Читать книгу Rescue At Cedar Lake - Maggie Black K. - Страница 10

ONE

Alex Dean fixed his sharp blue eyes on the screen of his Ash Private Security laptop and prayed hard for his stepsister, Zoe, to answer the secure video call. Winter winds howled through the trees outside and shook the frost-covered windows of the Dean family cottage. A storm was coming. The video call kept ringing. He ran his hand over the back of his neck where sandy blond hair brushed the collar of his leather jacket. Where was she?

Zoe wasn’t just family. She was a colleague and fellow bodyguard who’d joined him in helping their boss, Daniel Ash, create Ash Private Security. Despite being four foot eleven, she was every bit as strong and savvy a fighter as the rest of the team. Not to mention her assignment had been a very simple one—to bring a stressed-out university student up to the remote shores of Cedar Lake, Ontario, for a weekend of quiet studying. Not a high risk assignment by any means. The twenty-year-old client, Mandy Rhodes, came from one of the high-powered families they’d grown up knowing because their families all had cottages at the isolated lake. She was also the second cousin of their close friend Joshua, who was overseas completing his final few months of military service.

But after the initial check-in call yesterday, Zoe had fallen out of contact. He hadn’t been able to get through to her last night. Then, when Alex had called again this morning to give her a heads-up that a vicious, unexpected storm now threatened to wreak havoc on the roads and send power lines crashing down, Zoe still hadn’t answered. Cedar Lake had never had reliable cell phone service, though. Even the state-of-the-art Wi-Fi hotspots on their laptops had glitched far too often. So he’d driven up in person to double-check everything was okay—and found the cottage empty.

Empty and yet oddly tidy. There were no signs of a struggle. Or that Zoe and Mandy had ever made it there. Instead, the rustic space where he’d spent his childhood summers almost looked like it’d been gone over by a professional cleaning service. Something he might’ve taken comfort in if Mandy’s parents hadn’t warned them she was so stressed out about university that the last time they’d let her come up alone to study, just a couple of weeks ago, she’d left her family cottage in such a bad state they weren’t about to let her travel up alone again. And he’d never known Zoe to be anything close to neat.

Unlike Theresa Vaughan.

He winced as his ex-fiancée’s captivating green eyes suddenly flickered across his mind. Theresa was the only person he’d ever known with the compulsion to leave every place she touched more beautiful than she’d found it—something some of the other kids on the lake had teased her about. The stunning brunette’s wealthy family owned the large cottage at the mouth of the lake. Their romance had first blossomed as teenagers when he’d been watching with his buddies from a cottage window as a thunderstorm capsized her sailboat. Her harness had gotten tangled in the rigging, trapping her underwater. While the other kids had laughed, oblivious to the danger she was in, Alex had pelted down the shore, barely pausing to kick off his shoes before he’d leaped off the dock and swum to her rescue. She was now a trauma counselor and psychotherapist who also worked with Ontario Victim Services, and remained the one and only person Alex had ever pledged his foolish heart to—even though she’d broken that heart and called off their engagement just days before the wedding.

The computer beeped. He looked up. The call had timed out. He hit Redial. Alex drummed his fingers on the table. The call icon circled on the screen. Was a suspiciously clean cottage all it took to distract him with thoughts of Theresa? Despite putting eight and a half years between himself and that summer, the memory of losing her still ached like an old scar at the edges of his heart. This was why he hadn’t been back to the lake since that day, no matter how many times his family and friends had urged him to come. Every inch was a minefield of unwanted memories, from the huge rocks in front of her cottage where he’d proposed, to the apartment over the boathouse—where he’d thrown the returned engagement ring so hard it had gotten lost under the floorboards.

The call to Zoe stopped again. He hit Redial for a second time. Then his head dropped into his hands, and he shoved his sore memories to the furthest reaches of his mind. It would only be a matter of time before the impending storm took out the power lines and cut off road access. If he didn’t leave soon, he could be stuck there in the cold, remote cottage without power for days. His sister and their client’s safety mattered. Nothing else.

“Hello? Alex?” A voice filled the air. Puzzled. Female. But it wasn’t his sister’s. No, this voice was both sweet and strong like the first coffee waking him up in the morning. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

He blinked. “Theresa?”

