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Tribune . Cutbacks at the News Tribune and other papers had shifted more editorial effort to the electronic side of the news operation. Frequent updates, blog entries, and even video supplied by “mojos,” or mobile journalists, would be featured there. Partly because her husband was in the media business, working for a hunting and fishing magazine, the Starks still subscribed to print editions of three newspapers: the Kitsap Sun , the Port Orchard Lighthouse , and the Tacoma News Tribune .
    She set the paper aside and opened her laptop on the kitchen table and clicked over to the web page, where the update included the victim’s name, Alex Connelly. There was also a photo. He was a handsome man with a square jaw and dark hair that he wore combed straight back. His eyes were intense and very blue. Piercing blue eyes, even in a photograph. The image appeared to be a business portrait. In the casualness of the Pacific Northwest, a suit and tie were seldom worn unless it was for work or a wedding.
    In the comments section someone had posted:

    RIP, Alex. You were a great guy. It was an honor to serve with you.

    Although the paper said he was an executive with an investment firm, it was clear that Kendall’s first impression was right on the money. She instantly saw the unmistakable deliberateness that came with a military background. A military man’s eyes never failed to telegraph directness. He looked straight at the camera. Unblinking. Sure. Confident. She wondered where Tori had met him. Had it been across Port Orchard’s Sinclair Inlet in Bremerton where the navy decommissioned old battleships and aircraft carriers? Or maybe Fort Lewis south of Tacoma? That was army. Or McChord Air Force Base right next door?
    More than anything, she thought about Tori.
    How was it that she was able to escape when her husband was likely trained in self-defense?
    It was close to 8:30 and she needed to finish drying her hair and scoot out the door to work, a ten-minute drive away. That it had been a slow spring, crime-wise, was just as well. She wasn’t the kind of cop who’d signed on because she was an adrenaline junkie. She knew that type and felt they’d missed the whole point of law enforcement.
    â€œWe’re here to help people, not ride the wave of others’ misfortune,” she once told her frequent partner in investigations, Josh Anderson. “Do you really need to smile so much at a scene?”
    Kendall went outside to the patio, following the sound of her husband and son in the yard. She glanced at the stump of the madrona that had once arched over the backyard with its distinctive red-and-green striated bark and canopy of waxy green leaves. It had silvered in the weather of the past couple of seasons, and a series of fissures ran from the center of the cut outward, like spokes on the wheel of an old ten-speed bicycle. The cool air from Yukon Harbor blew against her face and she touched her damp hair, wondering if she’d be able to avoid the blow dryer and just tousle it with her fingertips. It was short and she could get away with that technique most days. She was still young and attractive, but time was creeping at her and she knew that fingertip hairstyling and a light swipe of lip gloss was no longer a wise go-to regimen for the morning.
    She watched Steven and their nine-year-old son, Cody, burn deadfall in a fire pit on the edge of the yard. For most, it would have been too early in the morning for such an endeavor. But not for those two. Father and son were early risers. Kendall was the opposite—the last one out of bed on a Saturday morning. The one to turn out the lights of the house in the evening. The one to check the door locks and the security of the windows.
    A smile broke out over her face as she caught her son’s gaze. Cody was quiet, leaving the conversation to his father.
    As always.
    â€œLet’s get that bunch of branches from over there, son.