Page 34 of Tracing Her Stolen Identity (Secure Watch #2)

Chapter One

It was like stepping into hell.

The memories immediately slammed into Deputy Eden Gallagher. The stench of the mold and decay in the barn. The dank chill crawling over her skin. The autumn wind moaning through the cracks in what was left of the walls.

And the still-dark stain on the cracked concrete floor.

Once, it’d been more than a stain.

It’d been fresh blood, and there had been a body, too.

“Mellie,” she muttered, not able to suppress saying the name of the woman who’d been her mother in every single way that mattered.

Five months wasn’t nearly long enough for the grief to have passed. Or for the memories of seeing Mellie’s body not to cause a jolt inside her.

“You don’t have to be here,” her fellow deputy, Rory McClennan, insisted. “I can call in someone else.”

Except he was more than her fellow deputy. A whole lot more. Rory was technically her boss at Renegade Canyon PD since he was the acting sheriff while Sheriff Grace Granger was on maternity leave.

Rory was also the father of her nine-month-old son, Tyler.

So, yes, a whole lot more.

Even though Rory and she weren’t a couple any longer, and they hadn’t been since before Tyler had been born, he wouldn’t have any trouble realizing that she was far from okay. He was well aware this place held the hellish memories that were causing her breath to go thin and her heartbeat to race.

“It’s my shift,” she said, barely managing to get out the words. “I can do my job.”

She hoped.

For Rory to call in someone else, it would mean a deputy would end up coming in on their night off.

That was because only Rory, Bennie Whitt and she worked the swing shift, 4:00 p.m. to midnight, and Bennie was manning the office.

She and Rory had opted for the swing shift so they could spend a good portion of the day with their son, and while those hours were generally quiet in their hometown, that hadn’t been the case tonight.

A call had come in at nine thirty, forty minutes earlier, through Dispatch. A frantic ranch owner, Fran Cagel, had said her golden retriever had come home with blood on its feet and fur. According to Fran, the dog often came to the old barn since it was only a couple of acres away from her ranch.

Of course, it was entirely possible that the retriever had gone elsewhere since he’d been off-leash and roaming, as Fran had said was his routine.

But after Rory and Eden had used a simple test to confirm it was indeed blood on the dog, they’d arranged for the sample to be picked up by the county lab to see if it was human.

They had also contacted the town hospital in case someone injured showed up.

So far, nothing from the hospital, and while waiting for the lab results, they’d come here.

To hell.

To the place where Mellie had died. Or rather, where her body had been dumped.

Since they didn’t know who’d killed her, or why, that only added to the nightmarish memories. It was bad enough when someone was murdered, but it was worse when there was no justice.

Especially when Eden was in the business of getting justice.

That failure had given her plenty of sleepless nights.

“Let’s just get this done,” Eden insisted, a reminder to herself to get her focus back on the job.

This should be a quick in-and-out, where they could determine if the blood had indeed come from here. If it hadn’t, then they could search the surrounding area. But since it was already dark and the barn was out in the sticks, it’d be morning before a search team could start.

Stepping over the spot where Mellie had been found, she and Rory fanned their flashlights around the barn.

It had probably once been impressive, with its massive arched top window above the entrance and the twelve stalls, six on each side.

The glass was now broken, the remaining bits hanging on to the frame like loose, jagged teeth.

And the rest of the place, well, there was nothing impressive about it.

“This should have been torn down years ago,” Rory muttered.

Eden made a sound of agreement. If it had been, then Mellie wouldn’t have been dumped here. Of course, that wouldn’t have stopped her from dying, but at least she wouldn’t have ended up here in this rot.

“I’ll make another request,” Eden assured him. Though her previous request had generated no results.

Seventy or so years ago, when the barn had first been built, the owner had stalled prize palominos here.

After the owner had passed away, the land—and therefore, the barn and the nearby house—had gone to a distant relative, who apparently had no desire to sell or maintain the property.

The house had had been struck by lightning and caught on fire when Eden had been thirteen, twenty years ago, and because of the sinister look to the place, some of the local teenagers had dubbed it the Devil’s Hideout.

After Mellie’s body had been discovered, Eden had requested that the barn be destroyed since it could be a hazard, but the owner’s lawyers had come back with the argument that it was on private land with clearly posted No Trespassing signs.

Added to that, it was nearly a mile from a main road, and the only way for someone to reach it was via a rugged ranch trail.

All of that was true, and she had firsthand knowledge of the trail’s ruggedness since that’s how she and Rory had gotten here. But Eden wished there wasn’t such a hellish visual reminder of her foster mother’s murder.

Trying to shove aside that thought, Eden walked several feet into the barn, and with Rory right by her side, they paused to listen for anyone or any sounds that shouldn’t be there.

Nothing.

So they shifted, Rory aiming his flashlight to the left while she fanned hers to the right. The flashlights were solid, but they weren’t creating nearly enough illumination for her to see what was in the shadows.

And there were plenty of shadows.

“I don’t see any blood or dog tracks on the floor,” Rory whispered.

Neither did she, but the wind wasn’t cooperating with their search.

Along with creating those eerie whistling sounds, it was blowing around the dead leaves, dirt and other debris on the floor.

There were fast-food bags, empty beer cans and even the remnants of what appeared to be a campfire in a banged-up metal bucket.

Judging from the talk she’d heard, the barn had become a ghoulish thrill for some teens. It was yet another reason to have it torn down.

Rory tipped his head toward the stalls. “We’ll have to check them all.”

Yes, they would, and there suddenly seemed like more than a dozen of them.

Some still had stall doors. Others were just collapsed heaps of old wood.