He looked up at the screen. Theresa sat on a chair in front of his sister’s laptop with a slightly concerned look on her face and the snow-filled windows of a different cottage in the background. Long dark hair tumbled around her shoulders in the kind of disheveled, messy way he’d always found adorable. A question hovered in her deep green eyes. She was engulfed by a giant red sweatshirt with “Canada” embroidered across it in big block letters, but because of the way the fabric fell it almost seemed to read “and.” Hang on. Wasn’t that one of his old sweatshirts?

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Where’s Zoe and Mandy?”

“Not here.” Theresa said. Her nose wrinkled. “I’m guessing Zoe hasn’t managed to call you yet. They left me at Mandy’s family’s cottage and went for a drive to find a cell phone signal and pick up some groceries about an hour ago. Mandy is supposed to be hitting the books and staying offline. But once we got here, she was really panicked about not being able to surf the internet or get a cell phone signal. So I told Zoe it might be best not to make a video or use the laptop around her. Zoe said it wouldn’t be a problem, that you’d understand, and she’d call you this morning to explain. I got out the laptop after they left. When the call kept ringing and ringing I figured it might be important.”

He sighed heavily. “It is.”

“And I presume Zoe didn’t tell you she’d brought me in on this?”

“No, she didn’t.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. He wasn’t sure what he thought of his former fiancée making decisions that impacted an active operation, especially if it kept him out of the loop.

Zoe and Theresa had reconnected at Christmas, after Theresa and Samantha, a journalist she was working with, had been violently threatened. That had been the first thread that had relinked Alex’s life to Theresa’s. Since then there’d been even more. His best friend, Josh, was now engaged to Samantha, Alex was going to be their best man, and he’d already been warned that Theresa was invited to the wedding. Josh was also joining Ash Private Security when his tour of duty was up and had made it clear he thought Theresa’s unique perspective on crime victims would make her a strong asset to their team. Both Zoe and Daniel agreed and had already asked Theresa to advise on a few clients.

So far, all Alex had said on the matter was that he was fine with it and they all had his blessing to work with her. Just as long as he didn’t have to see her or talk to her until he was ready.

Now, ready or not, here she was.

“I don’t understand why Zoe needed to bring you in,” he said, “just because our client’s dealing with a little bit of stress.”

“Not everyone’s able to just shrug away stress and ignore it.” Her arms crossed, too, mirroring his stance. “Mandy’s not in a good place right now. She’s emotionally frazzled. Remember, both her brothers are a lot older and very successful.”

Mandy’s twin brothers were a year older than Alex, and had always been arrogant, athletic and entitled. True, as adults they’d done well for themselves. Emmett now owned a string of fancy car dealerships. Kyle was a local politician.

“Being under pressure is part of being young,” he said. It was hardly a crisis.

“Maybe,” Theresa went on. “But her parents are pretty overprotective and I’m getting the suspicion that there’s something more going on. Not that she’s been willing to open up to me about it yet.”

Well, Mandy’s breakdown would have to wait until the storm was over. He got why that kind of stuff might matter to a psychotherapist like Theresa. But it didn’t make much difference to his mission to get everyone home safely. His temples ached as his brain tried to translate everything she’d told him into a workable solution. There were several different towns in the area Zoe could’ve driven to. His options were to wait for them to get back, try to go find them, or just get somewhere with a functional cell signal and try to call Zoe again.

“And you’re at Mandy’s parents’ cottage now?” he confirmed.

“Yeah, Number Eight Cedar Lake, on the far side. Not one of her brother’s properties. I know originally the plan had been for us to stay at your family’s cottage. But Mandy was getting too stir-crazy and said she wanted to be somewhere familiar, so I suggested we move over here.”

Which now put her over forty-five minutes away by truck in weather like this. Though, if the early winter had been colder and the lake had frozen over properly, he could’ve grabbed his snowmobile from the boathouse and been there in fifteen minutes. But, as it was, the risk of hitting a thin patch in the middle was just too high. He ran his hand along his jaw, oddly thankful he’d shaved that morning. Theresa had never liked him in a beard.

Enough talk. He had to make a decision. “Where’s your car?”

“Back home. Zoe picked me up from the bus station.”

“Well, I’m sorry to cut your weekend therapy session short, but there’s a really bad storm coming. Several inches of snow falling this afternoon followed by a bunch of freezing rain tonight. Her parents asked us to bring her home. Emmett called my cell phone, berated me for even letting her come up here without running it by him, and threatened to come up and collect her himself personally if I didn’t bring her home right away.” Then he’d called back a second time and left a voice mail message saying that he’d sue Ash into the ground if anything happened to Mandy. “You two can talk while we drive or pick things up again once we’re out of harm’s way. But a storm this bad could take down whole trees, killing the power and blocking off the roads. I’ll drive around the lake to join you. Then, as soon as Zoe and Mandy get back, we’ll all head out together.”

