Hot as Sin: A Novel

by Bella Andre

  Sparks shot from her green eyes. “When I pressed him on it, he said part of the problem is that it will take them a while to get someone up to such a remote location. But I’m not willing to wait for the police. I’ve got to go check out that trail myself. Because if someone thought they saw her …”

  Sam knew Dianna was desperate to take action, and although he hadn’t yet made up his mind about their next move, he pulled out the map Peter had given them the day before.

  “Show us where the trail is.”

  Peter ran his finger along the paper. “It runs five miles from here to here.”

  Sam studied the map for a moment. “I don’t see an access to that trail from this property.”

  “Actually,” Peter said, “there is a private trail system that locals have used in these mountains for many years that leads straight to it.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow at the obvious implications of such a trail system.

  Peter answered his unspoken question. “Personally, I’ve never witnessed anything illegal on the trail. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, however.”

  Her hand on the doorknob, clearly antsy to get out on the trail right away and search for April, Dianna said, “I’m going to finish getting dressed.”

  Instead of following her, Sam wrote Will’s name, cell phone number, and Rocky Mountain station contact number down on a piece of paper for Peter.

  “Honestly, I don’t expect this anonymous tip to come to much of anything, but in the event that Dianna and I don’t come back by tomorrow morning, I’d appreciate you giving my friend a call. He’s a helicopter pilot with the local hotshot crew. If anything happens, he’ll be able to find us before anyone else.”

  Peter’s eyebrows raised. “You don’t think this is a trap, do you? The police wouldn’t steer you wrong, would they?”

  “No, the cops definitely wouldn’t mess with us, but then again, I doubt they’re expecting to see us up there on the trail looking for April ourselves, either.” Sam ran a hand through his hair, frustrated by the lack of good leads. “Problem is, Dianna isn’t just some random person looking for her sister. She’s a public figure and I can’t discount the chance that someone has gone to all the trouble of kidnapping April as a way of getting to her.”

  He leveled a hard gaze at Peter. “At this point, I don’t know that I should be trusting anyone we’ve met so far. Even you.”

  “Then why are you giving me this?” Peter asked, holding up Will’s information.

  “All I’ve got is what my gut tells me.”

  “Which is?”

  “In a nutshell, you make a bad first impression, but I think you’re all right. I also think this place you’ve got up here might have been shady at one point but isn’t anymore.”

  Dianna was putting her hair up into a ponytail when he walked back in to the guest house.

  “What should we bring with us?”

  Sam took her backpack from her and put it down on the floor. “Slow down. We’ve got to be careful and think this through before running off after some anonymous tip.”

  “What is there to think through?” she countered, her soft mouth now hard and unyielding. “Someone saw April on that trail and we need to go see if she’s still there.”

  “We don’t know who we’re dealing with or what their motives are. For all we know this story has leaked to the press and anyone could have called this tip in to the police.” Wanting to make himself perfectly clear, he said, “What if some deranged fan of yours thinks this is the perfect way to finally meet you, way up in the Rockies with no one else around?”

  Her cheeks flushed, her fists clenched, she said, “Can’t you see that I can’t even think about something like that right now? I’m not going to sit around when I finally have somewhere to look for my sister. I’m sick of taking time to think things through. Where has that gotten us so far? Nowhere! April’s still missing. Anything could be happening to her right now. I’m going after her, Sam. I have to.”

  She dropped her hands to her side. “I’m sorry,” she said in a hollow voice. “I shouldn’t be yelling at you. You’re only trying to help.”

  He put his arms around her. “You don’t have to apologize to me for anything, sweetheart. You’re right; we don’t have any other choice but to get out there on that trail. Hopefully April has left us a clue.”

  For the past three days Dianna had faced constant physical tests and challenges she’d never planned to tackle. River rafting, rock climbing, and long, steep hikes on extremely narrow trails like this one, where one misstep sent loose rocks falling hundreds of feet.

  With Sam’s help, she’d partially faced her fear of heights before getting to the Farm, but it still killed her that she had to go slow, when all she wanted was to race up and down the trail to find April.

  “I think we should take a breather,” Sam said after they’d been creeping along the trail for the better part of two hours.

  She shook her head. “I really want to get to the main trail the police said she was spotted on before we stop.”

  Stepping carefully, she continued to move forward, making sure to keep one hand on the rock wall beside her at all times to feel more stable.

  Thank God Sam was less than a foot behind her. She knew, without a doubt, that he’d be there to catch her if she started to fall.

  She’d never been comfortable with how much she needed him. But this search for April had broken through what was left of her foolish pride. She’d had no choice but to accept his offer of help in the hospital. Three days later, her previous independence seemed less impressive and more lonesome.

  She finally had something real to hold on to. She had Sam’s love.

  He loved her.

  Just thinking the sweet words took her breath away.

  Ten years after the first time they met, considering all the different ways their lives could have turned out, instead of having found love and creating families with new people, they’d rediscovered each other.

