Harlequin Intrigue January 2021 - Box Set 2 of 2

by Elle James, Nichole Severn

  A few days ago, that wouldn’t have mattered to him. He would have considered it a necessary lie for the possibility of rescuing those kids. Now, after the things she’d shared about her life with the Altiers, he understood why her loyalty was conflicted. For the first time in two years, he even sympathized with the woman who’d killed herself—and almost killed him—when she’d been on the verge of being rescued.

  He’d always pitied her. But there’d been too much anger for more than that. Peter had always assumed the hostage had been brainwashed, that she’d hit that detonator to protect the terrorists who had taken her. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe she’d done it to protect her family, because after nearly six months of being terrorized, she could see no other option.

  “What are you thinking?” Alanna asked.

  When he blinked and refocused, he realized she was staring at him with an expression that said too many emotions had been obvious on his face.

  “You’re nothing like I expected,” he blurted. From all the headlines, all the newspaper stories, he’d expected a conflicted, confused woman who’d grown up isolated and brainwashed, who’d come to Desparre for her own agenda.

  A hesitant smile turned up her lips, warmed her deep brown eyes. “I assume that’s a good thing?”

  He was attracted to her. The realization slammed into him with an intensity that made him slump back in his chair. It wasn’t just her long, silky hair, those plump lips or the secrets in the depths of her eyes. He’d seen too much as a reporter, on both sides of the camera, to really care about that anymore. It was the integrity of her character, the way she tried to do right by everyone, whether they deserved it or not. It was the way she’d clung to Chance in that avalanche, even when letting him go might have been safer for her. It was the way she challenged Peter at every turn, made him rethink his assumptions about everything.

  “What?” she asked, sounding concerned as she leaned toward him, put her hand over his.

  “Peter!”

  What terrible timing. Peter slowly swiveled in his chair to find his parents standing behind him, both holding takeout cups of coffee. His father was looking at Alanna curiously. His mother was smiling at him in a way that told him she’d totally misunderstood what was happening.

  “Mom, Dad.” He stood, hugged them both and then gestured to Alanna, who was also standing. “This is Alanna.”

  When Chance gave a short bark, attracting attention from nearby customers, Peter laughed and added, “And this big guy is Chance.”

  The St. Bernard wagged his tail at the introduction and Peter’s mom scratched his ears as his dad shook Alanna’s hand.

  “Do you live in Luna, Alanna?” his mom asked, giving him a quick grin she probably thought was subtle.

  He wanted to laugh and roll his eyes at the same time. Getting him to move back to Luna was a dream she was unwilling to give up on, even now that he’d lived and worked in Desparre for a year.

  “Actually, I live in Chicago.”

  His mom’s brow furrowed, then she breathed, “You’re Alanna Morgan, aren’t you?” Before Alanna could answer, she looked at Peter with concern in her eyes. “This isn’t another story, is it?”

  “No, Mom.” He shook his head at Alanna for emphasis, but she didn’t seem worried by the question, just uncomfortable that his mom had recognized her.

  His mom seemed to realize it, too, because she smiled again and said, “Well, we’re just off to a movie. You two have a nice time.”

  “Come by for dinner soon,” his dad said as they headed for the door.

  “They’re nice,” Alanna said.

  “They’re still upset I’ve moved to Desparre. They thought when I finally gave up being a reporter, I’d come home to Luna like my brothers and sister.”

  She leaned toward him. “You’ve got siblings?”

  Peter glanced at the front of the shop and saw his mom grinning back at him before she slipped out the door. He realized that she might have incorrectly thought this was a date, but in some ways, it felt like one.

  “Three,” he replied, shifting his full attention back to Alanna, suddenly wishing they could both shake free of their past baggage, of their reasons for being here together right now. Wishing it was really a date. But he could pretend it was, if only for a few minutes, to buy time. “Two older brothers and one older sister. They’ve all got kids and they all live in Luna. My parents keep hoping I’ll follow their lead.”

