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“Theresa, get down!” Alex shouted.
She turned toward him. For a second the world froze as she saw the strength that shone in his eyes. Then time sped up again and suddenly it was as if everything was happening at once. Alex dropped Brick’s wrist and pulled Theresa to the floor, knocking the couch over in front of them like a shield. A second gun blast sounded, then a third and a fourth, shattering what remained of the windows and tearing up furniture. Brick leaped to his feet, yanked a small handgun from inside his boot and returned fire, momentarily seeming to forget about her and Alex. Only then did she realize she no longer had a grip on the shotgun.
“We can’t look for it now,” Alex shouted. “Something secure. Somewhere low. Any thoughts?”
“There’s a hatch under the floor.” She pointed.
They crawled toward the hatch opening. Alex kicked it open. They tumbled through onto the brick floor below. The hatch snapped shut behind them. Darkness filled the space. Alex urged her up against the very corner of the wall. Then his body covered hers. His heart beat against her back. He pulled a rough tarp over them. Bullets and shotgun blasts rained in the cottage above them, roaring like a hailstorm. Then the noise stopped. Silence surrounded them, punctuated by nothing but the sound of their ragged breaths, their pounding hearts and whispered prayers mingling in the darkness. Her legs cramped beneath her. Her arms were pinned tight against her chest. She started to stretch.
“Wait.” Alex’s breath filled her ear. “Not yet.”
And then she heard the footsteps, one set, walking slowly through the cottage, stepping on the broken glass, kicking furniture aside. There was swearing in a muffled male voice.
Then there was the slow creak of the hatch door opening above them.
Light filtered down through the hole. Fear filled her chest. Panicked prayers filled her heart. Then the hatch clanged shut again, the footsteps moved on and eventually silence fell. After a long moment, Alex unfolded his body and crouched. “Stay here.”
He forced the hatch open and looked out. And she heard him sigh heavily, then pray for God’s mercy under his breath.
She crouched up beside him. “Everything okay?”
“I think we’re alone. The cottage is a wreck.” He hauled his body up through the hole. Then he looked back down at her face. “Brick is dead.”
* * *
Alex searched the rest of the cottage quickly, while Theresa waited in the relative shelter of the storage hatch. He found nothing. Except for Brick’s corpse, they were alone. The cottage had been so totally destroyed it was hard to imagine the criminals having any motive other than causing damage. When he returned to the living room, Theresa had already hauled herself up and was sitting on the edge of the hatch with her legs still dangling in the hole.
Okay, not quite where he’d asked her to wait. But no harm done.
“They’re gone, whoever they were.” He reached for her hand, helped her up and then closed the hatch behind her. “I only saw one shooter and it was a fleeting glance at that. He was about six-three, I would guess, masked, with square shoulders.”
“Sounds like Castor.” Her face paled as her gaze ran to where Brick’s body now lay. “But that doesn’t make sense. Castor knew I was here, too. He should’ve gone searching for me. But he barely checked the hatch.”
“We were pressed right up against the wall in the shadows,” Alex said. “If it was Castor, he probably thinks you escaped somehow. Do you have any idea why he would come back just to kill one of his men?”
“I have no idea.” She shook her head but she was still looking at Brick’s body. “But if it wasn’t him, it means somebody else is running around Cedar Lake destroying cottages. This is my fault. I didn’t think to check inside his boots when I was looking for weapons, and then I dropped the shotgun. If he’d run instead of returning fire he might not have gotten shot.”
Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her away from the body.
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” he said. “You do know that, right? It was chaos. That gun was hidden pretty deep inside his boot. I might’ve missed it, too. You pointed out the hatch. If we hadn’t hidden in there, we might not still be alive, and we can thank God for that.”
She nodded and looked down at the ground. Her lips quivered. He pulled her into his arms and hugged her. She hugged him back. Somehow standing there with their arms around each other felt as instinctively right as breathing.
