Love Inspired Suspense December 2013 Bundle: Christmas Cover-UpForce of NatureYuletide JeopardyWilderness Peril

by Lynette Eason

  Her wrist throbbed, and she massaged it. A shiver went up her spine. No matter how hard she’d tried, she couldn’t dispel the fear that flowed through her every time she thought of that moment.

  She shook her head, took a deep breath and climbed out of the car. Thinking about what might have been was doing her no good. Today she would be thankful she was alive. She said a quick prayer of thanks as she headed into the building and down the hallway to her small office.

  The minute she walked in the door she spotted the small box wrapped in brown paper on her desk. Her name and the address of the station were on the mailing label, but there were no stamps on the package. This had not come through the mail.

  She was about to pick it up when a voice at the door startled her. “I see you found your delivery.”

  Grace whirled to see Julie Colter, a new employee, standing in the doorway. “Good morning, Julie. Did you see who delivered this?”

  “Yes, it was a private messenger service. The guy asked if I would give it to you and I said I would.”

  Grace frowned. “Did you sign that you’d received the delivery?”

  Julie shook her head. “No, he was gone before I had a chance to ask him.”

  Grace sighed. “Do you know the name of the messenger service?”

  Julie thought for a moment before she shook her head again. “No, he just said it was a special delivery for you. I guess I assumed he was from a service.” Julie’s eyebrows rose, and her face turned red. “Did I do something wrong, Miss Kincaid?”

  Grace hesitated before she answered. “Sometimes our newscasts can upset some people. We don’t know who might send something harmful to us. We just need to be careful when accepting deliveries.”

  Tears welled in Julie’s eyes, and she bit down on her lip. “Oh, Miss Kincaid, please don’t tell the station manager I did anything wrong. I need this job. If he fired me, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  Grace reached out and patted Julie’s arm. “Now, now. Don’t get upset. Nobody’s going to get fired. You just need to be more careful in the future.”

  Julie nodded. “I will. I promise. Now, is there anything I can do for you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Julie eased toward the door. “Then I’ll get back to work, and I promise I won’t make that mistake again.”

  Grace nodded and didn’t speak as the girl left the room. How many mistakes had Julie made since she was hired? It seemed the subject of Julie and her mishaps came up in the conversation no matter who you talked to at the station. She probably wouldn’t make it much longer if her work didn’t improve.

  After a moment Grace turned her attention back to the package on her desk. Did it contain the clue her anonymous caller had told her about the day before? She leaned closer and studied the name and address on the mailing label. They had been typed, not handwritten, and there were no strings tied around the box, just tape to hold the paper.

  Should she open it or not? Only a year ago a Memphis accountant had been injured when he opened an package that contained a bomb. Perhaps she should have Alex take a look at it or even dust it for fingerprints, but she would feel foolish if there was nothing threatening inside the envelope.

  She pulled the tape loose and stepped back, then chuckled. If the box contained a bomb, a few steps away from the desk wouldn’t be enough distance to offer any protection. She eased back to the desk and loosened the package’s paper. It fell away to reveal a square box that looked to be about eight inches on each side.

  Her heart pounded as she lifted the top of the box and peered inside. A folded piece of paper lay atop something wrapped in tissue paper. Frowning, she pulled the note out and unfolded it.

  Dear Miss Kincaid,

  I enjoyed our chat yesterday, and I have done as I promised. I have enclosed directions inside this box for the first stop on your journey. For a knowledgeable geocacher like you the puzzle should be no problem. Solve it, and you will find what I have left for you somewhere in the city. I will be watching to see if you are successful. I’m looking forward to our journey together as you find out the truth about Landon’s death.

  Your Anonymous Friend

  The words made Grace’s skin prickle, and she read the note several times before she reached in the box and pulled out the tissue-wrapped object. She tore the paper away and blinked her eyes in surprise at the six-sided puzzle cube she held. She slowly turned it and studied the twisty puzzle’s mixture of white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow squares. Someone had turned the faces many times to make sure the colors were thoroughly mixed over every surface.

  Something written on one of the white squares caught her eye, and she stared closer at it. Her breath hitched in her throat. A quick glance over the other surfaces told her that more white squares had markings. GPS coordinates! Her caller had just sent her a challenge. Solve the puzzle by arranging all the white cubes on one side and she would have a location where she would find a clue about Landon’s killer.

  She dropped down in her desk chair and began to twist the faces of the puzzle in an attempt to get all the white-colored surfaces on one side. After twenty minutes she was ready to throw the toy in the trash can. She’d played with these puzzles when she was growing up and never had mastered the art of getting all the sides back in order. She doubted if she could do it now.

  “What are you doing?” Todd stood in the doorway to her office. A smirk pulled at his lips, and he let his gaze drift back and forth from her face to the puzzle in her hand. “Don’t you have anything better to do than play with toys? We do have a noon newscast to do, you know.”

  Grace opened her desk drawer, shoved the puzzle inside and stood. “I like to keep my mind sharp, Todd. You might try doing that sometime yourself.”

