Deadly Christmas Secrets

by Shirlee McCoy

  He frowned, jogging outside, the moist air spearing through his soaked jacket and shirt, chilling his thighs and his soaked feet. He’d forgotten how wet he was, how deep the cold went. His bones felt chilled, his muscles tight in response.

  He’d warm up while Harper packed.

  And she would be packing, because she would be leaving.

  Unless she wanted to be a sitting duck, just waiting for the hunter’s bullet.

  He reached the truck and opened the door. Harper sat still as stone, the black kitten purring in her lap. If she planned on getting out of the truck and going into the cabin, she wasn’t giving any sign of it.

  Surprising, since she didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d enjoy sitting idle for long.

  “The cabin is clear. Let’s go,” he prodded, taking her arm and helping her from the car.

  She felt...solid, the muscles beneath her coat hard and well developed. Not gym muscles. These were muscles honed by hard daily labor, and that intrigued him more than he wanted it to.

  He didn’t have time for relationships. He didn’t have room in his life for someone else. He’d made that decision years ago. As soon as his youngest brother had moved out of the house, he’d offered all three of his brothers the opportunity to take over the farm. Colt had jumped at the opportunity and eagerly thrown himself into farm life. That had freed Logan to do what he wanted, to give up the family life for something more exciting and—for him—more fulfilling. He’d taken the job Chance Miller had offered, moved to Washington, DC, and rented a small apartment there. Two bedrooms. Just enough room to have a guest if he needed to.

  Once in a blue moon he’d take his nieces and nephews for a weekend. They’d eat way too many sweets, stay up way too late, watch too much television and play too many video games, and when it was over, they’d go home.

  A perfectly acceptable arrangement. One that allowed Logan to be involved without a whole lot of commitment. It fit his lifestyle, suited his personality.

  He stepped back into the silent cabin and released Harper’s arm. She looked shaken, her face pale, her gaze hollow, the little kitten clutched to her chest.

  “You okay?” He touched her shoulder, felt firm muscles again. He wondered about a woman who would give up everything she’d worked for to create something new and uncertain.

  “I will be,” she responded as she walked to the couch and grabbed a blanket that hung across the back. She tossed it to him, her gaze direct, her eyes a soft, hazy green that reminded him of morning mists and lazy summer afternoons. Something had shaken her, but she seemed to be recovering, forcing herself to go through the motions of normalcy.

  He’d seen it before, watched as people who’d been traumatized, abused, injured and devastated moved through the world as if nothing had happened, as if everything was okay.

  Survival instinct, he’d always thought.

  The need to make it through and go on superseding the desire to cave in and give up.

  “You should probably warm up,” Harper said, scratching Picasso behind his ears and nudging him down when he tried to sniff the kitten. “There are towels in the bathroom if you want to dry off.”

  Stella cut in as she walked into the cabin and closed the door. “I think that he would rather get you packed up and out of here.”

  “We’re waiting for your coworker to arrive,” Harper responded. No argument about leaving, so Stella had made some progress. “That’s going to take a few more hours.”

  “A few hours that I’d rather not spend here.” Stella walked to the front window, pulled the curtains closed. They were sheers. Nothing that would keep someone outside from seeing shadows moving within.

  “Is there a better place?” Harper asked, pulling the kitten’s claws from her shirt and setting it down on the top edge of the couch.

  Logan thought it would run for cover and hide from Picasso. It jumped down instead, wound its way around the big dog’s feet and settled into a pile of fur beneath him.

  That made Harper smile, and he thought it changed her face, made her look younger than twenty-nine, more vulnerable than she’d seemed before.

  “It looks as if they’re going to be friends,” she murmured as Picasso sniffed the kitten and gave it a gentle lick. “So I guess I’ll—” she glanced around “—go pack.”

  That was it.

  She was gone like a flash, running into the kitchen and up the stairs, her footsteps pounding through the small cabin.

  “What happened?” he asked Stella, because something had. It had been in Harper’s face, and it was in Stella’s—tension, unease. Not because of the situation they were in. Stella had faced a lot worse than this.

  “Seems as if there’s a real possibility her niece is alive. Her brother-in-law just called her. He sent a photo.”

  “And?”

  “Good question. She wasn’t talking. I wasn’t asking.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “It is when someone has been through too much, when they’re just on the edge of having had all they can take. I was giving her some time to process things, and then I was going to take a look at the photo. You came out before I got a chance.”

  “I’ll go talk to her.”

  “Or I could,” she offered, eying the dog and kitten. “She might respond better to a woman.”

  True. She might.

  By all accounts, Harper had been a loner for four years, keeping to herself, not making any close friends. She’d closed herself off after her sister’s and niece’s deaths. Gabe hadn’t been able to explain why. He’d just said that she’d packed up her things and left town. No forwarding address, no contact. Nothing for four years. According to her brother-in-law, Harper’s actions were out of character. She was one of the most responsible people he’d ever met, and Gabe hadn’t seen any reason for her to run.

