Circumstantial Evidence
The Sweetwater Trilogy
Book 3
Lisa Clark O’Neill
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Date of Publication: February 26, 2015
Number of pages: 475
Cover Artist: Brian Koch
Book Description:
As Chief of Police in Sweetwater, South Carolina, Will Hawbaker has seen more than his share of violent crime. But none of it has prepared him for the aftereffects of a young boy dead at the hand of his mother’s boyfriend. And when the suspected killer turns up dead himself, it raises more questions. Could this crime which has already shaken the town be even more sinister than it appears?
Camellia Abernathy has seen her own share of heartache following the violent death of the husband she only thought she knew. In returning to Sweetwater, her childhood home, Cam hopes to pick up the pieces of a shattered life for both herself and her young son. One piece of that life includes Will Hawbaker, the man who not only launched the investigation which uncovered her husband’s double life, but with whom she’s been in love since they were teens.
A rapid fire series of events turns both Cam and Will’s lives upside down, drawing them together even as they find themselves in the crosshairs of a killer.
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Excerpt:
The fog was so
thick you could slice it with a knife and serve it up a la mode.
Will Hawbaker
scrambled over fallen logs, wading through a sea of saw palmettoes as deep as
his waist. The maritime forest was nearly impenetrable, with boggy patches of
ground to catch the unwary in its earthen grip, sucking the boots right off
your feet if you weren’t careful.
Will paused,
shining his flashlight around, the beam a feeble weapon against the moonless
night. It was hours yet until daybreak, when the sun would burn off the fog
like the wispy vestiges of a bad dream.
And this was
definitely a bad dream. One Will wished he could wake up from.
Even at this
time of night the air felt like a slow cooker, baking him from the inside out.
Sweat rolled down his temples, his back, causing his shirt to cling and his
hair to drip salty tears on the fanned leaves of the nearest palmetto.
Mosquitoes droned just outside the protective zone of the repellent he’d
applied, black clouds swirling through the white.
Nearby, an owl
hooted.
This was an
uncomfortable environment for an adult, even one who was accustomed to putting
himself in danger.
For a child, it
had to be terrifying.
“Sam!” Will
called out, listening as his voice seemed to be absorbed by the soup-like air.
He heard
barking, but couldn’t tell if it was coming closer to him or moving away. The
team from the Sheriff’s Department with the bloodhounds had set out at the same
time he had, but they’d all headed in different directions.
They had a lot
of forest to cover, and not a lot of time. The twenty-four hour window, that
critical time after an abduction, was closing fast.
Hearing
something – had that been a whimper? – off to his left, Will turned the
flashlight that direction.
“Sam?”
Even though no
response was forthcoming, Will began moving toward the sound. If the child was
hurt, he may not be able to answer. If he was frightened – and why the hell
wouldn’t he be? – he may be too terrified to make his hiding spot known.
“Sam!” Will
called as he shoved a small sapling out of his way. “I know you must be scared,
buddy, but I’m here to help you.”
And because the
kid probably didn’t believe jack shit coming from adults right now, especially
adults he was supposed to be able to trust, Will didn’t bother to mention
anything about being a cop. That wasn’t quite the vote of confidence it once
was, anyway. Better to try something on the boy’s level.
“I hear you like
dogs,” he said, his voice radiating calm even as he viciously kicked at a vine
that wanted to tangle him up in its thorny grip. “Do you hear the dogs barking?
They’re looking for you, too.”
Fingers of fog
tickled the back of Will’s neck, teasingly cool against his overheated flesh.
Mother Nature
was definitely female, Will thought sourly. Soothing and confounding at the
same time.
“I like dogs,”
Will said conversationally, because what the hell. If nothing else, maybe the
boy would get sick of hearing him yapping and tell him to shut up. “You hear
those bloodhounds barking? They’re out here looking for you, too. Kind of like
Timmy and Lassie.” Will paused, wondering if the kid even knew who that was.
Given that this was the age of animated sponges living in undersea pineapples,
probably not.
“That was an old
show I used to watch, about this awesome collie that was always saving this kid
Timmy’s butt. I thought it would be cool to have a dog that could get help when
you did something dumb like fall down a well, but I couldn’t have one when I
was a kid. My mom didn’t want one. She thought it would mess up the house and
was too much responsibility.”
His mother
didn’t particularly want him or his siblings either, for much the same reason.
But that was beside the point.
“Your mom told
me that you’ve been asking for a dog.” Will stopped, shone his flashlight toward
the base of the enormous oak tree off to the right. Was that a flash of red
he’d just seen?
“But that you
two had been debating about that responsibility thing, too. And that line about
a boy who can’t even pick up after himself not being responsible enough to take
care of a dog? I heard that one too, and it sucks. But the thing is, your mom
is kind of right. I think she’s willing to give you a chance though. She told
me that when you get back home, safe and sound, she’s taking you to the pound,
first thing.”
“Liar!”
Will froze. It
had been the merest whisper of sound, ephemeral as the fog itself. He half
thought it was wishful thinking on his part.
