Samuel Randall Cassidy pulled his dusty blue Audi into the rest stop parking lot forty miles from Honey Creek, Texas. It was time to clean up and step into the parallel life he might have lived if he’d turned down another road after college.
He laughed softly to himself and wondered if the Devil was joining him in the joke of thinking Sam had finally gone mad. Five years of seminary school, then ten years in the army flying, and another five as a firefighter in the Rocky Mountains. He’d been called a student, a captain, and a smoke jumper, but now he was stepping into a new identity . . . a preacher.
He’d spent almost half his life shifting, just being one of many. Moving among the crowds, never standing out, and now he was headed toward a little town where everyone would be inspecting his every word and action.
At thirty-eight, he knew it was impossible to rewind his life and go back to a simpler time. If he could truly look into his childhood, he might discover that it wasn’t as peaceful as he remembered. But he had to try. His life, his sanity depended on it. He’d been invisible so long he’d lost himself. It was time to go back to his roots and see what might have been.
He’d passed through this part of Texas several times as a kid. His father had even preached a revival a few times in the small town he was headed for.
As he walked across the deserted parking lot, a gray cloud floated over the pale sunrise. Humidity peppered with dust, he thought. The kind of dawn no one would want as the backdrop for a selfie. Not that he had anyone to send a picture to. He used his phone mostly for directions and weather reports.
Today, though, there were no directions helping him travel down the path he hadn’t taken that fall after school.
Sam had been born in Texas, spent most of his youth here moving from school to school, following his dad’s work. But Texas wasn’t home.
Nowhere had ever been. Even the small farm his parents went to between jobs wasn’t home. It was just a little house his mother had inherited because no other relative wanted it. When Sam inherited the place, he’d sold it to fund his last year of school and a trip to Europe after graduation.
Sam lifted his old suitcase shoulder high to stretch his muscles, then walked into the public restroom designed to look like one in a turn-of-the-century train station—lean, steel and porcelain, empty. The place was about as welcoming as disinfectant. A line of stalls. A line of sinks. A line of tall windows.
He pulled off his T-shirt and hung it on a stall door, then opened his shaving kit and began removing his short beard.
After that, he changed into a funeral black suit that matched his hair, pulling the price tags off as he went.
He felt as if he were traveling backward through the layers of his life. He couldn’t tell whether he was running toward or away from his destiny.
Fate had chosen his path, and he’d been fool enough to follow. A letter from a small church in a place called Honey Creek traveled though half a dozen former addresses to reach him. Sam knew before he opened the tattered letter that the mail was meant for his father. Samuel Cassidy, Sr., had been dead more than a dozen years, but the churches he’d preached in still wrote asking him to return to fill in for a sick pastor or stay long enough for them to find another shepherd.
For once Sam didn’t toss out the letter meant for his father. Instead, he decided to take the two-week calling. He might not have been in a church since his folks died, but he grew up on Sunday school crackers and funeral food leftovers.
One thing was certain. This assignment would pull him back to the past and maybe help him remember a period when the world was calm. This time he wouldn’t be flying for the army or fighting forest fires. This time, he’d be reliving the life of a man he’d never understood.
Just out of high school, he’d boarded a plane to head for seminary with his parents waving proudly. He’d felt the whisper of a calling to preach, to be a man of the cloth like his father and grandfather, or maybe become a missionary in a land he’d never heard about. Sam longed to see the world and this might be his ticket.
Five years later, three months after he graduated, he’d stepped on another plane after swearing in at the army recruiting office in Dallas. No one stood waving or wishing him well that time. But the calling to serve his country had been loud after the bombing of the London Tube he’d witnessed that summer.
After a few tours in the army, he left his uniform behind and drifted. No callings spoke to him. He’d crossed the country, stopping now and then to rest. By the time he’d finally stopped wandering, his hair was over his collar and his clothes rags. Sam decided to be a chameleon moving with the seasons. With no family, no roots, he just blew with the wind.
Until he met April Raine in San Diego. Sunshine wearing a ponytail and honey brown eyes that saw him completely, she became his home, his heart. He told everyone that he loved her from the moment they met.
He took a job as a firefighter their first summer when wild fires seemed rampant in California. Before long he was boarding planes to fly everywhere he was needed. He loved the rush of excitement when he parachuted behind the fire line.
Sam was a born leader, and his skills as a pilot made him even more valuable to the team.
April had said what he did was a gift. The world needed men like him.
He flew on a moment’s notice fighting wherever he was needed, but it seemed every time Sam left, he missed her more. When the mission was over, he’d go wherever she was. April had been a travel writer whose home was on wheels. When he wasn’t working, he was seeing the world through her eyes.