If someone had told him, even an hour ago, that he would ever hold Theresa in his arms again, he’d have laughed. But he’d loved her once, she’d been his friend and right now she needed him. Something inside him whispered that he wouldn’t be able to keep those old, lingering feelings at bay forever, but for right now, he needed to be stronger than his heartache.
“How are you even here?” she asked. “There’s no way you could’ve made the drive that quickly.”
“I took a snowmobile across the lake.”
“That’s crazy.” She pulled back out of his embrace. “It’s been a really warm winter. Or, at least, it was until recently. The lake never froze properly. There’s no way the ice is consistently thick enough for that to be safe, especially in the middle. You could’ve fallen through.”
He crossed his arms. She was right. It hadn’t been safe. It had been downright risky. But her life had been in danger. He’d taken a calculated risk in order to save her.
“It was fine,” he said. “I kept an eye on the shifts in the colors of the ice patterns, followed the channel markers and watched out for the buoys. I know this lake.” He looked down. “You’ve got duct tape on your sleeves.”
“Castor taped my wrists together behind my back.” She ran her hands over her arms self-consciously. “Fortunately, he did it over the sweatshirt and not on my skin.”
Part of him wanted to ask if he was right in thinking the sweatshirt was his old one, and if so, why she was wearing it. But something inside stopped him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “How did you get free?”
“I tore it loose on a metal bucket in the cupboard that they threw me in.” Her fingers picked at the duct tape. “I’m guessing you haven’t heard from Zoe and Mandy?”
His jaw tightened. Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that gunmen decided to ransack Mandy’s cottage the same weekend that Zoe brought her up for a quiet study break, could it?
“No,” he said. “I tried Zoe’s cell phone again before I left the cottage but I couldn’t get a signal. I placed a really quick internet call to my boss, Daniel, on the laptop, though, and let him know what was happening. He said he’d keep trying to reach her and obviously that he’d also call the police and send them straight here. But considering the road and the distance, it’ll take the police a while to get here and we’ve got to get out of here, now.”
His eyes glanced at the shattered glass of the broken windows.
“Needless to say, we still have a lot we need to talk about,” he went on. “But not here. We’ve got to get somewhere safer and quickly. I don’t know who did this, but they could come back, especially if they think you’re connected to this secret trunk somehow. Grab your winter gear. I’m going to check out the body.”
He could see the desire to argue forming in her eyes. But she pushed it down.
“Okay, we’ll talk once we’re somewhere safe.” She ran for the back hallway.
He crossed over to the body on the floor. He’d always appreciated how focused Theresa could be when necessary. But he desperately wished Zoe hadn’t brought Theresa into it. Knowing this whole mess had put her in danger made everything harder. He crouched beside the body on the floor. Brick’s winter jacket and gear were a popular, mass-produced brand available from countless stores and told him nothing. He used the camera on his cell phone to take a picture of Brick’s face. Then he took the man’s wallet from his pocket, flipped it open and pulled out his driver’s license.
“Says his name is Kenneth Brick,” he called. “He’s from Port Hope, Ontario. Age twenty-three. Looks like he works as a cashier at a supermarket.”
“Never heard of him, and I’ve never seen him before.”
“Me neither.” Alex took a picture of the driver’s license, too, put it back in the wallet and set the wallet next to the body. “Should we?”
“One of his buddies said something that made me question if he was familiar with Cedar Lake.” She hesitated. “He alluded to an old nickname of mine.”
“Well, the kids around here had all sorts of stupid nicknames flying around, none of which were exactly original, so I wouldn’t take it personally. But they know who Mandy is, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of connection to the lake. Let’s add that to the list of things we talk about later. Safety first. Talk second.”
She didn’t look convinced, but they’d paused here long enough and there really wasn’t time to draw this conversation out any longer. He grabbed the remains of a blanket and draped it over the body. When he looked up again, Theresa was standing behind him with a backpack in her hand.
