Meet Vic, a detective in a small southern town surrounded by good 'ole boys who finds the first body of a serial killer known as the cave dweller.

Chapter One

There was someone watching. Vic could feel the heat of their gaze as if it seared holes into her back. She stepped toward her locker, hoping to appear unaware and reached toward the combination lock. She hesitated for a moment, then turning on the balls of her feet, she faced the door, hands clinched in fists and ready for...

Nothing.

Paranoid.

Foolish.

She snickered in relief and returned to her locker, lifted the cool metal and turned the combination. Her senses remained alert, however, as her fingers moved the dial to the right 16, left 24, right 8 and the bindings released. Metal clanked against metal as she lifted the latch. Opening the grey door, she stepped back from the mounds of paper falling to the floor and felt movement behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see five of her male co-workers struggling to keep from laughing hysterically. She bent down and picked up the glossy magazine pages and flipped through them.

"Very funny, guys. Very funny." She held up the Playgirl centerfolds, shaking them in front of her.

"When are you guys going to grow up and start puberty? Huh?"

Vic balled up the papers and threw it at them as they pushed out the door, patting each other on the back.

This is not what she thought her life would be like. All the hard work, the academy, the training and the only thing she faced were playgirl pictures and a crossing guard post at Mike Elam Elementary. Yep, this was her life as the first female cop in Podunk, Tennessee. Detective Victoria Jacobson of the City of Caleb Police Department and the brunt of all the sexual jokes and harassment cops could dish out.

Damn, what she wouldn’t give for something to happen in her one-horse town. Why Mayor McKinely and the commission even approved a detective position was beyond her. Well, except the fact that the mayor himself was a cop wanna-be who couldn’t get through the fitness course of the Nashville Police Academy.

She threw her purse into the locker and slammed the door shut, the metal clanging with quiet echo.