Buttoning his clerical collar, Sam gazed into the tin mirror wondering what had happened to the man who used to laugh. The man who took gulps of life. The Sam who camped out with April beneath the stars. The wild man who’d fallen in love with a free spirit and howled at the moon just to make her laugh.
In his reflection now, he saw his father, a traveling preacher who never had his own church. But Sam saw no peace in his own dark eyes.
“Hi, Pop.” Sam raised one side of his smile like his dad always did. “I’m finally going to use that divinity degree you wanted me to have.”
Silence. The hint of a smile vanished.
Sam swore under his breath and continued his transformation. He combed his black hair back, letting the widow’s peak show. April would have hated it this way. His California girl would tell him he looked “New York slick.” Then she’d tease him and say preachers’ sons never learn to look sexy.
He stood perfectly still for a moment as if waiting for her to dig her fingers into his hair and mess it up. “Let it curl,” she’d say, laughing.
April had loved him and she never seemed to need more than what he gave. When they were together, the world was theirs. Tomorrow didn’t matter as long as they had today.
But she hadn’t been waiting for him the last time he’d come home from an assignment. When he finally found her RV parked at a police lot, she’d been dead two weeks and no one had told him.
“She wasn’t your wife,” one clerk of the station said. “You’d listed no living relatives, Cassidy. I heard you say your folks died when you were in college, so we had no one to notify.”
April had died without anyone knowing she was his world, his anchor. The doctor who checked her said her heart just stopped beating. Sam had taken the words calmly, but he felt his heart had stopped beating too.
He’d said he would survive, he’d heal, he’d march on, but in truth, a big piece of him died that day—the most important part. He didn’t know how to be anything without her. He couldn’t be a fighter in a world he didn’t care to live in. He’d lost his mate and had no plans of ever allowing anyone close again.
Samuel Cassidy continued to work, but mentally he was drifting. Never staying one place long enough to get to know anyone. His only goal was to survive until the next fire came in. He was no longer on a mission to see new things, no longer counting days before he’d be home with April. All the fight, all the passion, all the peace he’d known was gone.
Then the letter came. A chance to go back in time for a while. The offer for Samuel Cassidy to fill in at a church in Honey Creek might be just what he needed. A change. A place where he could hide out from his life.
He stared at his reflection in the tin mirror. He could play the part of a preacher.
The metal door on the public restroom rattled as if a strong wind blew past.
A man in scrubs and a lab coat stormed in carrying two plastic bags. He glanced at Sam, then disappeared into the last stall.
Sam watched as the lab jacket was tossed over the door. The guy was cussing as he bumped against the walls of the stall. Scrubs, bloody in places, were thrown over the door next. Then plastic shoes slid out from under the door as if trying to escape.
More banging against the walls.
Just as Sam was shoving his old clothes into the suitcase, the man burst out of the stall. The stranger now wore jeans and a western shirt. Worn boots had replaced the hospital shoes. He turned and collected the clothes and shoes he’d discarded, dropping them into the trash bin. Then he pulled a Stetson from a bag, crammed it down over his ginger-colored curly hair, and turned toward Sam.
For a moment they looked at each other. Sam could see now that he was a few years younger than he was, a few inches shorter, but still over six feet.
Just as the man seemed about to speak, a dozen Boy Scouts suddenly invaded the restroom. Talking, laughing, pushing one another, they formed a line in front of the five stalls.
The cowboy nodded his head once at Sam. “Guess we’d better head ’em up. . . .”
Sam grinned, realizing he’d just met a chameleon like himself. “And move ’em out.”
The man headed out the door and Sam turned back to the mirror and his own journey. The mirror reflected a stranger’s face now. No longer his father’s and not quite his. He’d been trying to save the world in one way or the other for half his life, but no more. He’d take this trip back in time; then he’d bury all the past. His childhood, his parents’ deaths, memories of April.
He was mad at God.
Not because He took April, but because God had left him behind.
Friday morning
Colby McBride watched the man he’d seen in the restroom walking toward an Audi. He had the stride of a man who’d once marched, Colby thought. Now, the guy looked like a preacher going to a funeral, not the type who’d give a hitchhiker a ride.
There was something about him Colby couldn’t peg. A priest maybe who didn’t seem to fit into his clothes. Or maybe it was his skin that he didn’t fit into. He was a tall man, 6’4”, maybe 6’5”, with black hair slicked back and eyes that missed little. The man of the cloth was drinking in every detail of his surroundings.
