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cutting her
     heart from her chest.
    Hell, she’d prefer to cut her heart from her chest.
    She had never had a home, she had no family. So she would make her own home, her own
     family, or, she swore, she would die trying.
    *   *   *
    Archer Tobias stared at the map on the wall in his study for long minutes before inserting
     the yellow, round-headed push pin he held into its proper position.
    The pin represented the Slasher’s latest victim, Katy Winslow.
    His grandfather had started this map fifty years ago, during his election campaign
     when he ran for sheriff of Corbin County.
    Each pin represented a suspicious death, murder, or suicide in the County.
    Katy’s pin was bunched in with more than a dozen others.
    “A favorite killing ground,” he remembered his father saying as he stared at the map.
    The red push pins represented a Callahan who had died, and each blue push pin represented
     the death of someone connected to the Callahans. The white-headed pins represented
     deaths that couldn’t be connected, but those bodies had been found on or near Callahan
     property.
    For instance, Logan, Rafer, and Crowe’s parents and Crowe’s infant sister’s pins were
     all there. They had gone over a cliff during a winter snowstorm while on the way back
     from Denver. The boys had only been eleven and thirteen at the time. They had been
     with Rafe’s mother’s uncle, Clyde Ramsey, while the parents had made the trip.
    There were other colored pins on the map of Corbin County as well.
    Green pins represented areas where marijuana had been found growing, pale blue marked
     burglaries, purple marked assaults.
    Brown represented suicides. Black represented murders of those not connected to the
     Callahans.
    The deaths of those connected to the Callahans threatened to outnumber them.
    Bad luck, being a Callahan. Or knowing one.
    Other than the Slasher, Corbin County wasn’t a place that drew much crime.
    His eyes returned to Katy’s pin.
    Why Katy? he wondered again.
    Shaking his head, Archer turned and left the study, locking the patio doors as securely
     as he had the inner doors that led to the rest of the house, then setting the security
     system Crowe had helped him install in the spring.
    Moving to the SUV he drove, the trip to the sheriff’s office was made in less than
     five minutes. His home only sat two blocks from his office, one of the older buildings
     behind the main street courthouse.
    Pulling into his designated parking slot, he restrained a sigh at the sight of the
     County attorney, Wayne Sorenson, as the other man walked down the back courthouse
     steps and turned to head to the sheriff’s office.
    The text the attorney had sent earlier that morning had sounded dire.
    Must see you at nine. Imperative.
    Shaking his head, Archer reached for the Stetson he’d laid on the passenger seat before
     exiting the vehicle. Settling the hat on his head, he adjusted it automatically while
     hitting the door lock to the SUV.
    The warmth of the morning sun beat down on Sweetrock like a lover’s caress, stroking
     across the town with the promise of more heat to come. There were clouds building
     over the mountains above that promised rain in the valley though and a possible blizzard
     higher up.
    The season might be summer, but the mountains paid little heed to the calendar.
    It was the middle of August, but already the chill of an early winter was invading
     the temperatures at night, and the old-timers swore there was a hint of snow in the
     air.
    They hadn’t had snow in Corbin County before October in nearly twenty-five years.
     The last time it had snowed that early, JR and Eileen Callahan had died on that mountain
     road.
    He made a mental note to warn the Callahans to stay off fucking mountain roads this
     week.
    Waving at the two old men sharing a bench across the street, Archer strode quickly
     to the white stone sheriff’s office and connecting jail.
    Unlike many counties, Corbin County didn’t