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through.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I know about the rush. I know it’s addictive.”
    “Is that what made you a detective? The rush?”
    Maybe it had. Maybe that’s what had kept him at this job when any sane person would have moved on to something else. Anything else. Instead of doing that, he’d come here—a south Alabama county as alien to him as the face of the moon.
    At least he was doing something constructive with his addiction, he thought, pulling his mind away from people and places he couldn’t bear to remember. All these punks were doing was destroying. And he knew in his gut, as strongly as he’d ever known anything, that whoever or whatever they were, they weren’t through with their destruction.

Four
    “ M s. Sloan’s got a boyfriend.”
    The comment came out of the blue during the last seconds before the tardy bell for second period. Lindsey looked up to see who’d made it, but half the class was sniggering.
    The masculine half, she realized. And the voice that had made that announcement had definitely belonged to one of them.
    “Ms. Sloan! Have you been keeping secrets from us?”
    Renee Bingham was the prototype for the American cheerleader. Blond, blue-eyed, and slightly buxom, she was also enormously popular. And one of the nicest people Lindsey had ever known. No matter where someone ranked on the school’s rigidly established social ladder, Renee was friendly to them.
    That same friendliness extended to her teachers, whom she was apt to treat with a familiarity that had nothing to do with disrespect. Since Lindsey was aware the girl’s taste in literature ran to supermarket celebrity magazines, she knew any gossip pertaining to a teacher’s love life would be irresistible.
    She was grateful when the tardy bell sounded, bringing the last few stragglers to their desks as well as giving her an excuse to ignore Renee’s question. She opened her grade book, willing the telltale flush in her cheeks to subside.
    “Paul Abbott.”
    “Here.”
    “Ms. Sloan, you aren’t just gonna call roll and not tell us.” Renee’s tone was indignant, as if an injustice had been done, to her and the class.
    “Tell you what, Renee?”
    “About your boyfriend. ”
    “I don’t have a boyfriend. And if I did, that would hardly be something I’d discuss with y’all.”
    “He’s the new detective in the sheriff’s office. From somewhere up north.”
    Lindsey was surprised that Steven Byrd had been the one to share that information. He seemed to have little use for the rumors that ran rampant in the high school—who was dating whom, which couple was breaking up, which was reconciling.
    “When I first saw them together,” Steven continued, his eyes shining mischievously behind his glasses, just as they had when he’d seen her and Jace that morning in the office, “I thought Ms. Sloan was in trouble with the law. Lucky for her, that wasn’t what the detective was investigating.”
    There was a masculine chorus of “ooohs” from the back of the room in response to his slightly suggestive statement. Lindsey could feel the color rising in her cheeks again.
    “That’s enough.” Lindsey looked down at her grade book in an attempt to gather her composure. “Leslie Arnold.”
    “Here. Is that the guy you were with at the game?”
    “I sold tickets at the game,” she said evenly. “I wasn’t with anyone. And I’ll repeat for those of you who don’t seem to get it, my social life isn’t any concern of yours.”
    By now she realized she’d bungled this. If she’d made a joke, said something clever, claimed to be smitten, they would have let it drop. Instead, she’d stupidly added fuel to the fire by trying to quash it. Then she’d fanned the flames by letting them see that she was embarrassed by their teasing.
    “We’re just glad to know that at your age you can still get a date.” Roy McClain’s comment drew laughter, still good natured, despite her mishandling of the