Shadow of Vengeance by Kristine Mason Page B

missing, and ended up inheriting this mess. I still want to know your background and your capabilities as a sheriff. I want to know what you’ve done to stop this during the last six years.”
    “Oh my God,” Rachel groaned. “For someone who didn’t mean to be insulting…”
    “It’s okay,” Jake said. “Actually, I appreciate your partner’s bluntness. And he’s right. I did inherit this mess. My first year as sheriff, a student went missing, and the Hell Week note was left in his dorm room. When I started questioning folks I discovered that, over the prior fourteen years, the same damned thing happened seven other times. The previous sheriff was dead, so he was obviously no help. The deputies claimed that the former sheriff exhausted every possible angle, which was a lie. My initial file on the first kidnapping victim I dealt with is thicker than all seven my predecessor investigated. So I called the Michigan State Police.”
    “You’d mentioned they’re not interested in helping,” Rachel said.
      “Yeah, the first time they came to Bola, it didn’t go well. I gave the two inspectors from the State Police Field Service Bureau the Hell Week note I found in the missing kid’s dorm. In the meantime, I contacted the kid’s parents, gathered a couple hundred volunteers from Bola and the university, along with trained search-and-rescue dogs loaned to us from another county. The inspectors even had divers come in to search the river. This search ended up going on record as the largest of its kind in this county, ever.”
    Rachel leaned forward. “But you never found the kid. That must have been rough.”
    “No.” Jake shook his head. “We found him.”
    “But I thought you told me you’ve never found any of the bodies,” Rachel said.
    “True. None of the missing boys have ever been found. This kid wasn’t missing though. He was in Niagara Falls with his girlfriend for the weekend.”
    Rachel frowned. “But the note.”
    Jake shook his head. “The State Police lab found fingerprints on it, and those prints ended up matching a couple guys from the fraternity the not-so-missing kid was pledging.”
    “I take it everyone knows about the kidnappers MO,” Owen said.
    “That’s right. My predecessor and his deputies kept no secrets. Those two frat boys thought it would be funny to plant the note. Their hoax cost the county thousands of dollars it didn’t have. The two boys lost their scholarships and were eventually expelled. And, their little prank ended up damaging my reputation.”  
    Aside from assuming the sheriff had been days from retirement, Owen realized he’d pegged Jake Tyler wrong. It sounded as if, during his first year on the job, Jake had done everything by the book with this particular case. Unfortunately, that hadn’t mattered. Although the circumstances weren’t his fault, the sheriff had been the lead on the investigation, as well as the eventual fall guy. Owen could relate to Jake’s frustration. Hell, a misguided and manipulative seventeen-year-old girl had cost him his career with the U.S. Secret Service. After his reputation had already been ruined, he’d later learned she hadn’t meant to, just like he was sure those two frat boys hadn’t meant for their prank to blow up in their faces, or Jake’s for that matter.  
    “None of this was your fault,” Rachel said. “I still don’t see why, after that incident, the State Police—”
    “It gets better. Two weeks later, another kid went missing. The kid’s RA, his roommate, the guys from the fraternity he was pledging…they all thought he’d gone home to see his family. No one contacted me, or anyone at my department, about his disappearance. A month later, I get a call from this kid’s parents, asking me to check on their son. When I went to his dorm room, and looked through his things, I found the Hell Week note. This time, because now I knew this Hell Week kidnapping had been legitimately going on for