Colby sensed there was more to this preacher than met the eye. Colby could usually spot the ones who weren’t what they seemed—a drug pusher or someone who drove stolen cars out of state. Private investigator or undercover feds tracking movements on the interstate. They moved easy, almost invisible, and they watched their surroundings as if their life depended on it.
As a state trooper, Colby McBride had seen all types in the ten years he’d worked the Texas highways. If he’d been in uniform he might have pulled this guy over or maybe followed him a few miles down the road.
But then, Colby was always skeptical of strangers, and even sometimes friends. He caught himself looking for the criminal in everyone he passed. Maybe he was wrong this time, but he would swear this easygoing man in black was hiding something.
Colby laughed to himself. Get in line, he almost said aloud. Who isn’t hiding something these days? People were rarely what they seemed, and today that included him.
He hadn’t felt properly dressed in a decade if he wasn’t wearing a badge and his service weapon. But today—no badge, no patrol car, no backup. Now was Colby’s turn to pretend to be someone else. For the first time in his career he’d be investigating off the record.
Texas Ranger Max Mackenzie had asked Colby to go into Honey Creek without calling too much attention to himself. Check the place out. Find out what was going on. Keep any scandal away from the Mackenzie family and especially his sister, who just happened to be the town’s mayor.
And damn if the assignment wasn’t so intriguing Colby had to break out of the hospital to make it to Honey Creek as fast as possible. Doing this favor for the Mackenzie family would be great for his career. He borrowed scrubs and a coat, had a friend pick him up at the back door of the hospital, and headed straight to his unofficial assignment.
The friend dropped him off at the nearest rest stop to Honey Creek, and Colby planned to hitchhike into town before noon. He’d cowboyed enough in his college days to drift into town and fit in. The friend had provided clothes, and Colby had made up a great cover story.
Max had told him over the phone to spend the day mingling with the locals. Mingle? Colby had no idea how to mingle. It wasn’t in his skill set. But he’d come up with something.
Now, with no sleep and little money, Colby walked toward a line of trucks on the back lot of the rest stop. They’d probably stopped to rest until full light. Places like this were quieter and sometimes safer than the big truck stops near towns.
The driver of the third rig was walking around his cattle truck. He wasn’t tall, but he was wide, with a beard like a scruffy Santa Claus.
Colby kept his hat low. “Mornin’,” he said. “Any chance a cowhand could catch a ride. I got a girl waiting for me in Honey Creek. My pickup broke down a few miles back and I’m not sure how long my girl will wait.”
The truck driver looked him up and down.
“I got kin in Honey Creek who’ll help me tow the truck in later.” Colby shrugged. “It’s only forty miles.”
“I’m not supposed to take on passengers, but if you’re stranded, I could take you a few miles. I’d enjoy the company.”
Colby nodded his thanks. If he ever stopped this truck on the highway for a driving violation, he’d return the favor.
Colby had made two phone calls, in order to disappear from his real life. One to ask for a few vacation days and another to his neighbor asking him to pick up the mail.
Max had made it clear that no one was to know what Colby would be doing in Honey Creek. He even hinted that he’d owe Colby a big favor for doing this. Most of the Mackenzie family were in politics. They couldn’t afford any rumors.
Apparently, the mayor and little sister of Max, Piper Jane Mackenzie, had a fiancé who had disappeared. The town sheriff of Honey Creek suggested to the nearest news station that this could be foul play. It had been a back-page news note until the fiancé’s car was found floating in the Brazos River just outside of town. No fiancé. No body.
Colby thought about turning off his personal phone. The only one who ever called him was his ex-girlfriend, and she just dialed now and then to remind him that she never wanted to hear from him again.
But then Max might call. He was collecting info from official sources and promised to send along anything significant
This would be Colby’s first private job. An “off the books” case. A missing person’s case if he was lucky, a murder maybe, who knows. Colby hadn’t fully believed it was real until Mayor Piper Mackenzie called an hour ago and said he needed to start digging fast and report in to her at dusk. She sounded as bossy as her brother.
She’d had an all business kind of voice, like her idea of a fun time would be guessing how many paper clips are in the jar on her desk. Maybe the fiancé just got bored and left, and she was up before dawn trying to find him.
Colby could picture her just from her voice. Flat shoes, shapeless suit with padded shoulders to make her look like a general, hair short or tied back so tight her eyes bugged out. Glasses, definitely glasses. She’d expect his work to be the best, and he planned to do just that. An assignment like this could move him up the ranks faster and a connection with a mayor, rumored to be on her way up in politics, couldn’t hurt. Who knows, she might be governor in ten years and he’d be guarding her as the Texas Ranger he’d always planned to be from the day he signed on with the Texas Highway Patrol.