  Alanna smiled, sipping her coffee. “That’s nice.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a nice idea.” But he’d always been restless, always wanted to get out and see the world, do something that got his blood moving, that made a difference. For five years, he’d done it as a reporter. Since he’d returned to Alaska, he’d discovered that being a police officer filled that need. He’d never been able to understand how the rest of his family didn’t have the same restlessness.

  “You wouldn’t ever move back to Luna?”

  “Probably not. Don’t get me wrong—I love my family. But it’s not like there are tons of opportunities in Luna. They’re lucky I got the police officer spot nearby.”

  “Well, it’s close until Desparre gets a particularly bad snow and you can’t get over here for months,” she said, reminding him that she knew Desparre at least as well as he did.

  “When I was a reporter, sometimes they wouldn’t see me for six months at a time.”

  “It’s got to be hard for them. First, you’re in war zones and now you’re a police officer, potentially under fire at any given moment.” She looked a little queasy at the idea.

  “My grandparents moved here from Czechoslovakia—back when that’s what it was called. During the Czech uprising in 1968, when the Soviets sent in half a million tanks and troops, they fled. At first, they thought they’d stick around, be part of the protests. But they didn’t like living among so many tanks, the constant unspoken threat of violence. Ultimately they decided they had to get out—about three hundred thousand people there felt the same way. My grandparents said they came here because they just wanted to be left alone. I grew up hearing their stories and the stories they’d been told by their parents about what their country was like at the time of the Nazi invasion.”

  Alanna nodded slowly, probably thrown by his change of topic. “I don’t blame them for wanting to live peacefully, quietly, after all of that.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Peter said. His parents had wanted the same thing and so did his siblings. “But I always felt like it was in my blood to get out there and witness conflict. To record it for history and, hopefully, help prevent us from repeating it.” He shrugged, suddenly embarrassed by how naive he sounded.

  She reached across the table and put her hand on his. “I understand that, too.”

  She understood because in her own way, she’d chosen a similar path. They were both in professions to help others.

  He smiled back at her, realizing how natural it felt to be sitting in this coffee shop with her, their hands stacked together. If this had been a date, if she was someone he’d met who lived in Desparre or Luna, he’d already be planning to ask her out again.

  His smile faded. If she was right, if they found Darcy hiding in Luna, it would all be over. Alanna would return home and he’d never see her again.

  * * *

  FROM THE MOMENT they’d set foot in Alaska, Darcy and Julian had loved the mountains. So Alanna wasn’t surprised when Peter slowed the truck near the location she’d identified and it was at the base of the mountain they’d driven on last night.

  When they’d settled in Desparre, Darcy and Julian had built their home at the edge of the mountaintop, with the natural protection of a steep slope at their back. Here, apparently, they’d done the same thing in reverse. Only this time, there was just Darcy.

  The cabin was much smaller than the one in Desparre. It looked like
a single-room shack and if anyone drove close enough to see it through the trees, it seemed deserted.

  Alanna’s shoulders dropped as she peered through the windshield. “What if I’m wrong?” There had been four other locations on that list, but although she’d tried to recall the other symbols and decode them, nothing she’d worked out in the little notebook Peter had given her made sense yet. She wasn’t sure it ever would.

  Peter’s hands were resting lightly on the wheel, but there was an excitement in his gaze that told her how much he loved chasing leads. “What’s the likelihood that there’d be a cabin at the exact longitude and latitude you decoded?”

  He was right about that. Like a lot of Alaska, the towns of Desparre and Luna were more open land than homes or businesses. Her discouragement turned to anxiety. “Maybe I should go up to the door alone. If she’s there, I might be able to talk her into giving herself up.”

  “We agreed we’d go together,” Peter replied, then turned into the driveway.

  “If she’s here, you’re going to scare her o—”

  The words died on her lips as the cabin’s front door opened and Darcy stepped halfway through the threshold, backlit by a light inside that had been blocked by the heavy curtains on the windows.