  He glared at her and took a step forward. “Someday you’re going to go too far with me, Grace.”

  She ignored the remark and crossed her arms. “Do you need something?”

  Todd shook his head. “No, I just thought I’d check and see if you’d had any response to your plea on yesterday’s newscast for information about Landon Mitchell’s death.”

  “I haven’t had anything concrete yet.”

  He cocked one eyebrow. “But you have had something?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing I can talk about.”

  He pursed his lips and frowned. “Okay. Let me know if I can help you with anything.”

  “I will.”

  She waited until he’d left before she sank back in her chair. Nothing would please Todd better than to scoop her on the story of Landon’s death. She would have to be more careful in the future.

  Grace pulled the drawer open and looked down at the puzzle. She should call Alex. She’d promised to let him know if she heard anything from her mysterious caller. She jumped up, hurried to the door and closed it before she returned to her desk and dialed Alex’s cell phone. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, Grace.”

  The abrupt tone of his voice startled her, and she winced. “My, my. Don’t you sound grouchy this morning?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s already been a busy morning.” His voice softened. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better today.”

  “Good.”

  “I don’t know if it means anything or not…” Her office door rattled as if someone was about to open it. She paused in speaking. “Hold on a minute.”

  She rose, walked to the door and pulled it open, but there was no one there. She stepped into the hallway and caught a glimpse of Todd just as he disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall. Had he been listening outside her door?

  Frowning, she stepped back into her office and closed the door. “I’m sorry. I thought someone was at the door, but I was wrong. But the reason I called was to let you know I received a message from my caller this morning.”

  “Really?”

  He remained silent as she related the details of her delivery this morning and her inability to so
lve the puzzle. “He told me this wasn’t going to be easy, and he was right. So, I’m at a standstill. I don’t know where to go until I get the GPS coordinates arranged on one side of the puzzle.”

  “This sounds weird to me, Grace. But then I’ve never done any geocaching. I’ve heard about it, and I know it’s like an internet scavenger hunt. But I really don’t know how it works.”

  She chuckled. “It doesn’t seem like something you’d be interested in, but I love it. Like you said, it’s an international internet scavenger hunt that’s run from a website. A cache is usually a small item that can be placed along with a log book in a box or some other container and hidden aboveground. Then the person who’s hidden the cache logs the coordinates on a geocaching website, and hunters enter the coordinates in a GPS to search for them.”

  “So the searcher gets to keep the treasure when he finds it?”

  “Not necessarily. The geocacher signs the log book that’s been left at the cache site and may take the item inside or leave it. If they choose to take the item, they are required to leave something of equal value for the next hunter to find. When they return home, they log into the website and report the date they found the cache. It’s not about what’s found in the box. It’s all about the hunt. I spend a lot of my weekends looking for caches. It tests your mind, and you get a lot of exercise, too.”

  Alex was silent for a moment. “So whoever sent you this puzzle is familiar with geocaching, and he knows you are, too. He’s left you a clue to Landon’s death, and the only way you can find it is to solve the puzzle and get the coordinates. Then you’ll know where to look.”

  “That’s right. I told you I would call if I found out anything, but I have no idea whether or not I’ll ever be able to get the puzzle faces turned so that all the whites are on one side.”

  “I was never much good at working those things, either. If you solve it, give me a call, and I’ll go with you to the location. I don’t want you going by yourself.”

  Grace sighed. “Okay, I’ll let you know, but don’t hold your breath. This may be a hopeless task.”

  “Thanks for calling, Grace, and keep in touch.”

  “I will.”

  Grace opened her desk drawer, picked up the puzzle, and twisted the surfaces. The longer she worked the more hopeless the task appeared. After about twenty minutes, she tossed the cube on her desk and rose to her feet. She might as well give up.

  She placed her hands on her hips and looked down at the innocent-looking toy on her desk. Hidden on its surfaces were directions to a place that might reveal an answer to how Landon died. She had to get those coordinates lined up.

  An idea hit her, and she smiled. There was more than one way to find what she needed to know. She sat down at her computer and pulled up the internet. Within minutes she had the information she needed.

  She rushed to the hallway and hurried to the small closet near the staff restroom where the custodian kept his tools. She grabbed a screwdriver, took it to her office, and sat down at her desk. Smiling to herself, she picked up the cube and followed the instructions she’d found on the internet. First she rotated the top layer by 45 degrees, and pried one of its edge cubes away from the other two layers. The piece fell to her desk.

  One by one she pulled the small cubes away from the center axis of the toy and watched them tumble to her desk in a pile of colors. When they were all stripped from the cube, she laid the white stickered sides out as if they were one surface on the cube and studied them. Frowning, she rearranged the pieces until she was satisfied she’d finally gotten the correct latitude and longitude. Then she leaned forward, folded her arms on top of her desk and smiled.

  The coordinates stood out from the white surfaces. All she had to do now was enter them in her GPS and she would be on her way to finding out the truth about Landon Mitchell’s death. Smiling, she picked up her cell phone and punched in Alex’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hi, Grace.”