  It was a second chance, after all.

  And it was nothing short of a miracle.

  Dianna wasn’t blind to the fact that they still had a lot of decisions before them. Where to live, how to manage their very different careers. But she felt confident that they’d figure it all out. And that they’d truly transcended their past.

  If only she felt as confident about finding April.

  Please, she silently prayed, I need to find April today, up here in these mountains.

  Her plea had barely floated up into the universe when she rounded a corner and stopped dead in her tracks.

  The narrow path they’d been following had been swept away. The mudslide looked fresh, probably having occurred during the previous night’s storm.

  “The trail’s gone, Sam,” she said in a hollow voice. Unable to keep from spiraling off, she said, “What if other sections are washed out and the police can’t get up here either?”

  In lieu of answering, Sam unclipped his backpack and pulled out several rock-climbing bolts.

  “I’m going to climb up and over to see how far it is until the trail picks back up.” Before he went, he lifted her chin with one finger. “Don’t you dare worry; this is just a minor bump in the road.”

  She forced a small smile, trying desperately to keep the faith.

  After putting his pack back on, Sam got to work quickly screwing the bolts into the rock beside them, using them as hand- and footholds to climb up and over the rock. Too soon, he disappeared from view.

  For three days, he’d only left her side once, when the cabin had been on fire at the campgrounds. After ten years of being alone, sixty seconds without him had her heart pounding, especially when her brain rewound to the conversation they’d had just before heading out here: “What if some deranged fan of yours thinks this is the perfect way to finally meet you, way up in the Rockies with no one else around?”

  She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to go to that sort of trouble over her. But
still, she found herself looking at the forest with wary eyes, until even the sound of the birds and the leaves rustling in the breeze fell on suspicious ears.

  God, how she hated standing on the trail helplessly waiting for Sam to come back.

  That’s when it hit her—she didn’t need to wait. She knew how to climb up the rock, and had left most—if not all—of her fear of heights behind her on that first rock face with Sam two days ago.

  She was just reaching for the first set of bolts when she heard voices.

  But who could Sam be talking to way up here on an unmarked trail in the middle of nowhere?

  Her first thought was that the police had already come. But even from a distance what she was hearing didn’t seem like a friendly conversation.

  Oh God, she thought with increasing alarm, had Sam been right? Was the anonymous tip to the police a trap?

  She knew what he would tell her; he’d insist on her turning around, going back to the Farm, calling the police, and waiting somewhere safe for his return. But there was no way she could leave him to fend for himself.

  Sam had saved her so many times. Now it was her turn to save him.

  Reaching for the bolts, she pulled herself up off the trail. Her heart immediately started racing, her palms began to sweat, and her legs trembled like crazy. But even though her body was still doubting she could do this, her heart knew differently.

  Sam had taught her how not to be afraid.

  Taking a slow, deep breath to calm herself, she put all of her focus on the goal of getting up and over the rock, refusing to leave even a smidge of room for fear to creep back in.

  As she climbed, the grunts and curses from the other side of the trail grew louder, more intense. Moving as quickly as she could over the rock without slipping, she finally got high enough to see down over the other side to the trail.

  Her breath caught as a stranger pointed a gun at Sam. But instead of backing off, Sam threw himself against the man, knocking him hard into the rock beside the trail. It occurred to her that something about the man’s face was vaguely familiar, but she didn’t have time to try to place it, not when she needed to find some way to stop Sam from being shot.

  As she clamored across the rock faster than she would have ever thought she could, Sam looked up.

  “Dianna, get the hell out of here!” he shouted, momentarily distracted by seeing her.

  And then, as if in slow motion, the man gave an unholy roar and shoved Sam with all his might.

  Her mouth opened and she thought she screamed as Sam’s boots slipped on the slick trail and his heavy pack pulled him backward off the edge, sending him flying through the thin mountain air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SHOCK PARALYZED her, making her fingers slip off the cold metal bolts. She was sliding down the rock, but instead of hitting the trail and falling off the edge to her death, she was caught by the man who’d pushed Sam. No!

  Hands clamped down over her windpipe and she gasped for air. She needed to find a way to get away from this man and go get help for Sam.

  If he was still alive after his fall. If she could even find him.

  As she struggled to fight her way out of the man’s strong grip, her mind, her heart, and her body were all revolting at the thought of Sam dying.

  From the first moment she’d met him, he’d been larger than life. After all the risks he’d taken in his life as a hotshot, after all the fires he’d outrun, she refused to believe that Sam could die like this.

  He had to be alive. She’d know if he were dead, wouldn’t she?

  Or was that just a lie she had to tell herself so that she could keep going without him? Especially when after ten years of stubbornly denying their love for each other, she’d known in her gut that they were on the verge of a new start.

  Not a terrible ending.

  The man’s fingers clenched tighter around her neck and chills overtook her at the same time that her vision darkened.

  “Don’t pass out on me now, bitch,” the man growled, removing his stranglehold on her neck just in time.