Problem was, her call came in before dawn while he was getting stitched up from a really bad evening at work.
Don’t bleed on the mayor, Colby reminded himself as the truck driver pulled into the postcard-cute town of Honey Creek.
Friday late afternoon
Mayor Piper Jane Mackenzie sat in her cramped office on the fourth floor of city hall, looking out over the town square. She’d barely slept in three days, but by dusk she’d meet the man who would help her get to the truth.
Her nitwit almost fiancé was still missing. Which wasn’t a crime but could mean trouble for both their families. She’d known Boone Buchanan all her life. His grandfather and her grandfather had been friends and political allies. People had teased her since she was a kid that she’d grow up and marry him. She’d be the governor’s wife and he’d be the governor. Only Piper wanted to be the governor.
Boone was handsome, impulsive, fun, and popular all the way through law school, while she was plain, shy, and bookish.
But Boone also had a wild streak. Life was a game to him and he had to win. Their engagement was just a card up his sleeve that he’d played for fun or to get something he wanted. She wouldn’t be surprised if he walked into town with some tall tale.
The truth and Boone had never been more than passing strangers. She’d let him win at games when they were kids, she’d listened to his rants when they were teenagers, and she’d gone with him to a few political rallies where he rarely talked to her.
Six months ago, at a big fund-raiser for her father, Boone had seemed the perfect date. He lived in Austin. He was rich and handsome. His family was powerful. He was a young partner in his uncle’s law firm. Surely he’d outgrown his pranks and temper tantrums.
She talked about her work and he acted like he cared. He talked about himself and she made an effort to act like she was listening. Best of all, there were no sparks between them. She didn’t have time for romance in her life and she wasn’t his type.
Boone liked the press he got with a mayor on his arm. After their first fund-raiser, he offered to accompany her again, getting friendly when there was a camera around.
Last month someone, probably Boone, leaked a rumor that he and Piper were engaged. Maybe he wanted a little more attention.
She should have shot the rumor down, but Piper didn’t see any harm in it. It was just a rumor. It’d die on its own and Boone would get the notice he craved. Just what the youngest in the firm thought he needed to build his base in the law office.
He never visited her in Honey Creek, but when Piper was in Austin, Boone was always showing up, hanging around, even saying things like “we think” as if she and Boone had somehow locked brains.
It embarrassed her, but Piper was just shy enough not to want to cause a scene.
But then he vanished after visiting half the bars in the county Tuesday night, and the rumor of their engagement seemed to become a fact. His red limited edition BMW was found floating in the Brazos River, and no one had seen Boone since. She’d heard that he used the valley around Honey Creek to let loose, though he’d never mentioned it to her. He might not be able to get drunk in Austin without some reporter snapping a shot, but here no one noticed, or cared.
To make matters worse, the county sheriff, LeRoy Hayes, had also disappeared. Then the deputies seemed to have gone deaf, mute, and blind, and the dispatcher declared she’d only answered the 911 calls. Everyone in town believed the deputies and the dispatcher knew something, but they were loyal to the boss.
As stories flew as fast as the north wind, Piper could almost see her career crumbling around her. Part of her felt like she was standing with the men at the Alamo. She might not win, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight.
In whispers people began to talk. Some said she killed Boone because he cheated on her. Some said her father had him kidnapped just at the thought of Boone becoming his son-in-law. Autumn, her secretary, suggested that he killed himself. Piper had even heard that the beauty shop talk thought Boone hadn’t been near town. His car could have been stolen and taken for a joy ride by someone who fit his description.
One old vet at the coffee shop said Boone wanted to step away from the world. Boone had served three years in the army. That’ll mess with your mind. Piper didn’t bother to point out that Boone was messed up long before he went in the army.
Piper couldn’t deny the engagement now. She’d look like a fool. All she could do was wait until he showed up. She’d act relieved to see him, then vanish from the press. A few months later, she’d quietly break up on the first busy news day.
Piper decided not to dwell on the stories. Boone wouldn’t have killed himself. He loved himself too much. Her father would never kill a future son-in-law. If he’d been turned that way, he would have murdered the guy she had married in law school and divorced less than a year later.
Dating Boone had ended some talk about her being the only mayor with a stone-cold heart. All she wanted to do was serve the people and keep her private life private. Which shouldn’t be too hard since she had no private life.
Looking out on the town she loved, Piper tried to think of a way out of this mess. Of course, she could call a press conference, but that might just draw more attention. More qu. . .
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