unease. She locked eyes with the coroner, seeking the truth in the only way she knew how—unflinchingly.

Melissa hesitated for a fraction of a second before complying with a nod. Her gloved hands reached for the sheet that shrouded the day’s grim discovery, pulling it back to reveal what lay beneath. Jenna steeled herself against the onslaught of senses, the visceral reaction to death that never quite left her, no matter how many scenes like this she had witnessed.

The body of Clyde Simmons lay contorted, as though every muscle had seized in his final moments. He was bound hand and foot. His face, now a pallid canvas of horror. Jenna’s eyes moved instinctively to catalog every detail—the positioning of his limbs, the discoloration of his skin, the earth beneath his fingernails. But it was the grotesque insignia emblazoned upon his chest that ensnared her focus—a brand, dark against his flesh, depicting a tree with branches splayed like the veins of a leaf.

Jenna crouched beside Melissa, her gaze tracing the outline of the brand. It wasn’t just any tree; it reminded her of the ancient oaks that dotted the landscape around Trentville, guardians of secrets and silent witnesses to the passage of time. This symbol, however, wasn’t a homage to their beauty—it was a harbinger of something sinister.

“Never seen anything like it,” Jenna murmured. A brand was a claim, a statement, a signature—all things that would be vital to unwrap the mystery of Clyde Simmons’ demise. Her intuition, so often a whisper in her mind, felt muted beside the tangible evidence before her.

“Cause of death?” Jenna’s question cut through the heavy silence that enveloped the crime scene.

Melissa Stark paused, her gloved hand hovering just above the gruesome brand. “It’s not straightforward,” she replied, her voice tinged with the frustration that came from uncertainty. “There’s a blow to the back of the head, but it doesn’t appear severe enough to be fatal.” Her fingers traced the edge of the wound, then pulled away to gesture towards the darkened flesh emblazoned with the stylized tree. “No other obvious wounds except...”

Jenna’s professional facade held firm, though inside her thoughts raced. The blow to the head could suggest an altercation, but if it wasn’t fatal, what had ended this man’s life?

She stood, dust clinging to the knees of her uniform as she contemplated the cruelty of such a mark. Jenna knew that every detail mattered, each a potential key in understanding not just how Clyde Simmons died, but why.

“Any theories?” she pressed further, locking eyes with Melissa.

Melissa hesitated, the lines around her eyes deepening as she contemplated her next words. “I do have a theory,” she finally said, her voice low, almost reluctant. She glanced up at Jenna, a silent apology in her eyes for the foreboding nature of her impending revelation. “But you’re not going to like hearing it.”