CHAPTER ONE
At the sound of a faint rattle from the back of the house, Bri Dawson froze with her hand outstretched for the TV remote.
She quit breathing while she listened as hard as she could.
At last, she stood and tiptoed to where she could see down the hall and into the kitchen.
Of course, there was no one in sight, and the only way to be sure was to tiptoe as far as the laundry room.
She stifled a moan. Now she couldn’t even watch TV, because she wouldn’t hear someone breaking in.
She didn’t like being home alone at night. She didn’t even have to be, because Hailey had asked her to spend the night. Mom had said, “Not a chance. I told you already, we’re leaving early in the morning.” There’d been an edge to her voice when she added, “And no, don’t ask again’it’s a surprise.”
Aunt Mara would have let her hang out until Mom and Dennis picked her up, too.
An exasperated eye roll had been the answer to that suggestion.
Mom didn’t like Bri’s aunt, and although Aunt Mara had never said so, Bri could tell she didn’t like Mom, either.
Face-to-face, they were always polite, even giving each other fake hugs.
But Mom usually let Aunt Mara take Bri camping, or shopping down at the big mall in Bremerton.
Tonight, she had her back up, that was all.
Well, so what? Bri still had goose bumps.
She made herself creep through the house and even looked behind the shower curtain.
Then she squared her shoulders, marched to the front door and grabbed her parka.
It was only two blocks to Aunt Mara’s house, in this dumb little town where Mom had moved them.
She could do that. Hide behind bushes when she saw a car coming.
She could even run’fast! Mom would be mad, but who cared?
She slipped out onto the porch and pushed the button to lock the door’because leaving it unlocked would make Mom even madder’then dashed across the lawn toward the shelter of a big maple tree.
Two blocks.
* * *
The noise level in the crowded tavern dropped precipitously, leaving a momentary hush.
Even before she turned her head, Mara Dawson knew the cause.
Sheriff’s Deputy Cameron Frasier had just walked in.
He didn’t carry a gun unless he had one hidden, and he wasn’t even wearing his uniform tonight.
But dressing down didn’t change a thing. He was just that commanding.
He’d only been in town for ten days’Mara remembered the exact moment she’d set eyes on him’and he wasn’t yet well-known, but nobody had challenged him, not even jokingly.
The night she’d shared a table with him at the café, she could see flickers of humor in his eyes and his lips twitching, but you had to be looking for it or you’d miss any change from the watchful expression that seemed to be his norm.
Even the local band playing tonight hit an off note upon his arrival, but as Cam strolled across the room toward Mara, the voices gradually resumed until the usual din was only slightly subdued.
Men pretended he wasn’t here, while women couldn’t seem to tear their eyes away from him.
No surprise there’the man was at least a couple of inches over six feet, long, lean and muscular, and he moved lightly on his feet.
He was handsome, but in a hard, wholly masculine way that did it for her, big-time.
That worried her, since he seemed too good to be true.
Still...she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this attracted to a man.
He slid into the other side of her booth, the crinkles beside his pale gray eyes serving as a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey to you, too,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I was lucky to be able to grab a booth and didn’t want to have to fight someone off to keep it.”
Before he could so much as lift his hand, a waitress materialized by their table. He ordered a burger and a beer.
The one other time they’d met up here at the tavern, he took sips from his beer but didn’t finish it.
Maybe he just wasn’t a drinker, but it could be that he was too conscious of his role here, in the rowdy town of Thunder Creek, to lower his guard.
She herself was nursing a diet cola, and she wished there was somewhere’anywhere’else in town where you could reasonably meet up for a date.
“I see your sister is here,” he remarked.
Mara wasn’t surprised he’d noticed; he invariably scanned any room before he entered it, and she had no doubt he cataloged every single person in it, even in a crowd like tonight’s.
“Not my sister,” she said automatically.
“Sister-in-law.”
“Not anymore.”
Two months back, Mara had snagged her teaching job in this small, sleepy town for one reason and one reason only: she was determined to be close to Bri, her only remaining family.
Fortunately, she’d been able to continue her role with the Cascade Mountain Search & Rescue.
