Chapter One
Sophia Moretti was pretty darned impressed with her usually reserved self. While on the run, and in just under thirty hours, she’d evaded trained assassins, driven without a bodyguard for the first time, and had managed to make it from DC to New Mexico without stopping, except for the essentials. A new record according to her burner cell phone. Her main cell, the one tracked by her mobster father, was probably still riding around under the back seat of the cab, where she’d purposely left it, in DC.
To buy herself some time.
Her journey, which was thankfully almost over, was especially impressive for a dead person. Sophia Moretti had “died” in a car accident when she was just sixteen, as far as the rest of the world knew. Faking her death had been the only way to keep herself safe from the people who had killed her mother and brother twelve years earlier.
Her father had a lot of enemies.
Before her faked death, getting shipped off to Europe at ten years old with a new name had kept her safe. But the charade had left her mostly alone and with an empty heart.
Since then, she’d dyed her brown hair red, finished college with advanced archaeology degrees, and was now Gabby Knight. Keeper of artifacts in the underbelly of a DC museum, living a quiet life. That is, until her father broke his promise to clean up his act and stole the statue she’d been working on, right out from under her.
She glanced in her rearview mirror as she approached her destination and reminded herself she was done being that meek person. She was going to conjure up some of her family’s famous Italian tempers and show her father that he’d finally crossed the one person who wasn’t afraid of him.
She needed to start living the life she’d been spared twelve years ago.
As she pulled up to a secluded cabin in the woods, one with a property line that backed up to the land she needed to search, her eyes felt as dry as the desert she’d just driven through for hours.
New Mexico was like landing on the moon, compared with DC. It was an odd combination of sandy deserts; looming red-, orange-, and purple-layered cliffs; and mountain passes with pine trees and aspens reminiscent of Colorado.
Despite the beauty that was almost too much to take in, all she wanted was a soft bed. Even a hard one would do. Then, in the morning, she’d search for the Son statue purportedly buried on sacred land. The matching Father statue usually stood under guarded glass at a national museum. Until a few days ago. When her father decided to make it his own, forcing her to find the Son statue before he or his hired hands did.
She’d resorted to using Google Earth to locate the best cabin for her temporary stay. She couldn’t use her credit card to rent one or check into a hotel, which would expose her whereabouts. The nearest hotel to the dig site had said she could pay in cash, but she’d still need to show ID. Her father’s men, who wouldn’t hesitate to pull a gun for information, would find her in a heartbeat.
She’d reluctantly have to break into an empty cabin. Especially because a snowstorm was predicted to hit later, and she’d need shelter against the February cold. Hopefully, it wouldn’t snow too much so she could hike across the sacred Indian land to the site where the matching statue was buried.
Evidently, burying things—and dead people—in the New Mexico desert wasn’t so unusual. There were massive areas of undeveloped land due to the Indian reservations and old family land grants, so it happened more often than one would think.
Fascinating, really.
So, she’d hide out in a cabin, like Goldilocks, and hope no bears showed up later. But unlike Goldilocks, she’d leave money for the repairs after she broke a window to get in, and for any resources she used. She wasn’t a thief. Or so she’d told herself every half hour of the last twenty-four—she was not like her father.
She pulled up slowly to her first choice of hideouts. Looked like she was in luck. No cars out front, nearest neighbor pretty far away, and dark inside—all looked promising. After maneuvering her Jeep around a few stumps and foliage, she parked the car behind the little cabin and killed the engine. She hopped out, sucked in a deep breath of cold, pine-scented air, and then tiptoed to a window. It was dusky out, with just enough light to see inside the pretty wooden home with its green metal roof. It was a cozy-looking place, warm and inviting. And it surely had a bed to lay her tired head on.
She ran back to her Jeep; grabbed the gloves, duct tape, and all the rest of the items she’d picked up to repair the damage; and broke the window. After climbing through and falling hands- and headfirst onto the wooden floor with a thump, she dusted herself off. Then she found the kitchen to test if the utilities were on.
She slowly lifted the handle on the faucet in the sink just as she noted a light was on in the hallway. Warm water poured out of the spigot. So, the utilities were on, and the owners could appear at any moment. She glanced around the warm cabin and spotted a calendar on the wall, Xs marked on certain weeks. Was it a vacation schedule for the cabin? She flipped backward and forward through the months. Sometimes it noted two female names, or simply said “kids.” Like the children didn’t always come. But the best part was that the calendar was clear for weeks. Yes! It’d be safe to stay.
The grumble of her stomach joined the chorus in her head, begging her to get on with things and settle in for the night. But not before she fixed the window. It was too cold to leave a gaping opening in the wall. After that, she’d sleep like the dead before she set out on her artifact-retrieving quest.
