WHERE THE WHISKEY RAN RED

The reservoir gave up four bodies. Red Creek had spent thirty-two years making sure they stayed buried.

Summer, 1985.

A brutal drought drains Briar Creek Reservoir and exposes a rusted Chevrolet sunk deep in the Carolina mud. Inside are the remains of Wade Bellinger, his wife, and their two children, a family that vanished without a trace in 1953.

Sheriff Ed Price has heard the story his whole life.

Wade took his family and ran.

Only Wade wasn't running.

He was days away from taking control of the Bellinger empire, and when he did, he intended to shut down the whiskey operation that had quietly fed half the county for years.

That meant money.

Bootleg money. Political money. Money passed beneath tables and through back doors. Money that kept stills burning, whiskey moving, lawmen looking the other way, and powerful men powerful.

Then Wade disappeared.

Now Ed and Deputy Glenn White are digging into a thirty-two-year-old murder in a town where old men remember more than they'll admit, witnesses learned long ago to keep their mouths shut, and nearly everybody had a reason to make sure Wade Bellinger never saw another sunrise.

Somebody killed the Bellingers.

Somebody buried them beneath a reservoir.

And somebody in Red Creek knew the water would keep the secret.

But the water went down.

And the dead came home.