On the Edge of Trust (Logan Point)

Chapter 1

A ding from her phone jerked Jenny Tremont from a sound sleep on her den sofa. She hadn’t been able to sleep and had come down to the den to watch her favorite Friday night show.

Her phone dinged again. The security camera. She grabbed her phone and clicked on the video but didn’t see anything. Maybe an animal?

She replayed the video, looking closer. This time Jenny saw it. A shadow. And it wasn’t an animal. Her sins had found her out—wasn’t that what her mother always said? That her sins would be exposed.

Whoever it was hadn’t gotten in the house yet. She could grab her go-bag, find the intruder’s location on her cameras, and go out on the opposite side of the house.

Jenny raced for the stairs. Wait. The back door. She’d locked it and set the alarm . . . hadn’t she? She always did, even before she had reason to fear, since Logan Point, Mississippi, was next door to Memphis. But sometimes she forgot.

Was there time to check? She couldn’t risk not checking and changed direction. At the back door, her shoulders sagged. She hadn’t locked it. Dumb mistake.

Jenny threw the dead bolt. Getting caught had always been a possibility—she’d even prepared for it.

But she’d never really believed it would happen.

And she hadn’t thought it would happen when she couldn’t get to the money.

She couldn’t go to Zack Mitchell’s house in the middle of the night—he would want to know where the money came from. Think.

Zack’s son. Drew would bring it to her, no questions asked. Jenny’s thumb hovered over the phone. But not here—that might put him in danger.

Quickly she punched in his number as she hurried to her bedroom. Once it started ringing, she laid the phone on the bed while she changed from her pajamas to a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. By the third ring, she’d yanked on a pair of Nikes and grabbed the phone again.

“Come on, Drew, answer!” she muttered under her breath.

On the fifth ring, he picked up. “’Lo?”

Thank God. “I need you to bring me something.”

“Jenny? What? I can’t hear you.” He sounded half asleep.

“Drew!” she hissed and pressed her hand to her head. “Pay attention and don’t ask any questions, just do what I ask.”

“Huh?”

“Please, just listen. I have to leave town. I hid a package in that place you showed me back when your mom was sick. Get it and bring it to the house on Winslow.”

The house was on her way out of town, and meeting the boy there shouldn’t put him in any danger.

“I don’t under—”

“Please. Drew, just do what I said. I need it now.”

Silence stretched for five seconds. “Okay . . . it’ll take me a little bit,” he mumbled.

A board creaked outside her bedroom, and she snapped her head toward the door. Was it the old house settling? Or had the intruder found a way in without alerting her?

“Just hurry,” she whispered.

Jenny disconnected and eased to the door, holding her breath as she pressed her ear against the wood. Hearing nothing, she exhaled quietly. She was on edge. That’s all it was.

Even so, she tiptoed back to her bed, where she grabbed the go-bag. As an afterthought, she silently opened the drawer on her night table, where she kept the Beretta that Zack had given her.

No gun.

It had to be there—she never kept the gun anywhere else. Jenny quietly burrowed through the drawer.

It wasn’t there.

Had she accidentally put it in the lower drawer? The gun wasn’t there, either.

When had she last seen the Beretta? Think. Jenny pressed her fingers to her temples. Maybe Zack had taken it the last time he was here, when he installed the security cameras. He wouldn’t have done that without telling her.

Earlier this week, people she worked with had dropped by for her birthday, including—

Her cell phone buzzed. Drew. She punched the answer button. “What is it?”

“Where did you say to meet you?”

“The house on Winslow. I’m leaving now.”

Jenny hung up, crept to the door, and stood stock-still. Her breathing and the grandfather clock ticking off the seconds at the end of the hall were the only sounds in the house. If anyone was here, they weren’t moving.

She waited. An eternity passed, and she checked her watch. Five minutes? Time she needed to be on the road.

Jenny calculated how long it would take Drew to get to their meeting place . . . the same amount of time it would take her to drive there. Would he wait around if she was late? Probably not. Knowing Drew, he would come check on her. And that might put him in danger. She had to leave now.

Jenny cracked the door just as the grandfather clock chimed the two o’clock hour, masking the creak of the door. Ignoring the pounding of her heart, she stepped into the hallway and looked both ways. Empty.

Encouraged, she eased to the top of the stairs.

No one hid at the bottom. Treading lightly, she descended the steps.

Front door or back? She’d parked her car at the back .

. . and probably there was no one in the house anyway.

She couldn’t believe she’d let a little creak put her in such a panic.

Except it hadn’t been the creak. She’d seen someone’s shadow—that’s what set her on edge.

She had to leave. Now. Jenny tiptoed down the hall to the dark kitchen.

She should’ve put alarms on her doors, but she’d thought the cameras were enough.

An intruder could’ve gotten in before she locked the back door and be hunkered down behind the island.

Or under the table. Impossible to tell in the dark.

Did she dare risk turning on the light? Even though she’d almost convinced herself no one was in the house, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

Jenny hesitated. If someone was in the house, they would expect her to go out the back door to her car. She backed away and hurried to the den with its sliding doors. It wasn’t much farther to her car, anyway.

If only she had the Beretta. Jenny knelt and removed the security bar from the track. The steel bar felt good in her hand. At least she had a weapon now.

Light flooded the room. Jenny whirled around, and her eyes widened. The intruder stood just inside the door to the den. “What do you want?”

“You know why I’m here.”

Jenny tried to swallow, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cold eyes stared at her. “Come on, Jenny—I’m tired of paying you.”

“What you’re giving me is only a fraction of what you’ve stashed away.” She needed the money to help her dad start over.

“Wrong answer. I’m tired of you holding that data drive over my head.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you got your hands dirty with drug money.”

“That’s rich, coming from you. You were the one snooping on my computer.”

And found an encrypted account on the computer that she’d hacked into. “I thought you were embezzling, not putting dirty money in an offshore account.”

Jenny hadn’t shared the file with anyone since she didn’t know who else was involved in the scheme. A gun raised level to Jenny’s chest.

She gasped. It was the Beretta Zack had loaned her. “How did you get my gun?”

“That part was easy—like most people, you are so predictable. A key under the flowerpot on the front porch—although I didn’t need it since you conveniently left your door unlocked.

As for the gun . . .” The intruder shrugged.

“It was where I expected it to be. Why couldn’t you have been that predictable with the data drive? Hand it over.”

“I don’t have it.” Jenny gripped the cold steel bar. She wasn’t a fool. If she gave up the drive’s location, she’d be dead. Jenny tightened her hand around the bar and edged closer to her intruder. She’d never tried to kill anyone before, but there was a first time for everything.

“Where is it?” Impatience rang in the voice.

She didn’t have much time. “I . . . I mailed it to Victoria Mitchell two weeks ago.”

No! She’d just put a bull’s-eye on Victoria with words that weren’t even true. But they were believable—everyone knew she was close to the Mitchell family. She would just have to survive to keep Victoria safe.

The intruder fixed her with an intense gaze and seemed to be considering the possibility that what she’d said was true. Jenny was almost within striking distance. “But we can work this out. Just turn around and leave. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

“Not without the drive.”

And that would seal her death. Jenny swung the bar, knocking the gun to the floor. She scrambled to reach it first.