Reese Morris stepped inside Casey’s Honkytonk Diner—definitely more diner than honkytonk—and slipped back in time sixteen years. It hadn’t changed.
She moved through the crowd, and her gaze shifted to the first booth on the right. Just like that, she was twelve years old, wearing her new vacation beachwear and smelling like sunscreen. Across from her sat her parents, and beside her, too happy to sit still, wiggled her four-year-old brother, Ricky. The beach waited less than a block away.
On the wall hung the same ol’ pictures and the swordfish with a broken nose. Finally, seeing past the nostalgia, she realized the place had changed. Time hadn’t been kind to the hole-in-the-wall.
It looked like hell. But it smelled like heaven.
No, it smelled like home.
Like Granny’s kitchen back in Texas. Granny, determined to live to a hundred, followed every health guideline the Surgeon General put out.
Except one.
Breakfast.
Nobody got in the way of Granny’s morning meal. And if you were at her house, she cooked it, and you ate it. Since Reese had lived with Granny from the time her parents died ’til she got her job as a teacher, she had learned to associate that first meal of the day with . . . love.
Reese inhaled the smell of bacon, eggs, and white bread toasted to perfection. This was it, she decided. For the next two and a half months, she was hanging her hat in Hung, Georgia. If you had to run away from home, why not run to a place that smelled like home? Her gaze shifted back to the booth. The one that held good memories.
Now, all she had to do was secure a job to help her get by. Face it: on a teacher’s salary a person could barely afford one apartment, let alone two. While she had run away from home, she planned to run back when school started—hopefully with her heart on the mend. So, a second income was a necessity.
And since she’d worked her way through college slinging hash, this place would do just fine. There wasn’t a “Help Wanted” sign on the door, but the crowd waiting to get seated, and the several un-bused booths, told another story.
Decision made, she cased out the joint for a manager-looking type. The older lady behind the bar, cooking, and spouting out orders to two waitresses, appeared to fit the bill. Now didn’t seem to be the time to ask for an application, but it might be time to prove her worthiness.
Collecting a towel and a large busing tray sitting to the side of the counter, she went to work.
With the background music of Southern voices, forks hitting plates, and the sound of sizzling bacon in the background, Reese stacked the dishes and wiped down three booths and two tables. With her tray full, she glanced around to find her way to the dishwashing area.
The door in the back had to be it. The young guy trying to keep up with the dishes barely gave her a glance.
For the next ten minutes, Reese cleaned and set up tables. When she got to the booth she and her parents had claimed as their own on that one vacation, she slipped back in time . . .
“Can we go next door to the toy store? Can we? Can we?” her brother asked.
Her mom looked at Reese. “Can you take him?”
Reese would’ve rather stayed and watched the cute busboy, but she agreed.
“He’s your responsibility,” her mom told her, the same way she always told her about Ricky. “He’s your little brother. Take care of him.”
Inhaling, pushing back regrets, Reese looked at the empty booth where her mom had once sat and wondered if she knew Reese had failed. Oh, she’d gotten Ricky safe and sound from the toy store, but look where he was now.
Sorry, Mom. Then, because she swore not to think about that, she put some real elbow grease into cleaning a week’s worth of sticky off the memory-filled booth. All the while, wishing all it took was elbow grease to push away the memories of the last two months.
Moving to the next dirty table, she felt the lady flipping bacon—Casey, she’d heard someone call her, she was right—giving her a cautious eye. The two waitresses working the floor just looked appreciative, but they were too far in the weeds to express it verbally. One of them started seating customers in Reese’s clean tables.
“Honey, I need some more coffee,” said a man wearing a pink shirt and Bermuda shorts with big pineapples on them.
Reese wavered and looked back. Getting coffee meant she’d have to go behind the bar to get the pot. Considering Casey hadn’t run her off yet, she decided to brave it. She shot behind the counter, got one confused look from the old woman, but snagged the coffee and refilled cups for all the tables.
Fifteen minutes later, she’d made another pot of coffee, cleared a couple more booths, and even rolled some silverware. The crowd of waiting customers was growing antsy, so Reese grabbed a couple of menus. “Follow me.”
“No!” Casey’s voice called out from behind the bar.
Reese glanced back, unsure if the woman was talking to her.
She was.
Casey’s spatula was pointed right at Reese, her wrist shifting back and forth. Reese debated ducking, fearing the woman might chuck it at her. “Locals get first dibs on tables,” Casey snapped.
“Okay.” Reese faced the stunned couple sporting beachwear and smelling like sunscreen. “Sorry,” she muttered, and looked at the next couple standing by the sign she’d not noticed.
“You locals?” she asked.
“Born and raised and proud to be Hungers,” said the middle-aged woman, with what appeared to be her middle-aged husband.
“Follow me.” Reese felt Casey staring, and expected to feel a spatula hit her any minute.
It didn’t.
She continued busing tables and seating customers for an hour. She got scolded two more times by Casey when she forgot to ask if the people were locals or tourists. Obviously, the gray-haired owner didn’t like tourists. Never mind that over half her business stemmed from the out-of-town beachgoers.