“I can tell you right now that Mandy won’t want to leave here if she thinks this is something her family is forcing on her,” Theresa said. Her voice was gentle, but there was still an edge to it that made him envision her heels digging into the floorboards. “She wants to be up here. Granted, she wasn’t prepared for losing her phone and internet connection. But that doesn’t mean she wanted to go home. This is Canada. Cottages withstand winter storms all the time. A few quiet days studying by candlelight and heating soup over the fire is probably the best thing for Mandy. More importantly, she needs to be able to decide for herself what happens next. Not to be told what to do. Or pressured into a dangerous drive on short notice.”

“I hear you, but that’s not your call to make,” he said. “Her parents hired Ash Private Security to look after her. They didn’t trust her traveling alone and they don’t much like the idea of her being cut off from the world in a dark and cold cottage.”

“Not even if she thinks it’s what’s best for her?” Theresa asked.

There was the distant hum of a motor outside and it took him a moment to realize it was coming from Theresa’s end of the call. Sounded like Zoe and Mandy were back. Thankfully.

“She’s twenty.” Alex’s eyes rolled. “She doesn’t know what she wants. She’ll probably change her mind the moment we’re on the highway.”

Theresa frowned. Okay, he probably shouldn’t have put it like that. But she was the last person who was going to convince him that what someone thought at twenty was a deciding factor in what they would or wouldn’t do. When she called off the wedding she’d been twenty, he’d been twenty-one and the argument had been such a mess he still wasn’t sure how it had happened. He’d told her he’d decided to drop out of university because, while a full scholarship was great and all, he wasn’t sure he wanted to study medicine. She’d said something about her parents having money problems, and that he needed to grow up, step up and be more responsible. The next thing he knew she was dropping the ring back into his hand.

“Look, I’m not trying to start a fight,” Theresa said. “Zoe tells me you’re really great at the whole bodyguard thing. I’m just asking you to take the time to think through how you’re going to talk to Mandy about this. This is no time for you to just charge ahead and not think about the consequences.”

By which she meant what, exactly?

There was banging and rattling behind her like someone trying to get the porch doors open. He looked past her, but all he could see were the shifting silhouettes of figures behind the glass.

“Hang on,” Theresa said. “They’ve probably locked themselves out. I’ll let Zoe know you’re on the call and then she can take over talking to you.”

“Great. Thanks.” He was almost positive Zoe would side with him.

Alex watched Theresa’s hair swish and fall down her back as she walked toward the door. Her wool socks padded softly on the hardwood floor. The sweatshirt swamped her slender body down to her jeans-clad thighs. A long breath left his lungs. Even more than eight years later and through the unflattering lens of a laptop webcam, she was still every bit as beautiful as she’d always been. Theresa paused at the patio door. There were three figures standing at the large glass doors, all of whom were too big to be either Zoe or Mandy.

They exchanged words he couldn’t quite make out. Then Theresa’s back straightened so sharply it sent fear coursing down his own spine.

“Hey!” he called, hoping the volume on the laptop was up high enough that she could hear him. “Is everything okay?”

The distorted sound of the men shouting crackled through the speakers. They started banging on the glass. Worry now pooled at the base of his spine. Did she have anything to defend herself with? His eyes scanned the room. A fake antique bayonet and decorative sword were crossed over the mantel, but even at a glance he could tell how useless they would both be in a real battle. But she might be able to barricade herself in a room upstairs long enough for him to help her plan an escape.

“Theresa! Listen to me!” His voice rose. “Don’t panic. I can help you protect yourself. But you need to do exactly what I say.”

Theresa took a step back, but her head didn’t turn. The shouting grew louder and more vulgar, with the demand that she open the door. The glass windows and doors rattled and shook like an earthquake.

“Theresa!” He forced his voice to stay clear and calm even as he battled the fear beating in his chest. “I need you to listen to me. Step away from the window. Walk backward to the laptop. Then grab a piece of furniture. Heavy but something you can lift. A small table. A chair.”

She wasn’t listening. Her eyes darted to the weapons above the fireplace.

