Detective Carrie Shatner has just about run out of tolerance for her criminally inclined family members. The Shatners have long since passed toeing the line. They have obliterated that line, and they are getting increasingly reckless with their criminal endeavors. Carrie is trying to figure out what to do about her family when Sergeant Jerrod Hardy of the Texas Rangers pops back up in her life with a warning…Texas’s Department of Public Safety has just started investigating the Shatner family, and their time as the leading crime family in East Texas is about to come to an end. It’s time for Carrie to make a choice—save herself or go down in a blaze of glory with the rest of the Shatners.
To make matters even more complicated, Carrie gets caught up in investigating another murder when human remains are uncovered during the demolition of a nearby lake house. The case quickly becomes personal when the victim is identified as one of Carrie’s childhood friends. Fifteen years ago, Paige Kemp ran away while she was on vacation in California and no one has seen her since. But someone went to a lot of effort to make people believe that Paige was still alive. Carrie teams up with Jerrod Hardy for a painful and enlightening trip down memory lane. The deeper Carrie delves into Paige’s investigation, the more secrets she exposes and lies she unravels. The question is who was desperate enough to kill a teenage girl and dispose of her body in order to protect their destructive secrets and lies.
CHAPTER ONE
“I’ve had about all I can take of my family and their shenanigans. I know I keep saying that, Veda, but I am seriously just about at my breaking point. I just don’t know what to do anymore,” I said as I stretched out on the uncomfortable chaise lounge and closed my eyes.
Years worth of stress and exhaustion pressed down on me, and I had to bite back the screams of frustration that had been slowly building.
The majority of the Shatners were criminals, and they had been for as far back as the family could be traced. When I was a kid, I was aware that a number of my family members broke the law on a fairly regular basis. And I was somewhat proud of them for getting away with it. But that didn’t mean I wanted anything to do with it.
Now that I’m in my early thirties, I’m much more aware of what kinds of illegal activities the Shatners are up to. Any pride I once felt died long ago. And I still really didn’t want anything to do with it.
“You really are starting to sound like a broken record, Carrie,” my life-long best friend Veda Houser said. “Why don’t you just quit your job? I mean, yeah, your family is probably never going to stop breaking the law. But you won’t be helping them get away with it.”
“You make it sound so easy. But it’s not,” I snapped.
For the past four years, I’ve been the only detective and crime scene technician for the Wyatt County Sheriff’s Department in Eastern Texas. Wyatt County is southeast of Tyler, and northwest of Nacogdoches. It’s a small, rural county with a population of around twelve thousand people. Crime rates in Wyatt County are moderately low aside from whatever the Shatners are up to.
Back when I first started at the sheriff’s department, I hadn’t been fully aware of what all my family was involved in. Sure, I knew about the marijuana and the moonshine. But I didn’t know the extent of it. Nor did I know about the insurance scams, money laundering, frequent assaults, or any of the other various crimes that my family members committed on a regular basis. And, recently, it had been getting harder and harder to look the other way when I knew what certain family members were up to.
I would love to say “not my circus, not my monkeys” and wipe my hands of the whole thing. But, let’s face it, the monkeys were my family. And the circus was my life.
“Quitting my job isn’t going to change anything,” I said, before explaining to Veda why I couldn’t just walk away. “The Shatners are going to continue to break the law whether I help them get away with it or not. Besides, you know I don’t do what I do to help the guilty commit more crimes. I do it to protect the small handful of innocent Shatners.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. And it doesn’t matter why you do it. The fact of the matter is that you’re helping the guilty ones get away with breaking the law,” Veda said in a know-it-all voice that annoyed me. “Regardless of your good intentions, your family is taking advantage of you.”
“Some days you’re the bug; somedays you’re the windshield. As for me, I’m the windshield wiper. Underappreciated, but always there when needed.”
Veda dramatically sighed. “Seriously, Carrie, you need to fish or cut bait. Because I’m getting sick of hearing about it.”
“And I’m sick of talking about it,” I said. I was also sick of thinking about it. And sick of dealing with it. To put it bluntly, I was sick of almost my entire family.