While Others Sleep
Who says lightning never strikes twice?Campbell Cody has twice experienced the strike of lightning, and both times proved to be a deadly portent of things to come. The first time lightning struck, she lost her friend, and her job as a police officer. The second time, Maida Livingstone, the dear old woman she was hired to protect, disappeared.Jackson Blade has also lost someone: a teenage girl he was tracking as part of a drug investigation. Nothing about her murder makes sense to the undercover cop until he attends her funeral and discovers a connection to Maida…and Campbell.Realizing their separate investigations are leading down the same path, Campbell and Jackson join forces to expose a killer. For Campbell, the encounter is as powerful as a bolt of lightning. But will it prove as dangerous?
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Driven by concern, Campbell stepped outside to a sky opening to a torrential rain. A barrage of icy droplets pricked her face and clear vision was impossible, but she knew the approaching car was a compact, and that it was traveling fast. And it was almost upon her.
Her memory was working better than her vision, and she reached a hand out into the driveway. Yet no sooner did she step out onto the walkway than she realized the driver didn’t intend to slow down. Worse yet, she heard the car accelerate.
It was going too fast to miss her and far too fast to make the necessary ninety-degree left turn out onto the drive.
Campbell flung herself backward. Although she struck hard against the booth’s rough stone exterior, she kept her eyes open and focused her attention to try to catch a closer look at the maniac speeding by.
The car was a Grand Am. The driver was—
“Maida?” Campbell gasped. “Maida, stop!”
Ignoring the pain in her back, Campbell launched herself after the car. Brakes squealed and the rear end swung wildly through that first impossible turn. She got close enough to slam her hand on the trunk, but either Maida Livingstone didn’t hear her, or the sound had the opposite effect and frightened her.
After several stumbling strides, Campbell gave up and stared in horror as the car accelerated again. The elderly widow was racing toward the next hairpin turn.
Also by HELEN R. MYERS
NO SANCTUARY
FINAL STAND
DEAD END
LOST
MORE THAN YOU KNOW
COME SUNDOWN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special salute to Texas Bluegrass singer Terri Hendrix, who inspired many of the characters in this book with her song about night wolves, those individuals who either suffer from insomnia, work, or otherwise maneuver through life while others sleep. Also thanks to the Longview Police Department and Longview Board of Education for their strong public access commitment.
To the Hide-Away-Lake Book Club and residents who asked that I feature a character who has experienced my own too-close encounters with lightning—I hope this adds insight. Your lovely development was, indeed, the inspiration for Maple Trails, even though I had to relocate it. But I will always cherish your graciousness and hospitality.
Finally, ongoing appreciation to my editor Valerie Gray and always to my agent Ethan Ellenberg. Couldn’t have done this without your wisdom, support and humor.
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Nobel Prize lecture, 1973
Contents
1
Maple Trails, a gated retirement community
Longview, Texas
11:30 p.m.
A lightning-fractured sky, followed by the quick crack of thunder, gave clear warning that the approaching storms weren’t only accelerating across Texas, but intensifying. Precipitation would be welcome in this section of the piney woods where residents continued to miss out on replenishing rains due to another El Niño in the Pacific. To the most grateful, the storm would serve as a lullaby.
To Campbell Cody, it felt like a combination of mockery and curse. Standing with her hands on her hips as the overly warm February wind tugged at her hair and khaki uniform, she had to wonder—would tonight be the night she got deep-fried? Like the answer of answers, the next bolt shot into the earth with the precise and deadly trajectory of a smart bomb achieving a direct hit on her nerves, elevating her tension to a level she had experienced all too often in the last fourteen months. She turned her back on the intimidating scene, but the damage was done. Dark memories, rife with immutable images flashed before her—scenes from another night filled with fury: a domestic disturbance turned Code 30, followed by a torment-filled wait in Emergency and, days later, a funeral. She could almost hear the condemning voices of the bitter and the bereaved within the gusting wind.
Another crack of thunder snapped her back to the present. It came as fast as it took Internal Affairs to convince her that her career with the Longview Police Department was over.
Uneasy as she was with what was about to befall the area, Campbell had anticipated trouble hours ago. Company policy required all staff to review the latest weather report and the local news, and to make notes on significant alerts coming over the police radio scanner before reporting to their posts. These procedures were twice as strict for the daughter of Yancy Cody, owner of Cody Security, Inc. The company might only be a regional name in the expanding and increasingly complicated world of corporate and private protection, but they were a growing one thanks to a solid reputation—another reason why she could not succumb to old vulnerabilities tonight. But neither could she rid herself of concern over what could become a worst-case scenario.