He stood up. “What’s that?”
“My emergency kit.” She slung it over both shoulders. “It’s got a first aid kit, a change of clothes, duct tape, a fire starter, a CB radio and some snacks. Everything’s in waterproof bags, so it’ll be fine in the snow.”
He blinked—even though he knew better than to be surprised, considering it was Theresa. He waited as she slid a pair of snow pants on over her jeans and laced up a pair of winter boots. Then she pulled a heavy, hooded winter jacket on and zipped it up.
They ran for the back door and pushed out into the snow. It was already up to their calves and growing deeper by the second. She followed him down the driveway and into a small, wooden storage shed.
“The snow’s gotten bad.” Theresa shook the flakes from her hair.
“It’s going to get a lot worse,” Alex said. What had fallen so far was only a small taste of the deluge the forecast was predicting. He took the spare helmet off the back of the snowmobile and gave it to her. “My truck is back at my cottage. So, the plan is we head to my cottage, I’ll call Daniel with my laptop, fill him in and we’ll figure out our next move. Hopefully the power will still be on when we get there and Zoe will be sitting there with Mandy, waiting for us.”
He closed his eyes. Lord, I just pray that wherever Zoe is, she’s all right. She’s strong and she’s fierce. But she might be out in a snowstorm with a client I’m not sure I trust and killers on the loose.
When he opened his eyes, Theresa was looking at him. Strands of dark hair had slipped from the furry hood of her ski jacket. Even now, in the gloomy light of the shed, with flakes swirling like a meteor shower behind her, he had to admit he’d never seen anything like her. It was hard to put into words, but in a world of unstable and transient things, Theresa had always been like a tree, a willow tree, maybe, with roots so long and deep he knew if he just stayed close enough to her he could ride out any storm.
Until she’d cut him off, and left him rootless and drifting.
“I know you’re worried about Zoe.” Theresa’s hand brushed his arm. “She’s going to be okay. She’s smart. If she made it to town and saw the weather forecast before the storm hit, she probably just found a coffee shop or restaurant to ride it out in.”
“I hope so.” He waited as she put the helmet on then climbed on the snowmobile. Her long legs slid over the back of it behind him. She hesitated. Then her hands slid about his waist, in a gesture somehow both so familiar and foreign that he felt his brain almost short-circuit for a moment as he reached for the ignition. “Hold tight. This could get rough.”
The engine turned over.
A tall, broad-shouldered figure in a ski mask stepped into the open doorway, blocking their way to freedom. There was a small, automatic handgun in his hand. “You two aren’t going anywhere.”
THREE (#ulink_579b59b5-16ae-5ef6-8783-005b6d737c7a)
Fear washed over Theresa’s body. Instinctively her arms tightened around Alex’s body.
It was Castor. It had to be. His dark, masked form stood silhouetted against the snow. But the voice and stance were unmistakable. The head of the gang of kidnappers and killers who’d raided the cottage was back, filling the doorway and blocking their escape.
“I said, get off the snowmobile!” He stretched his arm out to its full length and tilted the gun sideways, like some kind of television gangster. “Both of you. Now. With your hands up.”
There was no way past him. They were stuck in a tiny little shed and he was about to shoot them at point-blank range. Her limbs began to shake. Her grip loosened on Alex’s body. Tears choked in the back of her throat and mingled with prayer.
Alex gunned the engine.
The snowmobile shot forward. Her body bounced back hard against the seat. The weapon fired. The snowmobile swerved hard to the right and she clung to Alex so tightly her arms ached. A second bullet split the air. Then she felt wind and snow smacking her body again. She opened her eyes. The snowmobile was flying through the woods. Bullets echoed behind them in the trees. Then the sound faded and all she could hear was the rush of the engine beneath her and the beating of her own heart in her chest. Trees grew thick around them, pressing in on all sides. Jagged rocks seemed to burst through the snow. Flakes filled her eyes like they were shooting through a galaxy of stars. She held on.
