“No,” Cole said carefully.

“Sheriff Prescott just wants a private conversation.” Sheriff Roy Prescott was Trent’s father, the man who had ruled Harrington County like a personal kingdom for twenty-two years, the man people joked should have had a crown stamped on his brass badge.

And I understood, standing there, that the two cruisers meeting a grieving husband at the airport were not there to protect me.

They were the next move in the same game — a show of force, an intimidation, a message that in this county the Prescotts controlled everything, including the moment my boots touched the ground.