Porch lights from widely scattered trailers and small houses dotted the landscape, but she’d seen no one when she’d arrived. The village store sat alone on a two-lane road, the only place to purchase food and gas for twenty miles in every direction. Those lights formed a harsh bubble of white in the nighttime blackness that surrounded the building. Her police unit was parked in plain sight by the gas pumps, illuminated by the fluorescent lights in the metal canopy above it. She hadn’t heard a car pass by since she’d been here, and she’d sent the manager home after he’d let her inside. Head cocked to the side, she strained to hear any other sound that would indicate who-or how many-might be just outside the broken plate-glass window of the mini-mart. She stripped off her latex gloves with quiet efficiency as she rose, dropping them on the floor by her feet. Sergeant Nicky Matthews was careful to make no sound as she placed her fingerprint brush on the metal shelf in front of her. Other than a few emergency lights pooling eerily on the floor, the room was dark, its bulky shelves and racks rising out of the linoleum like misshapen boulders. Her eyes narrowed as she peered through the open door of the office and into the cavernous space on the other side.

Like fingernails on a chalkboard, the sound made the hair on her neck and arms stand on end. The harsh scrape, out of place in the quiet of predawn, penetrated the low buzz of the refrigeration motors.

Hearts of the Missing by Carol Potenza