“Now, I’ve got
no reason to pull your leg about that, son. Dogs are a pretty serious business.
A lot more serious than putting away your Legos and getting your dirty clothes
in the hamper. You’ve got to make sure you feed them and water them and take
them for walks… but maybe you’re not ready for all that responsibility.”
“Am too!”
That was
definitely no figment of his imagination.
Covering his
relief with a look of exasperation, Will followed the voice with the beam of
his flashlight.
Nine-year-old
Sam Bryant peered back at him from one of the branches of the oak tree.
“Pretty good
climber, are you?”
The kid looked
terrified, but defiant. “Yes. But my mom…” his voice trembled on the word “tells me that I’m going to fall and break
my head.”
“Your head looks
pretty hard to me.”
“She’s dead.”
“Excuse me?”
“He…” the kid’s
whole lower face started to quiver. “He said my mom was dead. So you’re lying
about the dog.”
Will swallowed
the curse he wanted to say, but silently wished all the seven plagues to be
visited upon the man in question. Hopefully while he was naked. And staked out
on a fire ant mound. Why the hell would he say such a thing?
“He lied,” Will
told the boy. “He’s the liar.”
He was Matthew
Hastings, Sam Bryant’s mother’s boyfriend. After a particularly nasty argument
over Hastings’ belief that Sam’s mom was coddling him too much because she was
squeamish about Sam learning to hunt, Hastings decided to take the kid out into
the woods anyway while his mom was at work. He’d abandoned him there, with no
food, no water, and little hope of finding his way out. Apparently this was
meant as an illustration of the importance of developing survival skills.
Luckily they’d
managed to track Hastings car to this area, a stretch of uninhabited woodland
used primarily for a hunting club.
Hastings seemed
to have abandoned his car along with the boy, which meant he was in the wind
somewhere. But the important thing was that they’d found Sam, alive and in one
piece.
At least he
looked to be in one piece.
“Sam, I need you
to listen to me, okay? Your mom is fine. She’s worried sick, but she’s fine.
But I need to know if you’re hurt anywhere.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“I’ll just bet.”
The kid had been alone in the woods for almost eighteen hours. Given the fact
that it was August in South Carolina, dehydration was a given. Will pulled a
bottle out of the pocket of his cargo pants.
“Lucky for you I
brought some water with me. Now, I have to contact the other people who are
looking for you, so that everyone knows you’re okay. Can you climb down from
there, or do you need help?”
“I can do it.”
“Good man.” But
because Will didn’t want to take any chances, he moved closer to the base of
the tree even as he thumbed on his radio. “Found him,” he said, and gave his
approximate coordinates. “I’ll give you a status report on his condition just
as soon as I have a chance to check him out.”
Fog swirled,
obscuring his view of the boy, the tree, and Will moved his flashlight around
in an attempt to see through it. “Sam?” he said, but received no answer.
“Sam?” he said
again. “Be careful climbing down.”
That would be
just what they needed at this point, for the kid to fall out of the tree and
actually break his head.
Concern niggled.
“Sam? Maybe you should just stay put, buddy, and let me help you.”
Will closed the
final distance to the tree, but he tripped over an exposed root near the base
and nearly went sprawling.
“Some help I
am,” he muttered. “Pretend you didn’t see that,” he called out. But still the
boy didn’t respond.
“Sam?” Will
aimed his flashlight toward the branch of the tree where he’d last seen the kid
sitting. Empty. He started moving the beam lower.
“Sam!” he said
one more time when he saw no sign of the boy on any of the branches. The nerves
that had so recently calmed began to jump beneath his skin. Shit. Had the boy
fallen? He shone his flashlight at the ground, the boiling fog making it nearly
impossible to distinguish shapes, around the side, back toward that root he’d
tripped –
“Oh Jesus. Oh
no.” Will stumbled the two steps that would take him to where the boy lay,
dropping down on his knees beside him. How could he have fallen without Will
hearing a thing?
“Sam?” Will
reached out, turned the boy over.
And felt the
blood drain out of his head.
The boy hadn’t
fallen. He’d been shot.
And he’d been
dead for quite some time.
About the Author:
One fine day in the not-too-distant past, Lisa Clark O'Neill left Wittenberg University with a BA in English, which she promptly neglected. After working as an interior designer, decorative artist, and Montessori art teacher (there may have been a BA in art as well,) she finally settled into the role of mother to two very fine children.
However, two years of doing the stay-at-home-mom brain cell melt drove her to pull out a pen and one of her old college notebooks.
That turned into six manuscripts.
Lisa spent subsequent years avoiding housework by burying her nose in just about every romance novel she could get her hands on, after completely falling in love with the genre. Her own work falls into the romantic suspense sub-genre, with strong comedic undertones.
Lisa currently lives in the Atlanta area with her family, her dog, her cat and her daughter's pet rabbit. When she isn't attempting to keep the rabbit from eating the woodwork, she's hard at work on her next novel.
Author Links:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
Tour giveaway:
5 digital copies of Circumstantial Evidence
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