  “I’ve figured out the coordinates.”

  “Already?”

  She laughed. “Well, to tell the truth I took a short cut. I tore the cube apart and laid the white sides out until I had the numbers in the right order.”

  “That was smart. When do you want to go take a look at the cache site?”

  She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost time for the noon news. What if I pick you up at the police station about one-thirty?”

  “Sounds good. See you then.”

  Grace disconnected the call and sat there a few minutes. Ever since she’d been back in Memphis, she’d tried to avoid seeing or talking with Alex. Then yesterday they’d been reunited by a man who wanted them to bring out the truth about his son’s death. Although she wanted to uncover the facts, she still wasn’t sure working with Alex was a good idea. Once she’d trusted Alex with all her heart, but when she’d needed him to have faith in her, he had failed her.

  Her skin warmed at the thought of what Alex had said when he’d accused her the day before of wanting a story that would get her back to the networks. Although she’d denied it to Todd, in her heart she knew she hadn’t really left that life behind.

  Her primary reason for returning to Memphis had been to help her mother with her invalid father, but he was getting stronger every day. Maybe she could go back sometime in the future. That’s why she couldn’t let herself get sidetracked by old memories about Alex Crowne.

  She glanced up at the clock on the wall and gasped. Thinking about what the future held for her would have to wait. Right now she had the noon broadcast to do. She picked up a pen and wrote the coordinates on a piece of paper, stuck it in an envelope and along with the puzzle pieces dropped it in her desk drawer.

  *

  Alex consulted the GPS unit Grace had handed to him when he got into her car and then looked at the traffic in the lane beside them as they drove along East Parkway. “You need to change lanes. We’re going to turn left onto the road that leads down to the Overton Park Pavilion up ahead.”

  Grace nodded and glanced in her mirrors before she eased into the left lane and put on her turn signal. “Thanks.”

  She hadn’t said much since she’d picked him up. He wondered if it was because she was intent on finding the clue her caller said he’d left or if it was because he was with her. He shook the thought from his head and sat silent as she turned onto the road leading into the park and drove toward the parking lot at the pavilion.

  When she pulled to a stop in the deserted parking lot, she glanced around. “Not many people out today.”

  He let his gaze drift over the pavilion and nodded. “It’s almost Christmas, Grace, and the temperature is in the thirties. Not a good day to be having a picnic in the park.”

  Her face flushed, and she smiled. “Yeah, I guess I’m so excited about finding the cache that I wasn’t thinking.” She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. “I guess there’s no use waiting. Let’s go.”

  They climbed from the car, and Alex waited until she had joined him. He held the GPS unit so that she could see it and pointed toward the line of trees at the back of the pavilion. “It looks like we need to go there. I hope your caller thought it was too cold to get very far away from the pavilion.”

  She smiled and pulled her coat tighter. “You should have been born in the tropics. You never did like the Memphis winters.”

  The memory of the two of them building a snowman in the yard of her home when they were about ten years old crossed his mind, and he smiled. “That’s not true. I like some things about winter. Low temperatures don’t happen to be one of them.”

  “Then let’s get this hike over with as quickly as we can.”

  Together they set off toward the trees in the distance. They didn’t speak as they entered the Old Forest State Natural Area of the park and ducked under some low-hanging bare tree branches. Within minutes they’d walked so far they could no longer see the pavilion. Alex plodded along, his feet growing colder by th
e moment, and kept his eyes on their coordinates.

  Finally, he held up his hand. “This is it.”

  Grace stopped, propped her hands on her hips and looked around. “It has to be around here somewhere. It could be at the base of one of the trees or partially hidden under a rock. It can’t be underground but somewhere that can be easily found.”

  Alex pointed to the right of where they stood. “I’ll take the area over here, and you take the opposite side.”

  She nodded and turned away from him. For the next few minutes they inched their way around the area as they inspected the trunks and bases of the trees. Alex turned rocks over and inspected each low-hanging branch to see if anything was perched there. He had just finished replacing a large rock he’d picked up when Grace called out. “I have something here.”

  He jumped to his feet and arrived at her side just as she pulled a small box out of a hole that had rotted away at the base of a tree trunk. She stood and held up the small container. “Here it is.”

  “It’s not a very big box.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not always about the size. It’s about what’s inside.”

  Grace loosened the string tied around the box, pulled the top off and found a small sealed envelope lying on top of a folded piece of paper. She slid her finger beneath the flap to unseal it and shook the contents into her hand. Her eyes grew wide, and she gasped at the sterling-silver ring that fell into her palm.

  Alex leaned closer and frowned. “What is it?”

  Grace swallowed and struggled to speak. She held it up for him to see. “It’s a friendship ring.”

  “Does this have some special meaning for you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, Landon gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday.” She pointed to the top of the ring. “He picked it out because it was designed with the infinity symbol across the top with our two birthstones set in it. He said it would always make me think of him.”