THE SECRET OF CHEROKEE COVE by Paula Graves Page B

headed outside.
    * * *
    T HE WOMAN IN question was a wiry, dark-haired woman in her late twenties who watched the truck’s approach through narrowed eyes. Her wary expression cleared when she got a better look at the vehicle, and she went back to what she’d been doing when they’d come over the hill, her hoe chopping up the rocky soil of what looked to be a fallow garden in front of her small wooden cabin.
    She was a natural sort of pretty, with lots of curly black hair and a spattering of freckles across her tanned face. She gave a nod of hello to Nix and then, resting the hoe on the ground, she turned her curious gaze on Dana. “Hello.”
    Movement on the porch behind her caught Dana’s eye before she could respond. There was a little boy rocking back and forth on a homemade rocking horse that had been carved from pine logs. He couldn’t be more than two or three years old, and the solemn gray eyes that stared back at her from a lightly freckled face were just like the woman’s, the color of the cloudy sky overhead—gray with a hint of gunmetal along the edges.
    “Briar Blackwood, this is Dana Massey. Dana, this is Briar.” Nix moved past Briar and took the porch steps in one quick bound, reaching down to the little boy on the rocking horse. The baby grinned up at him and lifted his arms, rewarded with a swooping swing to Nix’s hip. “And this,” Nix added, “is my man Logan.”
    “My son,” Briar added, unnecessarily.
    “Nice to meet you both,” Dana said.
    “Briar’s a dispatcher.”
    “For the police department?”
    “Police and fire,” Briar corrected with a little smile. “It’s a small town.”
    She had a strong accent, Dana noticed, as thick as those of the people she’d spoken to on Cherokee Cove Road outside the post office. She supposed Briar’s cabin was still in Cherokee Cove, but she and Nix had gone off the main paved road not far from where they’d met Wally from the garage to hand over Dana’s keys, traveling a narrow, winding road into the woods for almost a mile before they’d reached this small clearing where Briar and her son lived.
    “Starting a garden?” Dana waved toward the hoe and the broken ground.
    “Yeah. It’s finally gotten warm enough that I can start putting stuff out for the summer without worrying about a deep freeze.”
    “What do you grow?” Dana asked as Nix crossed to where they stood, still bouncing Logan on one hip.
    “Tomatoes, green beans, okra, squash, peppers—pretty much anything we can put up in the freezer or can,” she answered. “Do you garden?”
    “I did when I was a kid,” Dana answered. “But I live in an apartment in Atlanta now. Not really much time or space for gardening.”
    “That’s right. You’re a deputy U.S. marshal.” Briar’s lips curved into a toothy smile. “Hell, you might have brought in some of my kinfolk. I come from a dicey bunch.”
    “Apparently so do I,” Dana murmured.
    Nix’s lips twitched as he caught her comment. “Speaking of your dicey kinfolk, Briar, I heard that one of your cousins is a member of the Blue Ridge Infantry.”
    Briar turned to look at Nix, her expression cautious. “You mean Blake?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “He hasn’t been around here in months. We don’t want his kind of trouble.”
    “I hear he was up around Purgatory the other day.”
    Briar looked genuinely surprised. “He’s an idiot, then.”
    “Friends of mine think he might be trying to recruit folks from around here. With the economy like it is and some of the stuff coming out of Washington—”
    “I won’t say there aren’t some fool-minded people around here who’d fall for that kind of sales pitch, but I haven’t heard anything about it, and I generally hear just about everything that goes on in these parts. Like just a few minutes ago, I got a phone call tellin’ me that there was a Cumberland in Cherokee Cove, like I was supposed to run and take cover.” She slanted a look toward Dana. “I