  Logan had. He’d read the newspaper accounts of the murder investigation. Harper had been a prime suspect for nearly a month, her motives scrutinized by every reporter in DC. Thanks to Gabe, who’d been more than happy to fan the flames.

  That had struck Logan as interesting.

  The guy must have known he was next on the list of suspects. Even with his airtight alibi.

  “I don’t think she’s going to be responsive to either of us,” Logan said. “So I may as well be the one to talk to her.”

  “Suit yourself,” Stella responded with a shrug. “I’m going to call Jackson, see who his brother sent out.”

  “His brother’s name is Chance,” he said, poking her a little, and she scowled.

  “I’m well aware of that.”

  “I figured you were, but since you avoid saying his name as if the sound of it will poison your ears—”

  “I don’t avoid anything,” she spit out, her eyes blazing.

  “Right, because avoidance is for cowards,” he agreed, quoting one of the things he’d heard her say dozens of times.

  She blinked, some of the fire leaving her eyes, and offered a sheepish smile that made him realize she was just a human being, not the superhuman creature she always seemed to be when they were on a mission together.

  She’d been through her own traumas and heartaches, and she’d come out of them stronger. Whatever the thing was with Chance, whatever her response, it wasn’t Logan’s business to prod the wound.

  “Stella,” he began, wanting to apologize, tell her that he should have kept his big mouth shut.

  “Go talk to her. Find out what’s got her so shaken up. We have to plan our next step. We can stay here and wait for backup, or we can move her to another location and wait there,” she cut in, every word precise and practical, her focus shifted back to the job.

  Stella the superhuman again, and he had about three seconds to wonder what she was like beneath the hard-wo
n facade before she shooed him away.

  “Hurry up, Logan. We’ve got danger breathing down our necks, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere. If something goes down, escaping it might not be all that easy. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not get into a blazing gun battle in the middle of rural Maryland.”

  He nodded and headed toward the back of the cabin.

  The stairs creaked under his weight as he made his way to the upper level of the cabin. At one time, it had probably been a loft—a simple storage space or a small room that opened into the main area below. The floor had been stretched out, the various lengths of hardwood that had been used to finish it oddly beautiful. None of them matched, and he thought Harper must have salvaged pieces from condemned properties or maybe visited junkyards to collect what she’d used to finish the cabin.

  She had an artist’s eye. That made the lack of decor, the plain white walls and empty shelves all the more incongruent.

  A small room sat at the top of the stairs, a doorway beyond leading into Harper’s room and the tiny bathroom that jutted off it. He’d been through every inch of the cabin. He knew the layout, could picture the large windows that looked over her backyard.

  Hopefully she wasn’t anywhere near them.

  He knocked on the door and thought he heard a muffled response.

  He knocked again. “Harper? We need to talk.”

  The door swung open, and she appeared. She’d changed into dark jeans and a sweater that still had the tag hanging from the sleeve. She snapped it off, crumbled it, tossed it into a small plastic garbage can that sat near the bathroom door.

  “This is one of my go-to-town outfits, only I never actually wore it,” she explained, stepping back so that he could move into the room.

  A small duffel sat in the center of the bed, a few pieces of clothing spilling out of it.

  “I thought we were going to have a debate about the merits of you leaving the cabin,” he commented. “I guess I was wrong.”

  “No debate, Logan. I’m leaving, and I’m heading back to DC. I want to speak with Gabe.”

  That wasn’t the plan.

  The plan was that she’d go to a safe house and stay there while people a lot more suited to the work than she was searched to find answers.

  “About?”

  She pulled out her cell phone and thrust it toward him. “See the little girl?”

  She would have been difficult to miss. The girl was front and center. Maybe a copy of a school photo, the background plain white, the girl fair with green eyes. No smile, and the jaunty bows someone had wrapped around her pigtails only made that more obvious. “What about her?”

  “She looks like my sister.”

  “There are lots of people in this world who look like other people, Harper,” he said gently, because he knew where this was going, knew what she must be thinking.

  Or wanting.

  Hoping?

  That was the path he’d been down dozens of times after his father’s body was found. Every hazy photo snapped by a tourist or security camera, every word-of-mouth account of a foreign woman traveling with nationals had sparked a hope that his mother might be alive and a dream of pursuing the lead to the ends of the earth in an effort to find her.

  “I know,” she responded, shoving the clothes the rest of the way into the duffel and grabbing a small black Bible from the bedside table. She had a minimalist approach to decorating. The same seemed to be true of packing. Either that or she didn’t plan to be gone long. She zipped the bag, hefted it on her shoulder. “I’m heading out.”

  “We should probably talk about things first.” He was standing between her and the door, and he didn’t move. He’d never been a bully, never believed in throwing around his weight, height or muscles. If she wanted to leave, he wasn’t going to stop her, but he wasn’t letting her go alone. She might as well know that, and she might as well spend a little time planning things out so that she didn’t walk into a trap or into gunfire.