In a foul mood, Detective Jake Morris tossed enough groceries for two weeks into his shopping cart. Suspended from duty for shooting an asshat? The guy had been hell-bent on killing a woman and her child. Some reward for being a good cop. Then confiscating his gun to investigate the shooting and putting him on administrative leave? That was the pretty term for it, but it felt like punishment for doing his damn job.
Next came the meeting in the lieutenant’s office. Ordered to take a month’s vacation because Jake hadn’t had one in five years. Insulting. Like crime ever took a vacation.
He’d been a little busy being the guy who closed more cases than any other detective in his squad. Sure, since his ex-wife, Dani, had cut back on sharing her woo-woo visions with him to help him nab bad guys, he hadn’t closed as many cases, but still, he was a damn good cop.
Wasn’t he?
It was just a slump. That’s all. Nothing to do with his divorce, as his boss had suggested. Dani was still his friend despite now being engaged to a stuffy lawyer. He and his ex got along great. Always would.
His other choice had entailed spilling his guts to the department shrink in lieu of the extended vacation. He didn’t want to talk about his crappy childhood again or explain why he didn’t like to be touched unless he was making love to a woman. Or how he’d been forced as a teen to work on a ranch run by a cruel foreman because he had nowhere else to go, or that his marriage had failed because he put his job first. He knew all of that. And he hated to be told he had to change his ways. He was fine.
When he found the right woman, that’s when he’d put the lessons he’d learned into play. He’d work less, settle down, and have a family. A nice family, dammit. With parents who’d never leave their kids to fend for themselves.
He threw his favorite chocolate cereal into the cart a bit too hard, earning a sideways glance from the one other patron in the store.
Maybe having a family had been a pipe dream, too. Hard to think straight when he was still seeing red after being told he’d be fired if he was caught using any police resources for the next thirty days. They’d taken his badge to be sure he complied. That had been beyond humiliating. His badge represented his heart, all that he believed in, the one thing he was proud of in his life.
Where was a punching bag when he needed one?
He got to the liquor section of the small country store and grabbed plenty of fuel for his pity party. Chips, dips, pretzels, and beer by the case? Check. Might as well get some hard stuff, too, for the lonely, cold nights and days ahead he’d need to fill. Doing what?
Maybe he’d do some fly-fishing in the river. He’d been meaning to do that for a long time. Or read books on his e-reader. Thank God he had Internet in the woods. He’d go nuts otherwise. He didn’t know what to do with himself when he’d had a few free hours at home, much less a month in the secluded cabin. The thought was depressing.
His demanding schedule meant Dani used the cabin more than he had. And she’d been nice enough to tell him to use it whenever he wanted, even though she’d gotten it in the divorce.
The times he’d joined Dani for the weekend, he’d never been bored. They had usually spent the whole time in bed. That part had never been a problem in their marriage—just everything else, because of him.
After topping off his cart to overflowing with junk food and frozen dinners, he made his way to the front to pay. He was starving and couldn’t get to the cabin quick enough. He’d been so busy trying to tie up loose ends before he’d left the station he’d forgotten to eat lunch. It was almost four in the afternoon, so a PowerBar at checkout was going to have to do until he could make it up the snowy hill the rest of the way to Dani’s cabin.
“Nice to see you again, Detective. Find everything okay?” said the daughter of the store’s owner. Shelly was a pretty blonde, too young, and completely off-limits, no matter how hard she flirted with him.
“It’s just Jake to you, kiddo. How’s that boyfriend of yours? Wes, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Shelly nodded as she bagged up his food. “He’s fine and belongs to some other lovesick fool now. So if you ever change your mind, and need someone to keep you warm up there in that fancy cabin, I’m always here.” She handed Jake the bags to pile into his cart.
“You’d be better off with someone your own age.” Being thirty-two had never felt more ancient.
She leaned forward and ran her scanner gun across the cases of beer he’d stowed on the bottom of the cart. She whispered, “I’m legal now, Jake. And eager to know what it’d be like to be with a real man. Like you.”
He made a note to himself: No more flirting. For the rest of his life. “I’m damaged merchandise, kid. Not nearly good enough for someone as sweet as you.”
“I’ll have to settle with having you only in my dreams, then, I guess.” She smiled coyly while he put his card into the reader to pay.
Probably best to ignore that comment. When the machine indicated he could, he removed his card. “Say hi to your folks. See ya.” He turned and pushed the cart out and into the snow as fast as the ice would allow.
Once he was all loaded up, he slowly hit the highway and navigated the slick asphalt to the cabin. He took the turn off onto a dirt road covered in fresh powder. Looked like none of the neighbors had been down their street to leave tire tracks, so he forged down the middle and christened the pristine, glistening snow.