Dear God, please help me protect her!

Her hands struggled in vain to pull the antique weapons down from the brackets holding them.

“Theresa! Please! Listen to me!”

Oh Lord, please, save her life.

The patio door splintered. Theresa turned and ran toward the laptop. But she’d barely taken a step before the world exploded behind her. Wood splintered. Glass shattered. Wind whipped through the open doorway, hurling snow in with it. Three men ran through in winter jackets, blue jeans and ski masks.

Armed with shotguns.

A scream ripped from Theresa’s lips. Her fingers reached toward the keyboard.

Someone grabbed her from behind. The laptop fell to the floor. It landed on its side and for one helpless moment Alex could see nothing but muddy floorboards and boots. Then Theresa’s head hit the ground. A gloved hand pushed her against the floor.

Theresa’s panicked face filled the screen. Her terrified eyes met his.

* * *

Theresa’s lungs ached with every breath. A hand gripped the back of her head pushing the side of her face into the floor. A knee pressed hard into the small of her back.

Alex’s eyes met hers through the screen of the fallen laptop. She could hear the men searching the cottage. Things were being tossed off shelves. Furniture clattered and fell. Male voices shouted and swore. She kept her eyes locked on Alex like a lifeline. Alex leaped to his feet, still holding the laptop in one hand while he dialed his cell phone with the other.

“Stay strong, Theresa,” his voice filtered faintly through the speakers. Fear filled his blue eyes, making something inside her own chest ache in pain. “I’m coming for you. I promise.”

A boot landed hard on the laptop, stomping it over and over again until the screen died. Alex’s face disappeared. She was alone. Theresa closed her eyes and prayed. Lord, help me. Please. Whatever this is, please keep Zoe and Mandy safe from it. Thank You that Alex knows I’m in trouble. But please, keep him out of danger.

His cottage was a good forty-five minutes’ drive from here. The nearest police station was more than an hour and a half away. Even if Alex came for her, would she even be here when he arrived? Would she even still be alive? Panic filled her throat pushing tears to her eyes.

Mandy had seemed so anxious and distracted about something. Did it have something to do with these men? If so, how had Theresa missed it? Dealing with victims of violent crime was a huge part of her work and yet she’d never imagined Mandy could be linked to something like this.

“Castor!” A voice filtered down from the second floor landing. “It’s not here!”

“Well it’s somewhere!” The man pinning her down shouted loudly. “Tear the place apart if you have to!” His hand jabbed in the direction of a small, wooden hatch, barely visible in the floor near the kitchen’s old-fashioned wood-burning stove. “Check the cold cellar. Check everywhere. If they’ve got it, they’ll have brought it here.”

A heavy man in a red ski mask yanked the hatch open. “There’s nothing down there. Just wood and kindling.”

“Then check upstairs.” Her captor growled in frustration. Then he yanked her head back. His low, menacing voice filled her ear. “Where’s the trunk?”

“What trunk?” She tried to turn her head toward him but his grip held her tight. “Look, this isn’t my cottage. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’re looking for a trunk!” Castor shouted, so loudly her ears rang. His mouth grew even closer to her face. The stench of stale coffee and cigars grew stronger as he leaned toward her, shifting his weight deeper onto her torso. “You know, a large, heavy, old-fashioned luggage trunk. Something big enough to hide a body in.”

Snickering came from the other side of the room.

“Again, this isn’t my cottage!” She could almost feel the defiance rising in her voice, battling back against the fear as her breath pushed its way out of her aching lungs. “I just got here this morning. I haven’t seen a trunk.”

Castor sat back, relieving just enough of the pressure on her torso to let her gasp a deeper breath. He turned and shouted more frustrated profanities at his two henchmen. For a moment, she was ignored again as they ransacked Mandy’s family cottage. She closed her eyes, prayers filling her heart as she listened and tried to focus on any tiny sliver of information she could glean. Castor called the other two Brick and Howler. Brick sounded angry and frustrated by the futility of the search. Howler barely spoke.

“Where’s Mandy Rhodes?” All too soon Castor was back barking in her ear again. “And that other woman she drove up with?”

A shiver of fear ran through her heart. How did he know who they were? Had they been watching them?

Lord, please keep Zoe and Mandy far, far away from here.

“I don’t know where they are. They went for a drive.”

“Where did they go?” Castor’s grip tightened. “When are they getting back?”

“I don’t know! They didn’t tell me!”