  “What things?” She walked to one of the few photos displayed in the house. He’d looked at it when he’d walked through. He’d seen it before. In Gabe’s office when he’d gone there to discuss the case, feel the guy out, see why he suddenly wanted to find a sister-in-law he hadn’t seen or heard from in years.

  “How you’re going to go visit Gabe and stay safe, for one.”

  She shrugged, her gaze focused on the photo—the beautiful blond woman dressed to the nines, her hair done up, her makeup flawless, a little girl beside her. Also blond, her hair just long enough for tiny pigtails on the sides of her head, the child couldn’t have been more than two years old. Like her mother, she was beautiful. Would have grown into a beautiful woman if she hadn’t died.

  Disappeared?

  That would be a twist in the story, a hiccup in a job that he’d thought would be a straightforward missing-persons search.

  Only Harper hadn’t really been missing.

  If Gabe had taken the time, he’d have found her.

  That left a bad taste in Logan’s mouth and a bad feeling somewhere in the region of his stomach.

  Things felt off, and they obviously were. Otherwise, he’d have found Harper, she’d have told him to go away and he’d have left. Mission accomplished, case complete, time to move on to something else.

  Harper slid the photo into the duffel. “I can’t stay hidden forever.”

  “It won’t be forever.”

  “Who’s to say? We plan all kinds of things. We think that we have life figured out, that the path we’ve set for ourselves is the one we’re going to stay on. Then something comes along and blocks our way, and we have to head in new directions, make new decisions based on new information. Gabe sent me the photo on my phone. It was mailed to him with a piece of cloth that looked like part of Amelia’s blanket.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s Amelia,” he said, keeping his tone light and his words as neutral as possible.

  He didn’t know if the girl was Amelia.

  If it was, if she was alive, they’d find her.

  He couldn’t make that promise to Harper, though. Not yet. Not until he spoke with Chance, got his approval to expand the scope of the case, take on some things they weren’t being paid for. Unless Gabe decided he wanted more than his sister-in-law found. Maybe he’d hire HEART to search for his daughter.

  That was a possibility that excited Logan, a case that wasn’t cut and dry and easy. If Amelia was alive, she’d been hidden well for four years. There’d be no paper trail, no way of tracking her. No clues. No people to interview. The last person to see her was dead.

  He studied the image on the cell phone, the wide-set eyes, the perfect arch of the brows. The girl couldn’t have been older than eight, but she had a maturity to her face, a stunning beauty that people would notice and remember. That kind of beauty was reflected in every photo he’d seen of Lydia, and he’d seen plenty of them. He’d pored over newspaper articles, tried to get a sense for what had happened, how a woman who’d had everything, had seemed to be loved by everyone who knew her, had ended up dead.

  “You’re quiet,” Harper said, her arms crossed over her stomach. She had a more subtle beauty than her sister. Light green eyes instead of bright green. Soft brown hair instead of blond. Nothing flashy in her face or in her actions, and yet, there was something compelling about her, something interesting. He wanted to study her face, try to figure out what it was that made him want to look and keep looking.

  “Just thinking that things aren’t what they seemed when my boss agreed to help your brother-in-law find you, and that if your niece is alive, I’d like to be part of bringing her home.”

  * * *

  “If she’s alive.”

  The words didn’t quite roll off Harper’s tongue.

  They didn’t qui
te settle in her brain.

  Maybe because she wanted so badly for them to be true. She wanted so desperately to believe that the police had been wrong, that Amelia hadn’t been killed, that somehow she’d survived the night Lydia died and that she still survived.

  Alive. Somewhere.

  She had to talk to Gabe again, get more information on the new investigation. If Amelia was alive...

  Was she okay?

  Happy?

  Scared?

  Wondering why she’d been abandoned by the people who loved her?

  She took the cell phone from Logan’s hands, her fingers brushing warm, rough flesh. She could feel the weight of his stare as she scrolled through old photos that she’d uploaded to her phone. She found a picture of Amelia the last time they’d been together. Ice cream on her chubby cheeks, a bow listing to the side of her fine blond hair.

  She had been adorable and precocious, already reading fluently by the age of four. Lydia had been talking about moving her from the Montessori preschool she’d been attending to a classical school on the outskirts of Alexandria.

  So many opportunities had been open to Amelia. She’d had every advantage, and Lydia had been proud of that.

  It hadn’t been enough to keep either of them safe.

  All the money in the world hadn’t been able to keep Lydia alive.

  Harper blinked back tears, the hot burning pain of them surprising. It had been a lot of years since she’d cried over her sister’s and niece’s deaths, a lot of years since she’d woken in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat, her sister’s pale, still face filling her head.

  She’d been the one to identify Lydia’s body.

  Gabe had claimed that he couldn’t do it, that he didn’t want his last memory of Lydia to be of her lying on a steel gurney.

  The truth was, he was a coward. He wanted his life sterile and safe, no messy emotions or overblown drama. Lydia was supposed to be his trophy wife, the beautiful woman who’d accompany him to gala functions and meetings with high-profile clients.