Diana had been furious, one of the few times their usual civility had broken down, accusing Mara of trying to steal her daughter.
She wasn’t wrong: Mara wanted to grab Bri and run, but so far she hadn’t discovered a legal justification to excuse her firm belief that the eleven-year-old girl wasn’t safe with her mother and the latest of Diana’s string of boyfriends. And just wait until Brianna reached puberty!
Aware of Cam’s pale eyes intent on her face, Mara forced a smile. “Guess you can tell we’re not crazy about each other.”
“There a reason?”
“Rubs me the wrong way, that’s all.”
His gaze stayed on her, and she could see that he knew there was more to it than that, but he had to turn his head to thank the server. He reached for his beer. “Is Brianna safe with her mother and...what’s his name, Dennis?”
“I wouldn’t give her the Mother of the Year award, but yes.
” Probably. She grimaced. “At worst, Diana is neglectful. Bri is probably home alone tonight, for example, even though she isn’t technically old enough to be on her own.
And her birthday was only a month ago!” She let out a huff.
“I haven’t gotten any bad vibes from Dennis, and Bri talks to me. ”
Cam nodded thoughtfully. “You ever gone up in that plane with him?”
Dennis Terrell ran a charter business with his six-seater plane.
The runway here had been built only four months ago and was private, part of a new resort being built half a mile out of town.
Mara had been taken aback when he moved Diana and Bri to this speck on the map bordering Cascade National Park.
Would he really get enough charter business here?
And why move before the resort opened? The views were spectacular, but Thunder Creek was a long, winding drive through deep forests far from anything you could call a city.
Before the move, he’d operated out of a much busier airport and was apparently thrilled when he could afford to upgrade from the four-seat plane he’d flown for years.
Responding to Cam’s question, she said, “I might consider it, if a forest fire was fifteen minutes from overrunning town.”
A quick flash of a grin startled her. “Not crazy about him, either?”
Despite herself, she flicked a glance to the side to see Dennis banging his glass on the table to demand a refill. “He’s drunk when he’s not flying,” she said flatly.
“You sure he isn’t still drunk when he goes up?”
“I don’t think so, but who knows?” She rolled her shoulders to relieve the instant tension.
She didn’t like the way Dennis yelled at Bri and Diana’although Diana could take care of herself.
Mara’s brother had been an alcoholic, too.
She’d encouraged him many times to go into treatment, then driven him there and picked him up, only to realize two days later he was drunk again.
Diana always seemed irritated when he’d go away for a month, though you’d think she’d let out a sigh of relief.
Now Mara asked, “Could you cite him if he was?”
“Once he’s off the ground, he’s technically not my business. I could sure arrest him during his drive to the airport, though. Or make some calls if I knew where he intended to land.”
To distract herself, Mara smiled at a passing couple she liked. They smiled in return, but eyed the new local law enforcement cautiously.
It was funny, because she’d bet almost every citizen in here was mostly law-abiding.
She hadn’t lived here long enough to say for sure, but her impression was that the resident sheriff’s deputy’only one, rotating every six months or so’didn’t do much but pull over speeders, lurk outside the tavern when it closed down on weekend nights to make sure no one was driving drunk and respond to a rare complaint of something stolen or a citizen who’d locked himself out of his car.
The sheriff’s department hadn’t bothered stationing anyone full-time in Thunder Creek’and from what she’d been told, town had been a generous description for a two-stoplight cluster of log cabins, a pharmacy, a post office, one expensive grocery store and two gas pumps before the resort started going up.
Now Whatcom County had expanded the comforting presence of law enforcement by posting one deputy at a time in a minuscule police station that had a single cell in back, sort of like it would have had in the Old West. Right now, two deputies overlapped, and the one who’d been here for six months was apparently showing the ropes to the new guy.
People were way more relaxed around Deputy Walker than they were with Cam Frasier, and Mara totally under-stood why. Walker was mild-mannered, growing a little soft around the middle and starting to bald, and he seemed to know everyone in town by now.
It was unfair. Cam was amiable whenever she saw him, making an effort to get to know people, never hinting that he could be a threat.
That part, she didn’t believe.