Her hands were yanked back. She heard the rip of duct tape tearing. Then she felt him bind her wrists together behind her. Castor stood and pulled her to her feet. She looked up at the tall, heavyset man, whose sneering mouth and dangerous eyes seemed to float unmoored through the holes of a ski mask. “You’d better not be lying to me.”

“I’m not. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

Castor leaned in so close that his face was inches from her, making it difficult not to turn away from the stench of his hot breath. “What if I threaten to kill you, slowly and painfully? Would that help you remember?”

No. But it would make her even more determined to not go down without a fight. She head butted him, as hard as she could. His head snapped back as her forehead cracked hard against his jaw. He let go of her. She turned and sprinted across the wooden floor toward the shattered remains of the doorway. Melting puddles of snow seeped into her socks. A bracing winter wind brushed her face. A sharp pain filled her skull as Castor’s rough hands grabbed her hair and snapped her backward. “Now I’m really going to make you hurt.”

Lord, please. I need You now...

“Come on, dude! This is a waste of time!” The rail-thin masked man the others called Howler snorted loudly from the corner of the room. The sound that was halfway between a laugh and a snarl. He waved his shotgun in their direction. “This wasn’t the job I signed up for. You want her dead? I’ll kill her. Bang. Right now. No problem. Or if you can, kill her quick so we can move on. Whatever. You said we’ve got a trunk to find. All I care about is getting my cut of the money. And I don’t wanna not get my money just because we’re stuck here waiting while you punish that finicky little princess chick for not telling you what you want to know!”

Finicky little princess? Theresa blinked as the words clanged like old bells at the corner of her mind. But before she could decipher the ringing, Castor shoved her across the room. He pushed her into the broom closet. She fell, landing hard on her knees among the mops and cleaning supplies. Castor stood over her. Blood seeped through the mouth of the mask. Her head butt had split his lip. “Fine. We’ll go find the trunk. But then I’m coming back and dealing with her when we’re done. She knows something. I’m sure of it. It’s in her memory somewhere. Even if she’s too useless to remember it.”

“Whatever,” Howler said. “Do whatever you want to do. Just after I get my money.”

The closet door slammed shut. Darkness fell. She heard a chair being scraped against the door.

“Brick!” Castor snapped. “Sit here. Watch the door. Shoot her if she tries to escape. But don’t kill her. I might need her later.”

There was a muffled argument and some more swearing that ended when Castor snapped that Brick would get an extra cut of payment at the end if he stayed behind to watch her, and a shotgun slug in the head if he didn’t. Then there was the thud of a body landing in a chair against the door. Castor and Howler’s voices faded away.

Theresa pulled herself into a seated position, slid a metal bucket behind her and scraped the duct tape binding her hands against the spout. It loosened slowly. Her socks were so wet and cold her feet stung. Theresa prayed hard, begging God to save her life and to protect Mandy, Zoe and Alex from danger. Then she took a deep breath and focused her mind on the criminals, pulling together the scraps of what she knew as if this was a file that she’d gotten through Victim Services.

These men were thieves. That much she knew. Castor and his lackeys were looking to steal some kind of trunk that he seemed to think she’d know about. But why? What could it hold that was worth ransacking a cottage over? Whatever it was, the henchmen were worried about running out of time and not getting their cut of the bounty. Castor had mentioned Mandy by name and knew about Zoe. So she couldn’t rule out that it had something to do with Mandy’s anxiety. But Theresa couldn’t be sure. Both Mandy’s older brothers were successful enough to have enemies.

Howler had called her a “finicky little princess.”

She closed her eyes and worked her duct-taped hands faster against the pail as the words pricked at painful memories buried so deep in the recesses of her mind that she had to ease them out slowly, bit by bit, like getting burrs out of her hair. She’d almost managed to forget that some of the kids at Cedar Lake had called her “princess.” They’d called her “useless,” too, and other things implying they thought she was too pampered and nonathletic to ever be one of them. She didn’t know who’d started it. But it’d definitely gotten worse after they’d seen her sailboat capsize in a sudden summer storm. She’d gotten tangled in the rigging and might’ve drowned if Alex hadn’t come to her rescue.

Back then, her parents owned a large seasonal equipment store on the highway north of Toronto. It sold boats, personal watercraft, sporting goods, barbecues and cottage furniture, along with whole rooms of decorative country kitsch. As a family, they’d always had the newest and nicest toys on the lake—sample models to trial, mostly. At the end of every summer, one of the other families on the lake, the Wrights, would host a huge team scavenger hunt. Afterward, Theresa’s mother would invite all the families on the lake over for barbecue.