What was he thinking driving straight at Castor like that? Yes, Alex had saved their lives. Again. But he’d done so by risking getting shot. Something about that made her feel almost indignant. Alex was the kind of guy who’d just free-fall through life, trusting things would work out okay. Sure, he was right most of the time. In fact, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she was safer on the back of Alex’s snowmobile than she would be with anyone else in the world driving at this kind of speed, through these woods, in the snow. But did that mean he had what it took to be anybody’s bodyguard? Who’d pick up the pieces if, the next time he launched himself into danger, he was wrong?
As a teenager, the strong, daring young man with sun-bleached hair and dazzling blue eyes had always seemed like something out of a teenage heartthrob fantasy. She’d had a girlhood crush on him long before the day he’d dashingly rescued her from the capsized sailboat. Wakeboarding, water skiing, diving off the cliffs—it had seemed like there was nothing he couldn’t do. Except plan or think for more than two seconds ahead. There was a world of difference between instinctively leaping into action to rescue someone from a capsized boat and impulsively dropping out of college. She hadn’t been sure back then that Alex knew the difference. She’d lost count of how many times Zoe had recently tried to convince her that Alex had grown up and wasn’t that reckless guy anymore. Maybe. But she had yet to see it.
God, forgive me for sounding ungrateful. I’m thankful that Alex rescued me. Thank You that we both got out of there alive. But please, help him be wise and actually think through what we’re going to do next, to find Zoe and Mandy, and get us all home safe and alive.
The snowmobile was slowing already. She sat back. They’d left the Rhodes family cottage only a few minutes ago, but now another building loomed ahead of them out of the snow. A moment later she recognized the shape. It was Number Seven Cedar Lake, the Pattersons’ cottage. Despite the size of the lake, its wild and rugged landscape meant there were only eleven cottages dotted around it, like the numbers on a misshapen clock. They were owned by five different extended families, now that her family had sold their cottage: the Rhodes, the Deans, the Pattersons, the Mullocks and the Wrights.
John and Judith Patterson were a sweet, elderly couple who spent their summers at their small, nonwinterized cottage and every winter at their condo in Florida. Their son, Don, was a widower who’d built a large A-frame for himself and his children, Natalie and Corey, after his wife had died tragically. It had probably been twenty years ago now, and she’d been just a kid at the time, but still she remembered how everyone came together to help.
Then Don had been the first one to leap to her parents’ aid, years later, when they’d lost their business, buying up what remained of their inventory and taking over the lease on their store for his lumber business. Sudden sadness filled her chest so sharply it hurt. The little Cedar Lake community had been like a second, extended family who looked out for one another. One that she’d lost the summer she’d lost Alex.
The snowmobile slid smoothly around the far side of the cottage under the side awning. Alex cut the motor and they sat there for a half a breath, hearing nothing but the wind shaking the trees and snow buffeting the awning above them. Then, slowly, she pulled her arms from around his waist. He slid his visor up and looked back over his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
The depth of genuine concern in his tone was probably the only thing that kept her from asking if he had any idea what he was doing. At least now they’d have a moment to regroup.
She slid her visor up, too. “Yes, I’m okay. That man in the mask was Castor. I’m pretty sure of it.”
“Well, I think he’s the same man I saw shooting up the Rhodeses’s cottage and who killed Brick. Which does not bode well.” Alex swung his leg over and stood up. “Can I take it from the look on your face that you don’t like something about how I handled things back there?”
Was she still that transparent around him?
“You drove a snowmobile straight at a gunman.”
“He was going to kill us. We may not know much about these guys, but we know they’re not above murder.” He stretched. “But they’re also sloppy and reckless. Castor, as you call him, was only holding the gun with one hand. Which is cute if you’re trying to look all tough, but absolute garbage when it comes to aiming. My gut told me that if I was fast enough off the mark he’d have no hope of hitting us.” He shrugged. “I was right.”
