Page 2 of So Savage

Thomas sighed.“All right, boy.You got him.Let’s try to focus on the task at hand now, okay?”

Shadow spit out the feathers and trotted to Thomas.When he reached his handler, he held his head high and sniffed the air.

"Uh uh.Enough of that.No more pheasants.One good run and I'll buy you a chicken wing instead of a lemon loaf.Deal?"

Shadow looked at Thomas and dipped his head—the German Shepherd’s equivalent of a nod.

“Outstanding.Okay, Marine.”

He bent low and held the scent marker for target four in his hand.Shadow sniffed it for a few seconds, then barked to let Thomas know he had the scent.Thomas frowned.The bark wasn’t necessary.He was supposed to just make eye contact.

“Go, Shadow.”

Shadow shot off into the darkness again.After a few seconds, he began to bark loudly.

Thomas sighed.Maybe he was up too late.Dogs got tired, too.

Then the barking abruptly stopped, and fear jolted his spine.“Shadow?Come here, boy!”

There was no answer.Thomas’s blood froze.He’d heard of bears wandering onto bases before.He started jogging toward his dog.“Shadow?Shadow!Shad—”

A sharp pain hit his neck.He winced and brushed it, coming into contact with a feathered dart.

His eyes widened.He turned in the direction the dart had come from and saw a shadow—not his dog—standing a few yards off.He reached for his gun, but he was unconscious before he cleared the leather.

CHAPTER ONE

“Go get ‘em, Turk!”

Turk leaped from Faith’s side like a rocket, barking exuberantly.The wild turkeys leaped into the air, stumbled, then leaped again.Slowly, they righted themselves, taking to the sky just before Turk reached them.Turk stopped and wagged his tail, watching as they flew fifty yards away before landing and shaking their ruffled feathers.Faith grinned and waved at the birds, who looked at her indignantly before pointedly ignoring the pair.

Turk coiled up, ready to chase them again, but Faith waved him off.“We’d better leave it at that,” she said.“But at least we got their blood moving.Come on.Let’s get back before Eddie finishes all of the cobbler.”

The two of them trudged through the snow toward Faith's Crown Victoria.The snow was a foot thick and sat atop a layer of ice, but the roads were plowed and salted, so there was no loss of traction.She had winter tires anyway.It never hurt to be careful.The Crown Vic was a robust vehicle, but it was definitely not in its natural element in snow and ice.There was snow in Philly, but the storms here were a different thing altogether.

Overall, she liked Sunrise Beach.It was a quiet little town—in the winter, at least—and it was nice to see Eddie again.She texted her cousin from time to time, but she hadn’t actually seen him since he visited her in the hospital after her run-in with Jethro Trammell, the infamous Donkey Killer whose short but vicious career had kickstarted a wave of violence across the nation and separated Faith’s life into two very distinct phases: Before Trammell and After Trammell.

She wasn’t here to think about that, though.She was here to not think about that.In fact, Special Agent Faith Bold was very specifically instructed not to think about work at all.She was laying low and letting other people handle the job of catching serial killers.

A job much easier said than done when there was yet another crazed murderer terrorizing the people of Philadelphia, and that murderer—like another murderer now currently awaiting a retrial—was for some reason obsessed with Faith.

She sighed and gave Turk a wry smile.“I’m not doing a very good job of being on vacation, am I?”

Turk cocked his head.From his perspective, they were having a wonderful vacation.Snow to play in, turkeys to play with, plenty of delicious food to eat… what wasn’t to love?

She chuckled and patted his rump.“Go on, boy.In the car.”

Turk jumped into the passenger seat, and Faith got into her side and started the engine.The car roared to life, and Faith began the five-mile journey back to Eddie’s cabin.

The landscape really was beautiful.The snow was thick, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t pretty.Drifts coated the branches of the trees, and the occasional deer moved through it, a picture-perfect image that could grace the cover of any album of the American winter.

The Lake of the Ozarks—jewel of the Midwest—glistened in the pale winter sun, and despite the literally freezing weather, Faith wasn’t surprised to see several boats on the water.Tourist season was over, but despite their genial hatred of that breed, the locals were more than crazy enough to make up for the absence of the out-of-towners.

The last half-mile of the drive was on dirt, which meant it was on snow.Since the Crown Vic was rear-wheel-drive and not four-wheel-drive, she had to gun the engine and use a combination of momentum and wheelspin to make it up the hill into Eddie’s driveway.She skidded the last few feet and came to a rest mere inches from plowing the nose of her car into the cab of Eddie’s old Ranger pickup.

She released a sigh of relief and walked into the house.The smell of apple turnovers blanketed her, and she closed her eyes and sighed.“I take it you finished the cobbler.”

“Yup,” Eddie called back.“So I’m making apple turnovers as a peace offering.”

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