But each space needed to be searched, especially since there were enough large holes in the exterior walls, and the retriever could have gone in and out through one of those.

The two of them moved together, in a rhythm that came surprisingly easy considering they had only been working together for five months.

Before that, she’d been a detective in SVU at San Antonio PD, where the pace was a whole lot different than here in her hometown.

Still, after Mellie’s death, Eden had felt the need to come home.

The need to be part of the police force that was investigating her murder.

Of course, Rory had played into that decision, too.

They weren’t a couple, not any longer, but he was Tyler’s father, and despite her turbulent past with Rory and his powerful, corrupt father, Eden hadn’t wanted to deny her son a chance to be with his dad.

Something that she hadn’t had growing up.

That, and her birth mother’s untimely death, had been the reason Eden had ended up in foster care on the Horseshoe Ranch in Renegade Canyon.

They kept moving. Kept looking. Kept listening. Still no sign of blood or a body. Eden froze, though, when she saw a heap in the corner of one of the stalls.

She didn’t say anything, but Rory must have sensed something was wrong because he shifted in that direction, automatically aiming his flashlight at the pile…of something. Whatever it was, it’d been covered with what appeared to be a ratty sleeping bag.

Glancing around, they went closer, and using the toe of his boot, Rory moved the sleeping bag aside. The tightness in her chest eased up when she saw it was a couple of pillows. Apparently, someone had been camping out. Maybe a teen—

Eden gasped when her phone vibrated in her pocket. That reaction was proof of just how on edge her nerves were. She yanked out her cell and breathed a whole lot easier when she saw it was a picture from the live-in nanny, Leslie Darrington.

She turned her phone so that Rory could see the sweet photo of Tyler asleep in his crib.

Night, night, Mommy and Daddy , Leslie had texted.

Despite her surroundings, Eden smiled and touched her fingers to the image of that precious little face. She and Rory might be at odds with each other, but there was no doubt they both loved their little boy.

Rory smiled, too, and for just a second, their gazes met. And for that second, the old heat was there.

No. No. No.

When was that blasted attraction finally going to cool down?

Eden had to consider the answer to that was never.

After all, Rory and she had been on and off since high school, and while their on time had been amazing, his father, Ike, had always found a way to tear them apart, along with making Mellie’s life a living hell.

It was hard to try being happy with Rory when Mellie had been suffering.

Eden took one last look at the photo and put her phone away. Just then, Rory’s phone dinged with a text. He looked at the screen and definitely didn’t have the same smiling reaction that he’d had seeing Tyler’s photo.

“It’s from the county lab,” he explained. “The blood on the dog is human.”

Eden groaned and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

That was not what she’d wanted to hear, even though the presence of blood didn’t mean someone had been killed.

She wanted to cling to the hope that someone, maybe the person who’d been camping out in that sleeping bag, had injured himself and left a blood trail for the dog to trample through.

“They’ll run it through the database to see if they get a hit,” Rory added a moment later.

Good. But Eden knew the limits of the database.

The majority of people weren’t even in it unless they’d committed a crime or worked in a job, like as a cop, that required a sample of their DNA to be on file.

Still, it was possible they’d be able to get a match so they’d know whom they were looking for.

He slipped his phone back in his pocket, and they resumed the search. Eden got another jolt when a rat skittered across the floor right in front of them. She was silently cursing it when she heard something. A moan, maybe? Or maybe just the wind.

Rory must have heard it, too, because he stopped, and they both turned in the direction of where the sound had come from.

The very last stall.

They moved toward it, quickening their pace but still making cursory glances inside the stalls they passed along the way.

The sound came again. Definitely not the wind, and it caused them to move even faster. When they reached the stall, they aimed their flashlights inside.

At first, Eden didn’t see anything. Not until she directed the light over the far right corner.

Then, she spotted her.

A woman.

Oh, mercy. And she was covered with blood.

“I’ll call for an ambulance,” Rory said, snatching out his phone.

Eden hurried to the woman, and she stooped down so she could check for a pulse. It was weak, but she was alive. She had also obviously lost a lot of blood. It wasn’t just on her face and clothes, but had pooled around her.

The woman lifted her eyelids, barely, moaned again and shivered. “Help me,” she murmured, her voice barely audible.

“We will,” Eden assured her. “Who are you?” she asked.

No response, and her eyelids drifted back down.

Eden studied her, taking in the long blond hair, what she could see of it, anyway. The torn black skirt, red top and heels. The clothing looked expensive.

And those stab wounds looked lethal.

Since adding pressure to the wounds could do more harm than good and potentially cause internal injuries, Eden focused on what little she could do. She yanked off her jacket and draped it over the woman to stave off what had to be a chill from the shock of the blood loss.

Behind her, she heard Rory finishing that 911 call for the ambulance, while she checked for any obstructions in the woman’s airway. There weren’t any. And the blood on her face and hair appeared to have come from a cut on the scalp. Maybe a sign of some kind of blunt-force trauma.

“An ambulance is on the way,” Rory informed her, and he came into the stall, kneeling down beside the woman.

“Who did this to you?” Eden asked her, hoping this time she would get an answer.

But the woman made no sound.

However, Rory did. He groaned, causing Eden to snap back toward him.

“Hell,” Rory muttered. “I know her.”

There was something in his voice, in his stark expression, that had Eden dreading what he would say next.

“She’s Brenda Watford,” he added.

Eden repeated the name a couple of times, but she had to shake her head. It didn’t ring any bells. “How do you know her?”

He swallowed hard. “She’s, uh, my father’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend,” Rory amended. “And the last time I saw Brenda, Ike was threatening to kill her.”

Copyright ? 2025 by Delores Fossen