Pulling up in front of the cabin, he maneuvered the truck as close as he could to the front door and then shut things down. Once he’d hauled all the groceries in, he’d grab some wood from the back and make himself a cozy fire. He loved when it snowed at the cabin. Something about trudging through it to get inside, sitting in the warm living room with the blinds open, and watching the animals leave tracks in their wake made his heart grow lighter. Maybe his time in the woods would do him some good after all. Maybe he did need to recharge and relax and learn to stand his own company for more than ten minutes. And just maybe he’d finally read that self-help book his buddy had given him to learn to relax.
He stomped the snow off his boots and then reached for the key in his coat pocket. But it wasn’t there. Had it fallen out in the truck?
He walked back to his 4x4 and put the groceries down as he searched the passenger side and then under the back seats in the extended cab for the lost key.
Dammit. It was probably an omen. Had coming to the cabin been a bad idea after all?
After sleeping for sixteen hours straight, Gabby, still feeling guilty for breaking into the cabin, sipped good coffee and enjoyed the light snowfall as she peered out the kitchen window, watching for her father’s men. The little crisscross prints the flitting birds left in the snow made her smile.
She’d woken up in the early afternoon, taken a peek outside, and realized that her plans for trooping miles to the dig site were instantly thwarted. Maybe the sun would come out the next day so she’d be able to continue her mission in the morning. Until the snow melted, no one else could effectively dig at the site, either, so she probably hadn’t lost any time there in her race to be first.
She turned and smiled at the coziness of the cabin. It had all the amenities of a five-star hotel, including central heat, so she was still padding around in her socks and pj’s at four thirty in the afternoon.
She crossed to the living room and ran her hand over the back of the rich-leather furniture while admiring the fine wood of the shelves that held homey knickknacks and books. She danced her fingers along the spines, searching for a fun story. She spotted a framed picture of two little girls and a handsome dark-haired man. She picked it up, studying it. They all looked happy. And the girls were so cute it melted her heart.
If she kept on living the way she had been, always under heavy guard, she’d probably never have a husband or kids, because no decent man would ever marry her when he found out the truth about her father.
She was two years shy of thirty. The clock wasn’t just ticking—it was clanging.
She’d always dreamed of having kids. To have people to love who were good and sweet, like her mom had been. A child to nurture and love with all her heart, the way her mom had loved her. She’d been essentially alone the last twelve years, hiding out, keeping her head down. Her love tank was practically overflowing with the need to share it with a handsome husband and their happy children. Like in the picture.
The slamming of a car door quickly ended her little daydream, and she hopped into action. She peeked out the peephole in the front door. A truck had parked in the driveway. Crap. Had they found her already? She could make out only the back of a man, bent over, gathering something out of the vehicle. Only one man instead of the usual pair who guarded her. Maybe her father had hired a new guard to retrieve her?
Her heart pounded as her mind raced for a solution. She could go out through the same window she’d come in from, but then a car chase for an inexperienced driver in the snow could be fatal.
She ran to the kitchen to look for something heavy. No way she’d use her gun or a knife. Threatening her father’s men with weapons wouldn’t work. They knew she’d never use those. It sucked those guys knew she was so wimpy.
She’d have to hit the guy.
She hated to do it, but she was trapped. And it wasn’t like she’d be hitting someone nice. Her father’s men were bad people. She’d hit the guy just hard enough for a chance to get away. But how hard was that? She’d never hit another person in her entire life.
She dug through cabinets and drawers, picking up a meat tenderizer to test its weight in her hand. Not nearly heavy enough.
Where was a baseball bat when a girl needed it?
Then she saw it. A cast-iron skillet. That’d do the trick.
She’d wait behind the door. When the man got close enough, she’d swing. And hope for the best. She’d been a pretty decent cricket player at her boarding school in England. How different could swinging a pan be?
It was the only plan she had, so she took her place in the hallway and tried to draw enough air into her lungs so she wouldn’t pass out.
She waited, but then the footsteps retreated, and the car door opened and closed again. Was the guy leaving? Maybe it wasn’t one of her father’s men after all. A neighbor perhaps? Checking on the place? Her heart rate had just settled when the footsteps came back.
Then the knob slowly turned.
She had to do it. No choice. She couldn’t let her dad’s thugs catch her and drag her back to DC. Not yet, anyway. She lifted the heavy pan above her head and sucked in a breath for courage. She could do it.
When the tall, blond man passed by her, she swung. The sick thud of the pan hitting something solid, and the way the bags of groceries sailed out in front of him, indicated she’d gotten in a good lick.
The man landed facedown and went completely still. Dead still. She dropped the pan as if it were on fire. What if she’d killed him?
She’d be no better than her father.
What had she just done?