All right, he had been right about that. Her studies in human psychology told her that there was a lot to be said for reading body language like that, and she could even concede that sometimes a person’s instincts took over and acted, before the rational brain had processed what they already knew. But it was one thing to believe these men were nothing but a ragtag group of amateurs. It was another to risk your life on that.
“So, we’ve stopped here to talk things through and make a plan?” She climbed off, too. The fact that Castor had killed his own henchman worried her, as did the fact he hadn’t taken the time to thoroughly check every corner of the cottage when he’d found her gone—despite how relieved she was he hadn’t seen them. But for now, she could only guess what all that could mean.
“Pretty much,” Alex said. “We should be safe here for a bit. This cottage is pretty hard to find from the main lake road if you don’t know what you’re looking for. If they were coming after us on snowmobiles we should have heard them by now. I’m going to try to call Zoe again on my cell phone and, also, the police and Daniel. Not that I expect I’ll be able to get a signal. So I’d like to try the CB radio, too. But that’s going to be trickier because anything we say on an open channel could be overheard.”
“Absolutely.” Theresa eased the backpack off her shoulders and pulled out the radio. “I’m sorry. You must be worried sick.”
“Yeah, I am.” He took it from her. “Zoe’s not just my little sister. She’s my colleague, and right now she’s somewhere with our client.”
He strode off down the side of the cottage under the porch roof.
“Alex, wait! You said you’re worried about being overheard on the radio. Like I tried to tell you, one of the guys called me by an old nickname.” She took a deep breath. “In fact, it was ‘finicky little princess.’”
She didn’t know what kind of response she’d expected from that, but it wasn’t the one she got. He didn’t even turn. “Okay, well, we can talk about that after if you think that means anything.”
If it meant anything? Didn’t he remember?
“But the kids at Cedar Lake used to call me princess, remember? And they thought I was spoiled.”
He still didn’t turn.
“The only person who ever called me a ‘finicky little princess’ was you. Just you. When you broke off our engagement.”
Alex spun back. His face had gone oddly pale. He opened his mouth, and for a long moment no words came out.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that,” he managed, finally. “I’m sorry if whatever those thugs said reminded you of our breakup. I don’t remember things like you apparently do. Certainly, I never meant to hurt you. But right now, our past doesn’t matter.”
She could tell he was upset, but she didn’t know why. Did it bother him to be reminded that he was the one who’d broken off their engagement? Either way he was completely failing to get what she was saying. Like when he’d seemed to think “I don’t know if I can marry you right now” had meant “Please go away forever. I don’t love you anymore.”
“Listen,” she said. “Please. What I’m saying is that it was very bizarre and specific. Added to the fact he seemed convinced I knew something about this trunk, which I don’t, it makes me think that maybe he had some kind of deeper link to our history here.”
“Maybe? I don’t know. It sounds like a pretty big leap of logic to me.” He didn’t look convinced. “But we can talk about it more when I’ve located Zoe and Mandy, we’re somewhere safe, we’re not trying to outrun a pending storm and nobody’s shooting at us. Just give me half a second and then we’ll keep going. Won’t be long.”
He turned away. She nearly groaned. The storm was growing worse by the second. His sister and Mandy were missing. She’d just been kidnapped and shot at. A man was dead. Yet here they were, reliving the very same kind of argument they’d had a hundred times before. He wanted to leap into action. She wanted to pause long enough to actually think.
Alex had already given up on the cell phone and was fiddling with the radio. She glanced at the cottage. The families at Cedar Lake used to have an open-door policy for all the kids on the lake in case of emergency. Maybe she could still find a key. Her hand ran along the underside of the window boxes, feeling in the snow. Then she stopped short. The cottage door was already ajar.
“Hey, Alex? I think the cottage is open.”
No response. She pressed her hand against the door. It swung open under her touch.
She stepped inside the cottage and cried out in shock.