  Shock jolted through Alanna. She’d come all the way to Alaska to find Darcy, but after five years, on some level, she’d never expected to see her again. All the letters Darcy and Julian had sent from prison had gone unanswered, mostly because Alanna knew how much it would hurt her biological parents for her to respond, how badly they needed her to make a clean break. She couldn’t bring herself to cut off her “siblings,” so she’d made the choice to cut off Darcy and Julian. Every letter had been returned, unopened.

  All these years later, it still physically hurt to wonder what Darcy and Julian had written her. Had they been letters of remorse, letters of love? Or had their love turned to hate over the note she had written and left in Jasper’s General Store in an attempt to go home to the Morgans?

  Darcy had been sentenced to sixty-two years in prison without the possibility of parole. Julian had gotten sixty-three years, and if he hadn’t been killed in prison, he would still have died there. Since the moment she’d chosen not to communicate with them, Alanna had hardened herself to the idea of never seeing Darcy or Julian again. In so many ways, it had felt like the right thing to do, the only thing she could do. A penance she had to make for fourteen years of silence.

  The Darcy in front of her was thinner, her hair almost entirely gray and lackluster. Her once stick-straight posture was now slumped, defeated. Every day she’d spent in prison seemed to show in the new lines on her face.

  Alanna couldn’t take her gaze off Darcy as she climbed out of Peter’s truck and took a step up the driveway. Behind her, she heard Chance leap over the seat and out the door.

  Across the thirty feet separating them, Darcy’s eyes seemed to widen comically, then her gaze darted right. Toward Peter. Her eyes narrowed, her lips twisting into an angry scowl. When she stepped fully outside, there was a pistol tucked into her belt at her hip and a shotgun clutched in her hand.

  It was a nightmare right out of her memory. Five years seemed to disappear, and instead of Peter beside her, it was Kensie, who had found her after so many years lost. She could see Darcy lifting that shotgun and firing at the truck where Kensie and Colter sat. Alanna heard the echoes of her own screams from back then in her ears as she threw her hands wide and ran toward Darcy.

  This time, although Darcy’s gaze kept darting toward Peter—and then toward the street, like she expected backup to come flying in, sirens blaring, at any second—she never lifted her gun. Instead, as Alanna got closer, slowing to a walk until she stood still a few feet away, Darcy shook her head and whispered, “Why?”

  Up close, the lines on Darcy’s face were even more pronounced, the dark circles under her eyes more hollow. Anger lurked just underneath the hurt that flashed in her eyes. The pain and betrayal she felt were as obvious in her voice as the tears she was trying to blink back. “Why?” she demanded again, this time almost a scream.

  Chance stepped up beside Alanna and she reached for him fast, put a steadying hand on his head to assure him she wasn’t in danger.

  Darcy’s gaze shifted to Chance and her lips shifted into a strange semblance of a smile, an echo of what it had once been. Too quickly, it dropped away. “When you were little, you always wanted a dog.” She looked back at Alanna, blinking rapidly. “Guess you got everything you wanted.”

  Then somehow Peter was beside her, his hand gripping her arm too hard, keeping her in place. His other hand was on the butt of his weapon. “We just want the kids. That’s it. You hand them over and we walk away.”

  Darcy did little more than smirk at Peter’s offer, her hand shifting on the shotgun with an ease that told Alanna she might look older and weaker, but Darcy still had an unexpected strength. Then her gaze was back on Alanna.

  “Who is this? Why is he here?”

  “He’s my friend, Peter,” Alanna said, glad that it was common in Alaska for people to carry weapons. It didn’t immediately mark him as law enforcement. “He drove me out here.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “This is where we were headed five years ago, isn’t it?” Alanna asked instead of answering.

  Darcy’s slight nod, as if she couldn’t stop herself from responding, was enough to tell Alanna it was true.

