Sutton greeted him with a nod. They were both Bitterwood natives, but Sutton was a few years younger than Nix. He was better acquainted with Nix’s younger brother, Lavelle, which might explain the wariness in Sutton’s gaze. Lavelle had never been anything but trouble.
“Calhoun,” Nix responded in kind, saving his smile for Sutton’s bride. “Have you heard from the chief?”
Ivy shook her head. “Laney said he told her he had to pick up something from the office before he came to the party. But that was nearly an hour ago.”
It didn’t take an hour to get anywhere in Bitterwood. “Have you tried calling the station to see if he showed up?”
Ivy cocked her head slightly to one side, her gaze narrowing. “You think something’s wrong?”
“One of your hunches?” Sutton added, not without a hint of sarcasm.
“No,” Nix lied, even though his hunch meter was going off like a klaxon. “Just doesn’t seem much like the chief to keep his girl waiting.”
“Is that his sister?” Ivy nodded toward Dana Massey, who stood at the front talking to Laney and her family.
“Yes,” Nix answered. “She didn’t seem worried about her brother’s lateness.”
Sutton took a sip from the cup of red punch he held in his right hand. With a grimace, he set the cup on a nearby table. “Maybe she knows stuff about him we don’t.”
“Maybe,” Nix conceded.
“But you don’t think so,” Ivy prodded.
He gave her a warning look, but her eyebrows merely rose a notch and her dark eyes flashed with amusement.
She thought it was all great fun, having a genuine Cherokee soothsayer on the police force, and most of the time Nix didn’t try to squelch her enjoyment. He wasn’t a soothsayer, of course—his hunches were usually based on deduction, not intuition. And he was only part Cherokee. The rest was pure Appalachian Scots-Irish, as his brother Lavelle’s headstrong ways would attest. But playing the inscrutable Indian could have its advantages, especially during interrogations.
“I’ll give the station a call, see what’s what.” He wandered away and pulled out his cell phone to call the main switchboard.
The night shift dispatcher, Briar Blackwood, answered, “Bitterwood P.D.”
“Hey, Briar, it’s Nix. Have you seen the chief?”
“He called about seven to say he was heading in to pick something up from his office, but he didn’t show. I figured he might have been running late and decided to come by after the party.”
Nix frowned. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”
“What’s wrong?” Briar asked.
“Probably nothing.”
“Nix—”
“Later, Briar.” He hung up before she could ask any more questions he couldn’t answer and crossed back to where Ivy and Sutton stood, talking to a tall redhead and an even taller man with dark hair and a rangy but powerful build.
Ivy introduced the pair as Natalie and J. D. Cooper, friends of the chief’s. “Natalie used to work with the chief down South,” Ivy added as Nix shook hands.
Natalie smiled, but he saw concern hovering behind her green eyes. “Ivy says Doyle’s late. Doyle’s never late. He may come across as an overgrown frat boy sometimes, but he’s as dependable as they come.”
Her alarm exacerbated his own growing concern. Keeping his voice low, he told them about his call to the station. “That was an hour ago.”
Ivy looked from Natalie’s face back to Nix’s. “Should we go look for him?”
“I’ll do it,” Nix volunteered. “You stay here and make sure Laney doesn’t start worrying too much until we know what’s what.”
Unspoken between them was the fact that there might well be a damned good reason to worry. Only three months earlier, Doyle Massey had crossed swords with a man named Merritt Cortland, whose thirst for power had led him to kill his father and several others in a deadly explosion. He’d tried to make the chief another of his victims, but Massey had fought him off. After Cortland had fallen down a steep incline, landing on the rocks below, he’d been thought dead, but by the time paramedics arrived at the base of the bluff, his body was gone.
Was Merritt Cortland still alive? It was a question that nobody had been able to answer to anyone’s satisfaction. Nix figured it was possible the man’s injuries weren’t fatal as the chief had assumed. It was equally possible that one of Cortland’s ragtag cohort of meth cookers, anarchists and radical militia soldiers had recovered the body and was keeping it on ice in order to keep the legend alive.
Under Merritt Cortland’s father, Wayne, the criminal operation had flourished, and even Cortland the younger had somehow managed to keep the enterprise afloat, despite the disparate elements involved. But if Merritt Cortland was dead, how long would the conspiracy thrive?
Outside the community center, night had fallen deep and blue. After a mild day, the temperature had dropped into the forties, driving Nix deeper into his leather jacket. As he started down the concrete steps to the sidewalk, the door opened behind him and footsteps clicked across the hard surface.
“Are you going to look for Doyle?”
The low female voice rippled along his nerves as if she’d run a finger down his spine. He turned to find Dana Massey standing on the steps behind him, her intelligent eyes full of stubborn intent.
Lying would do no good. She seemed like the kind of woman who never asked a question if she didn’t already know the answer. “I thought I’d see what’s keeping him.”
“How late is he?”
“Party started at seven-thirty, so—”
“When was the last time anyone heard from him?” She walked down the steps until she stood level with Nix, her head only a couple of inches below his own. She was as tall as her brother and had the same sort of dynamic presence, though the chief’s aura of command was often tempered by his good-natured humor.
There was no humor in Dana Massey’s green eyes at the moment.
“He called the police station around seven and told the dispatcher he was going to drop by the office before the party to pick up something.”
“Pick up what?”
“Don’t know.”
Her lips flattened with annoyance, though her irritation didn’t seem to be directed toward him. “Was he at home when he called?”
“Don’t know that, either,” he admitted. He should have asked the question of Briar, though the chief might not have said where he was. “I’m working on that assumption.”
To her credit, she didn’t make the usual joke about assumptions. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“So I hear.”
She extended her hand suddenly, as if she’d just remembered they hadn’t met. “Dana Massey. The chief’s sister.”
“Walker Nix. The chief’s detective.”
Her lips curved slightly at his dry rejoinder as she shook his hand. She had a firm, dry grip, with long fingers that felt like warm velvet against his own. “So I heard. Mind if I tag along?”
He could still feel the lingering sensation of her skin against his when he dropped her hand. “Wouldn’t you rather stick around the party?”
She shook her head. “I’m here for my brother. Wherever he is.”
He nodded toward the sidewalk. “Bundle up. My heater’s acting up.”
*