SNOWBOUND WITH A KILLER
Called in to work with a patient, therapist Theresa Vaughan didn’t anticipate being held hostage by a killer in a snowbound lake cottage...or rescued by her former fiancé. But now bodyguard Alex Dean is the only thing standing between Theresa and certain death, and her patient—who was supposed to be under Alex’s sister’s protection—has disappeared. Alex can’t fail on this mission, or in the eyes of the woman he once loved, so he has to convince her to trust him. With his sister’s client missing, a blizzard raging and a killer closing in, he must make a choice. Will he look to the future and focus on locating the missing charge...or remember the past and save Theresa?
He had to get to her.
He looked up the cliff. “Theresa? I’m on my way up.”
No answer. Snow fell heavily, and the wind beat against him. For every step, he slid back three. Where was she? A shiver of fear brushed his spine. “Theresa? You there?”
All he heard in response was a scream for help that filled his heart with dread. Theresa was in danger.
“Hold on! I’m coming!”
He scrambled to the top, his heart pounding like a fist inside his rib cage. He tried to get around the car that hovered over the cliff, but he couldn’t catch his grip.
“Alex, help!” Her voice floated on the wind.
He grabbed the twisted bumper and hoisted himself up onto the hood. The unstable car groaned beneath him, and he knew he’d have only one shot to save himself. He leaped for the branch above him at the same time the car plunged into the frozen lake.
And then he heard it. The deafening, unmistakable sound of a gunshot.
Maggie K. Black is an award-winning journalist and romantic suspense author with an insatiable love of traveling the world. She has lived in the American South, Europe and the Middle East. She now makes her home in Canada with her history-teacher husband, their two beautiful girls and a small but mighty dog. Maggie enjoys connecting with her readers at maggiekblack.com.
Books by Maggie K. Black
Love Inspired Suspense
True North Bodyguards
Kidnapped at Christmas
Rescue at Cedar Lake
Killer Assignment
Deadline
Silent Hunter
Headline: Murder
Christmas Blackout
Tactical Rescue
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
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RESCUE AT CEDAR LAKE
Maggie K. Black
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak.
—Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7
With thanks to my amazing agent, Melissa Jeglinski, my wonderful editor, Emily Rodmell, the whole Love Inspired team and the incredible group of other Love Inspired writers who encourage me onward in the battle to turn stories into words.
I am very grateful to be surrounded by so many strong and talented women. You inspire me.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EPILOGUE
DEAR READER
EXCERPT FROM PERILOUS HOMECOMING BY SARAH VARLAND
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.
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