  Taking in huge gulps of oxygen, when the fuzzy black dots finally cleared from her vision, she realized she was looking straight into the barrel of his gun.

  “Big tough guy like that, you’d think he would have put up more of a fight. But I picked the perfect spot,” the man bragged. “There’s no way he could have survived the fall. Serves him right for being in my way. Always protecting you. Now that I’ve gotten rid of him, you’re all mine.”

  A thick, murky fog came at her, swirling into her head, threatening to take her down. She’d fainted only once before when she’d worked too many hours under hot lights without a break and this was exactly how she’d felt before she dropped.

  “Get up.”

  Everything was spinning as she rolled onto her hands and knees. Bile rose in her throat and somehow she held it down, instinctively knowing better than to show her fear.

  Pulling herself to her feet against the rock face, she turned to look at him. His cold, glassy eyes, his twitching mouth, and his shaking, white-knuckled hands told her just how unhinged he really was.

  She’d never seen anyone look so angry. So deadly.

  “What do you want with me?” she finally managed to croak from out of her bruised throat.

  “You killed my brother.”

  She stared at the stranger in disbelief. What was he talking about?

  “I’ve never hurt anyone,” she immediately protested. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

  He shook the gun at her, his finger poised on the trigger.

  “Oh no, I know exactly who you are. Big, fancy TV star. Everyone wanted a piece of you at the hospital. But nobody gave a rat’s ass about my brother.”

  He’d been at the hospital? Something sparked in the back of her mind, but the temporary lack of oxygen was still playing havoc with her synapses.

  “Jacob is dead because of you. And now you’re going to pay.”

  He practically spat the words at her and she recoiled at the force of his fury.

  “I swear to you, I don’t know anyone named Jacob.”

  But he wasn’t interested in her claims. “Turn around and start walking,” he said, shoving his gun into her ribs.

  Temporarily out of options, she did as instructed. Was it at all possible that this guy was some whacked-out fan of hers who had gone off the deep end after his brother died? Had he somehow manufactured an imaginary scenario where she’d killed his brother and that’s why he was calling her a murderer?

  And if so, did she have any chance at all of getting him to comprehend the real situation?

  Several years back, when she’d been working as an assistant on one of the shows at her station, she’d heard a near miss rape victim describe how she got away from her captor. She got him to talk about his life, about why he was doing something so horrible, and ultimately, he let her get away.

  Praying that a similar tactic might work for her, she said, “I’ve got a sister and I know how hard it would be for me if anything happened to her. I’m truly sorry that your brother died and I know everyone else is, too.”

  But instead of softening, the man shoved the gun into the small of her spine even harder.

  “Do you think I give a shit that you’re sorry? Do you think I even believe you, you lying bitch? You walked away with a couple of bruises, while my brother is dead!”

  I walked away with a couple of bruises?

  A few short moments later, it hit her. This crazy man was talking about the car crash.

  Her hand went to her mouth in horror. “Are you saying that your brother was driving the other car?”

  “Of course that’s what I’m saying. You were too busy with the reporters to give a shit about my dead brother.”

  His bitter accusation made her stumble. He caught the back of her shirt in his fist before she fell.

  “I swear to you,” she said again, “the crash was an accident. And I di
d care about what happened to your brother. When the doctor told me he died, I was horrified. If I could change what happened to bring your brother back to you, I would.”

  “Bullshit! You’re rich, you’re famous, you think you’re so important. You were probably putting on lipstick instead of paying attention to the road.”

  All of his accusations were false, but telling him the truth wouldn’t help. Not when he’d already tried and convicted her in his own mind.

  Her brain whirred as she tried to think of something—anything—she could say to sway him. Then he said, “I’m going to make sure you pay for what you did to my brother. And I’m going to use your precious little sister to do it.”

  She gasped, momentarily forgetting about the gun and swinging around to face him.

  “You’re the one who kidnapped April?”

  “You might be pretty,” he taunted, “but you sure aren’t smart, are you?”

  He thought she’d killed his brother. Of course he’d abducted her sister. April was the perfect means for revenge. April had said some guy grabbed her in the hospital’s parking lot.

  This was the guy.

  Pure rage replaced fear as all of the fierce protectiveness Dianna had ever felt for April swelled up and filled her, head to toe.

  “If you’ve hurt her, I’ll—”

  Her threat was cut off by the slamming blow of the gun against her cheekbone. The force knocked her against the rock and she might have fallen off the edge of the trail just like Sam if the man didn’t grab her by the hair on her way down.

  “If you haven’t figured out by now, you can’t do a damn thing to me,” he said. “I’m the one who’s in charge now. None of your money or fame means a damn out here.”

  His eyes held a strong glimmer of satisfaction. “So move the fuck forward or I’ll shoot you right here and you’ll never see your sister again.”

  Visions of April being hurt by this man and then another of Sam falling down the steep cliff assaulted her. Dianna’s heart clenched with grief.