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EXCERPT

The sight was jarring. Her tire was shredded, the split in the rubber the work of a sharp blade. She quickly looked up and scanned the area. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Here and there others in town wandered down the sidewalks and perused the shops on Main Street, all of them unsuspecting and indifferent. Nobody had a clue that her tire had been slashed.

Walking around to the other three corners of her Jeep, she saw the rest were too. Somebody had intentionally sought out her Jeep and destroyed her tires. Her brain rejected that reality, swimming in a shock that left her speechless. For the life of her, she couldn’t rationalize why. None of it made sense. She was a visitor in Lutton, temporarily in town for the summer. Who the hell would do something like this?

Samara must’ve looked like a frazzled mess standing there beside her Jeep. Several passersby slowed up and stared. A few stopped and asked if she needed help. Her shock hadn’t worn off so she ignored them all, blinking with a lump in her throat at the damage done. It was difficult for her to tell how much time had passed before the last person she wanted to hear spoke to her.

“Who did this?” Chase asked from behind. He had exited the grocery store to discover her on the sidewalk. He walked up with tentative footsteps, keeping a distance between them. “Somebody slashed your tires.”

Her earlier temper rushed in like water bursting through a dam. “No shit! Just go, okay? I don’t need your—”

“You were in the store for a few minutes,” Chase interrupted in his low drawl. He dropped his own groceries on the cement and strode forward to kneel beside a shredded tire. “That means one thing.”

“What? What does it mean?” She had no patience, snapping without care or thought.

Chase ran a hand over the deep puncture marks. “It means somebody was watching you.”

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