  Her own anger flared up, the unfairness of it all, the blame she felt from all directions no matter what choices she made. “And then what was the plan? To keep running, go back to what we did when I was little?”

  “We wouldn’t have needed to do that if you hadn’t left that note. We were good to you. We loved you.” Darcy shook her head, as if she still didn’t understand it.

  Alanna’s gut clenched at Darcy’s use of the past tense, but as much as it hurt, this moment wasn’t about her. It was about those two kids who had to be in the cabin behind Darcy, probably terrified and confused like Alanna had been in those early days with the Altiers.

  “There was another family out there who loved me, too.” On some level, Darcy had to know what she’d done was wrong. Didn’t she? “How do you think it felt, knowing I’d never get to see them again?”

  Something flashed in Darcy’s eyes, some mix of guilt and sorrow that was gone so fast Alanna wondered if she’d imagined it. Then Darcy’s attention veered left, into the woods at the base of the mountain. Was that where she’d hidden her vehicle? Was she thinking about making a run for it?

  “Please,” Alanna whispered. “It’s not too late to do the right thing.”

  A spasm of emotion passed over Darcy’s face and for a moment, Alanna thought she’d gotten through to her. Then Darcy swung the shotgun up, past Alanna and Peter, high over the woods to her left.

  Alanna’s hand darted out to grab Peter, to prevent him from pulling his own weapon. What was Darcy doing? Trying to scare them? Had she lost her mind when she’d lost her “kids”?

  The boom boom boom of the shotgun firing repeatedly echoed, followed by a louder, heavier rumble that made Alanna’s heart seem to drop to her stomach. She recognized that sound, had felt the weight of the snow burying her only yesterday.

  Her gaze traveled up the side of the mountain, to the weak spot where Darcy had aimed, an overhang of snow that was now rushing downward. It was far enough away that it was unlikely to reach them, so Peter’s scream to watch out startled her, made her jump.

  Then, suddenly, everything around her was noise and motion.

  Peter raced toward the oncoming snow, Chance at his heels, as shapes emerged from behind the trees, people trying to escape the avalanche. People who shouldn’t have been there at all. People who weren’t moving fast enough.

  Darcy’s gaze lingered on Alanna for a drawn-out moment, then she darted the othe
r way, back into the cabin, slamming the door behind her.

  Alanna glanced toward Peter and Chance and the police officers who’d been hiding in the woods, who were being overrun by the snow. Then she glanced back at the cabin, where Darcy was hiding with two young children.

  And she made her choice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  For the second time in two days, Peter was running toward an avalanche.

  He’d lived in Alaska for most of his life and managed to never get caught up in one before this past week. Like most people who lived this far north, he had a healthy respect for the power of nature but he’d always taken precautions, so he’d never feared it. The way his heart was thundering in his chest now, that had changed.

  This time, he wasn’t in any real danger of being buried in it. The snow had already stopped falling from above and the rush through the woods was slowing. That was both good and bad. The trees acting as a natural blockade for some of the snow meant it wouldn’t spill over to the cabin, where he assumed those kids were being held. But it also meant more of it was piled higher in the exact location he’d last spotted his fellow officers. Including his partner.

  “Tate!” he yelled. Now that the thundering of snow was quieting, his voice echoed along the mountain base, taunting him with the lack of response.

  He slowed to a stop before he reached the snow, realizing he should have run to his truck instead to grab the collapsible snow shovel most people who lived in these parts always carried. He spun back even as Chance raced past him, right into the snow.

  His call for Alanna to grab his shovel died on his lips. He scanned the area around the cabin. But there were only woods and an empty driveway. She must have followed Darcy inside.

  Pain clamped in his chest as he glanced back to the snow, where Chance was frantically digging, then over to the silent cabin. He ran back the way he’d come, heading for his truck and shovel.

  He had to pray that Alanna was right and Darcy wouldn’t hurt her. He had to pray that Alanna would be able to talk Darcy into handing over the kids without hurting anyone.