That annual barbecue was also going be her wedding reception the summer she’d been twenty.

So, maybe there’d been some jealousy. Or the misconception that her family had more money than they did. But just before she’d turned twenty a warehouse fire had wiped out most of their inventory. The family then lost a long, hard court battle, in which, because the security cameras apparently hadn’t been working, the insurance company had accused her dad of setting the fire to cover some bad debts. So less than a month before her wedding, her parents realized they were probably going to go bankrupt and started making quiet plans to sell their business, cottage and home in a last-ditch effort to pay off their debts.

She could still remember the anxiety filling her heart as she’d gone to tell Alex. She’d been looking for a shoulder to cry on. Instead, he’d met her with the news that he’d dropped out of yet another university program, just tossing away a full scholarship and paid internship, as if real-world responsibilities didn’t even matter.

But that was just the way Alex was. He was spontaneous. But that day he’d been so full of blather that her sadness had turned to frustration. She’d said maybe they should postpone the wedding until he grew up enough. They’d fought. He took the cruel taunt that the other kids made about how she seemed to think she was royalty and aimed it at her heart with an added sting: should’ve known better than to fall for such a finicky little princess like you.

She’d handed the ring back, feeling too hurt to even cry. And that had been that.

“I’m done waiting.” Brick’s voice snapped through the closed door. “I’m cold. This is stupid. I want my money. I’m going to go find the thing myself. But I don’t know my way around this stupid lake and Castor thinks you know something. So you’re going to help me, whether you want to or not.”

The cupboard door flew open. With one desperate tug she yanked her hands free. Duct tape tore. The bucket clattered behind her. She launched herself headfirst into Brick, knocking him back so hard he slipped and hit the floor. He’d taken off his ski mask, showing a square face with fat cheeks, thin lips and deep-set eyes. She pushed past him and ran down the narrow hallway leading to the cottage’s smaller back door. If she could just grab her boots and her gloves and make it out the back door she might be able to escape through the trees and find somewhere to hide.

A sawed-off shotgun blast sounded behind her. Splinters exploded in the wall ahead as a hunting slug struck the wood.

“You keep running, I’ll shoot you,” Brick said. “Castor’s made me put up with too much nonsense to stick me on babysitting duty. I need that trunk. I want my money. So, you’re gonna help me find it. Even if you’re bleeding and in pieces.”

Her stocking feet froze beneath her as her brain struggled to think. Even if she cooperated, he was likely to kill her eventually, unless she just went along with him until she found a way to escape. But if she tried to keep running, she had no doubt he’d shoot her on the spot. There was a thud on the roof above them, like a sudden clump of snow falling off a tree branch. The hot barrel of a weapon brushed against the back of her head.

“I don’t know anything about a trunk.” Her hands rose slowly. “But I’ll help you leave Cedar Lake if you promise not to hurt anyone else.”

“Nice try.” He snorted. “But I’m the boss now. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but, either way, I’m not leaving this lake without what I came for. Castor said he was willing to pay me good to find this trunk. He’ll probably pay me double if I find it first. And if he gets mad at me for hurting you, I’ll just tell him it’s your fault for running away.” He spun her around and marched her back into the remains of the living room. “Now, you’re going to start cooperating. Because if ya don’t, I’m going to hurt you so bad you’re gonna wish I’d just shot ya.”

An ugly grin spread across his flat face. She closed her eyes and prayed.

A crash sounded from the low roof above. Brick swore. She opened her eyes in time to see a snow-covered form in jeans, a brown leather jacket and snowmobile helmet swing down through the open doorway. Brick grabbed her hard around her neck and yanked her back in a headlock, pressing her body back tight against his like a hostage. The tip of the sawed-off shotgun pressed into the soft flesh at the base of her skull just behind her ear.

“Look man, whoever you are, I’m just a guy looking for the same thing you are!” Brick shouted. “The trunk’s not here. We don’t have it and we don’t know where it is! So there’s no need for any problems. Just turn around and pretend you never saw us.”

“No can do.” The man in leather moved forward. “Drop your weapon, and I’ll let you leave. But you’re going to let her go.”

He pulled off his helmet. Her breath caught in her throat.

It was Alex.