Amazingly, the smell coming from the grill convinced even the non-locals to accept their second-class status, and not one person walked out.
Obviously, Casey’s Honkytonk Diner was still the breakfast hot spot in Hung that it had been years ago.
By ten thirty, the morning rush over, Reese busied herself wiping the syrup off the menus. Her phone, tucked in her back pocket, vibrated for a second time, but she ignored it. Good employees didn’t answer calls during work hours. Besides, it was probably just Granny giving her more hell for taking off. She’d spoken to her late last night after she’d checked into a hotel in Katyville a mile from the bridge that led to the island.
In the corner of her vision, she saw Casey untie her apron, hang it on a wall hook, and crook her finger at Reese. “Booth ten. Now.”
Reese swallowed a knot of nerves, relieved the woman had left her spatula behind.
Shoulders held firm, she followed the woman to the back booth for what she hoped would be an interview. Surely, Casey couldn’t be nearly as difficult as Granny. Could she?
• • •
Detective Turner Calder stormed into his boss’s office. Sergeant Cox looked up from his desk, obviously pissed he hadn’t knocked. Turner didn’t give a rat’s ass if Cox got pissed or not.
He ran a hand through his hair, worn long since he’d taken to doing some undercover work a year ago. “I just got a call from the DA on the Harper case.”
“Yeah, I know, she called me too. Talk about bad luck, but at least we’ve got Rick Morris and his sister.”
“Luck? Are you friggin’ kidding me? Two witnesses die within twenty-four hours and you call that bad luck?”
“Whoa. Slow down, Turner. Don’t go making this into something that it isn’t. One was a fifty-year-old man with a heart attack, and the other was a car accident with someone who’s already gotten three DUIs.”
“I don’t care if one of them died from an ingrown toenail, two witness deaths in twenty-four hours on a case like Jonnie Harper’s can’t be a coincidence. Harper swore the day we arrested him that he would never go to trial.”
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“I told you to calm down!” Cox said.
“I’ll calm down when you do your damn job! Contact the prison and make sure they keep Rick Morris away from the other inmates, then get Reese Morris into protective custody.”
“And I’ll bet you would love to be the one in charge of her, too!” Cox slapped his chubby, fisted hand down on his desk. “Damn it, Turner. If this case is in any jeopardy, it’ll be due to you fraternizing with Ms. Morris. If Harper’s lawyer suspects you and the witness were dirtying up the sheets, her testimony won’t mean shit. Then all we’ll have is her criminal brother.”
In spite of what his boss and a few other officers thought, he hadn’t had sex with Reese. The fact that he’d been tempted as hell, and had come painfully close—meaning for the first time in his life, he understood the meaning of “blue balls”—it wasn’t any of their damn business.
“Look—” Turner said.
“No, you look. Don’t think I don’t know what you did by talking to the DA and getting Rick Morris put away on a lesser charge.”
“He thought he was working for a nickel-and-dime dealer. He never was present during the big drops.”
“It was your job to put him away, not get him off.”
Turner leaned both palms on Cox’s desk. “Get Rick Morris and his sister some protection, or I swear if something happens to them, I’ll go to the press, sing like a canary, and say you were fully warned.”
Cox’s bushy brows puckered and his chubby cheeks turned red. “You know, son, if your daddy hadn’t taken a bullet for me before God took his sorry ass, I’d be asking for your badge right now. Hell, I’d have asked for it a long time ago. Since your divorce, you’ve gone off the ledge. And for what? A woman? I know you want to compare yourself to your ol’ man, but he just got lucky in love. Most cops go through wives like cheap wallets. Get yourself right, or even my debt to your daddy won’t stop me from doing my job and taking yours from you. You got that?”
He got it all right.
The temptation to reach in his pocket and slam his gold shield on the desk bit so strong, his hands shook. The only reason he didn’t was because since Cox wasn’t going to do his job, Turner would have to do it for him. And that badge, he might need it. But he would get the damn job done. He owed Reese that much. Even if he had to turn his badge in afterward. The look in her sky blue eyes when she’d learned he’d been undercover and was behind her brother’s arrest hadn’t stopped flashing in his head for the last two months. And by damn, he wasn’t going to let some goon of Harper’s lay one finger on Reese. Or her brother, for that matter.
He’d have to find a way to get to the warden. And he’d find Reese. Just because his boss wanted to stick his head up his own ass and not see the truth didn’t mean Turner had to.
He shot out of Cox’s office. Grabbing his phone, he dialed her number again. It went right to voice mail. He left his third message.
“Reese, it’s me, Turner. I know I’m the last guy in the world you want to talk to, but . . .” He paused. He hadn’t told her his fears in the other messages. He didn’t want to scare her to death. But damn it, she had a reason to be scared. And if she wasn’t going to take his calls, she needed to know.
“Look, Harper might be locked up, but he still has clout on the outside. And two of the other witnesses have wound up dead. Call me, please!”
Excerpt from Reborn
Read on for an exciting preview
of the first book in C. C. Hunter’s
Shadow Falls: After Dark series,
Reborn!
Available now!