The Night Shift

Deputy County Sheriff Molly Cooper pulls the night shift in Mason Creek, Wisconsin—not by choice, but because she’s still one of the newer deputies on the force. In a town where everyone knows everyone (or at least knows someone who does), the quiet hours between midnight and dawn usually bring nothing more exciting than speeding tickets, bar scuffles, and the occasional domestic call.

Molly’s learning to like the rhythm. It's quiet, for the most part, and she loves the job.

Until the night everything changes.

A stranger slips into Mason Creek under cover of darkness. At first the signs are subtle: livestock found exsanguinated in the fields, strange figures glimpsed at the edge of town, and a growing unease that something is hunting in the shadows. Then a small boy is taken from his bedroom in the dead of night—kidnapped by a human accomplice working with something far worse than any local criminal.

What begins as a frantic search for the missing child quickly spirals into something far darker. As Molly races against time to bring the boy home, she discovers that the creature now stalking Mason Creek is no ordinary predator. Ancient, patient, and endlessly hungry, the vampire has chosen this tight-knit community as its new feeding ground.

And it doesn’t hunt alone.

The deeper Molly digs, the more the boundaries between myth and reality dissolve. She learns she isn’t the only thing that goes bump in the night. The shadows have teeth, old secrets are stirring, and the people she’s sworn to protect may not be who she thought they were. With the town closing ranks and fear spreading faster than the truth, Molly must confront an evil that defies everything she was trained for—and face the possibility that some monsters wear familiar faces.

The Night Shift is a pulse-pounding blend of small-town crime fiction, supernatural horror, and relentless thriller. Robert Van Dusen weaves an atmospheric tale of duty, dread, and discovery where the darkness inside a quiet Wisconsin town proves every bit as dangerous as the one that just moved in.