Lamar palmed the door of the Sheriff’s office open and looked for the people that should have been waiting for his arrival.

Nothing.

He looked over the desk at the dispatch station; Sylvia was nowhere in sight. A cup of steaming coffee sat on the desk next to the dispatch radio. She had to be somewhere in the station.

With a sigh, he made his way to his office and the safe that held the automatic weapons and ammunition. He was not about to arrive at that house and face the security guards without an equalizer.

Lamar Opened the door to his office see destruction. Someone had rifled through his office with a determination that bordered on desperate. Lamar looked at the mess, shocked by the violence of the search. His once fine desk was tinder now. His computer was a pile of glass and plastic shattered in a corner. Nothing escaped the notice of this agent of destruction.

Only the gun safe stood aloof from the savagery.

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He crossed t positioned open. Tentatively, he opened the safe door while searching the widening gap for a trip wire for explosives. A weight slammed against the inner side of the door and whipped it against his face.

Lamar fell backwards to land on the wreckage of his desk. Splinters of wood dug into his back as the safe door swung completely open and the body of Deputy Maynard landed on his legs. He pushed at the corpse and crawled free of the desk. Lamar stood and looked at Maynard. Someone had placed two shots to the man’s chest and one in his temple.

Nothing but tangled remains littered the inside of the safe.

Sylvia was probably dead, too.

This was no coincidence.

He swore aloud, not caring if the intruder was still in the station. This was his station and his town, and Lamar was damned if he was going to let someone scare him to the point of looking the other way while Turner did God knows what at an isolated house in the barrens.

There were other guns in town and help if he needed it. It was time to call in a few debts.

He searched the rest of the station with his service revolver drawn, feeling like one of those men in the police shows on television. He found nothing more than Maynard dead.

They must have taken Sylvia.

He left the station through the front door, not caring who was watching his movements. Let them try to stop a band of pissed off shit kickers. He almost welcomed a try at the men who had killed his deputy.