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Chapter 1

There was no escaping now

As the steady click of sensible heels on asphalt grew ever closer, Campbell Crawford shut his eyes and repressed a curse Where the hell had she come from?

To give hi rese polite civility, Cam ducked back into his truck

“Mr Crawford, I need a word” Agnes Crockett used the saonoh school

Resisting the urge to hunch his shoulders, Ca blueprints under his arm and turned to face her “Yes, Mrs Crockett What can I do for you?”

Mrs Crockett peered up at hiht floral affair completely at odds with her no-nonsense deht up at the next City CouncilStreet”

Not again If he had a nickel for every tiht, he could buy a round of drinks for everybody waiting inside the Mudcat Tavern

“The city needs to fix the sensor Cross traffic fro, when nobody’s even co the other direction Why, I sat there for a full fiveStreet, and I was late to Bitsy Elliott’s daughter’s baby shower When is that sensor going to get fixed?”

Caiven the state of the city coffers, it would be ht would be entirely decoo back to the four-way stop, but that wasn’t so he was about to share with this particular constituent “I certainly understand your concern, Mrs Crockett Noe talked about this the last time—”

“You said I had to fill out this for around in her purse and came up with a sheet of paper that she thrust at hiht fixed”

Cam took the paper She’d filled in the blanks by hand, her slanted scrawl covering h and refrained fro that it was a web form she was supposed to subenda for our next City Council ”

“See that you do I’ve been put off for the last ti man”

Aware that his shoulders had hunched up by his ears, Cam forced theo meet a client” He tapped the blueprint tube and softened the diploood evenin’, now”

He called the escape good when he made it to the door of the Mudcat without pursuit or an order to detention

So on the jukebox The hot fiddle licks of “Callin’ Baton Rouge” were punctuated by the crack of billiard balls frohts still twinkled around the perimeter, as they probably would until Valentine’s Day or Easter Cam felt soh-top table in the corner, where his cousin, Miranda, was already taking a pull on a Sam Adams

“You’re late” She set down the bottle “Had a real pisser of a day at the clinic, so I started without you Two days after Christmas and there’s already an outbreak of flu And not the strain they were predicting when they for?”