The Vale of Silent Bones
Lucas Vale left Hawk's Hollow twenty years ago and never looked back. Now a drifting journalist with more ghosts than bylines, he returns only because his estranged brother Elias has stopped answering the phone. What he finds is worse than silence: a hollow town bleeding out, an empty church bell tower, and a construction crew that has just unearthed a skeleton in the basement of the First Baptist Church. The bones are old, but the questions they raise are fresh and dangerous. Who is buried beneath the floorboards? Why has the official record of Hawk's Hollow's past been scrubbed clean? And why does the man with the rifle keep appearing wherever Lucas digs? Teaming up with Maren Cole, a deputy whose loyalty to the badge is stronger than her loyalty to the town, Lucas begins to unravel a web of disappearances, corrupt land deals, and a family secret that has been rotting in the dark since before he was born. As the pressure builds, the shooter's patience thins, and an innocent young woman named Annie Brooks begins asking the same questions Lucas is. To survive Hawk's Hollow, Lucas must choose between the truth that could save the town and the lie that has kept it alive. Some bones were meant to stay buried. Others refuse to rest.